Travels in Nihilon

Chapter 10

Nihilon Airways ran three distinct services into Nihilon from the outside world: first-class, second-class, and a flight that could not be described as of any class at all. The fifth member of the guidebook research team, Richard Lope — a tall, dark, slim and handsome young man who, up to now, had been of a highly nervous disposition, had chosen second-class, or middle-class, and was finding it quite comfortable, though there were still three hours to go before landing. Lope had recently graduated with honours from the university, after three years studying the language of his own country which he had learned to speak at two and read at five. He was destined to become a diplomat, but looked upon the Nihilon trip as a pre-paid adventure before getting down to it.

What fascinated him at the moment was the naked air-hostess walking up and down with a tray of drinks and food. All she wore was a thin belt at the waist from which swung a notepad to take down the passengers’ orders. Naked air-hostesses were a speciality of Nihilon Airways, though few people were said to take advantage of the service for that fact alone. Nevertheless, Richard considered it a very pleasant aspect of Nihilonian travel, an encouraging introduction to the country as he gazed at the breasts of a beautiful young woman walking along the gangway with his lunch. Her red made-up lips smiled as she bent down to set the tray before him, one of her nipples only a few inches from his left eye.

What puzzled him, on the other hand, were the several protuberances along both sides of the plane which came awkwardly out towards the seats, and which the passengers unfortunate enough to have such a place — of which he was one — found difficult to sit by. They were a sort of oblong box, from which a long pipe or barrel went through the perspex windows. He imagined them to be the multiple aerials of some new and complicated beam-approach landing system, though he wasn’t entirely satisfied by this explanation.

During the meal, which included half a bottle of pink, fizzy and potent wine, he read the instruction booklet attached to the seat in front: ‘In case of emergency, passengers are kindly requested to carry on talking, reading, eating or sleeping, because though your lives are in our hands, and we will do our best to preserve them, there will be nothing anybody can do about it. Like all other airlines of the world we carry highly inflammable petrol, fly at a great height, and do not provide parachutes, so in the event of an emergency it is highly unlikely that either passengers or crew would survive. When the aircraft is about to land you may notice, if you are fortunate enough to be near an appropriate window, that the inner-port engine will burst into flames. This is part of our special Thrill Service, so you need not be alarmed. Your Captain is quite experienced at this form of landing, because he has already done it many times with this particular type of aircraft. All that remains is for Nihilon Airways to wish you a pleasant trip. You are flying at ten thousand metres. Speed unknown because the pitot tube has snapped off the main chimney, ha-ha! Your aircraft is a Cyclon B Private Enterprise 4-Jet Special, a miracle of modern technology built in the factories of Nihilon.’

Richard Lope copied this into his notebook, then went on to inform future would-be air travellers of the attractive stewardesses circulating on this class of plane. An elderly man sitting next to him said: ‘She is good-looking, isn’t she?’

‘Very,’ Richard agreed, as she poured his coffee.

‘If you stare too much it embarrasses them,’ the man whispered. ‘They’re liable to slap your face, or spill a lunch tray over you.’

‘It’s hardly possible not to stare.’

‘You are young,’ the man laughed, ‘I suppose that’s why. I’m fifty-five, and I’ve done this trip many times. I’m a professor of economics at Nihilon University, and I frequently visit other countries to attend seminars and conferences. I’m going back to form a committee for investigating ways of reorganizing Nihilon’s economy. All is not well in our country, Mr …?’

‘My name is Richard.’

‘Richard. There is a great deal of wastage.’

‘Too much nihilism?’ he laughed.

The professor nodded. ‘We may have to alter all that. There is talk that nihilism is not a viable economic proposition, though only a little talk, as yet. Nihilism is so highly regarded by the common people that we intellectuals are afraid to criticize it. Some won’t even talk about it. I don’t want to bore you with such vital topics, but I am beginning to realize that as a nihilist I have only one life, which fact will worry me in my old age, if ever it comes. That is why I travel second-class to Nihilon. I could go first-class, but that’s only for young people.’

‘What’s it like, then?’ Richard asked.

‘The best that Nihilon can offer. It is often referred to by us as the Ballroom Special, the biggest airliner we have, with eight engines, and no seats, but bars all round the plane and a dance band on a platform at the tail end. It is a heady wine-and-dance at twenty thousand metres, lasting five hours, followed by a forced landing at Nihilon airport with two engines on fire. There are charming dance hostesses fully dressed. Sometimes the captain comes down from his cockpit to join the passengers, and take a snack at one of the bars. Chandeliers glitter from the ceiling as the plane flies above all cloud at magnificent speed. Of course, there are incidents. People fight or get drunk, or they become ill, or hysterical, or morbid, or so happy they want to wreck the plane and make it crash. Or they try to organize a hijack mutiny against the captain and crew, in which case they are brought down by concealed water-guns set at various parts of the fuselage. Those who don’t indulge in these scrapes may just sit back and observe the antics of those who do, so that a good time is usually had by everyone. But as I get older I like danger less, and prefer the company of these nubile young hostesses. You may also have heard about the Party Specials. No? Well, when members of our government want to gather in a light-hearted way, they have a meeting in one of these great planes. It circles for hours high over the country, a magnificent going-on, which often lasts till fuel runs out and the pilot is forced to land. No one can gatecrash at that height, and so, with all credentials thoroughly checked before take-off, the guests can relax and have the time of their lives, with no fear of assassination, and very little from a coup d’état, since everyone is drunk. Naturally, loyal citizens of Nihilon fervently hope that no such plane will ever crash. We put great faith in our technological achievements.’

Richard, who had been writing in his notebook, at last looked up. ‘What about third-class, or whatever it’s called?’

The professor seemed uninterested. ‘Third-class tourist-economy night-flight in ten miserable hours? Yes, people are towed in huge gliders by obsolescent bombers, or so I hear. They sit on the floor with luggage at their feet and packets of sandwiches in their hands. A continuous tape of crying babies is played from stereo-speakers to make them feel more uncomfortable, and smells of fatty stew emerge from the end of a pipe near the tail of the plane as it goes through air pockets above the mountain tops. Not very nice, I must say. During the flight passports are collected, and hardly distinguishable false ones are handed back before landing on an improvised field in some remote area fifty kilometres from the main airport, so that people have to make their way to Nihilon City by a very irregular bus service on bumpy tracks, or walk through unmapped forest, if and when they get by the police and customs tent at the side of the field. Even disorganization is well organized in Nihilon. I’m very proud of my country, in some ways. The aim of our government is absolute chaos meticulously regulated. There can’t be a more noble aim in the world than that. I defy you or anybody else to tell me that there can.’

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?’