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
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
