My guess is that the truth is worse than many people think. Otherwise our leaders would tell us all they knew. But they do not, perhaps because they are ashamed. Or maybe they are repentant.
To hell with them, anyway! We cannot get a thing out of them.
JUNE 24
Level 3 reports that a married couple there have decided to go out tomorrow and take a look at the world. They do not want to stay inside for the rest of their lives. In fact they do not want to remain underground a day longer.
I remember I felt that way sometimes before I had my psychological treatment.
They intend to take a radio transmitter with them and report on what they see. Everybody down here looks forward with keen interest to that, and I suppose people must be just as curious on Level 3, or they would not allow this suicidal enterprise.
Because it is suicide. That pair will never come back. They must perish on this trip, and they know it perfectly well. But they will have a few days out in the sun.
Everyone on Level 7 is talking about this business. Some people think they are mad. Others say they are brave. If I am not mistaken, everyone envies them a little. Perhaps because of the publicity. Or because of the sunshine.
It is P’s firm opinion that they are neurotic—though even she seems to look forward with some eagerness to this strange escapade.
JUNE 25
They are out.
Their first report was that they have found several cars in good condition inside the underground mouth to their shelter. They chose the best and filled the back seat with cans of petrol which owners of some of the other cars had brought with them—no doubt in the vain hope that they would be able to drive back to their (non-existent) homes even if all the filling stations went up in smoke. This gives them enough fuel for a week’s drive at least. Food and water they took with them from the shelter.
The man is driving while his wife works the transmitter. Judging by what she says, the shelter was not very close to a burst. Even so, everything around has been scorched by fire. The road is in relatively good condition.
She says she will broadcast again in half an hour.
They are driving in the direction of a small town. As they go on, the way is becoming more difficult. Débris is scattered over the road. But the car they picked has good tyres, the woman says, so they are going on.
Reckoning by the mileage covered, she says, they should have reached the town by now. But there is nothing to indicate that they have. There used to be a church there which dominated the view. They should have seen the tower long ago. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing. Even the quantity of débris is quite small. Everything must have burned.
There are signs of fire to confirm this, she says. The destruction is so complete that it is hard to believe that anything ever stood where they are now.
Nor do they see anything on the horizon. They are driving through fairly fiat country, with no hills to obscure the view, but there is nothing to be seen. Other roads keep crossing theirs, but that is all. Here and there the road is severely damaged, but if they drive carefully they can get over the bad patches. They have to go slowly.
Now the woman says they are faced with a serious obstacle: part of the road ahead has cracked up to become quite impassable. She will break off her broadcast while she helps her husband to find a detour.
Quarter of an hour later: she says they managed to go round and get back on their road. They are keen to reach ground zero, the actual point where a bomb burst, but if the roads are that poor it will be impossible to do it by car. They could have done it if they had had a helicopter. The woman says they will be forced to take the best roads available and just see where they lead to.
She will broadcast more news this afternoon at 14.00 hours.
The afternoon broadcast has just finished. It started late, at about 14.15 hours. The reason, the woman explained, was that they had both been ill.
She had been the first to feel unwell, and when her nausea turned to vomiting they had to stop. This happened only a few minutes after her previous broadcast, when they had not been out of the shelter more than an hour and a half.
After she had rested they drove on, but they had not gone far before her husband had an attack of the same sort. Nausea. Stop the car. Vomiting. Diarrhoea. The old story.
The woman said they know it means radiation sickness, but they do not mind. They intend to go on and cover as much distance as they can before nightfall, as soon as her husband has rested. They will not use the transmitter again until they have some interesting news, she says.
JUNE 26
This escapade has caused incredible excitement—on all levels, apparently. Everybody is following the radio reports from outside. People are going without sleep so as not to miss broadcasts. And even when the two outside are not reporting—resting or asleep—discussion still goes on down here.
There has never, since the day we came down, been such excitement on Level 7. Not even during the war—or so people say. (I was not able to judge what effect the war had: I was busy conducting it.)
People are intrigued to know even the smallest personal details about the pair. Who are they? How old are they? What were their occupations? Where are they from? Do they have relatives down below? And so on.
He is an artist, a landscape painter. His wife has no particular job.
“This helps to explain why they decided to go up,” some people say. “There’s not much landscape underground.”
“There’s not much left outside either,” others retort. Still, the man must have felt dreadful in a crowded, enclosed shelter.
There is another fact which may have something to do with their escapade. They had expected to meet their eighteen-year-old daughter in the shelter. She had been assigned to the same one as they. When the warning siren sounded she was away from home visiting a friend. They phoned her and she assured them she would come straight to the shelter. But they never found her there. There must have been an accident. Nobody will ever know what happened. Obviously mishaps like that are bound to occur in such large operations: millions of people rushing, panic-stricken, to their respective shelters—or to any shelter.
So now the parents are outside, not looking for their daughter, but preferring to shorten their lives and die where they were born, in the sunshine.
I have just listened to their latest report. She is driving now, while he does the talking.
They feel more or less all right again. This often happens with radiation sickness. After the initial shock, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, a few symptom-free days may follow. But the symptoms will come back.
They are driving on all the time. But there is not much to report. Every now and then they see the remains of a steel frame sticking out of the ground, sometimes twisted into a strange shape. One such piece seemed to catch the painter’s imagination. He found it beautiful and said it would be quite in place in a museum of modern art. He thought an appropriate title would be ‘The Martyred Steel’.
They are good reporters, both of them. They do not dramatise. Certainly they are not melodramatic. They do not shed tears, they just report facts. With a little artistic colouring added.
Only there is so little to report. Complete destruction is complete destruction. To try to describe how complete such complete destruction is, is to be reduced to playing with words—or with what was and is no more.
But these two are not playing. They are looking for something that may have been spared. And all they can find is a tortured steel frame.