The control panel was no mystery to a brain which had not ceased to take in information during the twenty-five years of imprisonment. He had obtained the special tools, without which certain key plates leading to the rear cables could not have been dehinged. It was thought that Professor Took had given up his youthful and middle-aged ideals, but they had hidden and rested in the deepest recesses of his heart, and no influence had been able to reach them. He smiled, and wiped his nose, and considered that his long imprisonment had been worth it, since he was the only man in Tungsten able to save the country, and therefore the world, from the spectacle of this obscene aurora blazing its vile rites in the sky for all to see, in order that nihilism might be perpetuated to the end of time.
And yet, even though the project might actually be called obscene, these space nuptials were to be far from illicit. It was no dirty weekend that Nihilon had planned. The two candidates were to be joined in official matrimony before being packed into the rocket and launched towards their honeymoon. Though this seemed to go against nihilism, the authorities had decided on it as a mark of politeness to the other more moral nations of the world who could not then refuse to show this immortal film to their abundant and eager viewers.
Thus, as well as applauding the technological expertise of nihilism, Nihilon would also be the beneficiary of an untold amount of money in copyright fees. But Professor Took had decided that he could not permit his once proud and honourable country to solve its balance-of-payments problem in this way.
He cut two of the power lines, then joined them together, each to the wrong one. Piece by piece, he methodically worked the countdown with the other side of his brain while he coolly probed and severed. Even the last-minute tests would be read as normal, because of his simple idea of sliding a length of pencil into each vital pipe.
When the rocket went into orbit, a rejection by the computer of its allotted plan would not give it the expected performance. After one circuit of the earth the capsule would detach itself for re-entry, and come back by parachute to the Athelstan plateau. Thus, though the Nihilionian space-programme would not succeed, neither would it be a total failure in the eyes of the world. This was an important consideration for President Took because, as an ex-president of the country, he was still loyal to it, despite the régime. Neither did he have any wish to kill the passengers.
The air was fresh on his way down, a cool breeze licking through the warmth, for he went not by lift, but by the steps, sweeping each one until he came to the bottom. The rest of the day he spent going with his sweeping-brush from one hall to another, sometimes behind the regular cleaners, who had already scoured them well by super-thorough vacuum machines, and occasionally in advance, when his feeble attempts at sweeping were not noticed.
At the evening meal there was much more talk than usual, and he gathered from the confused chatter that a crisis had struck the space-programme, something so serious that there were even bottles of Nihilitz on the tables. For a few minutes of devastating uncertainty his veins seemed blocked and ready to snap at the thought that his sabotage had been discovered, and he waited for louder and more insistent voices to let him know whether or not this was the case. He put on his characteristic shamble and walked from the counter with a bowl of Betelgeuse soup and a round of zodiac bread, and found an empty table between two full and overcrowded ones.
Their talk poured into him, with such force that it was almost more than his mind could bear. Soup trickled on to his wrist when he tried to drink it, and he gripped the edge of the table, thinking he was going to faint. He caught the phrase ‘intestinal fever’, and it gradually penetrated his state of trance that the two subjects set to take part in the space copulation had become so ill that they could not be expected to perform when the rocket went up tomorrow.
Twenty-five years’ work would come to nothing if they couldn’t shove another loving couple into that rocket in the morning. Professor Took, in his tearful bewilderment at this unexpected turn, heard some of the technicians actually laughing loudly, as if it were funny. Meanwhile, the armies of insurrection were closing in, and almost no troops were deploying to stop them, apart from the garrison of Tungsten itself. President Nil’s guards were nowhere to be seen or heard. The frontier divisions were at the frontier, making sure that the Geriatrics did their bit. And the ordinary Nilitia Regiments had either gone to ground or joined the insurrectionaries.
But the lack of an army seemed the least worry to those whose job it was to see that the heavenly nuptials took place as planned. And such had been the insidious influence of nihilism that, in spite of the strictest precautions, no one had suggested training reserve passengers for the historic flight that was to put Nihilon in the forefront of nations. Unless a young man and woman of sufficient physical stamina and mutual attraction were found quickly, a great calamity was upon them.
Chapter 32
Surveying the distant establishment from the roof of Benjamin’s car, it appeared as no accident to Jaquiline that the Groves of Aspron protected the approaches to the rocket-launching base of Tungsten. The first three hundred insurrectionaries had gone into the attack, dodging skilfully between oak and olive trees, and getting as close as possible to the compound wire.
Lifting themselves up from the psychiatrists’ couches, the inmates of Aspron were given rifles by orderlies who only days ago had fought to fasten them down during one of their typical anti-Nihilist frenzies. The patients formed up and marched smartly through the central square of the buildings, and then past their director, who took the salute with tears in his eyes from a rostrum of packing-cases now emptied of the latest drugs. From there they went straight to the front, lining the barbed wire behind a rough embankment of stones and soil.
When three hundred of his best troops withered and wavered under the shattering hail of bullets, Benjamin sat by his car to think. A siege would take too long: he hadn’t sufficient men to bottle up Aspron with part of his column while the rest went to Tungsten. Neither did he care to lose half his force in dead or wounded to capture it, for then he wouldn’t have enough to use in the great battle yet to come. He decided to send six hundred of his hardiest guerrillas through the Groves of Aspron to attack from the south. Since the lunatic defenders did not realize his strength, they must be shown it, for while they were busy holding that assault, he would launch a shock offensive along both sides of the Aspron — Agbat road.
The southerly arm would be led by two lorries laden with petrol drums — which would run into the wall and catch fire. Jaquiline wanted to drive one of these vehicles, and Benjamin, knowing her hatred of nihilism, and the blows she had suffered from it, gave permission for her to do so. A soldier on the seat beside her clutched a string of hand-grenades for use when they stopped at the compound fence.
The sun was low, but the heat of day still hung over them. A petrol stench floated thickly in the lorry and made her feel faint, but she held the wheel on course for the wall, still two hundred metres away. White-coated figures carrying rifles scurried behind the wire. But they seemed to be few, as if no more than pickets had been left at this point, the others having gone to repel the diversionary attack. Nevertheless, their fire at both lorries now coming up the slope was consistent and accurate.