Level 7

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.

“Friends, citizens on all surviving Levels! Especially you comrades-in-arms on Levels 6 and 7. I have just hanged the arch-war-criminals, the so-called political leaders of our country. They were leaders, indeed: they led us to complete destruction.

“The trouble with them, friends, was that they did not trust us old, experienced and—I may add without false modesty—brave soldiers. In my day I led our country to victory on many occasions, with good fighting men to command and good weapons to give them. In we went, destroying, killing, conquering. Some of us were wounded; some of us were killed; but the others survived to reap with their country the fruits of victory. Even the politicians got some glory for themselves out of it.

“But they did not trust those well-tried methods. Good guns and tanks, and good men too—those were not enough for them. They wanted rockets, robots, electronics and all those other outlandish devices.

“Now we, my friends, we are paying for it. But I hope it will comfort you to know that they did not get away with it. They were not allowed to die their fine electronic—or whatever the damned thing is called—their fine electronic death. They were hanged, with a rope, in the good old-fashioned way. I did it. And I may say I enjoyed doing it.

“Long live our Army. Long live our country. Long live…”

That is as far as he got, for he started vomiting violently.