Travels in Nihilon

by Alan Sillitoe

  It was no use waiting, he decided. They would continue the search after he left, and if Jaquiline were found she could be driven to Tungsten in Big Doctor’s car, a swift and comfortable Mangler which was to be left behind for her.

  With two soldiers at the radio set, and Big Doctor on the other seat, Benjamin drove through the shattered gate, at the head of his column, almost an hour off schedule. Outside, where darkness began, a piece of sharp flint punctured his left front wheel. It was a rancid omen, and he matched it with ripe curses. Big Doctor, he saw, was smiling. The soldiers didn’t know how to work the jack and change the wheel, so he did it himself, a task which calmed him down, and was perfomed so quickly and well that Big Doctor’s smile went back into his long face.

  The black trees looming around were fixed in their own deep dreams, stalwart trunks brought forward in every case by the Thundercloud’s headlights. The advance-guard had left luminosity-stones to mark the route, which made it easy to follow. He felt carefree, back at his favourite work, for in spite of his sedentary life so far, Benjamin was convinced that he was at last doing what he had been born for – to be a soldier, no matter in what cause he was fighting.

  Chapter 33

  Forty soldiers were needed to haul Mella’s wagon into the mountains. Edgar sat as usual by her side, his arm in a sling, so doted on and wept over that his life became unbearable, especially when he heard Adam and Firebrand making contemptuous remarks from their seats of a little less honour behind.

  The groaning soldiers, as they dug their feet in against loose stones and shale, and flexed their arms around thick rope attached to the platform, were insults to Edgar’s ears, an injustice that’ no upright God-hating Nihilist government would have allowed. Adam, on the other hand, from his throne of poetry, seemed to enjoy this mode of travel, and sat back in comfort, when he wasn’t leaning forward to chide Edgar about the continual mothering he was forced to put up with from Mella.

  Firebrand did not mind how he travelled as long as he ate and drank frequently, though once the ascent into the mountains began he complained that the jerking of the platform made him feel sick. Edgar, whose ears had become finely attuned to insults drifting from that direction, now suggested that if things got worse, as it was inevitable that they should, then Firebrand would do well to get off the platform and walk. Failing that, he might try propelling himself on that crazy bicycle he’d ridden so successfully into Orcam, now strapped on to planks at the back of the vehicle, and preciously guarded because Mella wanted to make it the prime exhibit in the Museum of the Honest Insurrection after the war. Firebrand scowled, and swung his green face to concentrate on the semi-woodland that covered this part of the ascent, in the hope that it would prevent him being sick.

  The forty hauliers were relieved after a two-hour go at the tow ropes, and another relay took their places. But for his wounded arm Edgar would have worked with them – except that it might have made him even more of a hero in Mella’s moted eyes. The attempt to escape, and his inadvertent part in the night attack on Orcam bridge, came back to him as the highlight of his Nihilonian experience, his one act of so-called heroism, whose memory caused Mella to lean over him now with her moon face and half-bare breasts, tears falling through her kisses as she enquired again about the bullet scratch on his arm. If this was law and order, he longed for the days of wildcat, sky-tearing nihilism – a desire he could confide to no one around him.

  The soldiers tugged all day and far into the night, until it was reckoned by the geographical equipment looted from Edgar that they were about ten kilometres south of Tungsten. Mella decided to rest her brigade a few hours before moving them into the zone of final contest. A large tent was pitched for herself and Edgar, while Firebrand and Adam were left to themselves in the open air.

  A yellow moon laboured above the cork trees, and Adam wondered, as a poet, whether it would give birth to anything when tomorrow’s rocket hurled itself up with grand impacted power from the Athelstan Alps. The rocket-load of prospective fecundity was all set to flower in tribute to the full moon, and the Nihilists, by choosing such a time, had enlisted even its powerful aid in their startling project. Circumstances had drawn him into this anti-Nihilist expedition, yet as a poet he wished them the greatest success. When the time came, he wouldn’t pick up a rifle to fight, but would contrive to hang back while the mobs of honesty and the rabble of order flung themselves at Tungsten to ruin the most poetic spectacle the world had ever known.

  Insects vibrated through the trees. Why should anyone want to shatter such peace? What, after all, was wrong with Nihilon and its way of life? To get away from the drunken and pig-like snoring of Firebrand (who wasn’t totally degenerate, however, because he was still part of the lovable system of Nihilon), Adam recounted all the tribulations he had suffered since crossing the frontier, which now seemed no more than the ordinary adventures of any tourist in a foreign country. Soon, due to the fanatical sentimentalism of Mella and her followers, the dull wash of order and honesty would flow over this delightful territory of unexpected happenings, the last place on earth that a benevolent nihilistic régime seemed to have set aside for the delectation of poets!

  Nihilism’s downfall seemed certain, and he was a helpless onlooker. In spite of the battle of Orcam, little resistance had been shown by the Nihilists so far. What self-respecting régime would have allowed its enemy to pitch camp, and sleep in such peace so close to the final objective? Where was the perfect and bloody ambush which anyone with a truly nihilistic temperament would have set for them? Perhaps the outer defences of Tungsten had yet to be encountered, or maybe the garrison of that place had no idea of the danger threatening from this direction. He began to wonder why he did not forfeit his night’s sleep, and make his way into Tungsten to tell them.

  One of the salutary effects of Nihilon on a person like Adam was that no sooner did he think of something than he acted upon it. Even more beneficial was the fact that he didn’t even wonder why this was so. Easing away from Firebrand, he walked into the shadows of the trees, and made his escape between half-asleep pickets.

  He went along by the light of the moon, the road ascending in curves up the mountainside, well-lit till it entered another belt of forest. After a few kilometres he felt guilty at deserting the forces of order and honesty, in spite of his former clear sentiments. A sense of inexpressible remorse made him gloomy, but his feet would not go back, as if fixed on their course by a firm turn of destiny. He knew in his socially responsible heart that no matter how he rationalized the attractive qualities of nihilism, nihilism alone was not enough to sustain the ordered life that was necessary to his comfort.

  He kept on walking upwards, because an ascending movement demanded the physical exertion which enabled him to put up with such intense misery of indecision. If he turned back towards the camp, the reason for his guilt would vanish, but the memory of it would be so painful that the easy descent would not then help him to bear it.

  After several hours, during which the weight of his guilt became beneficial in that it put him into a walking trance so that it no longer bothered him, he sat down for a rest before entering another zone of trees. Perhaps I am doing right, after all, he said to himself, wondering whether he shouldn’t stop thinking about it altogether. But then such blankness of mind was alien to him, and he was afraid that if he didn’t think, he would soon cease to have any emotions whatsoever. He could recognize danger when it came too close. If his legs ached, he was emotionally tired. If he was hungry, he was emotionally deprived. If he was feeling guilty it was because he was emotionally unfulfilled. But at least he was alive. Comforted by such reflections, he went on his way.

  The road was a twisting footpath ascending between the trees. He’d been going so long and at such a rate that he expected to reach the plateau of Tungsten any minute, but there was no sign of it yet, nor of those defences against honesty and order that the Nihilists should have built.

  Pausing to tie his shoelace, he
heard a rustling in a nearby clump of bushes. Accustomed to the half-darkness, he straightened, and saw a human being staggering towards him. He instinctively looked for a place to hide, but the figure, seeing him, ran away first, so he turned and gave chase.

  It was not a long pursuit, neither far nor fast. ‘I shan’t hurt you,’ he cried.

  He knelt, to find that it was a woman who had fallen into the bracken, dressed like a soldier of the insurrectionary army. ‘Keep away from me,’ she wailed, when he shone the torch into her face. Her eyes stared, as if waiting for the expected blow, and he drew his light back: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Benjamin Smith,’ she moaned. ‘I lost him at the battle of Aspron.’

  ‘I thought we were going to meet in Nihilon City,’ he said reproachfully, when he recognized her.

  She stood up and leaned against a tree. ‘So did I. But I must have been knocked out at Aspron, and when I woke up, the fighting was over. I started to walk, wanting to get back to Benjamin in Aspron, but I got lost. Where are we?’

  He lit a cigarette for her. ‘Near Tungsten, I should think.’

  ‘I meant to meet you in Nihilon City,’ she said when they walked on. ‘I really did.’ He held her hand, wondering what had happened to her in Nihilon. He asked, but she only promised to tell him when they were home again. Strangely, she felt safer, being alone with Adam, her lover who had been lost but was now found again in the great forest of the Athelstan Alps, than with Benjamin and his all-conquering army. When they stopped, she pressed against him: ‘Don’t let me out of your sight for a second. Don’t let me go so far that you can’t reach out and touch me!’

  She had never been so fervent or afraid in her busy and fashionable life beyond Nihilon, he remembered. This country seemed to have changed her utterly, which made him so happy that he blessed the guidebook they had been sent to write. ‘I won’t,’ he promised, pressing her close, and wanting to make love.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, buttoning her shirt. ‘I love you so much.’ But the exquisite sensations of unfulfilled desire gave them an even more intense feeling of safety. ‘Where shall we go?’ she asked.

  He was hungry, but thought it indelicate to say so: ‘Nihilon City would be the best place, but it’s some way off. And we’ll have to hide in the woods till Mella’s column has gone through.’

  ‘I want to get out of this country,’ she said, her self-assurance suddenly diminishing in spite of him. ‘I’m frightened.’

  Adam saw nothing ahead but hunger, if they didn’t reach a town or village before the new day was out. Getting finally home was too far away to contemplate, a distant mixed-up vision of heaven and hell that he couldn’t shake into focus, though he did not confide this to Jaquiline who, in the first light of dawn, looked at him lovingly from her blue eyes.

  For some time they had been observed by an invisible circle of orderlies from the space-station. The tender behaviour of our lovers was noted with satisfaction, and the ringleader of these marauders at last gave his signal. There was a crack of twigs and a scuffle of stones, and on turning sharply to see who was there, Adam heard a scream from Jaquiline before he himself was brought down. A thin rope was tied around his wrists.

  Jaquiline sobbed as she was carried away. Her bitterness at this latest molestation, from the very arms of Adam, was such that no words from him could comfort her. Adam was also pulled along, though he was aware of his captors doing it with as little roughness as possible.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he demanded.

  ‘A long way,’ laughed one of the men.

  ‘Up!’ said another.

  Chapter 34

  Two-faced flags were out in Nihilon City, one side marked for the Festival of Liberation by the Army of Honesty and Order, the other marked to celebrate the Festival of Salvation by the Forces of Nihilism. Despite a generally expectant air of enjoyment, no one could yet say with certainty which side of the flag would be finally displayed, though the fact that it would obviously be one side or the other made the people happy enough.

  The city was in the hands of order and honesty however, and reinforcements of Cronacian troops shuttling up from Shelp were said to have been marching through the suburbs all day, dressed in the blue overalls of the insurrection, on their way to attack the last bastion of nihilism at Tungsten. But the people, with their two-faced flags, convertible bunting, and age-old instincts, were by no means convinced of their victory.

  Richard passed the early part of the night looking for the man who had stolen his briefcase. He telephoned the professor to report its loss, and was told that such carelessness was an act of treason, and that he would be shot out of hand for it when the forces of law and order brought him to justice, as they undoubtedly would. Determined that this should not happen, Richard returned to his room at the Hotel Stigma, to gather up his few possessions and leave the city before daybreak, then make his way to the escape port of Shelp.

  But his briefcase was on the bed, and nothing had been taken from it. With mixed feelings at finding it again, he was faced with the moral problem as to whether or not he should go on with his work as an insurrectionary general, or follow through his plan of slipping away to Shelp and safety. The art of living under nihilism consisted in being able to make moral decisions of a fundamental nature every few hours instead of every ten years. Most Nihilists solved it, he had found, by discounting the ethics of each problem, and merely making a choice in the form of a gamble. Thus they saved themselves from moral inanition, but only at the expense of the soul itself, a payment which nevertheless enabled them to go on living with a certain amount of spirit, until such time as the damaged soul could, if they desired it, reconstitute its moral qualities once more, possibly under a new régime of honesty and law. This would no doubt impose its own peculiar form of ethics, with just as much bother to conscientious citizens.

  A note attached to the handle of the briefcase said that in a country noted for its nihilism he should trust no one, and that in a régime soon to be distinguished ‘for its honesty he should trust them even less. ‘However,’ a postcript from the young man added, ‘I hope that if honesty triumphs, and I am brought to trial, you will have the goodness to remember that I protected your invaluable briefcase during the hours when it was undoubtedly in great peril from real thieves and other such nihilistic scum.’

  Richard, deciding to set out for the rendezvous with his loyally waiting troops, put on his general’s cap, fastened the revolver-belt, and went downstairs carrying the briefcase. The clerk at the desk sat to attention and saluted smartly, a mark of respect that Richard hadn’t received on going into the hotel.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ the clerk said, passing him a straw shopping-basket, ‘perhaps you’ll need this. It contains bread and cheese, sausage, Nihilitz, and packets of chocolate. And good luck, sir,’ he added, as Richard went outside to the waiting car, feeling like a real general at last.

  There was little hard marching to be done, for a railway went into the mountains, so that an immensely long train took Richard and his brigade as far as the copper-mining township of Tolemac. A seat was found for him in the engine-cab, and he sat there from the passing of night through dawn and daylight, studying his map by the glow of a torch. Beside him was a wireless-operator whose apparatus was fixed to the back of the plate. Cursing and sweating, the stokers were feeding coal into the huge white-mouthed boiler, their spades swinging dangerously close to Richard as he puzzled over possible systems of deployment on arrival at Tungsten.

  They travelled the final forty kilometres by road, most of his brigade finding enough lorries at Tolemac for a shuttle service, so that by nine o’clock he was observing Tungsten through field-glasses from the cover of a grove of trees. The white, glistening, low walls of the compound were five kilometres square, and seemed by no means impregnable in the blue and brilliant light of this vital day.

  No preparations appeared to have been made for its defence, which he found strange, not to say di
sappointing. Several thousand metres of open ground lay between his soldiers and the walls. In the middle of the extensive compound of buildings and hangars he now saw the rocket, surrounded by a gridwork of superstructure, rearing up slim and grey from this distance, and smokily shining in the new morning light, the last score or so metres of its pinnacle coloured a glittering crimson. He clandestinely thought it a pity to stop such a marvellous engine going its natural way into the heavens, regretting that it wouldn’t begin to rise up now, for him alone, in front of his very eyes.

  But the air shimmered around it, and the compound seemed uninhabited. It had been given out on Radio Tungsten the previous evening, in a Lies bulletin of nihilistic candour, that the two candidates destined for the sexual hook-up had become ill, and that no replacements were available, though the staff were leaving no stone unturned to find some. Richard, gazing across at the magnificent rocket, felt his groin aching at such frustrations of the Nihilon Space Plan, and the preposterous but delightful thought came to him that he wouldn’t mind offering himself as the male specimen for this experiment, no matter what the dangers might be. He tried to bring the rocket-head closer and closer, till his binoculars were overfocused and it shimmered into a haze.

  A long black estate car nosed its way between the trees, and Richard went to meet it. ‘Right on time,’ he said, when Benjamin Smith got out. ‘I hear you had a hard fight at Aspron.’