By nightfall the advance of her force, now five thousand strong, had taken them close to the foothills of the Athelstan Alps. Because of aches and pains in all his limbs Adam had expected a warrior’s rest before the final move began, but he was disappointed. Since crossing the frontier he’d hardly had time to pull a comb through his hair, though he admitted by way of consolation that being unwashed and ragged did give him a peculiar and attractive feeling of freedom.
Chapter 30
‘Nihilon is a city of half a million people which stands on the beautiful banks of the River Nihil, and can rightly claim to be the great seat of international nihilism. Its streets are laid out in a chequerboard pattern which gives such ease of control that one machine gun can dominate a thoroughfare two miles long. With twelve such streets running from north to south, and twelve going from east to west at right angles, only forty-eight powerful machine guns are needed to keep the population in perpetual subjection. With the complement of six men to a gun, no more than half a battalion need be on duty at any one time. And because these loyal soldiers are relieved every four hours, a mere brigade of eighteen hundred could keep the city centre locked up around the clock. This Nihilon lock-up force is so trustworthy that even the fiercest and most profound eruption of traditional nihilistic boisterousness on the part of the unpredictable inhabitants can be put down with minimal loss on one side, and none on the other.
‘As Nihilists, therefore, the inhabitants of Nihilon City know how far they can go in their celebrations of nihilism. Decades of refinement have taught them to control these outbreaks of liveliness. That is to say, they know when to stop, for a mob that cannot control itself is a danger to the community — it is thought — while a mob that does control itself is a danger to itself. Thus their tainted hearts have properly inculcated into themselves the tradition of therapeutic nihilism. Under the ever-watchful sights of forty-eight machine guns, this is not to be wondered at.
‘The police (who are, after all, none other than the citizens themselves, not only in Nihilon but in any country you care to name) keep an ear close and an eye set for those seditious malcontents who talk of orderly progress and cultural enlightenment, human responsibility and social honesty, and the universal fraud of human love — those brainless engines of menace for whom the government is on the look out, and for whom they cannot help but have an inordinate respect. Those who preach order, say the government, would only like to destroy society. Those who talk of progress want to put the country back to an age of barbarism. Nihilism works. It has been perfected through twenty-five years (if not for centuries), and to expound the benefits of law and order in the great nihilistic republic of Nihilonia is the most direct form of treason, for it means nothing less than plunging the honest population of patriotic enthusiastic Nihilists back into the darkest misery of the soul. Nihilists have come on to the earth in order to survive in disorder, not to go mad in regimentation. Therefore Nihilon, under the benign rule of President Nil, has devised the perfect system of regimented disorder as the best way of safeguarding the eternal spirit of its citizens. Life is the great driving-force of nihilism. Strife means Life! Confusion is creative! Security is idleness! Get up and mix! Nihilism is the soul of life. All talk of order and honesty only confuses, and thereby seeks to enslave and crush it.’
The professor’s commentary on these few pilfered pages from President Nil’s private diary observed that the volatile inhabitants of Nihilon seemed to have moved during the last few months from the desire for therapeutic destruction to a yearning for therapeutic reality, hence the strong indications of the tendency to insurrection, undetected by the authorities who mistakenly but understandably saw it only as the usual calm before one of the periodic nihilistic bouts. This is what the nascent but well-trained opposition had always relied upon, and now that it was definitely coming about, they were taking the opportunity to exacerbate the collapse of power in order to acquire it for themselves.
The commentary concluded by saying that President Nil’s constant extolling of total freedom had proved a most thorough way of enslaving the populace, tying them to the basic nature of their own lived-out fantasies. The slavery of such nihilism was the logical development of the jungle, the ultimate in raw and naked private enterprise, the flowering mushroom of human nature.
Richard wandered around the city, unobtrusively passing the hours until taking command of his troops for the march on Tungsten, examining tourist-sites for his guidebook, and careful at the same time to avoid any would-be assassin. Fortunately, no one as yet knew his identity, which he considered due to the adroitness of the insurrectionsists who had chosen him for the job. He admired such people, and hoped he would in no way disappoint them.
He found his way back to the café with the bullet-proof terrace, and as there wasn’t much shooting in the nearby streets, he thumbed through the papers in his briefcase, one of which informed him that the working people of Nihilon had no trade unions. Instead, the employers had unions, and it was they who went on strike for higher salaries. The workers had been given control of the means of production quite early on, as a matter of nihilistic policy, but the employers still did their usual work because they were found absolutely necessary to the running of industry. The employers prospered on their wages, while the workers got thin on their profits. Thus the employers occasionally went on strike, and when they did, the factory stopped immediately. The government invariably came out in sympathy with their strike, and forced the workers to put the employers’ salaries up. The spiral towards economic disaster continued. The policy of the law-and-order party was, therefore, to reinstate both employers and workers under rational government control, which meant putting a stop to the mad nihilistic capitalism that had so far prevailed.
When the early evening shooting opened it was particularly intense, indicating that the battle for the capital was by no means over. A young man wearing a soldier’s forage cap, and carrying a rifle, came in from the square and walked up to Richard’s table, laying down a scruffy piece of paper which he asked him to sign.
Richard saw, while the soldier stood to attention, that it was a request for permission to blow up the People’s Academy of Erotic Arts and Crafts, and all subsidiary departments of it in various provincial towns. So he signed, regretfully, and the soldier departed with a wide smile, and tears in his eyes. Richard has passed the building during the day, and loitered there for a while, hoping to get in, but it was already picketed by young men of the insurrectionary movement wearing white-and-yellow arm bands, and giving out notices saying that the academy had been shut for the good of the people. Richard gathered from an elderly male onlooker that not everyone agreed with this decision. In fact some people had hoped to watch the television screens in the lecture hall when the report on the sexual hook-up in space was shown. But now it seemed as if they would be forced into the embarrassing position of seeing it at home in the bosoms of their families.
Having signed the order for its destruction, and asked for a plate of food, together with a small bottle of Anihilitz (somewhat stronger than Nihilitz, and only to be drunk while eating), he took out his guidebook-briefing on the People’s Academy of Erotic Arts and Crafts. It commented on the fact that catalogues for this singular establishment were available to the general public, who might apply for them at the side door. ‘However,’ the text continued, ‘it has been brought to the notice of the editors that it is inadvisable to adopt this procedure, as cameras are concealed in nearby buildings so that records may be maintained on who makes application to obtain these unique and degenerate books. We are informed that, at times of social unrest, such applicants are liable to interrogation. Travellers, therefore, ought not to avail themselves of this catalogue-service in case possession of it is used in some way to delay their exit at the frontier. Having said this, our representative should endeavour to gain admittance to this establishment in order to describe it for our future readers.’