This was true, yet nothing had been harder for Benjamin to bear than the loss of Jaquiline Sulfer. His troops coming up behind had seen no sign of her. He wondered whether she hadn’t been wounded during the attack, and pulled against her will into the Aspron complex, hidden among those endless corridors where it would be impossible to find her. Should he receive evidence that this was true, he would return with his army, after the capture of Tungsten, and raze Aspron to the ground. He would show those Nihilists what nihilism really meant, though in the meantime there was the attack plan to talk over: ‘How many men have you got?’
‘Two thousand here, and another thousand coming up – mostly Cronacians.’
‘Can’t use those,’ said Benjamin. ‘It’s got to be done by Nihilon alone. The country cleanses itself – with no outside help. That’s what we need for the history books, anyway.’
‘They’re in Nihilonian uniforms,’ Richard said, amused at his probity. It was obvious that Benjamin had been fighting in the country, instead of in the more sophisticated moral atmosphere of the capital.
‘Makes no difference,’ he asnwered stiffly. ‘It’ll get known.’
‘Whether we use Cronacians or not, people will say we did. So we might as well,’ Richard went on, and Benjamin remembered that he was known for his diplomacy – a polite euphemism for his irritating persistence. He looked at him closely – an unstable face, the apotheosis of nihilism on a man supposed to be in the vanguard of reliability and honesty. But he too had suffered such feelings, so turned away and lit a cigar. His orderlies took a table from the back of a nearby lorry, and set it up under the trees. Richard leaned over it, and looked at the plan of Tungsten that Benjamin unrolled: ‘There are four thousand in my column,’ he said, ‘all of them good Nihilonians, meaning fierce, under-privileged, well-trained, honest, and totally confused in their political ideas. That makes seven thousand. With two thousand from Mella Took, we have nine altogether. Three tough brigades. We should be able to crush the place in a couple of hours.’
Richard liked neither his tune nor tone, and certainly not his bland, business-like assumption of total command. ‘My troops are exhausted,’ he said. ‘They need time to prepare for the attack.’
Any such softness annoyed Benjamin, who foresaw trouble if he did not show firmness now: ‘The sooner they get it over with, the better. That’s what all soldiers think, believe me, no matter how exhausted they are. In any case, it’s easier to die when you’re tired. You waste less energy that way. But here’s Mella, so let’s welcome her.’
Richard had heard about this extraordinary woman in Nihilon City, and now he saw her chariot-platform bedecked with blue and green ribbons, drawn by scores of soldiers singing verses from the folk-song written by President Took and often sung over his baby daughter’s cradle called ‘Honesty is the Best Policy’, while as many others advanced before it with long knives cutting at foliage so that it could get through.
She sat stiffly, enthroned on a sort of padded armchair, trying to look stern, though her soft dark eyes were too good-natured to instil fear, Richard thought. Yet her impressive pose certainly called for respect, which could not be said for the other person on a smaller chair beside her, a man with his arm in a sling who, as they came closer, he recognized as his third colleague.
Edgar looked uncomfortable, stiff and self-conscious due to the proximity of Mella Took, whose hand affectionately caressed his as the platform advanced, so that Richard had an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But he broke into a cough, hoping to disguise his breach of manners sufficiently to go forward and help her descent.
‘You are very kind,’ Mella said, gratefully holding his hand. ‘I hope I’m not too late to discuss our methods of attack?’ Richard felt his hand squeezed affectionately as he led her to the table, from which she picked up binoculars to view the rocket-base. For some minutes she was absolutely still, as if trying to hypnotize it into surrender.
Edgar descended from the platform, and the three men drank a victory toast. ‘I hear that Nihilitz will be banned by the new government,’ Richard said.
‘Let’s have another then, for absent friends,’ Benjamin proposed, thinking of Jaquiline. Edgar said that Adam had also vanished, though he saw less reason than Benjamin to think that these events could be in any way connected.
Mella wanted to lead the attack from the high point of her chariot, with Edgar at her side, a massed head-on assault of all three brigades against the main gate of Tungsten. Benjamin dissuaded her from this on the grounds that her life was precious and must be saved for the future of Nihilon, a country which her gracious presence would do much to rebuild. Edgar backed him up, while trying not to sound too enthusiastic. In any case, Benjamin was determined to carry through his own special arrangements no matter what Mella might suggest – in her misguided and romantic zeal. If she insisted on wielding her military influence he would have her bound and gagged and slung into a guarded thicket with her love-struck companion, even if he had to shoot down her eighty stalwarts to do it. She was not the linchpin of his campaign, and he had no time today to indulge in detestable debate. His anger decreased to a mere nihilistic interior seething, which he could only finally control by getting his own way and capturing Tungsten for the forces of law and order with the unique plan he had in mind.
He strode up and down to calm himself, reflecting with some satisfaction that he had turned into one of those influential men who not only make decisions but also carry them through. He wasn’t aware of too much pride in this, only a mathematical realism which unfailingly produced confidence when there was some danger of it being taken away.
So he expounded his plan, while Mella ate a bunch of large black grapes and looked at him admiringly with her cow-like eyes. He didn’t doubt that she took in clearly all that he was saying, for it was astonishingly simple, and in the long run such a plan would be economical of human lives, for if it succeeded only a small proportion of their army would be used. He had two hundred red Zap sports cars to play with, and would send the first hundred against the southern line of the Tungsten perimeter, with ladders strapped to their roofs which would be laid at the wall by the four men crammed into each car. The second hundred cars, also containing four men each, would assist the first wave to breach the wall, thus paving the way for a brigade of foot-soldiers who would swarm in after them. The two regiments of cars were inaugurated as the Zap Brigade – or Mella’s Own, Benjamin added as a brilliant afterthought to win her to his side, kneeling like a knight of old to kiss her hand.
She put her gracious blessing to his plan, and a sumptuous breakfast was spread under the trees. Benjamin ate quickly, giving orders between mouthfuls concerning the Charge of the Zap Brigade which was to carry everything before it, standing now and again to look through binoculars and see figures scurrying up and down the mass of scaffolding lapped around the lower part of the rocket. He had one hour from the start of his attack to reach the computer room and prevent blast-off at midday. Special squads of engineers were to lay explosives around the launching-pad and blow it – and themselves, most likely – to pieces while it was still on the ground.
He mentioned, as a sort of half joke to Mella, that one could be ingenious in military affairs when one had nothing else to think about, and she gave him such a smile that the loss of Jaquiline faded from his mind. ‘I admire you,’ she said, ‘and I shall wear that admiration in my heart for quite some time.’
With a flicker of intoxicating fantasy – at such a time – Benjamin wondered whether he ought not to cultivate her high opinion of him, though as if he didn’t care for it at all, so that he might one day be sitting on the throne of Nihilon with Queen Mella at his side. After a while, of course, Mella would disappear, and he would reign alone, a sad and ruthless monarch despoiling the kingdom at his leisure. And who could rule more absolutely than a king over a country that had recently given itself up to twenty-five years of nihilism?
Edgar ruefully saw that his glorious
bravery, which had almost smashed his right arm to pieces in the attack on Orcam Bridge, had faded from Mella’s eyes as she gazed adoringly (though by no means adored, he was glad to see) on Benjamin. She had turned her soft and womanly personality away from himself; whom she could treat as an infant, to Benjamin whom she could look on as a father. Benjamin left him little time to brood, however, and sent him through the trees with a message to Brigadier Kalamata, the officer commanding the two hundred Zaps.
From each car-roof of the Zap Brigade fluttered a blue and green pennant. The two regiments were set out in perfect alignment, their blood-red vehicles glistening in the sun as if still wet from being washed. In order to strike more fear in the defenders’ hearts, every headlight was turned full on, four hundred white and incandescent orbs proclaiming that the forces of purity were out for the kill at last. Benjamin, Mella, and Richard stood together on a high platform erected under cover of the trees, giving perfect views of the plain in front.
A patrol was sent forward to test the defences, and Benjamin saw the soldiers go right up to the wall, then through it by some half-concealed but well-camouflaged entrances. There had been no firing, and not one member of the patrol came back, and though he was worried about this he didn’t doubt that the Zap Brigade would triumph.
Observers from the highest branches reported more activity around the launching-pad and up the scaffolding of the rocket itself. Two people in space-suits were being forced into the vehicle, suggesting to Benjamin that the Nihilists had succeeded in getting new candidates for their universal wedding, which caused him to speculate on who the victims might be, for victims they would be when his dynamite squads got to work in an hour’s time and they were trapped in their nuptial coffin.
He watched the minute-hand of his dashboard clock creeping towards attack-hour. Two hundred engines idled softly, a chorus of pistons in perfect tune pushing out thin clouds of obnoxious smoke, each car holding enough fuel to reach the walls, and get back again if need be. Who but the dashing, scheming, valiant, skilful Benjamin Smith could have used them in this way? And yet what more apt employment was there for these terror-motors of such impacted power, machines that up to now had been a menace to civilization, such as it was, and that were now harnessed into saving it? He laughed aloud at his own subtlety, and lit a cigar. He hoisted his revolver and, as the second-hand ticked to its final spot, pressed the trigger.
Chapter 35
President Nil, watching the array of power soon to be sent against him, realized that his reign was coming to an end. He stood behind an air-vent on one of the compound roofs, watching his men running in alarm along lanes and gangways on all sides below, preparing, so they had assured him, to fight to the death. But, win or lose, the end had come as far as he was concerned. Being a born Nihilist, a firm believer through and through, he had arranged for his own disappearance, and therefore his defeat. In other words, since it was inevitable, he had decided to accept it stoically and with good grace.
Having shown for a quarter of a century that nihilism worked, he was prepared to depart in such a way as to prove that nihilism would never die. There was no other way to do it, but he sweated under his top hat, and in a fit of irritation took it off and stamped on it so that he would never be able to put it on again. Not that one, at least. He was going elsewhere because he’d run out of ideas for the moment, not because he was tired of nihilism. His motoring psyche could tick over forever on the fuel of its self-induced nihilism.
His constant extolling of total freedom, of compulsory freedom, of nihilism in fact, had only been a more thorough way of enslaving the population. He saw that now. It had been far more efficient than any form of socialism. Nihilism is the ultimate state of raw and naked slavery, he mused. Nihilistic private enterprise works because it enslaves most of the population for the benefit of a small portion of it. Thus it was unfair. To be fair, all must be enslaved, and only socialism can do that. But at least all people would be equal under it, and thus being equal, could easily claim that they were not enslaved, and that socialism was therefore the highest form of existence as far as society was concerned.
But he was fatally tired, and wanted to rest, needed to get away from Nihilon with the fortune he had hoarded for just such a purpose. Already from Nihilon City airport four planeloads of gold and banknotes had been sent to Cronacia. He knew by radio code that two had arrived safely. One had been flown to some far-off country by the treacherous pilot. Another was mistakenly shot down by Cronacian Pug 107s. This was the least valuable cargo because it contained banknotes and not gold, and as the plane went down in flames, breaking into pieces a few hundred metres over the country, immense numbers of thousand-klipp notes fell like so much flaming confetti over the poverty-stricken villages, totally consumed to ash as soon as the grasping peasant fingers touched them.
All he had to do now was save his own skin in order to enjoy the fortune that was waiting for him, the fruits of his untiring devotion to nihilism – he might say. He looked across the plain at the lined-up sports cars and massed insurrectionary troops ready to charge over that death-space which he had set for them. Maybe a few would reach the wall, but not many. The trap was waiting, and it would give him the greatest pleasure to watch the attack of the idealists, and see how far their ideals got them under the rain of his high-precision smithereen artillery. But he could not wait to see the battle, just as he had been unable to witness so many of the set spectacular pieces of destruction he had brought about. It was enough to construct and organize them. He’d never even wanted to see films and photographs of the great dam disaster at Fludd, or read accounts of it.
During his rule he had turned the country into a fairground, and as a last gesture of private-enterprise nihilism he was going to hand it over to the forces of law and order, honesty and progress. He recalled that one of his first measures, after tugging the ropes of government into his hands, had been to decree that everyone should henceforth write with his or her left hand – a fundamental order designed to bring them into line with his régime from the heart outwards rather than from the wallet inwards. For the last few years the observance of this rule had been faltering, especially as young people had grown to man or womanhood and proved the unfortunate conjunction of being able to rebel against both the parents and the state at the same time, something he had not anticipated, and certainly as basic as his original law.
He laughed, and wiped the sweat off his brow. What greater contribution to nihilism and benign chaos could there be than to allow order and honesty to return? Rebellion had been splintering the fabric of his beautiful Nihiland for several years, and instead of trying to prevent it taking hold, as a more misguided ruler might have done, he had surreptitiously helped it to its last rotten fruition – an over-ripe tomato about to hit him in the back of the neck, if he didn’t get out quickly.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to hurry, lingered a few minutes over the subtlety and success of his scheme to have five foreigners come to Nihilon and write a guidebook about the country. They had been the final poisonous agents who would, under the umbrella of idealism, wreck his nihilist paradise, and help to change his onerous existence. It gave him great satisfaction to play with people who thought they were making history.
One of the many proverbs of Nihilon said: The end is always quicker than the beginning. And so it was, seen now to be the truest of truths as the preparations across no-man’s-land went on with tigerish speed, the insurrectionist forces mercilessly goaded in their psyches by his great rocket which they wouldn’t be able to stop no matter how quickly they ran, or how desperately they fought.
The tunnel under Tungsten was wide enough to take his Mangler de luxe motorcar, and it led for ten kilometres to an opening in the forest. Nil had prepared a secret chalet where he could rest for a fortnight, before getting out of the country through the seaport of Shelp. During the last twenty-five years no one had been allowed to know what he looked like. In all the newspapers, day after day
for the whole reign, a speech or announcement by President Nil, or a news item concerning him, would be accompanied by a photograph of some unsuspecting citizen of Nihilon. Over the nine thousand days, every one of many newspapers and magazines of the country had used at least one photograph every day, which means that while nearly a million photographs of Nihilon citizens had been used, not one of them had been of the real President Nil.
In this one way his reign had been democratic, because a million people from all walks of life, and on his hilarious days even from the zoo, had, by their likeness at least, ruled the country.
No actual photographs of President Nil had ever been taken. He had never shown himself to the people, and only to his more immediate advisers while wearing a mask. His wife and mistress had already been sent out of the country, so not even they could be set to identify him. He had so successfully remained a cypher that many people doubted his existence, which was why he hoped to be unrecognizable when he walked to the ship in Shelp harbour dressed like any tourist, complete with camera around his neck, and a special transmitter in his pocket by which he would be able to spark off the bombs he would have placed along the quayside.
President Nil was born of a father from Damascony (of the tribe of Gelt) and a mother from Cronacia, fifty-five years ago. His upbringing was strict and traditional, and his training as a lawyer was one of the best. Each of the thousand books described a thousand laws, and the silence of each one was deafening to his heart, and these millions laws turned into maggots eating up his soul. But he held the rotting dust at bay, in order to satisfy his parents who had struggled for his education. He became adept at hair-splitting, a monster of rationality with a memory that was profound, and his judgments were famous – if too complicated to carry out. By the age of twenty-eight he was a rich and respected judge, but in order to stop himself from going mad he took to the mountains on the frontier of Damascony where, in a few months of intellectual explosion, he reversed and then shattered all his previous precepts and wrote a short but stunning manual of nihilism. How he made contact with the maniac-dissidents of the country which was to become Nihilon, and came to power after two years of political acitivity and civil war, is too long and complex to relate here, but his meticulous training in law, coupled to the fires of his own hitherto half buried temperament, ideally suited him for the task he knew he had to carry out.
Travels in Nihilon Page 26
