Unlikely Stories Mostly

by Alasdair Gray

  “Gentlemen,” said the president, “I do not wholly agree with my military adviser. The sky is not a territory we should defend against other summits — that would unite the whole world against us. But the sky must be pierced, not to give us advantages in a future war but to prevent war beginning here and now. Our entire structure is committed to growth. All wealth which does not go into building goes into weaponry. If we do not expand upward we must do it sideways, which means absorbing the bases of the neighbouring summits. In a quiet way our company is doing that already, but at least we have the excuse of needing the extra ground to build higher. Without that excuse our enlargement will be an obvious act of naked aggression. Professor, make this burner of yours as big as you can. Employ all the skill and manpower you can, use more than you need, build several damned furnaces in case one of them goes wrong. Blast a hole the entire axletree can use. And maybe we’ll be able to maintain a stable state for another twenty years. By that time the world will have run out of building materials. But it won’t be our problem.”

  There was a director who served on an international committee which attended to plumbing in the axletree’s basement. He compensated for this squalid work by writing wildly hopeful poetry about the future of mankind. He said, “Mr. President, your description of our unhealthy state is accurate, but you suggest no cure. It is clear that for many years continuous expansion has done us great harm. The highest summits in the work contain the greatest extremes of wealth and poverty, the greatest expenditure on soldiers and policemen, and the greatest fears for the future, as your speech has demonstrated. The safest summits are a few low ones whose tops can still be seen by people on the ground outside, structures whose comforts and opportunities are shared by a whole community. I realize we cannot halt the whole great work by simply refusing to build, so let us announce, today, that we will leave the sky intact and build no higher if other companies and societies will stop building too. And let us call for the formation of an international parliament to rule the heavens, and let us give our highest platforms to that parliament. Then the sky can be tested, not rashly and rapidly, but carefully, over a period of years.”

  “You have not understood me,” said the president. “If I even hint at halting our building programme the shareholders will withdraw their money from the constructive side of the work and invest it in the destructive side, the military side, which consumes nearly half our revenue already. Then allies and enemies will think we are about to make war, and will over-arm themselves too. In a matter of weeks this will lead to the catastrophic battle everyone dreads, the battle which destroys the whole axletree.” “But we are the most powerful company in the world!” said the poet. “Let us make our shareholders invest in things which do people good! Directly or indirectly we control the world’s labour force, yet most labourers live very poorly. Mountains of grain rot in our warehouses while thousands of families die by famine in the lands outside.”

  “There is no profit in feeding poor people,” said the financial secretary, “except on rare occasions when it will prevent a revolt. Believe me, I know people on the ground outside. They are lazy, ignorant, selfish and greedy. Give them a taste of wealth and security and they’ll demand more of it. They’ll refuse to obey us. They’ll drag us down to their own sordid level. Not even the co-operatives are crazy enough to trust their surplus to the folk who produce it.”

  “But we are using our surplus to organize disasters!” said the poet. “If those who have grabbed more food and space and material than they need would share it, instead of bribing and threatening the rest with it, the world could become a splendid garden where many plants will grow beside this damned, prickly, many-headed, bloodstained cactus of a poisoned and poisoning TOWER.”

  “Strike that word from the minutes!” said the president swiftly.

  Directors had jumped to their feet, one hid his face in his hands, the rest stared haggardly before them. The poet looked defiant. The chief seemed amused. The president said quietly, “Sit down, gentlemen. Our colleague is over-excited because his work at the lowest level of government has given him exaggerated notions of what can be done at the highest. We do as things do with us, and the biggest thing we know is the axletree.”

  The poet said, “It is not bigger than the earth below.”

  The president said, “But it has cut us off from the earth below. On the common earth men can save nothing, and their highest ambition is to die in one of our works hospitals. But the axletree is full of comfortable, well-meaning people who expect to rise to a higher position before they die and who mean to pass on their advantages to their children. They can only do this in a structure which keeps getting larger. They cannot see they are dealing out crime, famine and war to the earth below, because the axletree shelters them from these things. If we oppose the unspoken wishes of the people in the axletree – unspoken because everybody shares them – we will be called levellers, and in two days our closest supporters will have replaced us.”

  There was silence, then the religious director said sadly, “I used to wish I lived in the age of faith when our great work was a shining structure with a single summit revered by the whole continent. I now suspect it only did good during the slump when it was a crumbling ruin whose servants fed hungry people upon ordinary ground. Until recently I still believed the axletree was planned by God to maintain art, knowledge and happiness. I now fear it is a gigantic dead end, that human history is an enormous joke.”

  “The fact remains,” said the commander of the armed forces, “that we can only prevent an overall catastrophe by preparing what may become an overall catastrophe. People who can’t face that fact have no place in politics.”

  “I disagree once more with my military adviser,” said the president. “There is always a place for the idealist in politics. Our poet has given us a wonderful idea. He suggests we form an international parliament to rule the heavens. We certainly will! Our allies will like us for it, our competitors will think they can use it to delay us. Loud-mouthed statesmen everywhere will feel important because they are members of it, which will reduce the risk of war. I hope, sir” – he addressed the poet – “I hope you will represent us in this parliament. The whole conception is yours. You will be inaugurating a new era.”

  The poet blushed and looked pleased.

  “Meanwhile,” said the president, “since the formation of this parliament may take years, mankind will advance to its destiny in the sky. Science will open a gateway into a universal store-house of empty space, remote minerals, and unbreathable gas.”

  My chief and the army commander worked hard in the following days and all the people of the summit were drawn into money-making activity. Low-level fuel-bunkers and furnaces were built beneath crucibles from which pipes ran up the central lift-shaft. Lifts with clamps fixed to them now slid up cables attached to the axletree’s outer wall. The top pylon sprouted three huge burners, each differently shaped, with spire-like drills in the centres and domes beneath to shield the operators. Meanwhile, foreign statesmen met the poet in a steering committee to draw up an agenda for an international legal committee which would write a constitution for an international parliament which would govern the heavens. The steering committee’s first meetings were inconclusive. And then the first big test was held.

  It lasted six seconds, made a mark on the sky like a twisted stocking, and produced a sound which paralysed the nearest operators and put observers on other summits into a coma lasting several hours. The sound was less concentrated at ground level, where the irritation it caused did not result in unconsciousness. And inside the axletree nobody heard it at all, or experienced it only as a pang of inexplicable unease: the outer shape of the building baffled the vibration. The chief announced to the directors that the test had been successful. He said, “We now know that our machines work perfectly. We now know, and can guard against, their effect on human beings. My technicians and all foreign observers are being issued with padded helmets which
make the wearers deaf to exterior vibration. People on ground level can protect themselves by plugging their ears with twists of cloth or withered grass, though small lumps of rubber would be more suitable. We will start the main test in two days’ time.”

  “You intend to deafen half the dwellers on the continent for a whole month?” said the president. “Listen, I don’t like groundlings more than anybody else here. But I need their support. So does the axletree. So do you.”

  “We have enough resources to do without their support for at least four weeks,” said the director of food and fuel.

  “But that din causes headaches and vomiting,” said the president. “If twisted grass is not one hundred per cent effective the outsiders will swarm into the axletree and swamp us. The axletree will be the only place they can hear themselves think.”

  “All immigration into the axletree was banned the day before yesterday,” said the director of public security. “The police are armed and alert.”

  “But here is a protest signed by many great scientists,” said the president, waving a paper. “Most of them work for the professor’s college. They say the tests have been planned on a too-ambitious scale, and the effect on world climate could be disastrous.”

  “Our new wave of prosperity will collapse if tests are curtailed,” said the financial secretary. “Even outsiders get employment through that. They should be prepared to suffer some inconveniences.”

  “The scientists who signed that paper are crypto-cooperators,” said the army commander.

  The president got up and walked round the room. He pointed to his chair and said, “Would anyone like to take my place? Whoever sits there will go down in history as a weakling or a coward, no matter what he decides to do.”

  Several directors eyed the chair thoughtfully, but nobody moved. “Right,” said the president. “Let all outsiders on the earth below be supplied with earplugs and sleeping-pills. I authorize a test lasting one whole night, starting at sunset and ending at dawn. The public reaction will decide what we do after that. They may want us to hand over the whole works to our scribbler’s heavenly parliament. The steering committee has agreed on an agenda now. I promoted that crazy scheme to distract attention from our activities, but I fear it will soon be my only hope of shedding unbearable responsibility. So now get out, all of you. Leave me alone.”

  Preparations for the big test were organized very quickly, and security precautions on our summit were so increased that movement there became very difficult. Machinery was being installed which only the army chief and the leading industrialists understood. The president seemed unwell and I was employed to guard and help him. He announced that he would pass the night of the test on the ground outside, using nothing but the protection supplied to ordinary people, and this was such good publicity that the other directors allowed it. So he and I travelled west to a mild brown land where low hills were clothed with vines and olives. We waited for sunset on the terrace of a villa. The president removed his shoes and walked barefoot on the warm soil. He said, “I like the feel of this. It’s nourishing.” He lay down with his head in a bush of sweet-smelling herb. Bees walked across his face. “You can see they aren’t afraid of me,” he muttered through rigid lips. He sat up and pointed to the axletree, saying, “Everybody in there is crazy. I wonder what keeps it up?”

  The sky overhead was clear and smooth but beyond a range of blue mountains lay a vaster range of turbulent clouds. These hid the axletree base so that the rest did, indeed, seem built on cloud.

  The air grew cold, the sun set and the land was dark, but above the clouds the axletree was still sunlit. No separate summits were distinct, it looked like a golden tusk flushing to pinkness above the dark advancing up it from the base. Inside that dark the tiny lights of many windows defined the axletree against the large, accidental, irregular stars. My eye fixed on the top which flushed pink, then dimmed, and a white spark appeared where it had been, and the spark widened into a little white fan.

  The noise hit us soon after that. We thrust rubber plugs into our ears, and that reduced it, but it was still unbearable. We would certainly have swallowed the sleeping-pills (which caused instant stupor) had I not produced helmets and clapped them on our heads. The relief was so profound that we both felt, I know, that absolute silence was the loveliest thing in the world. We were sitting on chairs now, and the moon was up, and the earth at our feet began gleaming moistly with worms. All creatures living in the earth or on solid bodies were struggling into the air. Ants, caterpillars and centipedes crawled up trees and clung in bunches to the extreme tips of twigs. Animals went to the tops of hills and crouched side by side, predators and victims, quite uninterested in feeding, but eventually clawing and biting to get on top of each other’s backs. Birds tried to escape the air they usually felt at home in. Robins, partridges and finches packed themselves densely into the empty rabbit-holes. Winged insects fled to openings and clefts in animal bodies, which gave the best insulation from the sound. The president and I leapt to our feet, scratching and slapping ourselves in a cloud of midges, moths and mosquitoes. We ran to our cars, followed by the armed guards who came floundering out of the shrubberies.

  The journey back was the most fearful in my life, far worse than what came after, because that was so unexpected that I had no time to fear it. On the moonlit road we passed pedestrians without pills who stumbled along retching with hands clapped to their ears. The air above was full of gulls, geese and migratory fowl who had sensed the zone of silence in the axletree. A parasang from the base I removed my helmet and found the noise had dwindled to the intensity of a toothache. The president huddled in the car corner muttering, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” He took off his helmet when he saw me without mine and said, “The sun rose two hours ago.”

  I nodded. He said, “They’re still burning the sky.” From the summit a white scrolling line like an unbroken thread of smoke undulated toward the western horizon. I told him that the pills eaten by the populace would keep them unconscious for another five or six hours. He said, “Can very small babies go so long without food?”

  His maudlin tone annoyed me and I answered briskly that babies were tougher than we knew.

  The entrance was heavily barricaded and we would not have got in if the soldiers of our guard had not fired their weapons and roused comradely feelings among the soldiers inside. At the office of the weather-college the president was surrounded by officials who shouted and complained. An influx of rodents was making the lower dwellings unhabitable. The president kept whispering, “I’ll try. Oh I’ll try.” We were lifted to the base of the great summit and found it as stoutly barricaded as the entrance. The guards were surprised to see us and took a long time to let us through. It was late evening when we reached the presidential office. The president said, “They’re still doing it.”

  He uncorked a speaking tube which ran to the control room under the burners. A hideous droning came out. He screamed and corked it up and whispered, “How can I talk to them?”

  I said I would carry a note for him.

  Here is the text of notes which passed between the president and the control room in the next three days.

  President to control: STOP. STOP. YOU ARE KILLING PEOPLE. WHEN WILL YOU STOP.

  Control to president: WE EXPECT A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

  President to control: MASS SUICIDES ON GROUND BELOW. THOUGH SPRING, TREES, CROPS WITHER. RAT INVASION THREATENS AXLE-TREE BASE WITH BUBONIC PLAGUE. WHAT GOOD ARE YOU DOING?

  Control to president: REGRET EXTREME MEASURES NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN STABLE ECONOMY.

  President to control: CO-OPERATIVE ULTIMATUM DECLARES TOTAL WAR IF YOU DON’T STOP IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

  Control to president: WE’RE READY FOR THEM. President to control: RAPIDLY CONVENED HEAVENLY PARLIAMENT ORDERS YOU TO STOP. FOREMAN OF WORK DECLARES GOD WANTS YOU TO STOP. EVERYONE ON EARTH BEGS YOU TO STOP. PLEASE STOP. NOBODY SUPPORTS YOU EXCEPT SHAREHOLDERS, A CORRUPTED TRADE UNION, THE ARMY
, AND MAD EXPERIMENTERS WITHOUT RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE.

  Control to president: SUPPORT SUFFICIENT. THE SPIRIT OF MAN IS TOO GREAT TO BE CONFINED BY A PHYSICAL BOUNDARY.

  The control room was always a comforting place after the hysteria below. In complete silence (everyone wore helmets) the chief, the army commander and the financial secretary sat round a triangular table controlling the industrial process which produced the flame. Their faces showed the stern jubilation of masterly men who understand exactly what they are doing. Dials and graphs indicated the current bank-rate, stock exchange index, food and fuel reserves, activity of stokers at furnaces, position of soldiers guarding them, flow of chemicals to the crucibles, flow of gas to the burners, and the heat and width of the flame. A needle would flicker, then a hand would change the angle of a lever, or write and despatch an order. Between these times the triumvirate played knockout whist.

  I was taking the final note down in the lift when I sensed a silence. Shielding my eyes I leaned out, looked up and saw the blue heaven opening and coming down to us. A lovely white flower bloomed whose hundred petals and stamens reached down and embraced us all. I was suddenly in white mist beside a white wall. The cable holding the lift must have snapped. I was spinning (I now know) downward through drenching whiteness, but I thought I was going up. Until I glimpsed collapsing pinnacles with whiteness gushing round them, water of course. I spun in drenching whiteness down cataracts of drenching whiteness flecked with rubble, bodies or furniture. And then I was in sunshine a few yards above plunging water and, ah, great waves. I went beyond these waves. I saw an edge of foaming water racing across fields, islanding woods and villages. Tiny figures waded, gesticulating from doors, then a huge wave engulfed them. A few floated up, some clinging to each other, then a vaster wave smashed down on them and nothing floated after that. The wind which carried the lift took me skyward and then back toward that white pillar, that waterfall from the sky beneath which the work of two thousand years was melting like a sandcastle. I grinned as I flew toward that dazzling pillar but I did not strike it, the lift went down again and out with the waves again to that foamy edge racing across the ordinary green and brown earth. Later I lost sight of the pillar. Either the heavenly continent had healed up or dissolved completely into water. The sky has been a lighter shade of blue ever since.