‘It sounds dreadful,’ said Jaquiline, tasting the soup.
‘I like talking to you,’ Cola said. ‘If only you were the one I had to talk to at Aspron. Once I get there I won’t be able to do it so easily.’
‘Why do people allow it to be done to them?’
‘Oh, because Nihilists like to be humiliated.’
‘I should have thought just the opposite,’ Jaquiline said, eating hungrily.
‘You don’t know Nihilon,’ said Cola. ‘I’m a Nihilist, but it’s still strange to me. A few years ago there were many child murders in Nihilon, and the government was very disturbed by it, though the people not so much, except those whose children were killed. Most of the murderers were never caught, because the crimes were motiveless. They really were, if you see what I mean. But many of the criminals sent letters to the police or press (whom they considered to be one and the same thing, though I’m not sure that they are at all) saying that they had only committed these crimes in the hope of being executed. But they couldn’t give themselves up because that would pervert the normal course of Nihilistic justice. So the government, caught in the trap of its own philosophy, had to do something about it. President Nil proposed the idea of the execution mat, a place one could go to if the lust for child-murder, or any murder in fact, came upon one. The entrances to these places were well concealed, but the addresses, and the ways into them, could be found by dialling a certain telephone number. So a person could go there, and as soon as the door closed, the ritual of execution began, and stage by stage it became so convincing that after a few hours the person who had entered really believed he was on the way to decapitation, or whatever it was to be. He was reduced to a state of terror, remorse, repentance — though still innocent. At the last moment, when it clearly seemed impossible that he would live, he was read out a personal letter of pardon signed by President Nil, and a letter of forgiveness from the mother of the child he was supposed to have killed. Then he was free, innocent, regenerated, blessed, so we don’t have any such murders nowadays — though there are still many things to put right. Do you like Nihilon?’
Jaquiline was going to say that she thought it a horrible country, but something made her hesitate: ‘How can I tell? I haven’t been here very long.’
Cola was disappointed. ‘I hoped you’d say you hated it. I do. There are too many laws.’
‘Too many?’
‘Of the wrong sort.’
Jaquiline threw all caution out, and said: ‘If you dislike the idea of going to Aspron, why don’t you run away, and just not go there?’
Cola’s face turned crimson. ‘How could you suggest such a monstrous thing? No, no, never. Please don’t mention it again.’ They finished the meal in silence, though back in the privacy of their compartment Cola took Jaquiline’s hands and said fervently: ‘Yes, let’s go away together. I can’t face three months in Aspron. Help me, please help me.’
They lay on their separate bunks and as it grew dark the train ascended loop by loop towards the pass that would take them through to the great central plain of Nihilon. Jaquiline got down and opened the window when the train stopped at a station, to witness the disturbance outside. The platform was short, and crowds of people were trying to get on, though not at the part where her carriage was. She saw them surging left and right, and pushing through the doors of the small station building. Blue bulbs hung from wires and poles, and in the distance the yellower lights of a town straggled up a hillside as if they went into the sky.
Whistles were blowing, and people were fighting. The train began to move with many would-be passengers still trying to get on. A voice shouted orders from a loudspeaker, but she couldn’t tell what it was saying. Several rifle shots sounded towards the back of the train, as it went faster, and the crowd with a united groan of disappointment appeared to draw back from it.
Jaquiline’s face was half frozen from the cold mountain wind. She wanted to sleep, but was restless, and knew that it would be difficult if not impossible. She stood at the window, swayed by the train. ‘I can’t get to sleep either,’ Cola said. ‘I keep thinking of how happy my son must be now that he knows I’m going to Aspron because of him. He must be half cured already.’
‘But you said you weren’t going,’ Jaquiline reminded her.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cola, rustling in her sheets, ‘we can get off the train in the morning, when it reaches Agbat. That’s the next stop. We’ll sell our compartment for at least ten times the price of the ticket, then make our way into the hills. I went on holiday there four years ago. The people in that region belong to a tribe called the Gelts, who have fair hair and blue eyes, and love money — though they have none because they sit all day talking about it. So when our money runs out we may have to face cold, hunger, thirst, humiliation, though it will be much better than going to Aspron. You are very kind to share my bad luck in this way.’ She came down from her bunk, and held Jaquiline’s hand warmly. ‘I’m sure we shall be all right. It’s safer in the mountains than in a town. We’d give ourselves away too easily there.’
Jaquiline wasn’t sure now that she wanted Cola with her while she investigated the tourist attractions of Nihilon City. ‘I want to sleep,’ she said, ‘I wonder if you’d be kind enough to lend me a nightdress?’
‘I can’t,’ Cola said. ‘All my cases must have been emptied and repacked with pieces of wood when I left them in the station this morning. I have nothing at all.’
‘My things were stolen too,’ Jaquiline said, alarmed at such a coincidence. ‘My own cases are full of wood.’
Cola fell to such heart-stricken sobs that Jaquiline’s sympathy came back. ‘You too!’ she said, when she was able to speak. ‘My luggage is filled with wood because I’m going to Aspron. Tomorrow the police will get on the train, and when they open our cases, they will see that you have to go to Aspron as well.’
‘It’s ridiculous,’ Jaquiline cried. ‘There’s been some dreadful mistake. I shall explain everything to them.’
‘You won’t be able to,’ said Cola, a little calmer. ‘When the police see wood in our cases they’ll arrest us on suspicion of arson.’ Jaquiline kissed her, as if to thank her for an idea that suddenly came to her: ‘We’ll open the window and throw the wood out.’
Cola wept again. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying! If they see empty cases we’ll be sent to Aspron for life.’
‘Then we’ll throw the cases out as well.’
‘That’s worse. No luggage at all means that we’ll be shot on the platform as a warning to others. Let’s accept our fate together in Aspron. It will be better that way.’
Jaquiline patted her soothingly. ‘All right, my love, if it will please you.’ When Cola climbed back into the bunk, Jaquiline began to undress. This wasn’t nihilism. It was a bad dream. She had no intention of submitting to such barbarous impositions, and remembered the book bought from her police chief friend at the frontier, a volume closer to her heart than ever because it contained a loaded revolver. When the police came, and if they came — for she could not readily believe all that Cola had said — to take her to Aspron, she would shoot them down like the dogs she was fast considering them to be. With her clothes off, she climbed into Cola’s bunk, and they slept the night together, consoling each other for whatever might happen to them on the following day.