Level 7

The first signs appeared yesterday, the broadcast said; but they decided to say nothing about it until they were sure what was wrong. By now the symptoms are so widespread that no doubt remains. Somehow radioactivity has reached Level 3.

There are several theories as to how it happened. The most plausible one is that the water supply has been polluted. Water for Level 3 and below comes from ground sources and is naturally filtered by the earth layers through which it passes. But perhaps the filtering is not thorough enough. Who knows? The system was never tested under the extreme conditions which have existed since A-Day.

There were so many underground explosions. In numerous places the earth must have been polluted down to a considerable depth. In such spots, perhaps, the rain water has been contaminated rather than filtered on its way to the ground water sources.

Well, I really do not know how this calamity has come about, but it has happened all right. Eighteen shelters on Level 3 are affected by radioactivity. They are probably doomed.

Some people I spoke to today were seriously worried. For Level 3 is self-sufficient, a part of the new underground world. If they are being poisoned, say the pessimists, anyone can be poisoned.

The optimists retort that the differences in depth are significant and decisive. Otherwise Levels 4, 5, 6 and 7 would never have been built. The deeper the level, the safer. Level 7’s water supply passes through many more natural filters than Level 3’s.

SEPTEMBER 16

The optimists have been over-confident. Reports of sickness have come in from six shelters on Level 4 and two on Level 5. Four more shelters on Level 3 are affected.

All three levels have been ordered to distill all their drinking water. It is not enough to boil it: they must distill it. I do not know how they will set about doing that, for they have no special equipment for the job. But they will have to manage somehow—or else go on drinking poisoned water.

The military levels, 6 and 7, are all right. Our water supply comes from a really great depth.

SEPTEMBER 17

The news from Levels 3, 4 and 5 is terrible. Everybody is going down with severe symptoms. Yesterday some of the shelters on these levels were still all right. Today there is not one unpoisoned shelter, and reports of deaths have already started to come in.

They are distilling their water, but it looks as if the damage has already been done. The precautions may have been taken in time to save some, perhaps. We shall know in a week or two. Perhaps sooner. It does not take long to find out.

Not so long ago this news would not have affected me at all. Now I feel sorry for those people up there. It must be horrible for them, knowing their probable fate and not being able to do a thing about it. Those who are still able to get about can busy themselves with hopefully distilling the water. Apart from that, all they can do is wait and see.

If Levels, 3, 4 and 5 perish, only the military levels will be left. The ex-PBX and ex-PBY Commands. But now our job will be not to destroy but to create: to ensure the survival of mankind.

Can people who helped to destroy become creative? What kind of humanity can the men and women who were once PBX Command give birth to? PBY Command was purely defensive. But we are the hangmen of mankind, as X-117 so aptly called us. And are we to form the élite which will perpetuate the human race?

What will it be like, this race? Our children will never see sunshine. They will never get inspiration from beautiful things, as those two doves did. If human beings who had known life under the sky could degenerate into creatures crawling about underground, what hope have people who never saw day and night, who never smelled a flower?

X-107 suggested, when I told him what I had been thinking, that our children and our children’s children may be taken to see plants growing in the air-supply department.

“Well, that may be so, but….”

SEPTEMBER 18

In one of the shelters on Level 5 there is rioting. Our leaders, statesmen and politicians, are there sharing the lot of the others. But some people want to take personal vengeance on them. They say the leaders are to blame for the disaster.

They have done it. One of them is speaking at this moment over the Level 5 radio, which has been taken over by the rebels. The leaders have been executed, he says. They were hanged. They would have died anyway, but the rebels wanted to make a distinction, he says—”to kill the criminals in a way appropriate for criminals.”

The executioner was a retired general. A famous commander of an armoured division. He is going to make a speech. I will try to write down what he says.

“Friends, citizens on all surviving Levels! Especially you comrades-in-arms on Levels 6 and 7. I have just hanged the arch-war-criminals, the so-called political leaders of our country. They were leaders, indeed: they led us to complete destruction.