Chapter 21
After a reasonable night’s sleep (except for a few puzzling rifle-shots sounding through his dreams), and a good breakfast, Richard went out of the hotel and into the main square of Nihilon City. A strong breeze was blowing from the nearby Athelstan Alps, stirring the trees along the pavements. The square was about two hundred metres from north to south and east to west, and in the middle of it — towards which Richard suddenly ran through fast-moving traffic — was a concrete colossus erected to nihilism. He stood before it with open notebook, glad to be working at last. It was supported on four sides by lesser monuments portraying the virtues of Madness and Anarchy, whose great fierce heads were chasing the tails of their enemies, Order and Progress. ‘This vast, towering, sprawling conglomeration of Nihilistic culture,’ he wrote, ‘which seems to have been chipped in many places by bullets, deserves an asterisk in any guidebook. It is to be hoped, however, that a thorough renovation of it will take place before many years go by, because flocks of pigeons have painted it well, which, together with soot presumably blowing in from the industrial suburbs when the wind is in the right direction — have given it a somewhat piebald appearance.’
Much of the square was lined with shops on the lower floors of the buildings, and there were many cafés, as well as several hotels, and from his central position he was able to observe the black ink-blot emblem of Nihilon flying from the roof of the Stock Exchange, while the hammer-and-chisel banner of nihilism itself fluttered from the office of Socialist Private Enterprise.
He referred to a thirty-year-old plan of the city in order to pencil in the positions of these edifices. The old bank was still in the same place, and so was the post, telephone, and telegraph office. The House of Deputies and the Peoples Savings Box were housed in one building, but the doors were closed and they seemed little used.
Several passers-by stopped to look over his shoulder at the map, and many more were standing around. A young man in a threadbare yet fashionable suit, who seemed to have a cold, leaned over and ran his black nihilist fingernail along certain streets. ‘I’ve never seen a map of our city,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m trying to make out where I live.’
‘Can’t you buy them at the newspaper kiosks?’ Richard said, knowing this to be difficult.
‘Yes,’ answered the young man, carressing the edge of the map as if it were an expensive piece of cloth, ‘a city plan is published monthly, but they are different every time, and don’t in any way resemble the real layout of the town.’
A middle-aged woman with a shopping basket came forward and tugged at the map, crying: ‘What beautiful colours! Is it a real one?’ A huge fellow in cap and overalls elbowed them aside and offered a thousand klipps for it, while Richard vainly tried to fold it up. More people surged towards him, and he hit at a near-by face at the sickening sound of the thick paper tearing. A huge piece of the city vanished. Cars were stopping, and a driver leaned out, shouting: ‘He’s got a coloured street-plan of the city.’
Richard’s notebook was pulled away, and he felt a sly hand draw the fountain-pen from his lapel pocket. Letting this go, he pressed a fist to his coat to hold his wallet safe. Drivers ran from their cars to get at the map, but most of it had already gone, and Richard relinquished the last piece. When the crowd drew away, he leapt clear and into the road, but a few disappointed people were so enraged that they chased him through the traffic, and he ran as if his life was in danger, regretting that he had left the Professor’s revolver in his suitcase at the hotel.
Entering a glass-fronted café, he closed the door behind, ready to defend himself should he be chased and cornered there. But he wasn’t, so sat at a table on the glassed-in terrace, which gave a good view of people in the middle of the square still fighting over what was left of his map. He asked the waiter for a cup of black coffee, as well as a glass of Nihilitz, which he hoped would stop the tremors in his limbs.
He took more sheets of paper from his wallet, and with a pencil wrote his notes again concerning the monstrous and squalid megalith to Nihilism which stood in all-revealing sunlight across the road. He followed this by the comment that: ‘It is inadvisable to open a map in Nihilon, for it immediately draws spectators who are anxious to see what a real map of their city looks like, even though it may be hopelessly out of date. The enquiries that follow upon this act are often good-natured enough, but such curiosity has been known to get out of hand, so that the unfortunate traveller has had his map pulled from him and torn into a thousand pieces. This is no doubt due to a desire for possession, and for topographical orientation, which for no reason suddenly affects the whole crowd. While this is in some way understandable, though not totally commendable, what follows is undeniably bad for the traveller in that those of the mob who are baulked of their object occasionally resort to all but tearing the clothes off his back. For this reason the traveller is advised to have a newspaper with him at all times, in which to place his map while endeavouring to consult it.’
‘Your coffee and Nihilitz,’ said the waiter, disturbing Richard’s somewhat ravelled composition. People outside were running across the square and falling to the ground. A machine gun sent chips of pavement spurting along an arcade. ‘It’s all right,’ said the waiter, amused at Richard’s pallor. ‘The glass at this café is bullet-proof.’ The gun spattered another stretch of pavement and several people had formed a short queue by the monument to buy rifles, revolvers, and ammunition from a stall with a striped awning, before taking cover nearby and firing back with their newly acquired arms. A heavier explosion drummed along one of the side streets. ‘Why is it allowed to sell guns so openly?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ the waiter yawned. ‘Perhaps it’s the war. Cronacia is at it again. It’s all part of the system we live under. Our government, meaning President Nil, floated a commercial company to run a war against Cronacia, so that we could take over that country. That’s what all these border incidents are about, if you want to know the truth. Every citizen of Nihilon is able to buy shares in the Cronacia Reconstructs Company, in order to destroy it and then draw dividends and profits when it’s exploited — I mean occupied. I even bought a few certificates myself. It comes under the heading of Peoples Enterprise Number One, and rates very high on the Stock Exchange. Even foreign countries are beginning to invest in it, hoping to get their share of the spoils — I mean dividends — when Cronacia is finished and on the spit. Not that all is going too well at the moment. The trouble was, that just after our firm got going, the Cronacians found out about it, and so by way of revenge and self-defence, started a company in their own country — also a commercial concern with public shares — to ferment revolution in Nihilon. That may be what is happening now, sir, though it’s early days, and still hard to tell. It could be over by the afternoon, because everybody sleeps for two hours. But if by any chance it picks up again in the evening, then it’s more serious. That’s two hundred klipps, sir.’
Other people on the glassed-in terrace were reading newspapers, or talking quietly, unperturbed at what was happening outside, though to their credit, thought Richard, a few at least were discussing the terrible dam burst at Fludd which had recently taken place. But he kept his attention on the square, where several cars had been driven into the central area and left, presumably as cover for the sharpshooters. Another vehicle in the far corner began to burn. When an ambulance roared in, its siren screeching with inhuman jerks, men in red overalls ran from it to pick up casualties, while other attendants pulled long boxes from it and took them to the gun-stall, which must have been running out of weapons and ammunition. ‘I thought Nihilon was famous for its law and order,’ Richard said to the waiter, by way of a joke.