Travels in Nihilon (9 page)

Notices along the plane said that in the interests of safety and hygiene, smoking was forbidden. Richard had been tempted to take out his pipe and slyly puff at it, but he was put off because there were no ashtrays. Now that the meal was over, however, he saw his neighbour, and other people, buying huge cut-glass souvenir ashtrays of Nihilon Airways at ten klipps each from the stewardesses, then taking out pipes and cigars, and lighting up. Richard also bought one, though not without five minutes of bargaining which finally brought the price down to seventeen klipps from the naked, though mercenary stewardess.

‘We have strange customs,' said the professor, blowing thick smoke across the gangway. ‘In Nihilon's internal politics the domestic theme is always and continually freedom – the uttermost freedom of the people to do what they like. We sing songs of freedom, ballads of liberty, lullabies of free-for-all. I supppose you're even going to stay at Freedom Hotel in Nihilon?'

‘Hotel Stigma, Ekeret Place,' said Richard. ‘May I borrow a match?'

‘Set the plane on fire if you want to,' laughed the professor, passing him one. ‘See if I care! But you see, when a few dissident intellectuals formed a political party called
Real Freedom,
they were derided not only by the people, but by the government as well (what's left of it) since everyone believed that they had freedom already. Freedom to start a political group based on freedom was only a way of destroying freedom. So President Nil ordered the offenders to be sent to a school for writers and journalists. However, a group of workers and intellectuals started a political party with the idea that people in our country had too much freedom, and that they should lose some of it in the name of National Unity and Recovery. The government saw a real threat in this. Scores of these dissidents were rounded up and shot without trial, but quite a few got away to the mountains, where they may still be, for all any of us know. Such political ideas were getting dangerously close to those of the Rationalists during our civil war twenty-five years ago, and none of us are nihilistic enough to want that back.'

A voice from a small air-vent, built into the back of the seat in front, called out: ‘Well said, professor. You speak like a true and grateful citizen of Nihilon.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said the professor. He grimaced at Richard, then pressed a handkerchief over the mouthpiece. ‘I was only praising the awful place,' he whispered to Richard, ‘to see whether they were tuned in or not. The fact is I'm high on the executive staff of a revolutionary party myself, but don't betray me, will you?'

Richard suspected a trap. ‘I really don't want to know about it.'

‘It's all right, my friend, they can't hear us now. I've got to tell you certain things because, as a foreigner, you might be useful to us.'

‘My sole purpose in going to Nihilon is to write a guidebook,' Richard protested, ‘not to help in revolution.' An air-hostess whose breasts were slightly too low asked with a smile if they needed anything to drink. ‘A glass of water,' said Richard, taking no chances on anything stronger. The lunch wine had given him a headache, indigestion, eye-strain, hot flushes, heartburn, handshake and a sudden flood of inexplicable melancholia, and he hoped these discomforts would diminish if not wear off by the time they landed. In order to change the subject, he mentioned these ailments to the professor while he sipped the water brought to him by the girl whose breasts he wanted to touch and who, he seemed sure, had winked at him suggestively while placing the glass into his hand.

The professor removed the handkerchief from the speaker-microphone in front, saying in a pompous voice: ‘There are many different vines in this country. Nihilon is famous for its superlative vintages, all of which are extremely delectable.' He stuffed the handkerchief back again so that he could not be overheard: ‘But some of them have unenviable reputations, dear foreign friend. That particularly sweet and faintly fizzy wine you so unwisely imbibed during lunch sends one into the blackest of black sadnesses. At one time our political prisoners were induced to get drunk on it, so that they invariably confessed, except the schizophrenics, who were always as hard as nails, full of contradictions, and confessions you could never rely on. Anyway, Richard, I remember an incident a few months ago, when I was staying at a remote village in the mountains for some peace and quiet to get on with my work. There was an impressionable tourist who, after drinking one glass of the wine you had at lunch, fancied he'd changed into a vampire bat so that, unknown to any of us, who thought he'd merely gone outside to sample the pure night air, he launched himself in one glorious leap from a hundred-metre cliff at the end of the village. The night had been dark to all but him as he climbed that fatal parapet, but the police found him mangled on the rocks next morning. Unfortunately, in his back pocket were the details of our proposed coup d'état, but as our relations with Cronacia were rather tender at that time, as they are today, so I heard on the radio, the police assumed he was one of their agents, and didn't connect us with it.'

‘You certainly seem to have exciting lives,' said Richard.

‘That's nihilism,' the professor beamed, taking a large envelope from his briefcase: ‘Will you deliver this to a certain address when you get to Nihilon City? Our operations orders are inside. I can't do it myself because I'm followed everywhere. Otherwise I would.'

Richard held it: ‘Who follows you?'

‘Everyone,' said the professor. ‘In Nihilon everyone follows everyone else. I follow the person I'm ordered to, just as another person is ordered to follow me. I'm never sure who it is, because he's changed from day to day, just as my own instructions are. It's all worked out by computer and communicated to us by telephone before breakfast each morning.'

Richard didn't believe a word of it. ‘Sounds like a lot of wasted energy.'

‘It is,' said the professor fervently, ‘that's why I think the system should be changed, or modified. The economy is going downhill fast. Unadulterated nihilism is a luxury we cannot afford.'

‘But I can't promise to deliver this,' said Richard, handing the envelope back.

‘You're committed to it,' said the professor. ‘Your fingerprints are on it. If I'm arrested I'll betray you and have you shot.'

‘Damn,' he exclaimed putting it into his own briefcase. ‘That was a dirty trick.'

‘It's nihilism,' said the professor, slapping his knees in an excess of joviality, then adding more seriously: ‘Now you know why we have to get rid of such a system.'

‘I certainly do.'

‘Down with nihilism! Nihilism must go! Long live Order and Rationality!' he cried. But the professor's handkerchief had fallen from the speaker-microphone, and a voice barked out of it: ‘Shut up, you old fool, you feeble-minded nitwit.'

‘That's the sort of thing our ridiculous and hot-headed revolutionaries say,' the professor went on, recovering quickly. ‘But I know they are wrong and can never hope to succeed, because, as millions of ordinary Nihilists like me say, before getting into bed at night, “Long live Nihilism. Nihilism is our salvation. Down with Order and Rationality.”'

‘That's better,' said the voice from the speaker. The professor stuffed his handkerchief back into it: ‘You swine,' he said vehemently, ‘I'll kill you. You'll be shot, hanged, and poisoned – all at once if I have my way.'

‘Who will?'

‘President Nil. It's his recorded voice we hear everywhere.' He held Richard's hand: ‘Please deliver that envelope. Our whole cause depends on it.'

‘Oh, damn,' Richard said again.

‘You promise?'

‘I said yes, didn't I?'

Chapter 11

One must always expect the unexpected in a country such as Nihilon, thought Adam, yet the unexpected could not be called the unexpected if one expected it. Be prepared for all surprises, but being prepared cut out the risk of being surprised, and so whatever happened that shocked you was always an unexpected surprise. There seemed no way around the problem.

The road changed from a broad, beckoning, tarmacadamized highway to a narrow, twisting, hilly, potholed, semi-bridlepath, so that it was often necessary to get off and push his bicycle under a rain of his own sweat.

Holes were more numerous on level or downhill stretches of the road, when he might otherwise have made good speed, but almost non-existent on uphill climbs when he had to get off and walk anyway, so that soon he was caked in dust, and feeling hungry again. A hundred-ton lorry came toiling up the hill, grinding slowly by, and the driver cheerfully indicated that he should throw his bicycle in the back for a lift to Nihilon City, but Adam refused with a comradely wave, for his instructions were to cycle the whole way, though later as he sat down to rest by the roadside he wondered why he bothered to obey such an order.

Before him was a great slogan-noticeboard which said:

OBEY – AND FEEL YOUNG
!

REBEL, AND LIVE FOREVER
!

He opened the dead soldier's map, extracted from the hollow butt of the rifle, and saw that the next sizeable town was a place called Fludd, which he hoped to reach by nightfall. According to preliminary notes given out at the office before leaving, there was no hotel between where he was now and the seaport of Shelp, though this information was based on hearsay and rumour, or taken from pre-civil war guidebooks. He certainly wanted to avoid nine hours under the stars in this desolate country.

At the summit of the next hill the sun spread an orange glare across dark-green flowing hills, reflecting light back into his eyes. The region now seemed more populated, for several localities lay ahead, one of which he thought might be the town of Fludd where he hoped to find a hotel.

The road surface improved, before reaching a restaurant called Rover's Roadhouse. He leaned his bicycle against its balustrade, and watched a group of youths and girls, reeking of alcohol, come laughing and staggering down the steps. They pushed each other into a black, sleek, high-powered car called a Nil, and after a short struggle as to who would drive, the vehicle moved erratically away in the direction of Nihilon City. He wiped his brow, glad that they would be well ahead of him on the road, for then there would be no danger of them coming on him suddenly from behind.

Prominently displayed in the vestibule was a huge notice in lurid crimson letters saying:

DRINK NIHILITZ
!
KEEP DEATH ON THE ROAD
!
IT
'
S FUN
!

The legend frightened him, and he began to envy the safety of his colleagues who were travelling by train, car, ship, and plane. He and his bicycle seemed so vulnerable and fragile on such perilous highways that he wondered whether he'd get to the end of his assignment. Before leaving home he'd expected an idyllic cycling tour in the smiling countryside of Nihilon, and saw himself writing poem after poem inspired by the sense of liberation that this journey would give him, but so far not a single line had entered his head. In this respect the land was disappointingly barren, for it seemed that all his intellect and imagination would be needed simply in order to survive.

‘No food tonight,' a waiter called out brusquely. Adam did not intend to eat a meal, only to order the smallest thing, so as to find out what sort of prices were charged: ‘A small cup of black coffee.'

‘Coffee?' sneered the waiter. ‘Have a bottle of Nihilitz. Make you feel better.' A bottle with a gaudy red-blue-and-gold label was set on the counter: ‘It's against the law to drive on coffee.'

‘I'm not driving,' said Adam. ‘I'm riding a bicycle.'

‘What do you want to drink then?'

‘A small black coffee.'

The waiter moved the bottle away. ‘Have a large one.'

‘Small,' said Adam.

The waiter glared savagely. ‘Listen, I receive a commission on all I sell, so what do you think I'll earn on a small cup of black coffee? In any case, it won't be enough for you. There's another ten kilometres before you get to Fludd, and it'll be dark soon. Go on, have a large black coffee. It'll only cost a hundred pecks.'

‘Pecks?' Adam cried in astonishment. ‘I thought it was klipps.'

‘That was in the Frontier Zone,' the waiter informed him. ‘You're in the Fludd Area now, and all money is in pecks. You should have changed your klipps at the provincial border.'

‘But I didn't see a bank there,' Adam said.

‘You should have looked,' said the waiter smugly.

‘There wasn't one,' he cried. ‘You know there wasn't.'

‘That was a pity, then, for you. All you've got to do is pay me fifty pecks for your coffee.'

Adam made an effort to stay clam. ‘Fifty pecks is too much. Anyway, can't I even have a small cup of black coffee?'

‘You're wasting my time. Unless you allow me to change it for you. Fifty pecks to a travellers unit.'

‘Fifty?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘It should be a hundred,' he ventured.

‘I know, but what about my commission? Do you want my children to starve?'

‘How many do you have?'

‘None. But I have to think about the future.'

He handed over a travellers unit. ‘All right, a large cup of black coffee.'

‘And a glass of Nihilitz?' said the bartender, happily. ‘Go on, have a drop. Then your breath will smell of it.'

‘I'd rather not,' said Adam.

‘Well, if the police stop you on the road and see that you haven't been drinking, and you get ten years in prison, don't blame me. It's the most serious crime in Nihilon. We've got to keep death on the roads. It's our only way of holding the population down.'