Travels in Nihilon

Chapter 37

Honesty had won, they claimed, in control of the computers at last. Nihilism had conquered, they thought, watching the television screens and the vast wall of dials that recorded the rocket’s progress as it circled the earth in space. No one could gainsay either proposition. No one wanted to. The forces of honesty were happy that the war was over. The defeated Nihilists were glad they were no longer locked in a race against time, and imprisoned at Tungsten because of it. The scientist-in-chief had already agreed to work for the new government.

Seats of honour for the leaders of the conquering army enabled them to observe the screens and computers as if at a theatre. Luncheon trays were clipped to their chairs, and on the television screens, via complex lenses that beamed and zoomed from outside the space-ship, a door was seen to open, and one of the astronauts floated out, a man whose legs swayed and parted and swam, side by side by side with the space-ship, his face now and again visible through the perspex visor, features anxious as if he had been unwillingly sent to a race through the bleak universe.

Mella sat with her father, holding his two hands, and staring fervently at him. He did not know who she was, and called her by her mother’s name. This brought copious tears, and her great and unexpected joy at having found him alive gave way to despair now that his mind would never be clear as to her identity. He told them however that he had tampered with the rocket, so that when it circled in space the advertised carnal hook-up would not occur. But what he did not know was that while he had descended one side of the rocket, after his clumsy adjustments to its programming, a member of the base staff had gone up the other side and put everything right again. So Took could not understand why the spectacle was being enacted on the television screen.

Before Benjamin and his party entered the Grand Computer Hall, the cleaner-in-chief had taken away the old president’s sweeping brush and peeled off his white overall, put a tie around his neck and a watch on his wrist, a pen in his pocket and a pair of black leather shoes on his feet so that no one would think he had been ill-treated. This rude change into something that he had not been for so long and never expected to be again may have broken his frail sense of identity, and been the reason why he did not recognize his old civil-war lieutenant either, a fact which sorrowed Benjamin after his long search and twenty-five years of enquiries. But the mystery of President Took’s disappearance had now been solved, so there seemed little else for him to do in Nihilon, except perhaps find Jaquiline.

The man emerging from the rocket was seen to be Adam the poet, whose blank, half-drugged features locked in a space-suit world were trying to smile, as if he knew they were viewing him, and felt embarrassed at being naked from the waist down. Mella covered her eyes. Benjamin forced himself to look, but hated it, though he was unwilling to close the show because shooting at the screens and computers would interfere with the delicately-timed space-scheme and put the occupant of the rocket in serious danger. Being a member of the guidebook committee, Adam was still entitled to certain courtesies from the land of Nihilon.

The door of the rocket stayed open, and two more legs appeared, comely and well-shaped, white and long as they slid free, fleshy at the thighs. All eyes looked on at the emerging female body, her top half well ensconced in a transparent space-suit that showed her small taut breasts, and floating with arms and legs apart like a starfish, and all delicately attached — like the male specimen — to the mothership nearby. As they drifted to each other, the National Anthem of Nihilon began to computerize itself in the universe around them.

Benjamin stood up, a wild and raving man they’d never seen before. He unlatched two guns, spinning around as they followed the free-shifting figures (which now appeared on an even bigger screen, specially switched on) of Adam and Jaquiline set to engage in the primal rite. The music grew solemn as they approached. Jaquiline’s face came into enormous close-up, illuminated and beautiful, as if experiencing some cosmic dream which fed into her the secret of creation and of the world, and as if the limits of the universe were being made known to her.

A band of hair came over her mouth as Adam went forward, her eyes and legs opening at the same time. A switch of some earthbound computer enabled him to find his place well and, with legs closed, lock the perfect lock, and begin his rhythm, maintaining it in that place while all eyes were on them, and with the appropriate slow movement of the Nihilon Anthem playing through it.

Richard took Benjamin’s guns away and pulled him back to his seat, while all kept their eyes on the fascinating scene of their two colleagues and compatriots copulating in space. Adam’s face was shown with Jaquiline’s through the moments of orgasm, the camera moving from their faces to the wedding-ring on Jaquiline’s finger, and then to the joined and jewelled movement of their four legs, at which a roaring cheer of triumph ripped from the several hundred detached and scientific scientists in the great hall — who had not only got this project off the ground, as it were, but had coaxed it to the stars. Edgar put hands to his ears, and closed his eyes at this manifestation, as if the two sweethearts in space might hear such vulgarity and thus be wakened from their sublime dream.

As they slid apart, Jaquiline put out her arms, and there were tears under her eyes as the last great close-up moved across the screen, before she was sucked back into the space-ship. Adam’s face also showed grief, almost panic as his arms reached forward to go on holding what had so recently been completely his. And then he was returned into the metal container, which went on to another circuit of the earth before scoring its way through the atmosphere, and floating by parachute on to the central plain of Nihilon, which would hold out its arms to receive them in safety and triumph.