Travels in Nihilon

Chapter 39

They left the country with what they stood up in, apart from a briefcase or handbag. The rest of their luggage had been ‘officially removed’ from their rooms — officially, because there were no thieves now in Nihilon. Thieving, like nihilism, had been abolished. The state saw to that, because it had acquired total rights to both. In its benevolent honesty the government carried on a policy of ‘removals’, not only to protect the people from the temptation of mass pilfering, which in Nihilon had always either been a habit or a temporary necessity, but also to make sure there was nothing left to pilfer. This system was known as ‘income tax’.

During his last afternoon nap in the hotel, Adam had opened his eyes and surprised a masked man trying to remove his guidebook-notes from the bedside table. On being pinned firmly to the wall the man had taken a government confiscation voucher from his pocket with his free hand, and squealingly maintained his own personal innocence. Benjamin, hearing the clatter, came in from next door and joined Adam in kicking him down the stairs.

They decided to leave that evening, while they were still safe, and also to make sure of getting on the ship at Shelp. If it left without them, in advance of the scheduled time, who could say when there’d be another? Benjamin knew from the old days that tourist offices regularly gave out false information in the hope that travellers would stay longer in the country, and so spend more of their invaluable foreign currency. So he wisely suggested that they take the evening train.

The hotel manager must have telephoned the Ministry of Departure, for a band was playing at the station to see them off. It was pleasant to be reminded that they were, after all, still considered to be the principal heroines of the New Nihilon. Factories, schools, and blocks of flats had been named after them. Even Edgar, their absent friend who was still deliciously sequestered with Queen Mella, had a power-station and the space-base as namesakes, while the country’s leading military academy (of which there were now several instead of a mere one) had been labelled Benjamin Smith.

They walked on to the station platform, and shook hands with the mayor of the city, who had turned up in his army uniform to see them off. Richard had seen that fat, sweating, elderly, intellectual face before, that amiability in the midst of chaos and fear, when the crippled airliner had been flying towards Nihilon City airport. They had met later during the fluid days of the insurrection, for he was none other than the professor. ‘Goodbye, dear friends,’ he said sadly. ‘Nihilon salutes you forever, wherever you go. We shall miss you.’

Jaquiline was also touched to sadness by such tender ceremony, and in the knowledge that Nihilon at last knew how to behave towards its guests when they were leaving.

They had to fight for seats in the third-class carriage, during which bitter struggle the band embarked on a solemn march of farewell. Adam, thrust to the window while Benjamin and Richard carried on the primitive elbowing for space, saw a commotion by the entrance gate.

The sombre and idiotic music wavered as the train moved. A bent-backed old man, armed with a walking-stick, sent several members of the band spinning, then burst through their ranks and ran along the platform. He had a long white beard and a pale puckish face, and though he stooped, he nevertheless ran speedily, swirling his stick to clear a way towards their carriage.

The professor shouted for him to come back and, when he gave no sign of doing so, drew a revolver. Pehaps the old man expected this, for after the peremptory order, he zigzagged along the line of carriages to make the professor’s aim more difficult, and to dodge the bullets now flying past him, in such a manner as to suggest that he was not altogether ignorant of the military art. Several rounds must have gone so high that they entered a nearby signal-box, and a man from that vantage point, enraged at the disturbance to his afternoon nap, began to sweep the whole platform with a light machine-gun, at which the professor and his band scattered to take up retaliatory positions.

Benjamin made his strength felt in the carriage, so that Jaquiline could sit down at least. In fact there had been enough seats for everyone, but the Nihilonians had spread luggage over them, which was now piled on the racks provided. In the struggle Adam had been pulled from the window, and didn’t see whether or not the old man finally got on the train.

The railway ran a dozen kilometres to the east, straight through the suburbs, whence it turned in a southerly direction towards Shelp. When they began to talk, it was disclosed that the baby sitting on the knees of the peasant woman opposite had been born on the day of the Great Space-Launch, and since it was a boy its mother had called it Adam. She asked therefore for Adam’s autograph, saying that she could frame it when her son grew up, for him to look upon with pride.

They tried to sleep during darkness, but it was barely possible. Benjamin woke from a brief nap, aware of a stranger lying full-length on the floor. When day came, Adam recognized him as the old man with the long white beard who had run for the train in peril of his life. ‘I’m glad you got on safely,’ he said to him.

‘So am I,’ responded the old man, who stood up and straightened himself. ‘I just had to get away from Mella,’ Edgar said, taking off his beard. ‘In another month I would have been a very old man, wrinkled and finished, so I finally decided to leave on the same boat as you. And the only way I could get out of that palace was to disguise myself as a Geriatric. Unfortunately that sharp-eyed professor recognized me at the station.’

He put on his beard again, and took a bottle of Nihilitz from his pocket. ‘I stole it at the palace. There was plenty of it in Mella’s sideboard.’

‘It makes me wonder why I helped the insurrection,’ Benjamin reflected morosely, drinking more than his share.

When the peasants got out at a remote stop, they had the compartment to themselves. A fresh sea-wind blew up the wide expanse of the plain and into the carriage window. On either side, fading away into the distance, were the mountains which channelled this gratifying wind into the great plain of Nihilon. Jaquiline drew in a deep breath of it, saying how pleasant it was to leave this country, knowing that it was not only beautiful, but peaceful at last.

South of the railway, which ran across level and arable land, lay the main highway of the country, lorries and buses rolling along it in both directions, showing that the eternal business of life was moving once more. Beyond was the River Nihil, boats steaming up it to anchorages at Coba, thin streams of smoke bending in the air. The Bay of Shelp could be seen on the horizon, spreading in a straight line on either side of Shelp itself.