Richard now regretted having signed the order for its destruction, and hoped that, by some fluke of inefficiency, it might be spared. He would much rather they had asked him to cooperate in the destruction of NAG — the National Art Gallery, a permanent exhibition by the foremost artist of Nihilon, Dung. His paintings were massive and stylish, vividly coloured and monstrously exaggerated poster-bank-notes of the great Nihilist Inflationary Capitalist Transformation Period to the era of the Good Life. The handbook stated that no one had captured the spirit of the people and the nation so profoundly, and went on to say that Dung’s paintings were works of immense significance and genius. They even merited more asterisks than the genius Anonymous Bosh, whose immense pornographic paintings in the old style had been a star attraction in the establishment now under sentence of destruction.
Many rooms of NAG were given over to books of laudatory criticism which had been written about Dung and his masterpieces of mock-fiscal art. Countless costly and elaborate volumes, as well as innumerable scholarly exegeses in the form of magazine articles, were racked and filed for the benefit of people and scholars who rarely went there. Entrance to the museum was free, and recorded not by ticket but by the ratchet works of several turnstiles. The portly men on the door, and all the ushers, were paid according to attendance, and consequently could be seen every minute of the day running in and out and round and round in frenzied circles, so that the numbers registered as entering would be as great as possible. In fact so busy were they at this frantic labour that the few people who genuinely wanted to look at the paintings were rudely told not to interfere with the cultural life of the nation, and pushed out of the way if they insisted on doing so.
It was dark, and the flash of a great explosion filled the sky outside. Richard’s glass of Anihilitz toppled over, and a large crack zigzagged down the bullet-proof glass of the terrace window. When the tremor subsided he wrote in his guidebook notes: ‘The Editors regret to say that the People’s Academy of Erotic Arts and Crafts no longer exists.’
People who crowded into the café to get drunk were saying that the whole city was now in insurrectionist hands. On rooftops bordering the square, soldiers were mounting anti-aircraft guns. In fact hundreds of them were also being placed on the top floors of buildings all over the city, so that their muzzles were pointing out of the windows, through lace curtains, from specially constructed emplacements among the furniture within. This vast array of ambush-artillery was in readiness for the flight of the Nihilist celebration aircraft that was due to fly over when the Nihilonian space-rocket went into the heavens.
It seemed unlikely that this project would begin, but the new and honest authorities of the city were taking no chances. Perhaps as a final effort against the insurrection, the aircraft would still take off from some hidden airfield of the northern coast and fly over Nihilon City, even if the space-rocket were prevented from being launched. So law and order had to be ready for it.
Richard gathered, from the busy conversations, that the celebration aircraft was fitted with four special piston-driven engines, which were tuned to play, like a great symphony organ, the national nihilistic anthem of Nihilonia, and various other compositions, such as ‘Free Enterprise Forever’, and ‘Every Man for Himself’. The pilot could throw the appropriate switch in his cockpit when approaching the city, and the four infernal combustion engines, as well as propelling the aircraft, would begin to play the anthem as he swept low over the tops of the buildings. It was so monstrously loud that there was no possible way of escaping its din. It would fly back and forth over the city for a whole hour, then set off for a circular tour of the principal towns of Nihilon, to make sure that the rest of the country suffered the same fate as the capital.
Richard, in the rapid flow of his writing, found himself exaggerating the truth of this, and recounting for future readers how a score of airborne concatenators were sent hedge-hopping over the country, their eighty pounding engines programmed to whatever so-called music the diabolical Nihilistic government and its pet composers might devise. His arabesque statements descended into lies too fantastic even to sound feasible, till he found it difficult to stop, realizing with hilarity and helplessness that though he had accepted the task of assisting the apostles of honesty and rectitude, he was at the same time being completely corrupted by the saturating nihilism all around him.
He wondered whether any of his colleagues on the guidebook were similarly influenced, and while dwelling on this possible misfortune he saw at a nearby table the young man he had met in the suburban café across the Bridge of Suicides. When he lifted a languid hand by way of greeting, Richard beckoned him over: ‘Have you found the insurrectionist general yet?’
‘Yes,’ said the young man, sitting down and swigging freely from the bottle of Anihilitz. ‘You, of course. I’ve been following you for the last few hours.’
‘And what do you intend to do about it?’ asked Richard, the revolver bulging comfortably close in his briefcase.
‘Kill myself,’ the young man smiled. ‘What else can I do? The government fled to Tungsten this morning, and President Nil has disappeared, so they say. And now the insurrectionists are hunting me.’
‘You want me to help you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have another drink, then. You seem an honest Nihilist. Perhaps I could find you a job in my column. I might even take you on to the staff, since I don’t have one yet.’ Such an act might earn him the approval of any world-weary over-subtle insurrectionary. ‘I’ll pay you well.’
‘I could only do it for nothing.’
‘You’re an idealist already,’ said Richard.
‘I always was,’ said the ex-assassin, finishing the bottle of Anihilitz, and calling for another. Beyond the glass, crowds were dancing around impromptu groups of musicians who had come out with their instruments as they had on all former, though not so successful, occasions. Even so, above the noise, full-stop bullets still appeared to be doing their work in reasonably dark corners. A man who came in was regretting to his wife that the NAG building was on fire. Richard was called to the telephone hanging on the walclass="underline" ‘Hello? Who’s that?’
‘The commander-on-chief.’
‘I recognize your voice, professor.’
‘The brigade will be waiting at PQ 45 at four o’clock in the morning. Motor transport will take your leading battalion to Tungsten. The attack is set for eleven. Good luck.’ The telephone earpiece clicked.
When Richard got back to his table the ex-assassin had gone, together with briefcase, gun, maps, and operations orders, and his precious guidebook-notes. It was the disappearance of these last that worried him most. They were slanted against the very roots of the country itself, nihilistic or not, and so he could be held responsible for them even by a law-and-order régime.
The waiter threw his screwed-up bill on the table, and waited sullenly for him to pay it. ‘The new government will settle that,’ said Richard, opening it out. ‘I’ll sign for it, though.’