Travels in Nihilon (23 page)

Only an immediate attack had any chance of succeeding. His column of six hundred men was well equipped with rifles and machine guns, but several thousand Nihilist fanatics were thought to be in Amrel. He decided therefore to drive his Thundercloud, with four other soldiers inside, over the bridge and up into the centre of the town. Posing as ordinary tourists, they would occupy the post-office, and turn it into a fortress. Five minutes later, with all attention focused there, a bridgehead would be secured from below, from which two companies would be launched into the town. A further force would by-pass Amrel to the north and establish blocking positions on the Nihilon City road so as to deal with any Nihilists attempting to retreat in that direction. This plan left him with no reserves should anything go wrong, but Benjamin thought this was a risk they had to take. In case of defeat, the survivors were to regroup in the eastern mountains.

He drove towards the bridge on a calm fine day that was full of the soft heat of spring, ripening barley on either side waving in the ever-provident earth. There was a new hotel by the river bank, and people dining on the terrace looked at Benjamin's car with interest as it went by. Many were Nihilist officials wearing black bowler hats, with guns by their tables, and singing drunkenly.

Beyond the first half of the long bridge, standing on low land between two arms of the river, was a garage repair workshop, with lorries and tractors parked outside that, after the battle, Benjamin would use to inaugurate a motorized column for reconnaisance and vanguard operations. The narrow bridge had low walls on either side, and he drove across slowly, admiring the packed mass of the old town on the hillside above – one of the tourist gems of Nihilon, he would say in his guidebook.

It seemed as if his life were living itself all over again. Through the fully opened windows came the same smells of dust and food, river water and kerosene that had assailed him so long ago. In spite of the neat and bellicose plan about to be carried out, he felt as if he were in fact going into the town as a peaceful and enquiring tourist. Only the rifles and machine guns lying about the bottom of the car told him that this was not so. He felt calm enough, yet sweat was pouring from him, and his hands around the steering wheel slid a little too much for safety. Life is one mistake after another, and he wondered whether this would be his last, though he consoled himself with the fact all mistakes are different, which at least made them interesting.

Beyond the bridge they passed the café, and a dismal-looking shop which had a notice chalked on its door saying:
NO NIHILISTS SERVED HERE.
This seemed hopeful for his cause, as he turned off the main road, went under an archway, and on up the steep cobblestoned street. A few housewives were about, and one or two old men, but the town was empty compared to when he had last been there.

They emerged into the large space at the top of the hill, and parked outside the three-storey stone post-office which overlooked the town. Grass grew in parts of the deserted square where the cobblestones had been worn or kicked away, and in the middle was an abandoned fairground roundabout, its machinery rusty, its wood rotting, its canvas awning blown into strips by the continual breeze. A large public clock struck the hour ten minutes late.

Benjamin and two of his companions walked up the post-office steps, heavily laden with guns and ammunition, as if intending to pack them up inside and send them registered to friends. The other two had taken a heavy machine gun to the opposite building in order to enfilade the square when they were attacked.

Inside the post-office Benjamin pointed his rifle at the three elderly and sleepy clerks, and his assistants quickly bolted the main heavy door. While waiting for them to search and clear the place he read a notice which said: ‘Foreign visitors are warned by the Nihilon postal authorities not to send any valuables by registered mail. The prominent stamping and labelling of such items serves only to mark them out for theft by our diligent and honest employees. To ensure that a letter will reach its destination, the visitor had better post by ordinary mail, and send two copies in order that one may get there.'

On an upper floor they opened loopholes from the windows. He looked at his watch. The bridge should be crossed by now. As if to confirm it, the first shots were heard. He hurried on to the roof, getting out by ladder and skylight, feeling competent in command, fit again in body and soul.

Though the bridge was captured, the hotel still held out, so that his two companies lost heavily getting over the river, and seemed in danger of being cut off. A battalion of Nihilist soldiers formed up in the square before going off to repel the attack. They did not know that the post-office was occupied, and Benjamin, when the whole force was in range, gave the order to open fire, signalling for the second machine gun to join in.

Few of them escaped. He perceived that their training must have been bloodily unrealistic, for they ran blindly to the attack with no order or system, fired without cover, and stood up to sing the incongruous national anthem that had so grated his nerves at the frontier, and which he was glad to blast out of their throats.

All over the town, a constant dull ripple of noise sounded, as if it were heavily raining in some far-off part of the country. It seemed like a dream, because he was tired. The exhaustion was only beginning, but reality would break through it, even though the tiredness was bound to increase. The bridge, the hotel, and the garage were now captured, and shooting was going on beyond the town as well, where retreating Nihilists were trying to make their way towards Nihilon City, or into the Athelstan Alps.

A way had yet to be made from the river to the main square, and Benjamin began to worry. He noticed a field-gun being hauled up a side street by a tractor. The purr of the engine brought vividly to mind his childhood spent on a farm. He thought this was because of the gun, since he had played with such models in those far-off days, but he knew it was the sound of the tractor, which made him see vividly the one that his own father had driven.

The building shook, as if a giant thump had hit every wall from the inside. He got downstairs to meet a blinding flash that pushed him down to the stone floor and tried to hold him there. The main door had burst from its hinges. Ordering the machine-gunners to cover him, he took a pair of grenades and dashed into the square.

He fell vomiting among the dead and wounded. More shells were exploding at the post-office walls and windows, so that he did not feel any less safe where he was. But he had no desire to go on, and did not know what to do next, though without wanting to, he leapt up and ran zig-zag towards the gun. Rifle bullets cut the air around him, but the dream had taken him over for his own protection, and he worked within its halo of safety and light. He threw his first grenade and fell to the ground.

A machine gun heavily threaded its string of noise from the nearest window, but Benjamin's alert gunner returned fire from the post-office roof even before the end of its burst. His grenade exploded during it, an increase of pandemonium joined by a final shell as his grenade blew one of the gun-wheels to pieces.

The survivors of the crew ran to him, and instead of the expected revolver-shot in his body he looked up and saw that they wanted to surrender. One of them leapt for freedom in the opposite direction, but fell against the bullets of the insurrectionists advancing along the street.

Helped by his prisoners, Benjamin staggered back to the post-office. His clothes were in tatters. He was covered with blood. At the steps he shook himself, paused for a moment with bent head, and eyes shut tight. The black-dot flag, and the hammer-and-chisel banner, were lowered from the flagpole of the town hall.

He straightened himself, tried to pull in his stomach, drew back his head, and walked into the building.

At the postmaster's large desk he spread out his map of Nihilon, while teleprinters in the next room sent the news of Amrel's liberation by the Benjamin Smith Brigade. Information had come in that the port of Shelp was also in insurrectionist hands, while another message claimed that several areas of Nihilon City had been secured. Some mysterious commander-in-chief, signing himself the Professor, had ordered his brigade to advance on Agbat, an important town and road junction on the railway connecting Nihilon to the northern Cronacian frontier. The way to treat the Nihilists, said the professor's teleprinter message, which struck Benjamin as being somewhat garrulous, was to hit them before they knew what had hit them, so that they wouldn't get up and argue. No one could win an argument with a Nihilist, so it was best never to let one start. End of text.

The local commander was brought in, a tall, elderly man with grey hair, and a haggard unhappy face. Apart from being in the army, he was also the mayor, the police chief, the hotel owner, and the postmaster, whose desk Benjamin now occupied. His rank was that of colonel, and he laid his black bowler hat by Benjamin's hand: ‘If you're going to shoot me, please honour me by doing it now. I couldn't stand the indignity of a trial.'

‘You forget,' said Benjamin, ‘that we represent legality and order, progress, and honesty.'

The colonel pressed an anguished hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, my God!'

Benjamin knew him as the man to whom he had delivered the town twenty-five years ago, in return for a bus and the safety of his group. Nevertheless, in spite of his crimes, he tried to calm him down. ‘We couldn't possibly shoot you, in any case.'

The colonel shuddered, and became even more distressed. ‘So you propose to hand me over to the justice of the people, do you? You progressives are even more diabolically cruel than we are.'

‘I'm not sure what's going to happen to you yet,' said Benjamin. ‘I have too much work to do.'

The man had tears in his eyes. ‘I'm tired of life, whatever you decide. For years I've been disillusioned with nihilism, at having to get up every morning and invent more novelties of disorder for the pampered populace when President Nil forgets to send his own suggestions through. I've known for a long time that it was retrograde and immoral to live under such a system. My wife has often seen me breaking my heart at the waste and burden of it all. I've been secretly praying for a safe and orderly existence, but I was so influenced by President Nil and his philosophy, which said that life should be a great lawless adventure, that I never knew how to try and change it. It's been a thankless task. I've frequently prayed for a few hectares of soil in a safe mountain area, where I could live the life of a simple peasant. I admire and envy you insurrectionists trying to change all this. You don't know how lucky you are, being the saviours of our country, the bringers of honesty and progress. I certainly wish you success in your venture. I know you intend to kill me, whatever you say, but if I were to stay alive, there's nothing I would want to do more than to help you in your great and honourable task.'

‘We need all the help we can get,' Benjamin admitted. ‘If you're serious about it, go to the barber's and get your head shaved, then buy a pair of workmen's overalls, and come back to join our ranks – under another name, of course. If you can persuade other Nihilist soldiers to do the same, providing they have a genuine change of heart, we shall welcome them.'

Colonel Amrel reached forward and held Benjamin's hand. ‘Thank you, dear sir, thank you. I am old now but I'm still a good soldier. Shooting and looting is the life for me!'

‘Any of that,' said Benjamin, though not too harshly, ‘and you'll be shot yourself. My column will assemble in the square, so make sure you are there with your men.'

The room was empty. His danger, for the moment, was over. His arms and legs were shaking. He tried to hold them still. Power, to Benjamin, was most satisfying when he returned someone's life to them, after refusing to take it away when he had the right and sometimes the duty to do so. There was nothing more sublime than this. But the weight in his chest seemed to have become displaced, and he walked to the window in an effort to control himself. He grabbed a high-backed chair so as not to fall. There were tears on his face. The uncanny circle of time had struck him with a hammer, as if to snap his spine at the crucial moment of action. He held on to the window-bars and looked through to the square. Blood patches and pieces of rag remained. Men stood beside the five lorries to talk and smoke. They would head for Agbat in the darkness, taking all night to get there, since the road was bad. With lorries, they would capture the place at dawn. Such thoughts stopped his limbs shaking when he walked back to his desk.

Chapter 25

The long train crawled and switched upon hairpin bends, continuing its night journey into the outlying spurs of the Athelstan Alps. From there, a sinuous pass between the mountains would take it gradually down to the central plain of Nihilon.

When Jaquiline climbed from between Cola's sheets, the train shook so violently that she almost fell, her breasts flattening on the side of the bunk, while she clung as if a hundred foot drop opened below. But her bare feet touched the floor, and when she bent to get into her own bed, her arm jerked back, for in the dimmest of lights she saw a strange person lying there, presumably as fast asleep as Cola was. Sick with fear, she felt blindly around for her clothes and began to get dressed.

Her impusle was to pull the communication cord, and have him carried off screaming under some accusation or other, for after her unpleasant experience with the police chief at the frontier, she had no wish to confront another Nihilonian male. But she knew that sleep would be impossible whether she stopped the train or not, for to do so in a place like Nihilon was clearly to risk the unexpected, either in reprisals for a semi-criminal act, or in some form of brutal unsuitable assistance that would do her no good at all. And since her life wasn't in danger, perhaps it was better to do nothing. In any case, he had threatened no harm yet.