Level 7

by Mordecai Roshwald

  So they just sit in the car, resting, and occasionally transmitting some personal impressions. These become less and less descriptive and more and more emotional as time goes on. At times almost poetic—or perhaps delirious. They must be an interesting pair. And very sick by now.

  There is something about the quality of these occasional talks which makes people listen again. Interest in the couple revives—interest in them personally, rather than in the surface of the earth.

  Here comes one of their talks now. I will try to scribble down their exact words. It all sounds pretty odd. Delirious already, perhaps.

  She: “We’re a pair of doves, sent out by Noah to see if the flood has gone down.”

  He: “The flood is still around us, the water is deep. We’re the doves which didn’t fly back.”

  She: “But the dove which didn’t return to Noah was a sign that the flood was over. It was a sign of life and hope when it stayed away from the ark.”

  He: “How right you are, my dove! We’ll stay here, outside the shelter, until it’s all over. For this is a much worse flood than the one God made. Men caused this tide of blood to rise and leave no hope for man or dove.”

  She: “Listen to us, you people down there in the caves. Hear what we have to tell you. The flood is around you, the poison is trying to get inside you. Your blood is still red, but the world is black. Stay below in your man-made caves as long as there is air to breathe, as long as water seeps so deep, as long as spirits don’t go down and drag you up!”

  He: “Stay in the ark for ever!”

  They must certainly be delirious. But not everyone in delirium can talk that way. It is broadcasts like that one which have people listening, fascinated. Almost everybody. Even P has stopped making disparaging remarks. After one of this morning’s transmissions I do believe I saw an unusual shine in her eyes. As if they were wet.

  JUNE 29

  The couple are still broadcasting, though their voices are weaker today and they have to break off from time to time. But we listen. Everybody listens.

  Another broadcast is due to start any moment now. I will try to jot down what they say as I did yesterday. It is easier now that they have to speak slower.

  She: “No birds are singing in the world today, no flowers are blooming. There are no trees, there are no fields.”

  He: “Just débris.”

  She: “Man is gone, and woman too. No children play around.”

  He: “Just bare earth.”

  She: “The world is like a ship abandoned by her crew. Like the moon, it is arid and dreary.”

  He: “Another planet.”

  Another planet. They have got something there. In their delirium they may have hit on a truth. The earth has become like the dead moon—except for the caves. But who knows?—there may be caves like ours on the moon, with some crawling creatures living in them.

  Just another planet. The earth was always that, anyway. But not just that: for there were other things on earth.

  JUNE 30

  The couple announced today that they would not broadcast any more. They are too weak. They ended like this:

  He: “This is our last message, the last broadcast from the face of the earth. Nothing new to report. The world is empty. It still revolves. There is day and night, sun and moon and stars. But that is all.”

  She: “Farewell, men and women of the caves! Let us die in peace.”

  That was this morning. Since then nothing has been heard from them. I wonder if they are delirious or unconscious. Perhaps they are gone already.

  We shall not hear from them again. Let them die in peace.

  I did not intend adding to what I had written earlier today. But although the time is already past 23.00 (I have reverted to normal hours for sleeping since my daily duty finished), I do not want to go to bed until I have recorded a strange feeling which has come over me since hearing that last broadcast. The feeling is new to me, yet not entirely strange: a feeling of tenderness for those two up there in the car. I wish I could have comforted them and helped them.

  Something seems to have changed inside me. It stirred when I saw X-117 hanging, just outside in the corridor there; but on that occasion the sensation quickly passed. Perhaps my new feeling is connected with the sudden chill I felt then, and earlier, when I saw the black screen. But this is different: not a passing shiver, but a persistent warmth.

  Is this compassion? Love? Sociability? Are other human beings able to arouse in me feelings like those? Was there a green spot hidden in my soul which they, the doves, have discovered?

  It is a warm feeling—warm towards them. But it has enough warmth for humanity in general, for any living thing. It even reflects back to keep me warm inside.

  Only now do I realise how cold I was inside. How dead. Now I can understand X-117. He must have had a lot of that warm feeling. It could not have been taken from him, even by psychotherapy.

  I do not have that much. But I have some, enough to keep me warm. And chilly too, in a curious way, when I think of that screen, or even of the buttons which blackened it.

  One needs that warmth in order to feel chilly. And it is better to feel warm and cold than not to feel at all. That is what the treatment they gave me was supposed to do: deprive me of what little feeling I might have possessed.

  But they failed. I love that pair of doves, dying out there on the bare planet. I love them.

  If there can be such a pair of doves, the planet will live again. If I can love, then my soul is not like the dead shell of a planet. It can be revived.

  Life and love are spreading. Give them a little space to take root, a beginning, and they will conquer the world!

  JULY 1

  What nonsense I wrote last night. “Life and love are spreading!”

  Death and destruction, hate and indifference—these are spreading. It is not a pair of doves which has conquered the world; buttons have done that. They have killed everything. Even the doves.

  That feeling inside me—what can it do? Unpush the pushed buttons? Unrelease the released rockets? Unbomb the bombed world? Undestroy the destroyed? Unkill the killed? Save a pair of doves?

  It can do nothing. The buttons have been pushed. It is too late! Too late!

  JULY 2

  No more broadcasts from the couple up there. They are probably dead by now. People have stopped talking about them. They pass into oblivion.

  But I still think about them. They are alive for me. They have pushed the hidden button in my soul. The lost, forgotten, decayed button. It was a hard thing to do, but they did it.

  What a wonderful button it is. It makes me realise that I am not alone in the world. It makes me feel that there are other beings like myself. Better than myself, some of them: X-117 was better. And the people who stayed outside—most of them were probably better than me.

  Why is it so difficult to push that button of humanity, and so easy to push the ones which launch deadly rockets? And why did nobody discover my good button earlier, before it was all too late?

  Not that it would have affected the results. If I had refused to push the buttons, and X-117 had refused, X-107 and X-137m would have done it. And if they had refused, anybody else could have done it—without even knowing what he was doing!

  The same results could have been achieved without using the Operations Room at all. Our rockets could have been released automatically the moment the enemy rockets exploded, and vice versa. The retaliatory arrangement was almost automatic as it was. It could easily have been made completely automatic. It was an automatic error which started the war. From that point the chain reaction could have gone on with automatic perfection to destroy the world, without any of us button-pushers raising a finger to help it.

  When all that has been said, at the bottom of this super-clever, super-stupid business there still remain some human beings in whose souls a button remains unpushed. As mine was, till now.

  But what could be done about it? How could all those other buttons
be pushed to release the humanity which everyone perhaps has somewhere inside him?

  Still, why bother about it? It is too late anyhow.

  SEPTEMBER 13

  Yesterday part of my diary was destroyed. P, in a fit of temper, grabbed a sizeable chunk and tore it to bits. I did not bother to stop her. Why should I? The world went to pieces: should I care what happens to my diary?

  P cannot understand me—or rather, the change in me since that couple from Level 3 went up. She says she could put up with me when I was gloomy, depressed, mentally ill. “But,” to quote her, “in this saintly shape of yours I just can’t stand you.”

  What seems to enrage her most is the fact that I do not retaliate by storming back at her. My meekness makes her more furious than ever, though it is not intended to. I just do not find in myself any anger against her—or against anybody else, for that matter.

  This is neither saintly nor vicious. Something in me has changed, that is all. I do not undergo the mental ups and downs which troubled me before; my mood is on one level. I have no need of company and entertainment. Nor even the speculation I used to indulge in. My thoughts often ramble through the world that is gone, though, and I think a good deal about humanity—the humanity that disappeared during those few hours of button-pushing.

  I think about all these things calmly, in a detached way, yet sympathetically. I feel no pangs of conscience or remorse, though. I do not know why.

  P does not understand this mood of mine. I suppose she cannot classify it according to the psychology she has learnt. She was waiting patiently in the hope that it would change, I think, until yesterday’s incident, which made her lose her temper. It happened during her visit to my room. (Such visits have been allowed since hostilities ended.) She must have thought that tearing my diary would be some kind of shock to me, for when I failed to react she shouted: “Oh, if that didn’t shake you, nothing will!” Then she spun on her heel and left the room without giving me another glance.

  The last entry in the diary to survive P’s assault was the one for July 2. More than two months have elapsed since then. I am not going to rewrite what I wrote during that time. Not much happened, anyway, and my inner changes—well, I doubt if they would interest my prospective readers (if I have any).

  Perhaps one thing should be mentioned, though it was already clear back in June. The living world has shrunk, shrunk incredibly, into a few holes. But these holes—Levels 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, with an estimated 622,500 people—go on living. I do not know what precisely is the situation in the enemy’s country, the number of levels and people surviving there; but probably the population of the whole world is now somewhere between one and two millions. Incredibly small, but also extremely dense, if one remembers the limited space available underground.

  Still, it is amazing how people can adjust themselves to the new conditions. Now, three months after A-Day (‘A’ for Atomic War), life seems to be smoothly regulated even on the civilian levels.

  How flexible human beings are! And yet how rigid!

  SEPTEMBER 14

  P announced this morning that she wanted to divorce me and marry X-107. He had often been present when she visited me in my room, and that is how they had got to know each other.

  I agreed and wished her better luck with her new mate. She had tears in her eyes.

  X-107 was rather uneasy about it, but I told him I did not mind at all, and this seemed to reassure him.

  The formalities were arranged for this afternoon without any difficulty. P and I were divorced in the marriage-cum-laundry room, where five minutes later she was married to X-107. I was told to leave the ‘m’ from my identity badge in the room. X-107 probably got it.

  I think this development was inevitable and for the best. Perhaps a man of so-called ‘saintly’ disposition should not be married.

  The general loudspeaker announced today that the PBX Operations Room was to be transformed into a maternity ward. Several births are expected, but not before January or February next year, so there is plenty of time and no real need to announce the conversion of the room so early.

  Perhaps the news was given now with the intention of cheering people up. They even tried to suggest that the transformation is symbolical: from operations room, the centre of push-button war, into maternity ward, the place where new life starts.

  “And you shall beat your push-buttons into perambulators,” occurred to me.

  Rather late in the day, though!

  I rarely go to the lounge now. There is nobody I want to talk to. People I meet there, my fellow-internees on Level 7, think differently, feel differently. I might have found a good companion in X-117. But he is gone. Not by blast or fire or radioactivity. By his own hand and a leather belt.

  But I commune with myself. I almost converse with the artist and his wife who chose to die their radioactive death.

  There are people living all round me, but I do not live with them. For me the dead are alive. The living are dead.

  SEPTEMBER 15

  Alarming news from Level 3. There are symptoms of radioactive sickness there.

  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 m
ilitary 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.