Travels in Nihilon Read online

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘For losing your passport.’

  ‘But I didn’t lose it. My pocket was picked.’

  ‘That’s your story. Try telling it to the police.’

  ‘So you aren’t a policeman?’

  ‘Yes, I am, but not when I’m claiming my reward. Police regulations state that during the few seconds when a reward is handed over you cease to be a policeman. That time, of course, is when many of my dear brethren are killed, and the reward turns out to be one of a fatal kind. Anyway, I’ll trouble you for three hundred pecks.’

  ‘I refuse. Let me see a copy of your regulations.’

  ‘He’s a very hard man, sir,’ said the waiter to the policeman.

  ‘I’m still writing my regulations,’ said the policeman. ‘They won’t be ready till tomorrow night. I’m very slow at it because I have to think about them carefully. Every regulation can be taken two ways, so that when I arrest people like you, as I do now, you don’t have any chance of getting away with it.’

  It was obvious to Adam that he couldn’t win, and that the only chance of keeping sane was to submit to every injustice that came along. He held out his hands, inviting the policeman to handcuff him.

  ‘Don’t be impatient,’ said the policeman with a smile. ‘There’s no hurry. I’ve got years yet, before I bring my career to a successful conclusion. You can cash some travellers units at the bar, then pay me the three hundred pecks. Waiter!’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Our friend would like to change some money.’

  Adam was shocked into silence, merely nodded when the waiter looked unbelievingly at him and enquired: ‘How many, sir?’

  The transaction was quick, the cheques by-passing Adam and going straight into the policeman’s pocket.

  ‘You ought to buy me a drink now,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s not every day that I recover somebody’s passport for them.’

  ‘It’s not, sir, is it?’ said the waiter respectfully. Adam put a twenty-peck note back on the counter and asked for Nihilitz. Four large bottles of urine-coloured liquid were set before them. ‘I can’t pay for all that,’ he said, shocked at such a quantity, and not wanting to be caught out again.

  ‘You already have,’ said the waiter. ‘It’s only five pecks a bottle.’ The policeman drank a tumblerful straight off, and the waiter did likewise, after pouring a little into Adam’s glass and saying: ‘I wouldn’t drink much if I were you. You’re not used to it.’ But it melted into Adam’s mouth like snow on a hot day, and he immediately felt better, whatever the after-effects might be. His anxious state of mind drifted away.

  ‘He drinks like a true native of the country,’ the waiter said to the policeman, both of whom had already started on the second bottle.

  ‘Not too much, though,’ the policeman cautioned Adam, clinking glasses with him nevertheless. This was obviously what he had needed ever since firing his fateful shot at the frontier, he thought, reaching out to pour another quarter-litre. The policeman glanced disapprovingly, fearing that he might drink it all and leave none for them. Most of the diners had now left, and those few who remained looked at the policeman and the waiter drinking with such outrageous greed at the bar. It passed through Adam’s mind that he should not drink on an empty stomach, but the ambrosial liquid tempted him, and dulled him with such calm solicitude that he could not resist finishing his large glass as if its contents were water.

  Chapter 12

  An uneven corrugation of mountains rose from the line of grey sea. The northern coast was steeply cliffed and inhospitable, communication along it being only possible by boat, or so it had been thought, though Richard now saw, from the window of the airliner, the faintest thread of a road going up and through a pass in the direction of Nihilon City. He lifted his topographical camera, and took several photographs after asking the professor to shield his activities by the double spread of his Nihilon Gazette, knowing he could hardly refuse to do so, or betray him for spying, since he held the professor’s revealing envelope in his briefcase.

  ‘There’s more trouble with Cronacia,’ the Professor said, lowering his newspaper. ‘An exchange of shots took place yesterday on the southern frontier. A few of our Geriatric battalions are already fighting it out. According to the news reports they are courageously pressing forward their attacks, which means they are suffering heavy losses. I suppose there are worse ways of dying.’

  Richard hoped that his colleague Adam had come safely through this troubled zone, reasoning that he must have been there during the fighting. ‘I’d rather die in bed when I get old,’ he said. ‘Or even if I die young.’

  ‘Nobody dies in bed in Nihilon,’ said the professor, ‘unless they are young and fit, and get stabbed by a jealous husband, or shot by a frantic wife, or picked off by an enemy who can only be sure of finding them in bed. Otherwise the old are sent into a convenient frontier clash, while the fatally sick are despatched to a remote part of the country and allowed to die peacefully in the open air. It is considered bad for anyone to pass on in bed, but when our party comes to power we’ll issue a law giving every person the right to do so. That will be a great blow against nihilism. Bed and Peace will be our slogan, at first.’

  The plane was losing height, fixed on its long slide towards Nihilon airport, when a sudden upsurge caused the professor’s newspaper to wrap itself over his knees. Richard’s camera fell to the floor, and his seat was pushed with such force that he thought he was going to be squashed into the ceiling like a fly. Then the plane righted itself with a splintering roar of its engines, so that his heart felt like an inflated paper-bag about to explode between two hands. It banked steeply, and kept turning as if to fly in a circle forever, while he stared vertically down at the earth. Rows of people were gripping their seats in fear, and an air-hostess, standing against the wall of the arch leading to the galley, had her otherwise ample breasts so pressed in by gravity that she seemed almost flat-chested.

  The plane straighened, and Richard wondered why the primitive idea of providing parachutes had never been thought of by modern airlines. He assumed that his face was as white from fear as was the professor’s. The wings of the plane fluttered, and out of the window he saw three small red planes, exhaust smoke curling from their engines as they climbed towards the sun. ‘Cronacian jets,’ explained the professor. ‘Fighter-training planes. I expect they were buzzing us. They often do.’

  ‘You’d better get your old men up in their fighter planes to protect us, then,’ Richard joked.

  ‘That may not be necessary,’ said the professor, trying to reassure his new-found friend. ‘All Nihilon airliners are armed.’

  ‘Armed?’

  ‘Yes. With guns.’

  The jets were spinning like red coins towards them. The airliner was closer to Nihilon earth than when the attack started, though the main airport was nowhere in sight. The land was grey and ribbed, bone dry and barren, an unknown area that caused him to lift his camera for another topopicture.

  He was pushed back into his seat by a burly man who removed the cover from the box near his knees, revealing the mechanism at the back end of a machine gun. Another man was stacking boxes of belt-ammunition in the gangway. When the plane dipped, the machine-gunman shook to his own lethal noise, and Richard looked out of the window, as if to enjoy the spectacle and so calm his fear. One Cronacian plane lurched into the air, and vanished above the back of the jet, with smoke spewing from its red wings. The professor clapped, and shook the machine-gunner’s hand. ‘Bravo!’ he cried and, turning to Richard: ‘We might get one or two more before landing.’

  ‘Does this often happen?’ Richard asked, his arms and legs shaking with apprehension. Several more machine-gunners were positioned along both sides of the jet, waiting intently for the next brush of the Cronacians.

  ‘Usually,’ said the professor calmly.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘We try not to mention it. The
Nihilon government, ever mindful of its peaceful image in the world, doesn’t want to make an international incident out of these high-spirited attacks by Cronacian pilots, though we’ve never actually fired back at them before.’

  A blazing line of gunfire broke from every aperture. The bare-chested gunner nearest Richard gripped a huge cigar in his teeth. Many seats were empty, suggesting that the gunners had been travelling as ordinary passengers under the auspices of the Nihilon government. Air-hostesses walked from the galley with trays of hot coffee and sandwiches, handing them out to each sweating gunner. Richard, watching the sky, saw another red button of a fighter-trainer growing bigger, and it only stopped after it had turned into a shocking black circle of disintegration, scattering in bits and pieces to the earth. The gunner, a man of more than fifty, half-bald but with a halo of grizzled hair, gave a belly-laugh and reached behind for a cup of coffee.

  ‘But they weren’t shooting at us,’ said Richard.

  The professor giggled with embarrassment. ‘So you’ve noticed, dear boy? Of course not. They never do. But we’ve decided it’s time they were taught a lesson, in case they should ever decide to turn serious.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ said Richard. ‘They were buzzing us, that’s all.’ He took a cup of coffee from a passsing tray, but the hostess snatched it back, her breasts quivering with indignation: ‘That’s only for our brave gunners!’

  He apologized, and turned to the professor: ‘The Cronacians will send up armed fighters, and then they’ll blow us out of the sky.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the professor. ‘Those pirates are evil enough for any atrocity.’

  ‘I suppose this incident will end all civilian flights to Nihilon for a while?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ the professor replied. ‘We’d lose too much foreign currency.’

  ‘What about the safety of the passengers?’

  ‘They’ll have a fighter escort, in and out.’ He helped himself to coffee and sandwiches, and the hostess smiled at him, for he put a heavy coin on to her tray. ‘My dear boy, when has air travel not been perilous?’

  The Cronacian pilots did not wait long for revenge. They must have radioed for help at their first casualty, for suitably armed planes had now been sent up by way of reply. In fact the passenger plane in its manoeuvres had gone dangerously close to the Cronacian frontier, and four Pug 107 fighters were now streaming down from the mountain peaks. Richard, seeing them at the same moment as did the machine-gunner, felt terror and helplessness, for there was nowhere to run for shelter. He did not know for sure that they were armed, but a deep unease told him that all was not well. The machine-gunner grinned, as he prepared his savage mechanisms for brushing them out of the sky as soon as they got close enough. This irrational urge for safety might even have communicated itself to the pilot (and one of the air-hostesses, who began to scream), for the plane climbed and banked in a sickening corkscrew motion, so that hats, umbrellas, and briefcases were thrown all over the fuselage.

  The Cronacian Pugs spat fire from nose and wing, but the Nihilon pilot’s manoeuvre was so deft that bullets merely ripped into the bottom of the plane, though a few had penetrated the windows before the Pugs sheered off. At this unexpected retaliation the machine-gunner near Richard ran whimpering to the middle of the gangway. The professor was so disgusted that he put out a foot and tripped him, causing him to lose his cigar as he stumbled. A gunner across the plane was killed when the Pugs came back, but the cowardly gunner from Richard’s side recovered his wits under the stern eye of an air-hostess and took his place, ready and silent, biting his lower lip.

  The plane shuddered, and people were screaming. Black smoke coiled from the engine nearest Richard, and he gripped the arms of his seat. He heard a shout that the pilot was dead, yet the plane remained steady, though losing height in its descent towards Nihilon airport, whose lights of dusk glimmered in the distance. He had been counting the seconds of life as they passed by, in order to stay conscious, but he now forgot to continue, and was dragged more and more into becoming part of the desperate shambles of the plane, for bullets were smashing into and through it, as if the Cronacians, said the professor, were intent on their revenge, and out to besmirch the good name and hitherto unblemished safety record of Nihilon Airways.

  A squadron of Nihilon war-planes had been sent up, and those passengers who could see them were cheered at the sight of all twelve on a keel-haul under the belly of the airliner. But they were slow and shivering biplanes with two old men in each, going out to do battle with the voracious, aerobatic Pugs. ‘What a glorious sight our aircraft are,’ said the professor. ‘They’ll save us from certain death.’

  Two of them were already spinning down in flames, and Richard hoped that enough would stay in the air to distract the Pugs until they had landed. ‘Why don’t you have modern jet-fighter planes?’

  ‘We are putting so much effort into our space programme,’ explained the professor, ‘that modern war-planes just can’t be built. Nihilon is planning a space spectacular, due to begin any day now. The government is pinning all its hope for survival on it, which is why we have to strike, and strike hard, and strike soon, to bring the whole rotten edifice crashing down.’

  A laugh sounded from the mouthpiece. ‘Apart from that,’ the professor went on in a different tone of voice, ‘how can you expect Geriatrics to handle complicated supersonic war-planes?’

  Flames lit up the darkness of the long passenger cabin, and a calm voice said from the loudspeakers:

  ‘We are now approaching Nihilon airport. Will customers kindly begin smoking, and unfasten their seat belts? We trust that you have had a pleasant journey, and hope that you will have an opportunity of using our airline again soon. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.’

  Richard held his breath. Could it be that he would survive this terrible journey after all? He felt as if he had been living it forever.

  Chapter 13

  Benjamin, having lost a litre of blood, a complete repair kit, and his windscreen, was at least glad to know that all formalities were at last behind him, and that he was now well and truly inside Nihilon. Experience with other countries told him that the worst was over, as he took a large bar of chocolate from the glove-box and ate it as if it were meat. This immediately made him feel better, and he decided to get as far into the country as he could before nightfall.

  The road climbed in hairpin curves towards a pass, which he could see ahead, formed by two enormous jutting walls of mountain. The cold Alpine air flowed icily into his car, so he stopped by the roadside to put on a leather trench-coat, thick scarf, and woollen hat, cursing the customs bandits for the loss of his windscreen, which both cut down his speed and made him cold.

  Beyond the pass the road became a mere trail of mud and broken rocks, with tree trunks sometimes laid across, low down in the ground, so that riding over them was designed to corrugate his backbone. As if to mock him, traffic signs put the speed limit at a hundred kilometres per hour. Perhaps this deception, and such broken routes, were meant as obstacles to any Cronacian incursion, though he couldn’t see them doing the tourist trade much good.

  Grey crags of cloud flew low across the sky, and spots of rain flicked into his cheeks and forehead. When the road inexplicably improved to a narrow but perfect surface, the speed-sign indicated only twenty kilometres per hour, but he decided to ignore this piece of Nihilonian mockery, and geared his engine up to a smooth sixty. Therefore, he did not see the deep trench splitting the road. Taken too fast, the jolt was almost hard enough to snap head from shoulders, and but for the miraculous suspension of his Thundercloud Estate car, he would have proceeded into Nether Nihilon on foot, if not on a stretcher.

  He passed a roadmender’s house, with several modern highway construction machines rusting outside, and a score of ragged children clambering happily over them. A circle of men sat on chairs, engrossed in some primitive gambling game. One knocked out his pipe on a pile of road signs, and waved at Benjamin as he w
ent by.

  Around the next bend, at the edge of a flat upland zone, was a garage. A prominent poster advertised in several languages that windscreens were for sale, so Benjamin thought he would attempt to buy one.

  The service station was a group of large sheds set back from the road, with a single petrol pump at the exit end, towards which he drove his car. A sheet of cardboard fastened to the pump with a piece of string had: DO SMOKE written on it, which pleased him because he wouldn’t have to put out his cigar. Beyond the sheds were fields and gardens, in which young men and women were toiling.

  A young garage proprietor of medium height, wearing rimless spectacles above pimpled cheeks, smartly dressed in a pin-striped suit, his fat neck held together by a white shirt-collar and sober grey tie, a ring on his left middle finger, a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, an expression of worried concern on his face, whose blue eyes and brown wavy hair nevertheless reflected an inspired blaze of commerce, walked towards him in bare feet, and leaned against the car door to ask how many windscreens he wanted.

  ‘Only one,’ said Benjamin. ‘I don’t wipe my nose on them.’

  ‘My customers usually buy six, sir.’

  ‘I’ve got one car,’ Benjamin retorted, restarting his engine and ready to leave, ‘not six. If you won’t sell me one I’ll go to the next garage.’

  The proprietor stepped away for fear the wheels should run over his bare feet. ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t sell you one.’

  ‘But you started to argue,’ Benjamin shouted, ‘and I’m tired of arguing in this damned country. All I want is a new windscreen, and if you haven’t got one, say so.’

  ‘Will you be needing any petrol sir?’ he asked, as if no exchange had so far taken place.

  He got out of the car. ‘No, I don’t want petrol. Just a windscreen. All right?’

  ‘Tyres?’

  ‘No tyres. How long will it take to fix the windscreen?’

  ‘Not long at all. Oil?’