Part One, Chapters Five through Eight Summary

In Chapter Five, Beatrice-Joanna enters the Ministry of Infertility. She sees desolate-looking mothers who smell of cheap spirits, or alc, collecting money for the deaths of their children, now that infanticide is rewarded by the government. Feeling angry and unaccountably guilty, Beatrice-Joanna collects payment for the death of her child. She takes an elevator to the Propaganda Department, where she sees Derek talking to others, conducting himself in an obviously gay manner. She gets him aside and tells him that Roger died, and he is sympathetic, but he tells her a small, mustachioed man standing in a corner, named Loosley, seems to be watching him. Beatrice-Joanna makes him say he loves her before she lets Derek go. In Chapter Six, Tristram tells the class that the Interphase cannot continue forever. The disappointment in...