Level 7

Somebody on Level 6 or 7 will have to make the decision. But who?

The general loudspeaker system has just announced that Level 7’s three chief administrators have decided to hold a referendum. The peace treaty question is to be decided by a majority vote. A truly democratic answer.

Voters are instructed to press a red button, identify themselves and say whether or not they want peace. Level 6 will be asked to participate, of course, their votes being added to the democratic pool.

I am in favour of peace, and I intend to record my vote as soon as I have finished writing this entry. I am sure most people will feel the same way. Down here on Level 7, at least. I do not know how Level 6 will react. Up there they are defensive button-pushers, and I have no idea what kind of character was looked for when they were selected. They may be very different from ourselves, which makes their views on peace hard to guess. We shall just have to wait and see what they say.

SEPTEMBER 24

Level 6 is silent. Last night, and again this morning, our people broadcast the voting arrangements and asked Level 6 for their comments. But they did not even acknowledge the receipt of our message.

This is most curious, for physically they are the nearest to us of all the shelters. Our transmitter has been checked and found to be functioning properly. Presumably something has gone wrong with theirs.

In the meantime we have informed the enemy that consultations are going on concerning their peace proposals.

SEPTEMBER 25

Level 6 is still silent. Like the grave.

There must be something seriously wrong there. It cannot be just a matter of the transmitter. PBY Command, with its team of specialists trained to operate, check and repair the most complicated electronic gadgets, would be the last to be silenced by the breakdown of a radio transmitter.

More and more people down here are saying that Level 6 has perished. Probably so suddenly that they did not even have time to broadcast the news.

But what could have happened there? Perhaps their atomic reactor exploded—if this is possible. Perhaps the plants suddenly died and left people with no air to breathe. Perhaps….

Who can know what really happened? No one has lived long enough in the caves to know all the things that can go wrong. It is impossible to anticipate everything. Though we knew how aircraft worked, there were still crashes. Railways had been operated even longer, but that did not prevent the occasional accident.

So why should we be surprised if a shelter perishes, even one which looks completely safe? Look at what sometimes happened to submarines. And what are our levels but subterraneans?

Why should we consider ourselves so completely safe? Just because the surface is so fatally dangerous?

SEPTEMBER 26

We have just about given up trying to get an answer out of Level 6. It is generally assumed that they are dead, though even the scare-mongers of yesterday are too awed by what this means to talk about it openly any more. But you can read people’s thoughts in their faces. This seems to touch our level more closely than anything which has happened before. If it is possible for a shelter, a deep shelter with its own energy and air supplies, to go out like a light, for no apparent reason—then anything can happen.

So people here are losing their sense of security. Some are looking distinctly nervous. Even X-107m, who has developed a tic at the left-hand corner of his mouth.

Until now the feeling has been: “We are safe. We are deep in the earth. We are the most privileged, and the chosen few who have survived and will go on living.”

The feeling creeping in now is: “Shall we survive? Are we not just the last to die, waiting longer than the others for our turn to come? How soon shall we perish? How shall we perish? From plant decay and lack of oxygen? From some trouble we cannot even diagnose? Shall we know that we are dying, or will the blow be sudden and catch us unawares?’”

SEPTEMBER 27

We have concluded a peace treaty with the enemy. The voting was almost unanimously in favour of it. Why not? We may as well enjoy some live company before we join the other levels.

I wrote that paragraph this morning. Since then I have been thinking what a strange peace this is which we have made. A peace of death.

We are at peace not because the world is united, physically or in spirit, but because the warring camps are separated by an insurmountable barrier of death.

We, our former enemy and ourselves, wanted to be masters of mankind. Each of us wanted to rule the whole world, or to save it (both formulas amount to the same thing now). And the result: both sides have been diminished to a few hundred cave-dwellers.

Never in all human history was there anything so grotesque. Two vast countries, the two greatest world powers, reduced in a matter of hours to the status of a few moles, hiding below ground in the constant fear that the next hour will be their last.