Travels in Nihilon (10 page)

‘I don't want any Nihilitz,' Adam persisted.

The waiter pushed his coffee over so angrily that nearly half of it splashed into the saucer. ‘Fifty pecks.'

‘I could get a night's lodging at a good hotel for that. It's extortion.'

‘Oh, is it?' the waiter jeered. ‘You'd better drink your coffee, before it goes cold, then get back on the road, or I'll call the police in. You're creating a disturbance.'

‘Give me your complaints book,' shouted Adam.

‘The dog ate it.'

‘It's a lie. I know you've got one. All establishments in Nihilon have.'

‘We're waiting for a new one from the Ministry of Tourism,' said the waiter, suddenly dispirited at the way things were going.

‘Then I'll write it on a piece of paper and post it to the Ministry myself. I refuse to be robbed at every place I stop at.'

The waiter began to weep: ‘We shall starve, I know we shall. Nihilon is an underdeveloped country, and we need all the foreign exchange we can get.'

Adam gulped some of his coffee. ‘This country is one of the richest in the world. I've seen it with my own eyes.' This wasn't exactly true, but as if to prove his point, a score of people crowded into the bar, and waiters appeared from the kitchen to serve them. Steaming plates of food, platters of salad, and baskets of cut bread were carried around. Women fed their children, and men were laughing as they poured out wine and small glasses of Nihilitz.

‘We're by no means rich,' said the waiter, ‘so I shan't give you back your twenty-five pecks.'

‘That's robbery, then,' said Adam, almost resigned to it.

‘It looks like it,' said the waiter jovially. ‘In any case, you're keeping me from my work. All you have to do is spend a thousand pecks, then you can eat like the rest of these honest Nihilists.'

‘That's too much. I can't afford it.'

‘Look at this specimen, ladies and gentlemen,' the waiter shouted, losing his temper, leaping up on to the counter, though no one took much notice of him. ‘He comes into our country and spends only fifty pecks on a cup of coffee for his dinner. How can we prosper with such tourists? It's a national disgrace that these vagabonds are allowed over the frontier. I expect he has only a few travellers units in his pocket, maybe even less if we hold him upside down and shake him. They should make sure at the frontier that no one enters our great country with less then ten thousand units in his wallet. How else can our national economy survive? It shows how careless our customs officials are these days, not to mention our lazy police.'

A policeman came from one of the far tables, and told him to shut up.

‘Why should I?' screamed the waiter. ‘The police are even worse than foreigners. You expect to be fed free, otherwise you make all sorts of trouble, and alter the laws to suit yourselves.'

The policeman took out his gun, and when the waiter went back to washing glasses, he asked Adam for his passport, and in an inspired mood of desperation Adam said: ‘I haven't got one.'

‘I know you haven't,' said the policeman, handing it to him. ‘Your pocket was picked while you were arguing with the waiter. I'm giving it back to you.'

Adam blushed, and trembled, thinking that he must be more careful. ‘Thank you.'

‘Not at all,' said the policeman. ‘It's just one of our courtesy services for distressed travellers. There's a reward of three hundred pecks for returned passports.'

‘I haven't got three hundred,' he said, choking with irritation.

‘Then I shall have to arrest you,' said the policeman.

‘Whatever for?'

‘For losing your passport.'

‘But I didn't lose it. My pocket was picked.'

‘That's your story. Try telling it to the police.'

‘So you aren't a policeman?'

‘Yes, I am, but not when I'm claiming my reward. Police regulations state that during the few seconds when a reward is handed over you cease to be a policeman. That time, of course, is when many of my dear brethren are killed, and the reward turns out to be one of a fatal kind. Anyway, I'll trouble you for three hundred pecks.'

‘I refuse. Let me see a copy of your regulations.'

‘He's a very hard man, sir,' said the waiter to the policeman.

‘I'm still writing my regulations,' said the policeman. ‘They won't be ready till tomorrow night. I'm very slow at it because I have to think about them carefully. Every regulation can be taken two ways, so that when I arrest people like you, as I do now, you don't have any chance of getting away with it.'

It was obvious to Adam that he couldn't win, and that the only chance of keeping sane was to submit to every injustice that came along. He held out his hands, inviting the policeman to handcuff him.

‘Don't be impatient,' said the policeman with a smile. ‘There's no hurry. I've got years yet, before I bring my career to a successful conclusion. You can cash some travellers units at the bar, then pay me the three hundred pecks. Waiter!'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘Our friend would like to change some money.'

Adam was shocked into silence, merely nodded when the waiter looked unbelievingly at him and enquired: ‘How many, sir?'

The transaction was quick, the cheques by-passing Adam and going straight into the policeman's pocket.

‘You ought to buy me a drink now,' the policeman said. ‘It's not every day that I recover somebody's passport for them.'

‘It's not, sir, is it?' said the waiter respectfully. Adam put a twenty-peck note back on the counter and asked for Nihilitz. Four large bottles of urine-coloured liquid were set before them. ‘I can't pay for all that,' he said, shocked at such a quantity, and not wanting to be caught out again.

‘You already have,' said the waiter. ‘It's only five pecks a bottle.' The policeman drank a tumblerful straight off, and the waiter did likewise, after pouring a little into Adam's glass and saying: ‘I wouldn't drink much if I were you. You're not used to it.' But it melted into Adam's mouth like snow on a hot day, and he immediately felt better, whatever the after-effects might be. His anxious state of mind drifted away.

‘He drinks like a true native of the country,' the waiter said to the policeman, both of whom had already started on the second bottle.

‘Not too much, though,' the policeman cautioned Adam, clinking glasses with him nevertheless. This was obviously what he had needed ever since firing his fateful shot at the frontier, he thought, reaching out to pour another quarter-litre. The policeman glanced disapprovingly, fearing that he might drink it all and leave none for them. Most of the diners had now left, and those few who remained looked at the policeman and the waiter drinking with such outrageous greed at the bar. It passed through Adam's mind that he should not drink on an empty stomach, but the ambrosial liquid tempted him, and dulled him with such calm solicitude that he could not resist finishing his large glass as if its contents were water.

Chapter 12

An uneven corrugation of mountains rose from the line of grey sea. The northern coast was steeply cliffed and inhospitable, communication along it being only possible by boat, or so it had been thought, though Richard now saw, from the window of the airliner, the faintest thread of a road going up and through a pass in the direction of Nihilon City. He lifted his topographical camera, and took several photographs after asking the professor to shield his activities by the double spread of his Nihilon Gazette, knowing he could hardly refuse to do so, or betray him for spying, since he held the professor's revealing envelope in his briefcase.

‘There's more trouble with Cronacia,' the Professor said, lowering his newspaper. ‘An exchange of shots took place yesterday on the southern frontier. A few of our Geriatric battalions are already fighting it out. According to the news reports they are courageously pressing forward their attacks, which means they are suffering heavy losses. I suppose there are worse ways of dying.'

Richard hoped that his colleague Adam had come safely through this troubled zone, reasoning that he must have been there during the fighting. ‘I'd rather die in bed when I get old,' he said. ‘Or even if I die young.'

‘Nobody dies in bed in Nihilon,' said the professor, ‘unless they are young and fit, and get stabbed by a jealous husband, or shot by a frantic wife, or picked off by an enemy who can only be sure of finding them in bed. Otherwise the old are sent into a convenient frontier clash, while the fatally sick are despatched to a remote part of the country and allowed to die peacefully in the open air. It is considered bad for anyone to pass on in bed, but when our party comes to power we'll issue a law giving every person the right to do so. That will be a great blow against nihilism. Bed and Peace will be our slogan, at first.'

The plane was losing height, fixed on its long slide towards Nihilon airport, when a sudden upsurge caused the professor's newspaper to wrap itself over his knees. Richard's camera fell to the floor, and his seat was pushed with such force that he thought he was going to be squashed into the ceiling like a fly. Then the plane righted itself with a splintering roar of its engines, so that his heart felt like an inflated paper-bag about to explode between two hands. It banked steeply, and kept turning as if to fly in a circle forever, while he stared vertically down at the earth. Rows of people were gripping their seats in fear, and an air-hostess, standing against the wall of the arch leading to the galley, had her otherwise ample breasts so pressed in by gravity that she seemed almost flat-chested.

The plane straighened, and Richard wondered why the primitive idea of providing parachutes had never been thought of by modern airlines. He assumed that his face was as white from fear as was the professor's. The wings of the plane fluttered, and out of the window he saw three small red planes, exhaust smoke curling from their engines as they climbed towards the sun. ‘Cronacian jets,' explained the professor. ‘Fighter-training planes. I expect they were buzzing us. They often do.'

‘You'd better get your old men up in their fighter planes to protect us, then,' Richard joked.

‘That may not be necessary,' said the professor, trying to reassure his new-found friend. ‘All Nihilon airliners are armed.'

‘Armed?'

‘Yes. With guns.'

The jets were spinning like red coins towards them. The airliner was closer to Nihilon earth than when the attack started, though the main airport was nowhere in sight. The land was grey and ribbed, bone dry and barren, an unknown area that caused him to lift his camera for another topopicture.

He was pushed back into his seat by a burly man who removed the cover from the box near his knees, revealing the mechanism at the back end of a machine gun. Another man was stacking boxes of belt-ammunition in the gangway. When the plane dipped, the machine-gunman shook to his own lethal noise, and Richard looked out of the window, as if to enjoy the spectacle and so calm his fear. One Cronacian plane lurched into the air, and vanished above the back of the jet, with smoke spewing from its red wings. The professor clapped, and shook the machine-gunner's hand. ‘Bravo!' he cried and, turning to Richard: ‘We might get one or two more before landing.'

‘Does this often happen?' Richard asked, his arms and legs shaking with apprehension. Several more machine-gunners were positioned along both sides of the jet, waiting intently for the next brush of the Cronacians.

‘Usually,' said the professor calmly.

‘It's the first time I've heard of it.'

‘We try not to mention it. The Nihilon government, ever mindful of its peaceful image in the world, doesn't want to make an international incident out of these high-spirited attacks by Cronacian pilots, though we've never actually fired back at them before.'

A blazing line of gunfire broke from every aperture. The bare-chested gunner nearest Richard gripped a huge cigar in his teeth. Many seats were empty, suggesting that the gunners had been travelling as ordinary passengers under the auspices of the Nihilon government. Air-hostesses walked from the galley with trays of hot coffee and sandwiches, handing them out to each sweating gunner. Richard, watching the sky, saw another red button of a fighter-trainer growing bigger, and it only stopped after it had turned into a shocking black circle of disintegration, scattering in bits and pieces to the earth. The gunner, a man of more than fifty, half-bald but with a halo of grizzled hair, gave a belly-laugh and reached behind for a cup of coffee.

‘But they weren't
shooting
at us,' said Richard.

The professor giggled with embarrassment. ‘So you've noticed, dear boy? Of course not. They never do. But we've decided it's time they were taught a lesson, in case they should ever decide to turn serious.'

‘That's insane,' said Richard. ‘They were buzzing us, that's all.' He took a cup of coffee from a passsing tray, but the hostess snatched it back, her breasts quivering with indignation: ‘That's only for our brave gunners!'

He apologized, and turned to the professor: ‘The Cronacians will send up armed fighters, and then they'll blow us out of the sky.'

‘Perhaps,' said the professor. ‘Those pirates are evil enough for any atrocity.'

‘I suppose this incident will end all civilian flights to Nihilon for a while?'

‘I doubt it,' the professor replied. ‘We'd lose too much foreign currency.'

‘What about the safety of the passengers?'

‘They'll have a fighter escort, in and out.' He helped himself to coffee and sandwiches, and the hostess smiled at him, for he put a heavy coin on to her tray. ‘My dear boy, when has air travel not been perilous?'

The Cronacian pilots did not wait long for revenge. They must have radioed for help at their first casualty, for suitably armed planes had now been sent up by way of reply. In fact the passenger plane in its manoeuvres had gone dangerously close to the Cronacian frontier, and four Pug 107 fighters were now streaming down from the mountain peaks. Richard, seeing them at the same moment as did the machine-gunner, felt terror and helplessness, for there was nowhere to run for shelter. He did not know for sure that they were armed, but a deep unease told him that all was not well. The machine-gunner grinned, as he prepared his savage mechanisms for brushing them out of the sky as soon as they got close enough. This irrational urge for safety might even have communicated itself to the pilot (and one of the air-hostesses, who began to scream), for the plane climbed and banked in a sickening corkscrew motion, so that hats, umbrellas, and briefcases were thrown all over the fuselage.