It seems that under stress they are becoming more critical again. Some of them have been making abusive remarks about our government—accusing it of ‘negligence’, ‘stupidity’ and so forth.
It is good fun listening to these messages. They have real entertainment value.
That is one of the best things about these post-war days—the radio communication. For the first time since we came down here, we can hear the voice of people outside our own community. Not voices from the surface, admittedly, but voices from other levels. We communicate with the other military people on Level 6, we overhear what the politicians say on Level 5, we enjoy ourselves listening to the abuse from the cranks who survive on Level 2.
And all quite unrestricted, too. Since June 11 the general loudspeaker system has been relaying whatever messages have seemed of most general interest. As far as I can tell, the selection necessary in the circumstances (the alternative would be babel) is the only form of ‘censorship’ being used. There cannot be any other kind, or we should certainly not be allowed to hear the outrageous things said by the enemy and by Level 2.
Level 7, it seems to me, has been reborn. People are taking an interest in what is going on in the world—or rather in the underworld. There is a new sparkle in their eyes.
We are no longer isolated. We have contact with humanity again.
We are not underprivileged any more, doomed to live below while others enjoy the sunshine. Now we appreciate how privileged we are. Our deepest of shelters makes us the most favoured people in the world.
JUNE 14
P is very satisfied with my present mental condition. I am in a much better mood, and have almost forgotten the ordeal of my psychological therapy.
The activity, the feeling of having done something, does me good. I am through with my work now, admittedly, but since the end of hostilities there has been such a bustle on Level 7 that life here seems different.
P thinks it is the therapy which has made the improvement in me. She may be right, but I am sure the radio communication with other levels has something to do with it too. That is how it seems to me, anyway.
I think that if we had had the radio links all the time, from the very beginning, I would never have collapsed. I said so to X-107, but he had his usual sound argument against such an arrangement. “If we’d been able to talk to the outside world all the time,” he said, “we’d have longed to get out. That would have slowed down our adjustment to Level 7. But now that nobody in his right mind would dream of changing his privileged position down here, contact with other levels can only do us good.”
He was right, of course.
Today we heard some very interesting political news. The enemy denied our claim to victory and said that he had won the war. His arguments, and our politicians’ counter-arguments, were quite ingenious.
The enemy maintained that he had succeeded in destroying our country before we destroyed his. His last missiles were fired before 11.00 hours, whereas we pushed our last buttons at 11.20.
Our people admitted this, but interpreted it the opposite way. They said that he who fired the last shot was the victor. The enemy, they suggested, could not fire the last of his missiles at all, because his launching sites had been put out of order by our rockets.
That was not so, said the enemy, promptly resorting to another sort of argument: as he was fighting for the right and ultimately victorious cause, he said, he must have been victorious.
We maintained precisely the same for our cause and ourselves.
Then the politicians started slinging mud at each other. I do not remember all the abusive phrases they used, but here are some of them.
They called each other ‘war criminals’, ‘inhuman beasts’, ‘beastly men’, ‘unprogressive’, ‘reactionary’, ‘selfish’, ‘child murderers’ and ‘arch-criminals of human history’. They also exchanged such honours as ‘barbarian mongols’ and ‘beastly successors of red-skins’, as well as ‘hangmen of humanity’ and ‘electrocutioners of mankind’.
To cut a long story (it is long, it is still going on) short: the war continues! The military levels on both sides are doing nothing. But from their respective caves the politicians fire insults at each other through the intercontinental radio transmitters.
JUNE 15
For all practical purposes, the war is over. The destruction appears to be immense. The enemy and we, his satellites and our allies (or, as he prefers to put his, his allies and our satellites), indeed the entire surface of the earth, have been laid in ruins.
Even the neutral countries seem to have suffered heavy losses. Somehow they got hit too, by both our rockets and the enemy’s. Out of the thousands that were fired, quite a few missed their targets. So the neutrals suffered because of the lack of perfection in the guiding mechanism of the intercontinental rocket. It is a pity, in a way, but obviously it could not be helped.
Some heavily populated and underdeveloped neutral countries could not afford to build any shelters, and so perished completely. Others, better off, were well prepared for the danger and probably had better shelters for the mass of their population than we had.
Anyway, we can now listen to their broadcasts. They accuse both sides of lack of humanity. Sometimes what they say resembles the criticism which comes down from the cranks on Level 2.
But who can be blamed for the damage that has been caused? If global war is waged with intercontinental missiles equipped with thermonuclear warheads, the relatively small neutral countries cannot help getting hurt.
Besides, why should they be spared suffering, if the major powers are destroyed? Are they any better? They are certainly a lot weaker!
JUNE 16
The neutrals go on reproaching the two great powers. They claim that the big two are morally responsible for the annihilation of their respective allies. And they say the big two had no right to drag neutral countries into the abyss of destruction.
Our broadcasting service on Level 5 answers some of the charges. It says that we acted purely in self-defence, and that all the blame should be laid at the enemy’s door. “Everybody has the right to survive,” said the head of our government earlier today, “and that is precisely the reason why we had to defend ourselves against the treacherous assault of the enemy. For the right to survival implies the right to self-defence!”
The neutral broadcaster took up this argument, drawing opposite conclusions: “In the atomic age,” he said, “survival cannot be safeguarded by self-defence: for self-defence with thermonuclear weapons means total destruction.”
There are other neutral countries which do not join in these discussions, but broadcast accounts of the destruction. Some stress the human angle, going on incessantly about the great suffering caused, the number of people assumed dead all over the world. “Humanity has been decimated,” one speaker said. “Indeed, ‘decimated’ is not the word for it: out of a world population of about three thousand million people, the estimated number of survivors is only a few millions. Perhaps twenty million, perhaps fifteen or ten. And even these are condemned to live in caves!”
These were pretty gloomy statements, but somehow I did not feel as sorry for humanity as the speaker seemed to. ‘All right,’ I thought, ‘so there will be less human beings on earth. What difference does that make? Why is it better to have more people rather than less? And as for living in caves, well, I’ve grown to accept the life I’m forced to live down here, so why should other people expect to be able to walk in the sunshine? That wouldn’t be fair, would it?’
Other neutrals bewail, not the decease of a large number of human beings, but what they call “the catastrophic decline of civilisation”: “Libraries and museums, works of art, institutes of learning, houses, monuments, railways, roads, factories—all these are a thing of the past. What remains now and for the future is shelters, caves, bare minimal existence for the few survivors.” Another one added: “The toil of centuries, the traditions of generations, the wisdom of ages—all blown
away in a few split seconds of atomic blast. This is the suicide of civilisation!”
This kind of talk is rather alien to my way of thinking. Perhaps I have become biased by living so long underground. Or perhaps the psychological treatment did something to make me immune to such appeals. For one reason or another, all these descriptions and arguments mean nothing to me.
Libraries have been destroyed. So what? Museums are in ashes. Who wants to visit a museum anyway? The traditions of centuries perished in a moment. Who cares about traditions?
Maybe I was not so unfeeling when I still lived on the surface, though I was picked for my job because I was pretty unsociable. Up there I might have felt differently. But down here—who cares?
It could be that this is one of the reasons why PBX Command was placed underground. I think that even if it had been possible to construct a safe shelter outside—a round dome of thick glass, say, which would allow us to see the world—it would have been a very unwise thing to do. For psychological reasons, as well as for physical security, we had to be sent below if our performance was to be reliable.
Who knows?—if I had been able to see the world and the destruction I was causing, I might have recoiled from pushing the buttons, just as X-117 did when it came to A4, B4 and C4.
No news of him, incidentally.
JUNE 17
The neutral countries have been asking us and the enemy to tell them what metals were used for the casings of the rigged bombs. They want to know so that they can estimate the time they will have to spend in their shelters. Radioactivity can last anything from a few seconds to milleniums, depending on the material; so the knowledge of what metals were used may certainly be of practical significance. What they are anxious to find out is whether they will be able to go up fairly soon, or have to stay underground indefinitely.
Both we and the enemy have refused to tell them what we used. The reason given was that this was a military secret which might benefit the other side.
The neutrals tried to bargain with both sides, stressing the shortage of their underground supplies. We both declared ourselves ready to make the secret known, provided the other side did so too.
But I do not see how this can work out in practice. There is the problem of who will disclose the information first. And even if both sides agree to disclose it simultaneously, as a statesman from one neutral country has suggested, it is still doubtful whether the enemy will tell the truth.
The enemy suspects our honesty too. He says we may give false information in order to make people leave their caves and be killed by radioactivity.
So on this issue there is complete deadlock.
JUNE 18
There is news about X-117. They have had trouble with him. After that collapse on duty, he somehow relapsed into his neurotic state and the psychologists have given up trying to cure him. Perhaps because his services are no longer needed.
He has developed a guilt complex. He thinks he is responsible for the destruction of the world. As if he could not have been replaced by anybody else! He actually was replaced. But there is no arguing with a neurotic.
Today P and I visited him in his room—out of politeness. He lives opposite me and we worked together, after all. And P treated him when he was ill the first time.
X-117 was lying on his bed, half dressed, unshaven, doing nothing. When we came in, he hardly seemed to notice it.
P asked him how he felt. For some reason this enraged him. He suddenly sat up in the bed and shouted at us: “Thank you! I feel fine! I feel wonderful! I’ve succeeded in killing hundreds of millions of people, so I feel on top of the world. I’m the greatest hangman in history! Why shouldn’t I feel well?”
Then he burst into tears. I had never seen anything like it before. He cried like a little boy whose plaything had been snatched away. He just sat there racked by loud sobs.
P tried to calm him. “You shouldn’t feel that way,” she said. “You just did your duty. Are you a soldier or aren’t you?”
X-117 answered, tears rolling down his face: “Duty? Can there be a duty to kill humanity? To be mankind’s hangman?”
“But you’re not responsible for the killing,” I told him. “Why call yourself a hangman? You just obeyed orders.”
“So does the hangman,” was his answer. “But at least he obeys an order given by a judge. I did what a robot told me to do!” At this he started laughing, as hysterically as he had wept before.
“But look,” said P, “my husband did just what you did—in fact he went on obeying orders after you had left. And he doesn’t feel the least bit guilty.”
“As a matter of fact,” I added, “I feel better now than I did before. Not that I enjoyed pushing those buttons particularly, but doing it made me feel rather important.”
“Oh, you poor fool!” he retorted. “How dare you even think about yourself after the crime you’ve committed? Your feelings! As if they matter. You’ve murdered millions of people—blasted, burned, poisoned hundreds of millions! Do you know what that means? And now you talk about how you feel! You monster!”
I thought he was going to hit me, but he did not. Somehow I did not mind his antagonistic attitude. I dare say that if one is not sociable, one neither loves nor hates. And perhaps the psychological treatment has left me with even fewer emotions than I had before.
But what he said reminded me of the chilly feeling I had had when I saw the black screen in the Operations Room. The feeling had passed and had not recurred, even when I heard the details of the destruction, but I remembered it clearly. And I had not been back to that room since. So perhaps X-117’s reaction made some sense, even though I could not share it.
I was preoccupied with these thoughts when X-117 started shouting and wailing again: “Why? Why did I do it? Why did I push those buttons and kill them all? So many!…”
P motioned to me that we should go now. X-117 saw her sign and turned on her, shouting: “So you’ve had enough of this visit, you psychologist, you soul-killer! You managed to cure me of my conscience so that I’d be able to kill humanity. And you did the same to your husband. He might have had some conscience before! Now I’ve done my duty, you don’t need me any more. Soul-killer!” He stood up and waved his arms at us. “Get out of this room! Both of you! Go on, get out—before I strangle you! Not kill you with a button, no! With my bare hands!…”
We left before he finished his ravings.
JUNE 19
X-117 was found dead this morning.
His room-mate had woken to find X-117 missing from his bed. But his uniform was still there, so X-137m had got up and opened the door to see where he had gone. He found him just down the corridor, hanging by a belt from a pipe which runs across the top of the Operations Room doorway. X-107 and I were woken up by X-137m’s tapping on our door.
I saw his body dangling there, the unshaven face and the glazed half-mad eyes.
I saw him for a split second only, for I turned my head away quickly and walked back into my room, closing the door behind me. Again I had that chilly feeling, and I shivered as I had done when I saw the black screen.
The other two must have pushed the red button, for a minute later I heard footsteps outside the door and the murmur of voices. Then X-107 came back and quietly lay down on his bed. Another two minutes passed, and then the private loudspeaker sounded. We were instructed not to tell anybody what we had seen.
An hour later the general loudspeaker system announced that Push-Button Officer X-117 had died in the night. The speaker said something about ‘loyal service’ and the ‘strain’ which had been placed on his constitution by the ‘vital task’ he had performed during the recent offensive.
I suppose they are quite right to conceal the fact that this was suicide. Why depress people?
But why did he hang himself? I have been asking myself the question all day long. What was the trouble with him? He was rather a pleasant fellow before he became mentally unbalanced. I feel rather sorry for him.
When I saw P today it was all I could do to prevent myself telling her the true facts, particularly when she expressed her puzzlement at what the loudspeaker had said. While she had had X-117 under observation, she said, he had never given any sign of physical weakness.
I kept a check on my tongue, however, and we just discussed X-117 in a general way. She said I should not allow my fellow button-pusher’s death to depress me. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, she said, because he was quite the wrong person for life on Level 7. He must have been chosen by mistake.
While she was talking I heard again the words X-117 used yesterday, his last day alive. He had not accepted the inevitable. He had rebelled against it. He had not become adjusted to reality as it was. He was different. He was certainly not the right man for Level 7.
It is odd that I should feel sorrier for X-117 than for those thousands of millions killed in the war. I believe that if I had been told to push a button which would execute X-117, I could not have done it. Though without thinking twice about it I pushed the buttons which executed millions!
Executed? Am I a hangman? X-117 said we were hangmen. In a way, we were. Perhaps he was right and not P.
No, I still do not believe I could be a hangman. I do not enjoy contact with people who are going to die soon. I have no liking for the sight of life disappearing, bodies hanging. Like his.
But to push a button, to operate a ‘typewriter’—that is a very different thing. It is smooth, clean, mechanical.
That is where X-117 went wrong. For him it was the same thing. He could even talk about strangling P and me with his bare hands!
Level 7 Page 14
