Travels in Nihilon (32 page)

‘Lay flat,' he said, for they were still on the exposed side of the wall. But Jaquiline staggered to safety behind a tree, while a stray bullet caught her rescuer, keeping him in the fire-zone. Sheets of hot metal and petrol went far and wide. Some insurrectionist soldiers were caught as they rushed forward, but the conflagration cleared the wall, which in any case was not intensively manned.

Though such pyrotechnics hadn't been strictly necessary, they had put heart into the attackers, and discouraged the defenders from reinforcing the wall should they have thought to do so. Several hundred of Benjamin's men entered the compound, though it turned out that the other attacks had also been successful. As messages came to his Thundercloud, he felt justified in using such weight in view of the urgent need to push on that night towards Tungsten, which was still thirty kilometres away.

An immense bonfire was made of many psychiatrist's couches, together with tons of records and notes that had been scrupulously kept on every patient of past and present. To atone for their sins against humanity, the doctors were ordered to care for the wounded, and to bury the dead, and those members of the staff who refused were threatened with a course of their own electric-shock therapy, at which they turned amiable and accepted all Benjamin's conditions.

Indeed, it was easier to win over the doctors and medical staff to the insurrectionist cause than the patients, who saw the capture of Aspron as just another trap, a noisy and realistic show staged by the staff so as to make the final test on their loyalty to nihilism. They were like hunted people, physically well-fed and cared for, but only so that they would be able to run when the great chase was on. Even the presence of dead and wounded after the battle didn't convince them, for those who had been there longest whispered that such attention to detail was not unknown.

Observing Benjamin's perplexity and disappointment, the Big Doctor offered to set up a quick course of persuasion, promising that at the end of a week every patient would be eager to join the new cause. Benjamin turned down his proposal (while seeing the sense of it), though he decided to retain him as his medical officer for the attack on the rocket base.

Immense food stores were found, and long tables were set out in the main square so that soldiers and ex-patients could dine together. Other captured booty included a score of forty-seater Maloram Mountain Buses, as well as two hundred Zap sports cars. Benjamin had already sent an advance-guard of eight hundred soldiers towards Tungsten, and now, at midnight, every light turned on, the patients' band of the Aspron Psychic Redemption Institution (Lunatics) performed a fairly musical interpretation of ‘Honesty Forever'.

With the Malorams lined up and the Zaps in four files behind, he looked back on his army from the battered and windowless command car. Full of life's joy and fervour, he gave a salute, then got in and turned the ignition key.

Jaquiline was not in her accustomed place. There had been so much work after his victory that he had not missed her until now, when the enormous blunder of her absence shot him out of the car. He sent runners to every vehicle saying that the advance would be delayed until she was found. Search parties went into the surrounding groves, while the ex-patients scoured the compound and buildings.

He brooded in Big Doctor's office, because there was nothing else to be done. Several crates of Nihilitz and Anihilitz were found in a store-cellar by patients who had not tasted such fiery ambrosia for years, and they were soon wandering around in a state of agreeable drunkenness. The staff did nothing to stop them breaking into rooms and offices, out of fear because they had now lost all authority, but mostly, it must be said, to increase the very atmosphere of nihilism that this army of barbaric insurrectionists had hoped to subdue.

Because of this confusion, and darkness beyond the walls, it was by no means easy to search for Jaquiline.

Benjamin walked up and down the small room, sweating with worry and impatience, sipping now and again at a glass of water mixed with Nihilitz. Big Doctor offered pills to calm his nerves, but Benjamin refused, though he didn't know why. The Nihilitz was making him drowsy, in spite of his ravening anxiety, which was a bad thing because he still had to drive all night through unknown country on a rotten road, in the darkness, as well as fight a decisive battle in the morning. If he didn't start soon he wouldn't get there on time, and the whole combined operation might fail, in which case that nihilistic cargo of space-pornography would be triumphantly launched.

It was no use waiting, he decided. They would continue the search after he left, and if Jaquiline were found she could be driven to Tungsten in Big Doctor's car, a swift and comfortable Mangler which was to be left behind for her.

With two soldiers at the radio set, and Big Doctor on the other seat, Benjamin drove through the shattered gate, at the head of his column, almost an hour off schedule. Outside, where darkness began, a piece of sharp flint punctured his left front wheel. It was a rancid omen, and he matched it with ripe curses. Big Doctor, he saw, was smiling. The soldiers didn't know how to work the jack and change the wheel, so he did it himself, a task which calmed him down, and was perfomed so quickly and well that Big Doctor's smile went back into his long face.

The black trees looming around were fixed in their own deep dreams, stalwart trunks brought forward in every case by the Thundercloud's headlights. The advance-guard had left luminosity-stones to mark the route, which made it easy to follow. He felt carefree, back at his favourite work, for in spite of his sedentary life so far, Benjamin was convinced that he was at last doing what he had been born for – to be a soldier, no matter in what cause he was fighting.

Chapter 33

Forty soldiers were needed to haul Mella's wagon into the mountains. Edgar sat as usual by her side, his arm in a sling, so doted on and wept over that his life became unbearable, especially when he heard Adam and Firebrand making contemptuous remarks from their seats of a little less honour behind.

The groaning soldiers, as they dug their feet in against loose stones and shale, and flexed their arms around thick rope attached to the platform, were insults to Edgar's ears, an injustice that' no upright God-hating Nihilist government would have allowed. Adam, on the other hand, from his throne of poetry, seemed to enjoy this mode of travel, and sat back in comfort, when he wasn't leaning forward to chide Edgar about the continual mothering he was forced to put up with from Mella.

Firebrand did not mind how he travelled as long as he ate and drank frequently, though once the ascent into the mountains began he complained that the jerking of the platform made him feel sick. Edgar, whose ears had become finely attuned to insults drifting from that direction, now suggested that if things got worse, as it was inevitable that they should, then Firebrand would do well to get off the platform and walk. Failing that, he might try propelling himself on that crazy bicycle he'd ridden so successfully into Orcam, now strapped on to planks at the back of the vehicle, and preciously guarded because Mella wanted to make it the prime exhibit in the Museum of the Honest Insurrection after the war. Firebrand scowled, and swung his green face to concentrate on the semi-woodland that covered this part of the ascent, in the hope that it would prevent him being sick.

The forty hauliers were relieved after a two-hour go at the tow ropes, and another relay took their places. But for his wounded arm Edgar would have worked with them – except that it might have made him even more of a hero in Mella's moted eyes. The attempt to escape, and his inadvertent part in the night attack on Orcam bridge, came back to him as the highlight of his Nihilonian experience, his one act of so-called heroism, whose memory caused Mella to lean over him now with her moon face and half-bare breasts, tears falling through her kisses as she enquired again about the bullet scratch on his arm. If this was law and order, he longed for the days of wildcat, sky-tearing nihilism – a desire he could confide to no one around him.

The soldiers tugged all day and far into the night, until it was reckoned by the geographical equipment looted from Edgar that they were about ten kilometres south of Tungsten. Mella decided to rest her brigade a few hours before moving them into the zone of final contest. A large tent was pitched for herself and Edgar, while Firebrand and Adam were left to themselves in the open air.

A yellow moon laboured above the cork trees, and Adam wondered, as a poet, whether it would give birth to anything when tomorrow's rocket hurled itself up with grand impacted power from the Athelstan Alps. The rocket-load of prospective fecundity was all set to flower in tribute to the full moon, and the Nihilists, by choosing such a time, had enlisted even its powerful aid in their startling project. Circumstances had drawn him into this anti-Nihilist expedition, yet as a poet he wished them the greatest success. When the time came, he wouldn't pick up a rifle to fight, but would contrive to hang back while the mobs of honesty and the rabble of order flung themselves at Tungsten to ruin the most poetic spectacle the world had ever known.

Insects vibrated through the trees. Why should anyone want to shatter such peace? What, after all, was wrong with Nihilon and its way of life? To get away from the drunken and pig-like snoring of Firebrand (who wasn't totally degenerate, however, because he was still part of the lovable system of Nihilon), Adam recounted all the tribulations he had suffered since crossing the frontier, which now seemed no more than the ordinary adventures of any tourist in a foreign country. Soon, due to the fanatical sentimentalism of Mella and her followers, the dull wash of order and honesty would flow over this delightful territory of unexpected happenings, the last place on earth that a benevolent nihilistic régime seemed to have set aside for the delectation of poets!

Nihilism's downfall seemed certain, and he was a helpless onlooker. In spite of the battle of Orcam, little resistance had been shown by the Nihilists so far. What self-respecting régime would have allowed its enemy to pitch camp, and sleep in such peace so close to the final objective? Where was the perfect and bloody ambush which anyone with a truly nihilistic temperament would have set for them? Perhaps the outer defences of Tungsten had yet to be encountered, or maybe the garrison of that place had no idea of the danger threatening from this direction. He began to wonder why he did not forfeit his night's sleep, and make his way into Tungsten to tell them.

One of the salutary effects of Nihilon on a person like Adam was that no sooner did he think of something than he acted upon it. Even more beneficial was the fact that he didn't even wonder why this was so. Easing away from Firebrand, he walked into the shadows of the trees, and made his escape between half-asleep pickets.

He went along by the light of the moon, the road ascending in curves up the mountainside, well-lit till it entered another belt of forest. After a few kilometres he felt guilty at deserting the forces of order and honesty, in spite of his former clear sentiments. A sense of inexpressible remorse made him gloomy, but his feet would not go back, as if fixed on their course by a firm turn of destiny. He knew in his socially responsible heart that no matter how he rationalized the attractive qualities of nihilism, nihilism alone was not enough to sustain the ordered life that was necessary to his comfort.

He kept on walking upwards, because an ascending movement demanded the physical exertion which enabled him to put up with such intense misery of indecision. If he turned back towards the camp, the reason for his guilt would vanish, but the memory of it would be so painful that the easy descent would not then help him to bear it.

After several hours, during which the weight of his guilt became beneficial in that it put him into a walking trance so that it no longer bothered him, he sat down for a rest before entering another zone of trees. Perhaps I am doing right, after all, he said to himself, wondering whether he shouldn't stop thinking about it altogether. But then such blankness of mind was alien to him, and he was afraid that if he didn't think, he would soon cease to have any emotions whatsoever. He could recognize danger when it came too close. If his legs ached, he was emotionally tired. If he was hungry, he was emotionally deprived. If he was feeling guilty it was because he was emotionally unfulfilled. But at least he was alive. Comforted by such reflections, he went on his way.

The road was a twisting footpath ascending between the trees. He'd been going so long and at such a rate that he expected to reach the plateau of Tungsten any minute, but there was no sign of it yet, nor of those defences against honesty and order that the Nihilists should have built.

Pausing to tie his shoelace, he heard a rustling in a nearby clump of bushes. Accustomed to the half-darkness, he straightened, and saw a human being staggering towards him. He instinctively looked for a place to hide, but the figure, seeing him, ran away first, so he turned and gave chase.

It was not a long pursuit, neither far nor fast. ‘I shan't hurt you,' he cried.

He knelt, to find that it was a woman who had fallen into the bracken, dressed like a soldier of the insurrectionary army. ‘Keep away from me,' she wailed, when he shone the torch into her face. Her eyes stared, as if waiting for the expected blow, and he drew his light back: ‘Who are you?'

‘I'm looking for Benjamin Smith,' she moaned. ‘I lost him at the battle of Aspron.'

‘I thought we were going to meet in Nihilon City,' he said reproachfully, when he recognized her.

She stood up and leaned against a tree. ‘So did I. But I must have been knocked out at Aspron, and when I woke up, the fighting was over. I started to walk, wanting to get back to Benjamin in Aspron, but I got lost. Where are we?'

He lit a cigarette for her. ‘Near Tungsten, I should think.'

‘I meant to meet you in Nihilon City,' she said when they walked on. ‘I really did.' He held her hand, wondering what had happened to her in Nihilon. He asked, but she only promised to tell him when they were home again. Strangely, she felt safer, being alone with Adam, her lover who had been lost but was now found again in the great forest of the Athelstan Alps, than with Benjamin and his all-conquering army. When they stopped, she pressed against him: ‘Don't let me out of your sight for a second. Don't let me go so far that you can't reach out and touch me!'