Level 7

There is radio contact between ourselves and the enemy—between the two undergrounds, that is. Though the bombs have had their decisive say in the main argument, a kind of quarrelling post-mortem is being carried on by the spoken word. And all today the general loudspeaker system has been relaying these verbal exchanges.

This morning the enemy accused us of starting this disastrous war. He maintained that the twelve rockets which hit us in the first place were just an accident, the outcome of a technical failure, and that to retaliate with two thousand bombs was a war crime of the worst sort.

We answered that, if he had no intention of making war on us, he should not have answered our first bombing with a much more violent attack of his own. He should have refrained from action.

The enemy replied that the launching of two thousand H-bombs was not an action he could very well ignore. And retaliation, in order to be effective, always had to be more powerful than the act which provoked it.

The argument went on in this fashion for some time, each side trying to shift the blame on the shoulders of the other.

“It is your leaders,” shouted the enemy’s spokesman, “who will be condemned by future generations and by history for giving that order to launch two thousand rockets in response to a mere technical mishap.”

Our reply to this accusation startled me. The speaker retorted: “Our leaders did not give the order! It was given automatically when your twelve H-bombs exploded in our country!”

He went on to explain that for safety’s sake we had not relied entirely on our leaders, who, being human, were subject to human weakness and fallibility and could be sick, meet with accidents and what not. Certainly they could have given an order to attack, but in fact they did not issue such an order. It was done by a mysterious gadget called an ‘atomphone’.

This was an intricate and ingenious device which was said to be sensitive to atomic explosions occurring within a limited range: it would react to an explosion in our country, but not one in enemy territory. Though the atomphone utilised the principle of the seismograph, its function depended also on its sensitivity to acoustic waves, electro-magnetic radiation and some other properties. Thus it would not react to a mere earthquake. Moreover, it could classify the strength of the explosion. Once the atomphone had registered an atomic explosion, it would automatically issue the order for retaliation of the appropriate strength.

The twelve exploding H-bombs made this gadget set in motion the minimum retaliatory attack. Thus the first two thousand rockets were released.

This certainly was interesting news. Our politicians must have been still on the way to their shelters on Level 5 when the actual command was taken over by the atomphone. And this device issued the order heard by X-117 and myself, “Push Button A1,” which was probably tape-recorded.

The enemy’s reply to this news was surprisingly similar. Their leaders too did not actually give any instructions to strike back. As with us, any attack automatically set off a counter-attack of greater strength.

So the picture of what really happened starts to become clear. In all probability the war did start by accident. The retaliation was automatic. So was the retaliation to the retaliation, and so on. (The only exceptions, on our side, were the command to push Buttons C2 and C3, given locally on Level 7 because the C1 bombing was not quite effective, and the repeated command to push A4, B4 and C4, which had to be given locally because of X-117’s breakdown. And this explains why the voice giving the orders changed twice.) As each retaliatory measure was automatically more powerful than the attack which caused it, it was inevitable that the war should develop with increasing violence until the arsenal of one side was completely exhausted. As it happened, the two sides were of roughly equal strength and at the end neither side had anything left to fire.

Thus the progress of the war resembled the chain reaction going on inside the atomic bomb itself! On the other hand, it followed the pattern of most of the wars in history. One difference, and a big one, was that it was a war of weapons which fought by themselves, not of human beings armed with weapons.

I wonder why they needed to have PBX Command. The atomphones could have released the rockets directly, instead of ordering human beings to do it. What was the point of using us?

I suppose our leaders might have decided to attack on their own initiative, and then they would have needed us to carry out their orders. Or it might have happened that, in retaliation for a provocative attack, they would decide to use all our power at once. Such a decision could not have been made automatically. (Just think! If all the buttons had been pushed together, the war would have been over in about an hour.)