Alasdair Gray - Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

The resentment each felt for the other had not been foreseen or guarded against. In bed the original Ian Nicol could be recognized by his position (he lay on the right of the bed), but as soon as both men were strong enough to walk each claimed ownership of birth certificate, union card, clothes, wife and National Insurance benefit. One day in the hospital grounds they started fighting. They were evenly matched and there are conflicting opinions about who won. On leaving hospital they took legal action against each other for theft of identity. The case was resolved by a medical examination which showed that one of them had no navel.

The second Ian Nicol changed his name by deed poll and is now called Macbeth. Sometimes he and Ian Nicol write to each other. The latest news is that each has a bald patch on the back of his head.

The painting departments of modern art schools are full of discontented people. One day Mildred said to me, “I’m sick of wasting time. We start work at ten and tire after half an hour and the boys throw paper pellets at each other and the girls stand round the radiators talking. Then we get bored and go to the refectory and drink coffee and we aren’t enjoying ourselves, but what else can we do? I’m tired of it. I want to do something vigorous and constructive.”

I said, “Dig a tunnel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of drinking coffee when you feel bored, go down to the basement and dig an escape tunnel.”

“But if I wanted to escape I could walk through the front door and not come back.”

“You can’t escape that way. The education department would stop your bursary and you would have to work for a living.”

“But where would I be escaping to?”

“That isn’t important. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”

My suggestion was not meant seriously but was taken seriously. In the seldom-visited sub-basement a flagstone was replace by a disguise trap-door. Under this a room was dug into the school’s foundation and here the tunnel began. In forty minute shifts boxes of waste were winched up and the waste put in small sacks easily smuggled out under students’ clothing. The school was built on a bank of igneous quartz so there was no danger of walls caving in, no need of pit-props. Digging was eased by a chemical solvent applied to rock faces with a hand spray, making them soft as cheese. This was invented by industrial design students who despised the painters digging the tunnel but supported it as a technical challenge.

The tunnel did not fail after a few months like the attempt to start an art school debating society, magazine, choir and outing to Linlithgow. Enthusiasm for it actually increased. The Students Representative Society was packed with members of the tunnel committee who organized dances to pay for the installation of more powerful winches. We all became more tense, jumping at small sounds, laughing loudly at feeble jokes, quarrelling with small provocation. Did some fear the tunnel would open a volcanic vent? Yet the diggers noticed no increase of temperature. Sometimes I wondered how the project remained free from interference. An engineering venture supported by several hundred people can hardly be called a secret. It was natural for those outside the school to regard rumours as fantastic inventions, but why did none of the teachers interfere? Only a minority were active supporters of the project; two were being bribed to remain silent. I am sure the director and deputy director did not know, but what about the rest who knew and said nothing? Perhaps they also regarded the tunnel as a possible means of escape. One day work on the tunnel stopped. The first shift going to work in the morning coffee-break discovered that the basement entrance was locked. There were several tunnel entrances now but all were found to be locked, and since the tunnel committee had vanished it was assumed they were inside. This caused a deal of speculation.

I have always kept clear of mass movements, so on meeting the president of the committee in a lonely upper corridor one evening, I said, “Hullo, Mildred,” and would have passed on, but she gripped my arm and said, “Come with me.”

She led me a few yards to the open door of what I had thought was a disused service lift. She said, “You’d better sit on the floor,” and closed the gates behind us and pulled a lever. The lift fell like a stone with a noise so high-pitched that it was sometimes inaudible. After fifteen minutes it decelerated in violent jerks, then stopped. Mildred opened the gates and we stepped out.

In spite of myself I was impressed by what I saw. We stood in a corridor with an arched ceiling, asphalt floor and walls of white tile. It swept left and right in a curve that prevented seeing more than a mile in each direction. “Very good,” I said, “very good indeed. How did you manage it? The fluorescent lighting alone must have cost a fortune.”

Mildred said gloomily, “We didn’t make this place. We only reached it.”

At that moment an elderly man passed us on a bicycle. He wore a peaked cap, an armband with some kind of badge on it and was otherwise naked, for the air was warm. As he passed he raised a hand in a friendly gesture. I said, “Who was that?”

“Some kind of official. There aren’t many of them on this level.”

“How many levels are there?”

“Three. This one has dormitories and canteens for the staff, and underneath are the offices of the administration, and under that is the engine.”

“What engine?”

“The one that drives us round the sun.”

“But gravity drives the world round the sun.”

“Has anyone ever told you what gravity is and how it operates?”

I realized nobody ever had. Mildred said, “Gravity is nothing but a word top-level scientists use to hide their ignorance.”

I asked her how the engine was powered. She said, “Steam.”

“Not nuclear fission?”

“No, the industrial design boys are quite certain it’s a steam engine of the most primitive sort imaginable. They’re down there measuring and sketching with the rest of the committee. We’ll show you a picture in a day or two.”

“Does nobody ask what right you have to go poking about inside this thing?”

“No. It’s like all big organizations. The staff are so numerous that you can go where you like if you look confident enough.”

I had to meet a friend in half an hour so we got into the lift and started back up. I said, “Well, Mildred, it’s interesting of course, but I don’t know why you brought me to see it.” She said, “I’m worried. The others keep laughing at the machinery and discussing how to alter it. They think they can improve the climate by taking us nearer the sun. I’m afraid we’re doing wrong.”

“Of course you’re doing wrong! You’re supposed to be studying art, not planetary motion. I would never have suggested the project if I’d thought you would take it to this length.”

She let me out on the ground floor saying, “We can’t turn back now.”

“Why not?”