Edgar gave him some of the convoy’s food. ‘Isn’t it difficult to rent a flat in Nihilon City?’
He talked with his mouth fulclass="underline" ‘I thought it would be cheaper than a hotel, you see. I tried to be cunning, by taking a furnished flat in the capital. I came by train, and got the address and key from the tourist office at the station. I can laugh about the experience now, but it wasn’t funny at the time, though I suppose I was ready for a bit of an adventure.
‘It was a dull day,’ he went on, ‘so as soon as I went into the flat, I switched on the light — and a radio started blaring. There were small loudspeakers in every room, I found. The only way to switch them off was to put the lights out. Not to be defeated, I took out my electrician’s kit even before opening my luggage and adjusted the lights, so that they stayed on and the radio went off. I grinned to myself, and started to unpack. When that was finished I wanted a cup of coffee, so went into the kitchen. I filled the kettle, and when I turned on the gas-taps, music again blared through every loudspeaker. When the music stopped, they started to read the Lies.
‘Well, a chap can’t live that way, can he? By sheer hard labour, and a damned lot of ingenuity, I worked on that problem half the afternoon till I got some peace into the flat at last. Then I went for a walk and to buy some cigarettes. When I came back and opened the door, music came on again. It made me sweat with rage, I can tell you, but after an hour’s work I found out how to stop it. Silence once more. I went into the lounge to relax, but opening the door brought the Lies on again, a long account of that dirty space-rocket due to go up soon. Every door of the flat, I discovered, switched on news or music when it was opened, and didn’t turn it off when it was shut. I slaved all day and half the night to fix every door so that it could open peacefully. I breathed a sigh of relief and went into the lavatory for a few minutes. When I pulled the chain, it brought the martial music back — all over the damned place. I tell you, I wasn’t all that sorry when that howitzer-shell shattered it. You could hear the music cracking all along the street then, but I’d given up already. I’m on my way to Shelp to get a boat home. If there aren’t any ships I’ll trudge to the frontier. It’s not far from there. I wanted to get a plane back but the airport’s closed. I’m all of a sweat when I take the handle of this barrow, in case the music should start when I push it, or bring on the Lies, which is worse. Never again.’
‘Why leave Nihilon now?’ Edgar wanted to know. ‘It’s getting interesting at last.’
‘You won’t say that when you see Nihilon City,’ the man said with a sneer, getting into the shafts of his wheelbarrow, ‘that’s all I can say.’
Edgar was sorry to see him go, though he couldn’t have said why. During the next day’s progress the column grew to more than two thousand soldiers, a disciplined and dedicated force which wheeled north across the fertile central plain of Nihilon with its network of railways, roads and canals, its numerous towns and villages.
Wherever they stayed the night, whether at some humble village house, or on rocky ground in the open air, an almost royal bed was laid for them, with four guards posted a little way out from each corner. Edgar considered them to be still too close, for Mella, even though he was exhausted by the changing scenery of the day’s trek, uninhibitedly threw off the bedclothes and coaxed him into making love, behaving as if there were no other being within sight.
After one such connubial encounter she fell to kissing his hand tenderly, and said: ‘When the war is over, my love, we shall live together, not in the presidential palace, of which I have too many unhappy memories, but in a new one that my grateful people will build for us.’
Edgar shuddered at this news, for though he was fond of his passionate protectress he could hardly envisage them settling down as man and wife. Still less could he see himself as the husband of the President of the Republic — or whatever else she would be called after the change of power. All these events would be no more than memorable material for the book he intended to write on his personal experiences during the Nihilon insurrection, an account which would mark him out for fame in his own country.
‘I had never dreamed of becoming the President of the Republic, my dear,’ she went on, ‘but now that these honest soldiers want me to, I can’t refuse. I have my dead father’s memory to consider. But after five or ten years, when the country is honest, peaceful, and prosperous, I shall hand over my office to some other worthy person, so that my husband and I can then give ourselves up to eternal happiness, and to the education of our children.’
She shed tears at her speech, wetting the back of his hand with them. All he could hope for, in his fear of such a future, was that the war would go on for a long time. ‘Are you fond of children?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said sadly, doing her best to stop weeping. ‘I’ve hardly ever known any. But I’m sure I am, and that I shall adore our own.’
Orcam was a locality of low square houses and unpaved streets extending some way into the plain. Most of the built-up area lay at the confluence of two rivers, which made the town easy to defend. Mella’s column marched into the squalid suburb on the south side of the river. An advance party had already tried to rush the bridge, but all thirty had been shot down, and their dead bodies lay scattered along the straight street. This rebuff put Mella and her soldiers into a very gloomy mood, though Edgar felt selfishly hopeful on realizing that the war might not be over as quickly as everybody in the column had thought during the euphoria of the last few days.
A deserted house was found for them, out of the line of fire, and they occupied a low-ceilinged empty room on the ground floor whose only door led into a back-yard. The wide bed was covered by a hot, lumpy mattress. In spite of the depressing fact that they had at last met real military opposition, Mella kissed him in an excess of cheerful passion when she got into the bed, her naked body hot and soft against him. He could not but respond, and they were soon locked in a slow-moving but feverish bout of copulation.
When she was peacefully sleeping, one of her arms possessively across his chest, he felt utterly unable to close his eyes. Far from soothing him, the lovemaking had exhausted him to the marrow, so that in their insomnia his thoughts turned towards escape.
He eased himself up and stood by the bed. If he walked rapidly he could be back at Shelp in two or three days, where he would no doubt find the man with the wheelbarrow also waiting for a boat.
If he begged a lift on some vehicle he might even get there in a few hours, in which case he’d be there before him. Certainly it would be safer and more convivial sitting at a bar by the harbour, drinking the local brew, than pushing on into the savage interior of Nihilon with Mella and her column of incompetent freedom fighters.
He hurriedly dressed, holding his breath while she turned over. The inevitable shots were heard from the centre of Orcam, and he hoped these would now increase to divert attention from his escape. Outside in the small high-walled courtyard he peered hard through the darkness, glad that there was no guard nearby.
It wasn’t easy to undo the bolt of the gate in the far corner which was caked in dry rust, and squeaked noisily when he forced it. He expected to hear Mella’s loving voice call him back, but she seemed even more exhausted than he was for once. He walked along an alleyway formed by two walls, blessing his luck that it was deserted. Even the dogs seemed to have gone from Orcam. But breath scraped in his lungs, as if he were out of condition after being so long carried on wheels. He’d hardly used his feet in the last few days, and now paused to rest, looking up at the clearly defined stars, where all seemed really peaceful — though he knew it was not so.