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The man had tears in his eyes. ‘I’m tired of life, whatever you decide. For years I’ve been disillusioned with nihilism, at having to get up every morning and invent more novelties of disorder for the pampered populace when President Nil forgets to send his own suggestions through. I’ve known for a long time that it was retrograde and immoral to live under such a system. My wife has often seen me breaking my heart at the waste and burden of it all. I’ve been secretly praying for a safe and orderly existence, but I was so influenced by President Nil and his philosophy, which said that life should be a great lawless adventure, that I never knew how to try and change it. It’s been a thankless task. I’ve frequently prayed for a few hectares of soil in a safe mountain area, where I could live the life of a simple peasant. I admire and envy you insurrectionists trying to change all this. You don’t know how lucky you are, being the saviours of our country, the bringers of honesty and progress. I certainly wish you success in your venture. I know you intend to kill me, whatever you say, but if I were to stay alive, there’s nothing I would want to do more than to help you in your great and honourable task.’

‘We need all the help we can get,’ Benjamin admitted. ‘If you’re serious about it, go to the barber’s and get your head shaved, then buy a pair of workmen’s overalls, and come back to join our ranks — under another name, of course. If you can persuade other Nihilist soldiers to do the same, providing they have a genuine change of heart, we shall welcome them.’

Colonel Amrel reached forward and held Benjamin’s hand. ‘Thank you, dear sir, thank you. I am old now but I’m still a good soldier. Shooting and looting is the life for me!’

‘Any of that,’ said Benjamin, though not too harshly, ‘and you’ll be shot yourself. My column will assemble in the square, so make sure you are there with your men.’

The room was empty. His danger, for the moment, was over. His arms and legs were shaking. He tried to hold them still. Power, to Benjamin, was most satisfying when he returned someone’s life to them, after refusing to take it away when he had the right and sometimes the duty to do so. There was nothing more sublime than this. But the weight in his chest seemed to have become displaced, and he walked to the window in an effort to control himself. He grabbed a high-backed chair so as not to fall. There were tears on his face. The uncanny circle of time had struck him with a hammer, as if to snap his spine at the crucial moment of action. He held on to the window-bars and looked through to the square. Blood patches and pieces of rag remained. Men stood beside the five lorries to talk and smoke. They would head for Agbat in the darkness, taking all night to get there, since the road was bad. With lorries, they would capture the place at dawn. Such thoughts stopped his limbs shaking when he walked back to his desk.

Chapter 25

The long train crawled and switched upon hairpin bends, continuing its night journey into the outlying spurs of the Athelstan Alps. From there, a sinuous pass between the mountains would take it gradually down to the central plain of Nihilon.

When Jaquiline climbed from between Cola’s sheets, the train shook so violently that she almost fell, her breasts flattening on the side of the bunk, while she clung as if a hundred foot drop opened below. But her bare feet touched the floor, and when she bent to get into her own bed, her arm jerked back, for in the dimmest of lights she saw a strange person lying there, presumably as fast asleep as Cola was. Sick with fear, she felt blindly around for her clothes and began to get dressed.

Her impusle was to pull the communication cord, and have him carried off screaming under some accusation or other, for after her unpleasant experience with the police chief at the frontier, she had no wish to confront another Nihilonian male. But she knew that sleep would be impossible whether she stopped the train or not, for to do so in a place like Nihilon was clearly to risk the unexpected, either in reprisals for a semi-criminal act, or in some form of brutal unsuitable assistance that would do her no good at all. And since her life wasn’t in danger, perhaps it was better to do nothing. In any case, he had threatened no harm yet.

He stirred under the blanket when the light went on, showing his grey close-cropped head, and groaned, while she held her breath. Then he grunted, about to wake up. It puzzled her how he had got into her compartment, until the unbearable heat of embarrassment ran down her body at the thought that he must have come in while she had been on the upper bunk with Cola. He had obviously seen only one person in the compartment, and so took the bottom bunk for himself. She shrank against the sink when his grey eyes opened wide from an emaciated face. ‘If you call out,’ he said, though in no way menacing, ‘I’ll kill you.’

Her hand drew away from the communication cord, angry at having decided to use it only now, when it was too late. He meant what he said, so she became less afraid, and stared back at him, openly curious, though her hand kept touch with the false book and its loaded gun. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette.

He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Give me one, and I’ll tell you. Thank you. This train’s too slow. I’m going to Nihilon City, that’s all.’

‘So am I.’ She held her lighter under his cigarette. ‘Though it’s impossible to say when it will get there.’

When the flame went out he took it from her. ‘Double speed,’ he said, ‘that’s the first thing we’ll do. Double on the railways, and half on the roads. This nightmare’s got to stop. I’m just out of prison. I was awarded twenty-five years because I exposed the manager of the factory I worked at for swindling. The factory was going bankrupt, so I made a formal complaint. I had irrefutable proof that he was ruining the firm, but when I presented it I was arrested, and given twenty-five years as a misguided idealist. Strangely enough, even though the manager kept on with his dishonesty, the firm did not go bankrupt. It even prospered after I was sent to prison, so I hear. People won’t rebel against this government, because they see that God is on the side of the Nihilists. Do you have any food?’

She passed a packet of biscuits from her handbag. ‘How did you get out of prison?’

‘I talked my way out. From the moment I got in I began talking about my idealistic principles. I decided that since I’d been sent away for honesty, I’d continue to be honest, and I’d try to persuade everybody else at the prison to be honest. I calculated that most of them were already honest in any case, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. I didn’t expect this to be acceptable to the authorities though, because they hoped to reform the inmates into becoming swindlers and tricksters. I saw that I had nothing to lose, because it seemed to me that if they didn’t want me to ruin their good work they’d have to throw me out. And if the prison authorities were persuaded by what I was trying to say, they’d have to admit that none of us should be in prison in any case.

‘I talked so much I hardly slept or ate during the whole year I was there. The prisoners were swayed from their newly acquired rules of villainy. The governor and his soldiers saw how right I was, and came over to my side. They all wanted to do some work — to work, understand?’

The word ‘work’ touched some deep emotion in him. The lamps of his half-buried eyes seemed about to burst, but he drew his shaking hands across to dim them. ‘I don’t suppose you know, being a foreigner, that it’s always been hard to get people to work in Nihilon. Naturally, nihilism and work are not compatible, but President Nil, damn him, came up with the following solution — many years ago, now. A man was granted permission to kill somebody if he paid a hundred thousand klipps into the private account of President Nil at the State Bank. On receipt of this payment the man — or woman, though not many women were interested — was given a revolver and a Killing Certificate, with the name of the person inscribed on it whom he wished to put an end to. So everyone has an incentive to work, and save, because there is no one, in this country at any rate, who doesn’t have someone he wants to kill. Many people fervently saved in order to get their hundred thousand, and therefore a Killing Certificate. There was no need to produce houses or cars for them to spend their money on. True, a lot of people die, and sometimes whole families are wiped out, but people are cheap. Even the birthrate seemed to go up when this scheme got going. There was one sad case though of a poor man who worked all his life to save a hundred thousand klipps, and just as he was on his way to the bank with his last thousand he had a heart attack and died. Yet again, another man who had saved his money went to the state bank and duly collected his Killing Certificate and gun. Then, with happiness and murder in his heart, he went outside to lay in wait for his enemy. But the man he wanted to kill had got there half an hour before, and had already collected his Killing Certificate and gun. Lying in wait, he shot our happy saver dead as he came down the steps.