Such a picture was with him still as he heaved another stone up to the culvert, part of the same hot territory he’d tried to defend so long ago. That classically perfect bridge had never been blown, for a man of the town had approached him one evening, and beckoned him on to the arcaded walk with a wide view over the empty and lustreless plain. He talked for a long time of how the bridge was of great commercial and cultural value to the town, part of its actual life-spirit, a bridge which not only connected it to the rich wheatlands and the pastures of the Alpine regions, but also to the Chimney Zone north of Nihilon City from which came all manufactured goods. The bridge was a vital lifeline of the country that, once destroyed, would take years to rebuild, and in any case it was no longer a question, the man went on, of holding up the Nihilist army. All the Nihilists had to do was cross the river by boat to the north and south, out of range of Rationalist patrols, and the town would fall within a matter of hours.
Benjamin knew he ought to have shot the man dead, and had his body thrown towards the river, as the townspeople slung their dogs when they wanted to kill them, but he hesitated, and went on listening in the dusk. The man offered him a bus, with enough petrol to get his company to Nihilon City, in exchange for leaving the bridge alone. Amrel would fall anyway, even if they died defending it. Benjamin knew that the Rationalist armies were being defeated on all fronts because they lacked supplies and popular support. Walking up and down in the cool moonlight, smoking a cigar and listening to the smooth persuasions of this man, offering him safety in the form of a bus and petrol, he felt for the first time since leaving his own country that he wanted to live. Perhaps if he survived he would even fall in love again, and his nod of acceptance was barely visible in the half darkness.
The following morning he and his soldiers had got into the bus. The man who had provided it, and who had shaken his hand warmly, who had embraced him and called him his own brother as they said goodbye, was an agent of the Nihilists. Halfway to the capital, it was by the merest chance that a bomb was found under one of the bus seats, which was to have destroyed them all. Also, five of the petrol cans were full of water, though this was remedied by taking more fuel from filling-stations at gunpoint.
His company deserted him to a man on the outskirts of Nihilon City, where he was arrested, charged with treason for deserting the bridge, and sentenced to be shot. He had no defence, though he said he was innocent, and that his retreat from Amrel was a tactical move to draw the Nihilists into an ambush, but that his own men had abandoned him before he could carry it out.
A Nihilist column had marched over the bridge into Amrel on the following day, and so all the surrounding region was lost by the Rationalists. Other areas were thus outflanked, and the defenders of each front began to fall back in panic. It was the end of the end. In the general collapse, he escaped from his gaolers, and it was only by raw cunning and infinite privation that he was able to get out of the country some months later. As for President Took, no news of his fate had ever been published by the Nihilists.
The ditch was at last filled, and he drove his car on to the road, reflecting that his day back in Nihilon had so far been as arduous as when he was fighting to save it from the black threat which had now overtaken it.
After a few kilometres along the empty highway in his fast, comfortable car he came to a barrier with the words: CUSTOMS POST. WE IMPLORE YOU TO HALT in painted white letters across the top. There was a maroon Bivouac saloon car in front, and when the gate opened, they advanced between two concrete buildings with armed guards standing outside.
An arrogant young customs officer came out of the first door holding a large steel hammer with which he smashed the windscreen of the Bivouac to pieces. ‘You are forbidden to import windscreens into Nihilon,’ he sneered.
The blond, fair-haired, tall, blue-eyed man at the wheel jumped out and protested: ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘And that’s treasonable talk,’ shouted the customs officer. ‘Nothing is ridiculous in Nihilon. Drive on, or I’ll pulverize your headlamps. It’s also forbidden to import headlamps. It’s forbidden to bring anything in at all. I’ll tax your toenails if you insult me personally like that.’
The man quickly handed over a bundle of money, and after a big red paint mark had been splashed down the side of his car by a second customs officer, he was allowed to enter the country.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said the customs officer obsequiously when Benjamin drove forward, putting his hammer away into a briefcase. Benjamin was resigned to losing his windscreen, because he had a spare plastic one in his repair kit, but the customs officer asked: ‘How much blood do you have in your body, sir?’
Puzzled, he made a wild guess: ‘Sixteen litres.’
The customs officer opened the door: ‘You’re only allowed fifteen. Will you step this way, sir?’
He swore, but inaudibly, deciding to be more patient than he’d been at the first obstacle, and followed the customs man inside.
‘May I see your passport?’
Benjamin gave it to him: ‘Certainly.’
‘It’s forged,’ the man said with a smile, and Benjamin marvelled at how uncannily quick they were in detecting this fact, which was indeed true, though the falsification was so perfect that he didn’t see how they could tell. ‘However,’ the passport general said from behind the desk, ‘we don’t worry about such details in Nihilon. Kindly sit in that chair so that we can confiscate your litre of surplus blood, then we’ll let you go.’
Benjamin put his passport away, and began to roll up his shirt sleeve. ‘What would happen if I had a litre of blood less than the normal amount?’
‘You’d have a transfusion of the difference. That would be inconvenient, because you’d have to wait a few days until they could do it at the local clinic. And you’d have a big medical bill to pay. But there’d be no trouble. No trouble at all. As a Nihilist I have an answer to every question. There are advantages to this system, as you’ll no doubt find before you leave.’
Benjamin flinched and grunted as the needle went in, and turned pale when he saw such a huge flow of his life’s blood going out. However, the nurse who extracted it was pretty, so he didn’t object, but stood up as soon as it was finished and walked unsteadily back to his car.
‘The fact is,’ said the young customs official with the hammer in his briefcase, ‘no matter how much blood a person says he has we always take a litre out, on this route. We sell it to the Nihilon Blood Bank for use in our war against Cronacia. It not only makes us money, but it’s patriotic as well.’
‘A charming idea,’ said Benjamin, glad to be back in his car, though feeling that he’d need a week to recover from this day’s blows.
‘Another thing,’ said the customs officer, ‘do you have a repair kit in your car?’
‘Of course.’
‘Kindly get it out for me.’
Like a man under interrogation, he had admitted something he thought to be totally innocent, if not irrelevant, only to find it of vital consequence to his exhausted body and irascible mind. ‘What the hell for?’
‘All repair kits have to be inspected.’
‘Is there duty to pay on them?’
The customs man shook his head. With a sigh, Benjamin went to the back of the car, lifted the tailgate, and pulled boxes about till he came to the repair kit.
‘Open it,’ said the customs officer.
He regarded it as the pride of his travelling equipment, a collection of spare parts and tools which he had chosen with care so as to make sure he could deal with any minor breakdown, having heard of Nihilon’s bad and brutal service stations. The customs officer picked over the tools disdainfully: ‘Do you think our garages are badly equipped? Or do you suspect that our mechanics are incompetent?’