Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

There was a director who served on an international committee which attended to plumbing in the axletree’s basement. He compensated for this squalid work by writing wildly hopeful poetry about the future of mankind. He said, “Mr. President, your description of our unhealthy state is accurate, but you suggest no cure. It is clear that for many years continuous expansion has done us great harm. The highest summits in the work contain the greatest extremes of wealth and poverty, the greatest expenditure on soldiers and policemen, and the greatest fears for the future, as your speech has demonstrated. The safest summits are a few low ones whose tops can still be seen by people on the ground outside, structures whose comforts and opportunities are shared by a whole community. I realize we cannot halt the whole great work by simply refusing to build, so let us announce, today, that we will leave the sky intact and build no higher if other companies and societies will stop building too. And let us call for the formation of an international parliament to rule the heavens, and let us give our highest platforms to that parliament. Then the sky can be tested, not rashly and rapidly, but carefully, over a period of years.”

“You have not understood me,” said the president. “If I even hint at halting our building programme the shareholders will withdraw their money from the constructive side of the work and invest it in the destructive side, the military side, which consumes nearly half our revenue already. Then allies and enemies will think we are about to make war, and will over-arm themselves too. In a matter of weeks this will lead to the catastrophic battle everyone dreads, the battle which destroys the whole axletree.” “But we are the most powerful company in the world!” said the poet. “Let us make our shareholders invest in things which do people good! Directly or indirectly we control the world’s labour force, yet most labourers live very poorly. Mountains of grain rot in our warehouses while thousands of families die by famine in the lands outside.”

“There is no profit in feeding poor people,” said the financial secretary, “except on rare occasions when it will prevent a revolt. Believe me, I know people on the ground outside. They are lazy, ignorant, selfish and greedy. Give them a taste of wealth and security and they’ll demand more of it. They’ll refuse to obey us. They’ll drag us down to their own sordid level. Not even the co-operatives are crazy enough to trust their surplus to the folk who produce it.”

“But we are using our surplus to organize disasters!” said the poet. “If those who have grabbed more food and space and material than they need would share it, instead of bribing and threatening the rest with it, the world could become a splendid garden where many plants will grow beside this damned, prickly, many -headed, bloodstained cactus of a poisoned and poisoning TOWER.”

“Strike that word from the minutes!” said the president swiftly.

Directors had jumped to their feet, one hid his face in his hands, the rest stared haggardly before them. The poet looked defiant. The chief seemed amused. The president said quietly, “Sit down, gentlemen. Our colleague is over-excited because his work at the lowest level of government has given him exaggerated notions of what can be done at the highest. We do as things do with us, and the biggest thing we know is the axletree.”

The poet said, “It is not bigger than the earth below.”

The president said, “But it has cut us off from the earth below. On the common earth men can save nothing, and their highest ambition is to die in one of our works hospitals. But the axletree is full of comfortable, well-meaning people who expect to rise to a higher position before they die and who mean to pass on their advantages to their children. They can only do this in a structure which keeps getting larger. They cannot see they are dealing out crime, famine and war to the earth below, because the axletree shelters them from these things. If we oppose the unspoken wishes of the people in the axletree — unspoken because everybody shares them — we will be called levellers, and in two days our closest supporters will have replaced us.”

There was silence, then the religious director said sadly, “I used to wish I lived in the age of faith when our great work was a shining structure with a single summit revered by the whole continent. I now suspect it only did good during the slump when it was a crumbling ruin whose servants fed hungry people upon ordinary ground. Until recently I still believed the axletree was planned by God to maintain art, knowledge and happiness. I now fear it is a gigantic dead end, that human history is an enormous joke.”

“The fact remains,” said the commander of the armed forces, “that we can only prevent an overall catastrophe by preparing what may become an overall catastrophe. People who can’t face that fact have no place in politics.”

“I disagree once more with my military adviser,” said the president. “There is always a place for the idealist in politics. Our poet has given us a wonderful idea. He suggests we form an international parliament to rule the heavens. We certainly will! Our allies will like us for it, our competitors will think they can use it to delay us. Loud-mouthed statesmen everywhere will feel important because they are members of it, which will reduce the risk of war. I hope, sir” — he addressed the poet — “I hope you will represent us in this parliament. The whole conception is yours. You will be inaugurating a new era.”

The poet blushed and looked pleased.

“Meanwhile,” said the president, “since the formation of this parliament may take years, mankind will advance to its destiny in the sky. Science will open a gateway into a universal store-house of empty space, remote minerals, and unbreathable gas.”

My chief and the army commander worked hard in the following days and all the people of the summit were drawn into money-making activity. Low-level fuel-bunkers and furnaces were built beneath crucibles from which pipes ran up the central lift-shaft. Lifts with clamps fixed to them now slid up cables attached to the axletree’s outer wall. The top pylon sprouted three huge burners, each differently shaped, with spire-like drills in the centres and domes beneath to shield the operators. Meanwhile, foreign statesmen met the poet in a steering committee to draw up an agenda for an international legal committee which would write a constitution for an international parliament which would govern the heavens. The steering committee’s first meetings were inconclusive. And then the first big test was held.

It lasted six seconds, made a mark on the sky like a twisted stocking, and produced a sound which paralysed the nearest operators and put observers on other summits into a coma lasting several hours. The sound was less concentrated at ground level, where the irritation it caused did not result in unconsciousness. And inside the axletree nobody heard it at all, or experienced it only as a pang of inexplicable unease: the outer shape of the building baffled the vibration. The chief announced to the directors that the test had been successful. He said, “We now know that our machines work perfectly. We now know, and can guard against, their effect on human beings. My technicians and all foreign observers are being issued with padded helmets which make the wearers deaf to exterior vibration. People on ground level can protect themselves by plugging their ears with twists of cloth or withered grass, though small lumps of rubber would be more suitable. We will start the main test in two days’ time.”

“You intend to deafen half the dwellers on the continent for a whole month? ” said the president. “Listen, I don’t like groundlings more than anybody else here. But I need their support. So does the axletree. So do you.”