Travels in Nihilon (33 page)

She had never been so fervent or afraid in her busy and fashionable life beyond Nihilon, he remembered. This country seemed to have changed her utterly, which made him so happy that he blessed the guidebook they had been sent to write. ‘I won't,' he promised, pressing her close, and wanting to make love.

‘Not yet,' she said, buttoning her shirt. ‘I love you so much.' But the exquisite sensations of unfulfilled desire gave them an even more intense feeling of safety. ‘Where shall we go?' she asked.

He was hungry, but thought it indelicate to say so: ‘Nihilon City would be the best place, but it's some way off. And we'll have to hide in the woods till Mella's column has gone through.'

‘I want to get out of this country,' she said, her self-assurance suddenly diminishing in spite of him. ‘I'm frightened.'

Adam saw nothing ahead but hunger, if they didn't reach a town or village before the new day was out. Getting finally home was too far away to contemplate, a distant mixed-up vision of heaven and hell that he couldn't shake into focus, though he did not confide this to Jaquiline who, in the first light of dawn, looked at him lovingly from her blue eyes.

For some time they had been observed by an invisible circle of orderlies from the space-station. The tender behaviour of our lovers was noted with satisfaction, and the ringleader of these marauders at last gave his signal. There was a crack of twigs and a scuffle of stones, and on turning sharply to see who was there, Adam heard a scream from Jaquiline before he himself was brought down. A thin rope was tied around his wrists.

Jaquiline sobbed as she was carried away. Her bitterness at this latest molestation, from the very arms of Adam, was such that no words from him could comfort her. Adam was also pulled along, though he was aware of his captors doing it with as little roughness as possible.

‘Where are we going?' he demanded.

‘A long way,' laughed one of the men.

‘Up!' said another.

Chapter 34

Two-faced flags were out in Nihilon City, one side marked for the Festival of Liberation by the Army of Honesty and Order, the other marked to celebrate the Festival of Salvation by the Forces of Nihilism. Despite a generally expectant air of enjoyment, no one could yet say with certainty which side of the flag would be finally displayed, though the fact that it would obviously be one side or the other made the people happy enough.

The city was in the hands of order and honesty however, and reinforcements of Cronacian troops shuttling up from Shelp were said to have been marching through the suburbs all day, dressed in the blue overalls of the insurrection, on their way to attack the last bastion of nihilism at Tungsten. But the people, with their two-faced flags, convertible bunting, and age-old instincts, were by no means convinced of their victory.

Richard passed the early part of the night looking for the man who had stolen his briefcase. He telephoned the professor to report its loss, and was told that such carelessness was an act of treason, and that he would be shot out of hand for it when the forces of law and order brought him to justice, as they undoubtedly would. Determined that this should not happen, Richard returned to his room at the Hotel Stigma, to gather up his few possessions and leave the city before daybreak, then make his way to the escape port of Shelp.

But his briefcase was on the bed, and nothing had been taken from it. With mixed feelings at finding it again, he was faced with the moral problem as to whether or not he should go on with his work as an insurrectionary general, or follow through his plan of slipping away to Shelp and safety. The art of living under nihilism consisted in being able to make moral decisions of a fundamental nature every few hours instead of every ten years. Most Nihilists solved it, he had found, by discounting the ethics of each problem, and merely making a choice in the form of a gamble. Thus they saved themselves from moral inanition, but only at the expense of the soul itself, a payment which nevertheless enabled them to go on living with a certain amount of spirit, until such time as the damaged soul could, if they desired it, reconstitute its moral qualities once more, possibly under a new régime of honesty and law. This would no doubt impose its own peculiar form of ethics, with just as much bother to conscientious citizens.

A note attached to the handle of the briefcase said that in a country noted for its nihilism he should trust no one, and that in a régime soon to be distinguished ‘for its honesty he should trust them even less. ‘However,' a postcript from the young man added, ‘I hope that if honesty triumphs, and I am brought to trial, you will have the goodness to remember that I protected your invaluable briefcase during the hours when it was undoubtedly in great peril from real thieves and other such nihilistic scum.'

Richard, deciding to set out for the rendezvous with his loyally waiting troops, put on his general's cap, fastened the revolver-belt, and went downstairs carrying the briefcase. The clerk at the desk sat to attention and saluted smartly, a mark of respect that Richard hadn't received on going into the hotel.

‘Excuse me, sir,' the clerk said, passing him a straw shopping-basket, ‘perhaps you'll need this. It contains bread and cheese, sausage, Nihilitz, and packets of chocolate. And good luck, sir,' he added, as Richard went outside to the waiting car, feeling like a real general at last.

There was little hard marching to be done, for a railway went into the mountains, so that an immensely long train took Richard and his brigade as far as the copper-mining township of Tolemac. A seat was found for him in the engine-cab, and he sat there from the passing of night through dawn and daylight, studying his map by the glow of a torch. Beside him was a wireless-operator whose apparatus was fixed to the back of the plate. Cursing and sweating, the stokers were feeding coal into the huge white-mouthed boiler, their spades swinging dangerously close to Richard as he puzzled over possible systems of deployment on arrival at Tungsten.

They travelled the final forty kilometres by road, most of his brigade finding enough lorries at Tolemac for a shuttle service, so that by nine o'clock he was observing Tungsten through field-glasses from the cover of a grove of trees. The white, glistening, low walls of the compound were five kilometres square, and seemed by no means impregnable in the blue and brilliant light of this vital day.

No preparations appeared to have been made for its defence, which he found strange, not to say disappointing. Several thousand metres of open ground lay between his soldiers and the walls. In the middle of the extensive compound of buildings and hangars he now saw the rocket, surrounded by a gridwork of superstructure, rearing up slim and grey from this distance, and smokily shining in the new morning light, the last score or so metres of its pinnacle coloured a glittering crimson. He clandestinely thought it a pity to stop such a marvellous engine going its natural way into the heavens, regretting that it wouldn't begin to rise up now, for him alone, in front of his very eyes.

But the air shimmered around it, and the compound seemed uninhabited. It had been given out on Radio Tungsten the previous evening, in a Lies bulletin of nihilistic candour, that the two candidates destined for the sexual hook-up had become ill, and that no replacements were available, though the staff were leaving no stone unturned to find some. Richard, gazing across at the magnificent rocket, felt his groin aching at such frustrations of the Nihilon Space Plan, and the preposterous but delightful thought came to him that he wouldn't mind offering himself as the male specimen for this experiment, no matter what the dangers might be. He tried to bring the rocket-head closer and closer, till his binoculars were overfocused and it shimmered into a haze.

A long black estate car nosed its way between the trees, and Richard went to meet it. ‘Right on time,' he said, when Benjamin Smith got out. ‘I hear you had a hard fight at Aspron.'

This was true, yet nothing had been harder for Benjamin to bear than the loss of Jaquiline Sulfer. His troops coming up behind had seen no sign of her. He wondered whether she hadn't been wounded during the attack, and pulled against her will into the Aspron complex, hidden among those endless corridors where it would be impossible to find her. Should he receive evidence that this was true, he would return with his army, after the capture of Tungsten, and raze Aspron to the ground. He would show those Nihilists what nihilism really meant, though in the meantime there was the attack plan to talk over: ‘How many men have you got?'

‘Two thousand here, and another thousand coming up – mostly Cronacians.'

‘Can't use those,' said Benjamin. ‘It's got to be done by Nihilon alone. The country cleanses itself – with no outside help. That's what we need for the history books, anyway.'

‘They're in Nihilonian uniforms,' Richard said, amused at his probity. It was obvious that Benjamin had been fighting in the country, instead of in the more sophisticated moral atmosphere of the capital.

‘Makes no difference,' he asnwered stiffly. ‘It'll get known.'

‘Whether we use Cronacians or not, people will
say
we did. So we might as well,' Richard went on, and Benjamin remembered that he was known for his diplomacy – a polite euphemism for his irritating persistence. He looked at him closely – an unstable face, the apotheosis of nihilism on a man supposed to be in the vanguard of reliability and honesty. But he too had suffered such feelings, so turned away and lit a cigar. His orderlies took a table from the back of a nearby lorry, and set it up under the trees. Richard leaned over it, and looked at the plan of Tungsten that Benjamin unrolled: ‘There are four thousand in my column,' he said, ‘all of them good Nihilonians, meaning fierce, under-privileged, well-trained, honest, and totally confused in their political ideas. That makes seven thousand. With two thousand from Mella Took, we have nine altogether. Three tough brigades. We should be able to crush the place in a couple of hours.'

Richard liked neither his tune nor tone, and certainly not his bland, business-like assumption of total command. ‘My troops are exhausted,' he said. ‘They need time to prepare for the attack.'

Any such softness annoyed Benjamin, who foresaw trouble if he did not show firmness now: ‘The sooner they get it over with, the better. That's what all soldiers think, believe me, no matter how exhausted they are. In any case, it's easier to die when you're tired. You waste less energy that way. But here's Mella, so let's welcome her.'

Richard had heard about this extraordinary woman in Nihilon City, and now he saw her chariot-platform bedecked with blue and green ribbons, drawn by scores of soldiers singing verses from the folk-song written by President Took and often sung over his baby daughter's cradle called ‘Honesty is the Best Policy', while as many others advanced before it with long knives cutting at foliage so that it could get through.

She sat stiffly, enthroned on a sort of padded armchair, trying to look stern, though her soft dark eyes were too good-natured to instil fear, Richard thought. Yet her impressive pose certainly called for respect, which could not be said for the other person on a smaller chair beside her, a man with his arm in a sling who, as they came closer, he recognized as his third colleague.

Edgar looked uncomfortable, stiff and self-conscious due to the proximity of Mella Took, whose hand affectionately caressed his as the platform advanced, so that Richard had an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But he broke into a cough, hoping to disguise his breach of manners sufficiently to go forward and help her descent.

‘You are very kind,' Mella said, gratefully holding his hand. ‘I hope I'm not too late to discuss our methods of attack?' Richard felt his hand squeezed affectionately as he led her to the table, from which she picked up binoculars to view the rocket-base. For some minutes she was absolutely still, as if trying to hypnotize it into surrender.

Edgar descended from the platform, and the three men drank a victory toast. ‘I hear that Nihilitz will be banned by the new government,' Richard said.

‘Let's have another then, for absent friends,' Benjamin proposed, thinking of Jaquiline. Edgar said that Adam had also vanished, though he saw less reason than Benjamin to think that these events could be in any way connected.

Mella wanted to lead the attack from the high point of her chariot, with Edgar at her side, a massed head-on assault of all three brigades against the main gate of Tungsten. Benjamin dissuaded her from this on the grounds that her life was precious and must be saved for the future of Nihilon, a country which her gracious presence would do much to rebuild. Edgar backed him up, while trying not to sound too enthusiastic. In any case, Benjamin was determined to carry through his own special arrangements no matter what Mella might suggest – in her misguided and romantic zeal. If she insisted on wielding her military influence he would have her bound and gagged and slung into a guarded thicket with her love-struck companion, even if he had to shoot down her eighty stalwarts to do it. She was not the linchpin of his campaign, and he had no time today to indulge in detestable debate. His anger decreased to a mere nihilistic interior seething, which he could only finally control by getting his own way and capturing Tungsten for the forces of law and order with the unique plan he had in mind.

He strode up and down to calm himself, reflecting with some satisfaction that he had turned into one of those influential men who not only make decisions but also carry them through. He wasn't aware of too much pride in this, only a mathematical realism which unfailingly produced confidence when there was some danger of it being taken away.

So he expounded his plan, while Mella ate a bunch of large black grapes and looked at him admiringly with her cow-like eyes. He didn't doubt that she took in clearly all that he was saying, for it was astonishingly simple, and in the long run such a plan would be economical of human lives, for if it succeeded only a small proportion of their army would be used. He had two hundred red Zap sports cars to play with, and would send the first hundred against the southern line of the Tungsten perimeter, with ladders strapped to their roofs which would be laid at the wall by the four men crammed into each car. The second hundred cars, also containing four men each, would assist the first wave to breach the wall, thus paving the way for a brigade of foot-soldiers who would swarm in after them. The two regiments of cars were inaugurated as the Zap Brigade – or Mella's Own, Benjamin added as a brilliant afterthought to win her to his side, kneeling like a knight of old to kiss her hand.