Level 7
Mordecai Roshwald
■ HE WAS GOING
■ DOWN,
■ DOWN,
■ DOWN…
■ 4000 feet into the earth,
■ never to return!
Level 7 is the diary of Officer X-127, who is assigned to the country’s deepest bomb shelter housing important military personnel and equipment. For security reasons those who go down, stay down.
Four thousand feet away from sunshine, Level 7 is considered secure from the most devastating attack and has been prepared to be self-sufficient for five hundred years. Marriages are made in this inverted heaven; food is taken in the form of pulp and pills. All is ordained by the god Loudspeaker which, unseen and omnipresent, voices commands for the good of its creatures.
The duty of Officer X-127 is to stand guard at the Pushbuttons, a machine devised to rocket instant atomic destruction toward the enemy. There are pushbuttons 1, 2, 3, and 4. Pushbutton 4 is final, complete, total devastation.
“Powerful, deeply imaginative, haunting…. The best comment there has been so far on the ghastly imbecility of nuclear armaments.”
—J.B. PRIESTLY
“No one can read Level 7 without feeling its gravest warning.”
—N.Y. Herald Tribune
“This story gives the most realistic picture of nuclear war that I have read in any work of fiction.”
—Linus Pauling
Originally published in 1959, and with more than 400,000 copies sold, this powerful dystopian novel remains a horrific vision of where the nuclear arms race may lead and is an affirmation of human life and love. Level 7 merits comparison to Huxley’s A Brave New World and Orwell's 1984 and should be considered a must-read by all science fiction fans.
“Eventually, I believe, Roshwald’s remorseless apocalypse will be recognized as one of the masterpieces of anti-utopian literature.”
—H. Bruce Franklin
Mordecai Roshwald is professor emeritus of humanities at the University of Minnesota and a visiting professor at many universities worldwide.
LEVEL 7
by Mordecai Roshwald
To Dwight and Nikita
My thanks are due to Jonathan Price for translating the original manuscript from my English into English and for making many valuable suggestions.
INTRODUCTION
How I started to write this diary
Some time has passed—thirty-seven days, to be precise—since I decided to write this diary and started to do so. It seems longer: these thirty-seven days have stretched out like eternity. My previous life passes before my mind as a recollected dream, a remote image, the life of another man. In a way, I got adjusted to my new life pretty quickly, though I am still far from feeling happy.
It is now, when my diary is already quite substantial, that it occurs to me that it should have some sort of introduction.
Introduction for whom? I ask myself. What chance is there that the diary will ever see daylight? I mean that literally. For my unknown and uncertain reader sometime in the future, this diary is being written in dungeons.
These dungeons are so deep underground that there is not the slightest chance of any ray of natural light penetrating into them. Not that we need daylight, of course. Our light down here is as strong as is desirable. It is scientifically adjusted to suit human needs. In some ways it is more perfect than sunlight: we get no gloomy days down here, and we never need sun-glasses. I’m told the temperature too is scientifically regulated—to 68 degrees, I believe. This must be the only place in the world where nobody ever talks about the weather. There isn’t any.
So here I am, 4,400 feet down inside the earth, with no chance of seeing sunshine again, writing a diary which probably no one will ever read. The idea of writing it occurred to me a few hours after I had come down. They were very hard hours—hours in which I realised that I shall never go back up to live on the surface of the earth again. But I must go back a bit to tell you how it happened.
The time was 8:00 a.m. and the date was March 21. I was sitting in my room at the PB (Push-Button) Training Camp. I had just had my breakfast, and I was in the act of glancing through the day’s work-programme when there came a knock at the door. A messenger poked his head in and said that the Commanding Officer wanted to see me at once. I glanced in the mirror, flicked a speck of dust off the sleeve of my uniform, took my cap down from the peg behind the door, and left the room.
I had no idea I was walking out of one life and into another. I didn’t even wonder much what the C.O. wanted to see me about. He quite often called one in without any advance warning. Sometimes it was for a fairly important matter—to say that you were to go on attachment to another training base, for example, or that you had been promoted, or that your work was not up to standard. Sometimes it was for one of his periodical inquiries about how you had spent your leave or week-end pass, to find out whether you had met anybody who seemed to be too interested in military secrets. And sometimes he called you in for a friendly-seeming chat without any apparent purpose, which made you wonder for the rest of the day whether he had had a hidden motive or was just plain bored and wanted somebody to talk to.
For the C.O. often was bored—lonely, anyway. As the administrative apex of a highly trained unit of military technicians, he was our superior in rank but inferior to us in technical education, in I.Q. and—so we thought—in his indispensability for modern warfare. So he was always obeyed, but seldom respected; and never treated as a friend. Our attitude probably resembled that of a bunch of Ivy-league college boys under a veteran sergeant who ruled as a god on the parade ground but with whom they would not have dreamt of associating in private. I wouldn’t know for certain because I never was an aristocrat and our instruction bore little resemblance to the old-time training for officers.
To get back to my story: when I was summoned to the C.O. that morning I had no idea what to expect. I thought vaguely that it might be something to do with my leave. For the last three months I had not been allowed off the camp—it had been the final phase of my training period. I had not even had a week-end away. I felt I deserved some leave. We had excellent facilities for leisure inside the camp, but even the inconveniences of life outside seemed attractive once in a while. Now that I am deep underground, even the restricted life of the camp seems almost unbearably attractive in retrospect. And as for a week-end free to go where I liked and do what I wanted—I daren’t think about it.
Anyhow, the notion that leave might be in store for me put me in a cheerful frame of mind as I walked over to the administrative block and entered the C.O.’s office. The C.O. was as quiet and controlled in his manner as ever, perhaps—so it seems to me now—even quieter and more controlled than usual. He asked me to take a chair, and then told me that the report on my final training was quite good. I was to be promoted to major, and would receive the increased pay which went with the rank. “As a matter of fact,” he added with a superior smile, “you’ll be getting rather more than I get, because of your technical qualifications.” I thanked him for the news, and thought how cleverly he camouflaged his feeling of inferiority.
“Now, your leave,” he went on, and my hopes rose. “Unfortunately,” and he paused on the word, conscious of having scored, “that will have to be postponed for a day or two. You have been ordered down.”
This meant underground, to the deep military installations of whose existence we trainees were, of course, aware, but which we had never seen.
“You’ll be able to gain first-hand knowledge of those matters with which your training up here has made you acquainted. And then,” with his sweetest smile, “you will be truly capable of fulfilling your duty and repaying your country for the money, time and energy it has invested in you.”
I swallowed that remark too. Coated, as it was, with the sweet sugar of higher rank and pay, it went down fairly easily.
“After you return from the trip down,” the C.O. concluded, “you will go on two weeks’ leave. This is a part of the order from above, which even I could not change if I wished to.” He could never say a pleasant thing without some bitter twist; but it did not worry me. I was already thinking about my leave—my ordered leave.
Did the C.O. know that this leave business was only a trick, part of the routine for taking me, and my fellows, smoothly down? I did not think so. He was just passing on orders which he, just then, understood as little as I did.
When I asked him at what time I was expected to leave, he told me that a car was already waiting for me outside his office. This struck me as rather unusual, for normally an order of this sort allowed some time for personal preparation. Still, one purpose of a military training is to accustom you to obeying orders without asking questions. I therefore accepted without query another curious fact: that I should take nothing with me, not even a toothbrush. “Everything will be provided on the spot,” said the C.O. “Just get into the car and go.”
This was becoming interesting. But there was no time for meditation. I stood up, saluted, left the office, stepped into the waiting car, and we were off. I remember glancing at my watch. The time was 8.30.
It was not until a few days later, after my destiny had been made known to me, that I understood the reason for this haste. The Supreme Command wanted to take no chances. It did not want the men and women who were ordered down to talk to anybody who was to remain. They had to be taken down directly, without any contact with friends and relations. The only man who knew that we—myself and some others from my camp—were going down was the C.O., and he could be relied upon to keep his mouth shut. Even the toothbrush I left had a function to fulfil. It would serve as evidence that my disappearance was purely accidental and unrelated to any military task. If I had been sent somewhere on duty, I would surely have taken my toothbrush with me. In short, my companions and I had to vanish as inconspicuously as possible, as if the earth had opened and swallowed us up. Which is precisely what happened.
The car in which I was being driven was a closed military model of unremarkable appearance, the type of car which might have been used by anybody from a lieutenant to a general. I was sitting by myself in the rear seat, feeling most comfortable. I clearly remember this sensation of comfort, because it occurred to me that this was the way a major should feel. I realise now how silly I was to let the business of my new rank fill my mind at that moment. But, reclining on the soft seat, I felt like Napoleon after Austerlitz.
After day-dreaming pleasantly for an hour or so I began to look more closely at one feature of the car which was unusual: a partition which divided the front and rear of the car into separate compartments. I remembered seeing old films in which taxi-drivers were often separated from their patrons by glass windows. But the partition in my car was made of some opaque plastic stuff. I could not even see the driver, let alone talk to him. I had no way of communicating with him, which was a pity, because I would have liked to ask him the reason for the partition. Presumably that is exactly why the screen was there: to stop me asking questions. Well, one gets used to that in military life. I sat back again and, for lack of anything better to do, gazed out of the car window in an effort to establish where we were going.
I did not learn much. We seemed to have left the signposted public roads, and were travelling across barren territory which I had never seen before.
At about 11.00 a.m. the car entered a tunnel. I just had time to notice how well the entrance had been camouflaged—the countryside was rocky, and two huge natural boulders formed an arch which quite hid the mouth of the tunnel—before we were inside and travelling down a steep but smooth and well-lit incline. The tunnel was wide enough for two cars to pass, but no vehicles were coming the opposite way. (I assume they must have used a special exit tunnel. In case of emergency, either of them could be used for two-way traffic.) My car had slowed down now, presumably because of other cars ahead of us which I could not see from my seat. Then it stopped, moved on and stopped again several times, as in a traffic jam. Suddenly—it did seem sudden, though I had been anticipating the moment—the car stopped again and the door was quickly opened by someone outside. This was it. I stepped out.
The car had drawn up very close to an entrance in the wall of the tunnel. There was only one way for me to go—through that entrance. A notice on the wall of the short passage in which I found myself read: ‘Don’t Stop! Keep Moving!’ I passed through another door and entered a lift.
It was a fairly big one, about twelve feet square. Some people were in it already, and others were following me in. When it was quite full the door closed and down we went. As far as I could judge by the initial acceleration, the lift was travelling pretty fast—1,000 feet or more per minute. And as it took us about three minutes to reach our destination, I guessed we must be at least 3,000 feet underground. As I learned later, it was even more than that: our dungeons were located 4,400 feet below the crust of the earth.
We stepped out into a well-illuminated corridor, some seven feet wide by seven feet high and twenty or thirty yards long. It was quite bare except for painted signs on the walls telling whoever was in it to proceed—hardly necessary, as the lift-door had closed firmly behind us. At the far end of the corridor was a revolving door through which we passed one by one. I remember glancing behind me after I had gone through and noticing that one half of the door was blocked on the inside. And the door only revolved one way. But the full significance of this did not strike me at the time.
The passage in which we now found ourselves led to a moving staircase—only one such staircase, and moving down. A minute or so later I was standing in a long narrow room which stretched about fifty yards on either hand. It was set at right angles to the escalator we had just come down. The escalator exit door was in the centre of one side of the room, and to its left and right were other doors spaced along the length of the wall. Each door bore an inscription of some sort, but I was more interested in examining the long table which ran the length of the other long wall, opposite the doors. It was supported by brackets from the wall, and at each extremity it appeared to run into a hole in the end wall of the room.
Before I had had time to examine it closely a woman’s voice, very calm and clear, began repeating over a loudspeaker: “Everybody proceed to the table and be seated on the bench. Move along the room and do not block the entrance. Do not stop at the centre; move along the table. Thank you.”
Soon the bench was filled to capacity, and no more people were coming in from the staircase. I could not count how many were seated at the table, but I guessed the number must be somewhere between 150 and 200 (I found out later that meals were in fact served to 177 to 178 persons at a time). Then the voice on the loudspeaker was heard again: “Attention, please! Lunch will be served presently.”
Whereupon, as if at an agreed signal, everybody started talking. Though my neighbours were perfect strangers to me, they addressed me and I addressed them at almost the same moment.
“Well, that was a ride!”
“So this is the bowels of the earth!”
“We must be very deep down.”
“Thirty-five hundred feet, I’d say.”
“More than that!”
“And quite quickly done.”
“I wonder what we’ll get for lunch.”
“I feel rather hungry after all that.”
“So do I.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Such were the things we said: not profound things or purposeful things, but somehow important to the people seated at the table. It was only after this spontaneous talk had erupted all along the line that it occurred to me that not a word had been uttered all the way down in the lift, along the corridors, on the escalator and finally in this dining-room. Apparently we had all
been so preoccupied with the experience of going down that we had hardly noticed each other’s existence. The intensity of our brooding was revealed only after the familiar idea of lunch had jerked us out of ourselves and set our tongues free.
Now the loudspeaker addressed us again: “Attention, please! Your lunches will be served to you on the moving band of the table. Wait till the band stops. Then start eating. Eat everything you are given. You will need it. Don’t forget the pills: they are important for your diet. Don’t wonder or hesitate about the food. It was scientifically prepared to meet the needs of men and women in this new environment. Thank you.” Click.
Even before the loudspeaker had finished, the band had started to move, and I saw what the voice meant. I had not noticed before that the table was covered with a wide strip of some plastic substance which ran the whole of its length and into the slots in the end walls. As the band moved it bore dishes of food towards us from one of the holes. It moved smoothly and quite quickly, and slowed down steadily to a halt as the first dish reached the far end of the room. Now the long table was covered with identical, equally-spaced plates which—as I found when I tried—were attached to the band and could not be removed. Beside each place, on a magnetised metal disc, stood a metal cup which was further secured by a spiral wire to the plastic band. A medium-sized spoon was fastened to the band by a similar wire. In this way the cup and the spoon could be used but not taken away, on exactly the same principle as the pencils provided for customers in some offices. The magnetic ‘saucer’ stopped the cup sliding about when the band was in motion and also, I guessed, held it firm when the endless band passed upside-down through a washing machine which cleaned table, crockery and cutlery all together. I found out later that my guess had been right, and that the whole process, including doling out the food, was fully automatic.
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