Level 7

“Why,” I asked X-107, “were we condemned to life imprisonment down here? Couldn’t we do our work on the surface of the earth? Hidden away in the middle of a desert, or something? Why here, so deep, so completely cut off?”

“Now you’re talking like a child,” he replied. “PBX Command had to be secured—secured absolutely—against surprise attack, an attack which might have hit us in your secluded desert hide-out just as fatally as in the centre of a metropolitan area. If it had, our country would have been knocked out without being able to fire back a single shot. Down here on Level 7 we’re safe from surprises like that. Even if the enemy destroys our country in a surprise attack, we—you and I—can retaliate and destroy his country.”

“Still,” I tried to argue, “even if PBX Command had to be located on Level 7, there was surely no need to imprison us here! Why can’t we be relieved by other crews and go on leave every now and then?”

“That would be very dangerous,” X-107 answered. “If you were able to get out, you might come back with a destructive weapon, or a destructive idea, which could put PBX Command out of action. Contact with the outside world could mean contact with spies, with enemies, with pacifists. The government would be foolish to take such a risk.”

“So we had to be imprisoned for life in order to safeguard our country’s powers of retaliation?”

“Exactly,” he replied. “And to ensure its survival too: even if a surprise attack annihilates the population up above, down here we will go on living—after taking vengeance, of course.”

I asked: “But what happens if there is no war?”

“Well,” came the unperturbed answer of my room-mate, “our job is to be ready at all times to pull the trigger—to push the button. If no command to do so comes, we shall have served our country just the same; for if our enemy refrains from attacking us, it will only be because he knows how well prepared and unassailable we are down here on Level 7. So, on Level 7 we have to stay.”

I could find no flaw in his argument. Our imprisonment on Level 7 is a necessity.

MARCH 26

My closer contact with X-107 is a help to me. We talk to each other about various things and this, sometimes, makes me forget my situation. Another thing that helps is the lounge which has been opened for everybody on Level 7.

The announcement came over the loudspeaker—this is the only way announcements and orders are made known—yesterday at noon. As the lounge is very small, like most rooms here, and the demand is expected to be considerable, each person has been allotted certain hours when he may use it. I say ‘certain hours’, but that is misleading. Half an hour each day. That is my ration, anyway.

The room is small for a lounge—about fifteen feet by twenty. It asserts its identity, though, by having its name painted bold and clear on the door, one of the many doors in the long wall of the dining-room. When I walked in, there were already some ten or fifteen people there, none of whom I remembered seeing before.

Some of them were women. They all seemed quite nice and looked young, strong and healthy, though I found none of them specially attractive. I went up to one who was standing by herself at the time, and introduced myself. She was a nurse, N-527.

What I liked about her was her calmness. I do not know how she managed it, but she seemed even more calm and relaxed than X-107. Perhaps women are more self-sufficient than men (provided they have men) and less affected by environment. If so I envy them—for the first time in my life.

After a while another man approached us, introducing himself as E-647, ‘E’ standing for Electrical Engineer. He was behaving rather nervously, and soon had me on edge too. I decided to look for other company and leave him to the nurse. I had the impression he was grateful for that.

For a moment I stood alone. Then another woman came up to me, possibly a little older than the nurse, though not older twenty-five. I learnt that she was a psychologist, P-867. She was another calm person, but her calmness seemed of a different kind—a bit artificial, as if she were proud of the achievement—rather than the calmness of a naturally serene disposition. As we talked this got on my nerves.

The first thing she said was, how did I feel? I did not feel inclined to confide in a person I had only just met. I evaded the question: said I was very busy and had had no time to analyse my feelings. She brushed this aside and promptly suggested that I was either deliberately lying or else trying to escape from reality. In either case, she maintained, my attitude was not healthy: “Face reality and talk to other people about your feelings. That’s the best way to get adjusted.”