Level 7

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.

SEPTEMBER 28

There is some mutual entertainment on the air. We and our ex-enemy are exchanging slogans which express ideals supposedly justifying the war. The entertainment value lies in the fact that we both look on the funny side of it. The ironical exchanges carry on in this fashion:

“Cave-men of the world, unite!”

        “Freedom and democracy for all cave-men!”

“True people’s democracy for all cave-men!”

        “Let’s make the world safe for the cave-men!”

“Equality for cave-men!”

        “Freedom of speech for cave-men!”

“A classless society of cave-men!”

        “A real democracy of cave-men!”

And so on. The more high-sounding the slogan, the hollower it rings—and the more people laugh at it. Our ex-enemy seems to enjoy the game as much as we do. We have been invited by the general loudspeaker to send in slogans of our own to be broadcast. I have submitted mine: “At last the world is united.”

SEPTEMBER 29

My slogan went out this morning.

Their reply was rather slow in coming, and when it arrived I was not at all sure whether they intended it to be funny: “But it lives in separate shelters.”

I was asked whether I wanted to answer this one, and after thinking about it for a while I submitted my answer: “But it dies the one death.”

This time their reply came back in a flash: “Divided we live, united we die!”

SEPTEMBER 30

I spent this afternoon writing a short story for a possible broadcast. Here it is.