Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

“We have enough resources to do without their support for at least four weeks,” said the director of food and fuel.

“But that din causes headaches and vomiting,” said the president. “If twisted grass is not one hundred per cent effective the outsiders will swarm into the axletree and swamp us. The axletree will be the only place they can hear themselves think.”

“All immigration into the axletree was banned the day before yesterday,” said the director of public security. “The police are armed and alert.”

“But here is a protest signed by many great scientists,” said the president, waving a paper. “Most of them work for the professor’s college. They say the tests have been planned on a too-ambitious scale, and the effect on world climate could be disastrous.”

“Our new wave of prosperity will collapse if tests are curtailed,” said the financial secretary. “Even outsiders get employment through that. They should be prepared to suffer some inconveniences.”

“The scientists who signed that paper are crypto-cooperators,” said the army commander.

The president got up and walked round the room. He pointed to his chair and said, “Would anyone like to take my place? Whoever sits there will go down in history as a weakling or a coward, no matter what he decides to do.”

Several directors eyed the chair thoughtfully, but nobody moved. “Right,” said the president. “Let all outsiders on the earth below be supplied with earplugs and sleeping-pills. I authorize a test lasting one whole night, starting at sunset and ending at dawn. The public reaction will decide what we do after that. They may want us to hand over the whole works to our scribbler’s heavenly parliament. The steering committee has agreed on an agenda now. I promoted that crazy scheme to distract attention from our activities, but I fear it will soon be my only hope of shedding unbearable responsibility. So now get out, all of you. Leave me alone.”

Preparations for the big test were organized very quickly, and security precautions on our summit were so increased that movement there became very difficult. Machinery was being installed which only the army chief and the leading industrialists understood. The president seemed unwell and I was employed to guard and help him. He announced that he would pass the night of the test on the ground outside, using nothing but the protection supplied to ordinary people, and this was such good publicity that the other directors allowed it. So he and I travelled west to a mild brown land where low hills were clothed with vines and olives. We waited for sunset on the terrace of a villa. The president removed his shoes and walked barefoot on the warm soil. He said, “I like the feel of this. It’s nourishing.” He lay down with his head in a bush of sweet-smelling herb. Bees walked across his face. “You can see they aren’t afraid of me,” he muttered through rigid lips. He sat up and pointed to the axletree, saying, “Everybody in there is crazy. I wonder what keeps it up?”

The sky overhead was clear and smooth but beyond a range of blue mountains lay a vaster range of turbulent clouds. These hid the axletree base so that the rest did, indeed, seem built on cloud.

The air grew cold, the sun set and the land was dark, but above the clouds the axletree was still sunlit. No separate summits were distinct, it looked like a golden tusk flushing to pinkness above the dark advancing up it from the base. Inside that dark the tiny lights of many windows defined the axletree against the large, accidental, irregular stars. My eye fixed on the top which flushed pink, then dimmed, and a white spark appeared where it had been, and the spark widened into a little white fan.

The noise hit us soon after that. We thrust rubber plugs into our ears, and that reduced it, but it was still unbearable. We would certainly have swallowed the sleeping-pills (which caused instant stupor) had I not produced helmets and clapped them on our heads. The relief was so profound that we both felt, I know, that absolute silence was the loveliest thing in the world. We were sitting on chairs now, and the moon was up, and the earth at our feet began gleaming moistly with worms. All creatures living in the earth or on solid bodies were struggling into the air. Ants, caterpillars and centipedes crawled up trees and clung in bunches to the extreme tips of twigs. Animals went to the tops of hills and crouched side by side, predators and victims, quite uninterested in feeding, but eventually clawing and biting to get on top of each other’s backs. Birds tried to escape the air they usually felt at home in. Robins, partridges and finches packed themselves densely into the empty rabbit-holes. Winged insects fled to openings and clefts in animal bodies, which gave the best insulation from the sound. The president and I leapt to our feet, scratching and slapping ourselves in a cloud of midges, moths and mosquitoes. We ran to our cars, followed by the armed guards who came floundering out of the shrubberies.

The journey back was the most fearful in my life, far worse than what came after, because that was so unexpected that I had no time to fear it. On the moonlit road we passed pedestrians without pills who stumbled along retching with hands clapped to their ears. The air above was full of gulls, geese and migratory fowl who had sensed the zone of silence in the axletree. A parasang from the base I removed my helmet and found the noise had dwindled to the intensity of a toothache. The president huddled in the car corner muttering, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” He took off his helmet when he saw me without mine and said, “The sun rose two hours ago.”

I nodded. He said, “They’re still burning the sky.” From the summit a white scrolling line like an unbroken thread of smoke undulated toward the western horizon. I told him that the pills eaten by the populace would keep them unconscious for another five or six hours. He said, “Can very small babies go so long without food?”

His maudlin tone annoyed me and I answered briskly that babies were tougher than we knew.

The entrance was heavily barricaded and we would not have got in if the soldiers of our guard had not fired their weapons and roused comradely feelings among the soldiers inside. At the office of the weather-college the president was surrounded by officials who shouted and complained. An influx of rodents was making the lower dwellings unhabitable. The president kept whispering, “I’ll try. Oh I’ll try.” We were lifted to the base of the great summit and found it as stoutly barricaded as the entrance. The guards were surprised to see us and took a long time to let us through. It was late evening when we reached the presidential office. The president said, “They’re still doing it.”

He uncorked a speaking tube which ran to the control room under the burners. A hideous droning came out. He screamed and corked it up and whispered, “How can I talk to them?”

I said I would carry a note for him.

Here is the text of notes which passed between the president and the control room in the next three days.

President to control: STOP. STOP. YOU ARE KILLING PEOPLE. WHEN WILL YOU STOP.

Control to president: WE EXPECT A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

President to control: MASS SUICIDES ON GROUND BELOW. THOUGH SPRING, TREES, CROPS WITHER. RAT INVASION THREATENS AXLE-TREE BASE WITH BUBONIC PLAGUE. WHAT GOOD ARE YOU DOING?

Control to president: REGRET EXTREME MEASURES NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN STABLE ECONOMY.

President to control: CO-OPERATIVE ULTIMATUM DECLARES TOTAL WAR IF YOU DON’T STOP IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

Control to president: WE’RE READY FOR THEM. President to control: RAPIDLY CONVENED HEAVENLY PARLIAMENT ORDERS YOU TO STOP. FOREMAN OF WORK DECLARES GOD WANTS YOU TO STOP. EVERYONE ON EARTH BEGS YOU TO STOP. PLEASE STOP. NOBODY SUPPORTS YOU EXCEPT SHAREHOLDERS, A CORRUPTED TRADE UNION, THE ARMY, AND MAD EXPERIMENTERS WITHOUT RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE.