‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, following him.
‘You’d better get some of our money,’ he told her, a piece of advice he obviously believed in, for he set her cases down before a money-changer’s window. ‘This is a branch of the Nihilon Bank. They don’t change money on the train, except at two hundred to the unit.’
‘That’s double the rate,’ she said, opening her handbag. ‘I’ll wait till I get on, then.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t. It’s illegal. The currency they give you on the train is forged. You get real ones here.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said and, not to be hurried, wrote in her notebook: ‘Travellers are strongly advised to change money on arrival at the Nihilon frontier post, and should on no account attempt to do so on the trains, as such currency as is then given, though twice that of the official rate, is frequently forged.’ She then changed twenty units, for which she unknowingly received two thousand forged klipps, and followed him to the passport and visa control office.
No one had ever settled the question as to whether a visa was necessary for a visit to Nihilon. At home, Jaquiline had applied for information to the nearest Nihilonian consulate which, by a happy coincidence, was situated in the same building as the offices of the proposed Guide to Nihilon. The following advice-note was returned to her:
‘To enter Nihilon a passport provided with a permanent or transitory visa obtainable from any Nihilon consulate is essential. The former is valid for a stay of one year, while the latter does not permit a sojourn at all.’
In the same envelope was a printed form entitled: ‘Visa Application for Sojourn in Nihilon.’ The first questions were harmless enough, but they later became more personal, posing such queries as to how many children her four grandparents had had, whether they drank or not, and if so, what diseases and divorces there had been for as far back as she could remember. Then the questions ceased to be merely personal. They became shockingly intimate. Jaquiline, almost thirty, but looking younger, had had a good share of experience, but her upbringing had been strict and proper, so that she had controlled her life with such skilful discretion that hardly anyone suspected her of so many adventures. These questions, therefore, prying into the most intimate secrets of her sex life, made her indignant. Forgetting that she had already filled in the harmless part of the form, she tore it into four pieces, put it into an envelope, and posted it back to the Nihilonian consulate. Two days later, an impressive, gold-lettered, fully signed, and exquisitely stamped visa, reeking of perfume, was sent to her free of charge. This she now took from her handbag, and passed, together with her passport, through the small window of the control post, while the stationmaster waited nearby with her luggage. A loudspeaker, halfway down the wall by which she stood, and level with her knees, demanded:
‘Why are you coming into Nihilon?’
‘To write a guidebook.’
‘Do you have any money?’
‘Two thousand travellers units.’
‘How long do you expect to stay?’
‘A month.’
‘What about your accommodation?’
‘I shall be staying at hotels.’
‘Do you have any letters from your prospective employer?’
‘I’m not going to work in Nihilon,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’m only visiting the country.’
‘Oh,’ the loudspeaker sneered. ‘Don’t you like our country? Does nihilism frighten you?’
‘Not at all,’ she answered. ‘Perhaps I would even like to live here, but I can’t tell yet.’
‘Well, you can’t anyway,’ the man’s voice said superciliously. ‘You’d never get permission. Only Nihilon citizens can live in this country. Unless you have a bank account in Nihilon.’
‘I don’t,’ she snapped, tired of this interrogation.
‘Then how much money do you have with you?’
‘I’ve told you. Two thousand travellers units.’
‘You’re lying!’ he cried. ‘Show them to me.’ She took the notes from her wallet, and a hand snatched them away. The stationmaster’s eyes grew large at the sight of such money. She could hear a rustle beyond the window as it was avidly counted. ‘We don’t have to let you in,’ the voice said smugly, pushing her money back with two notes short, which she was unaware of because she didn’t think to check it.
His words alarmed her, for she had work to do on the guidebook. ‘I have a proper visa. And please hurry or I shall miss my train to Nihilon City.’
The stationmaster shuffled his feet. ‘I have to go now, miss.’ But she knew that as long as the stationmaster stayed with her the train wouldn’t be able to leave.
‘Your visa is no concern of ours,’ said the passport official. ‘None whatsoever.’
‘Your consulate abroad gave it to me.’
He gave a small dry laugh: ‘I’m afraid you were the victim of a hoax. However, if you do want to get into Nihilon I can sell you another visa here.’
‘How much?’
‘Three hundred klipps might help.’
She stamped her foot: ‘That’s robbery.’
‘Robbery does not exist in Nihiloh,’ a louder voice said from the speaker. ‘We are all well paid, happy, prosperous, patriotic, sober, and hardworking British — I mean Nihilonian — officials, while you are a foreign whore who has come to disturb the equanimity of our perfect lives. Four hundred klipps, or get back to those Cronacian bastards and see how they rob you.’
She pushed two hundred across the counter, and her correctly stamped passport was returned to her, though with some grumbling. ‘Come on,’ she said to the station-master ‘or I’ll have to bribe them some more.’
Just as they were entering the customs hall a strangled croak came from the passport booth behind, and a scarcely human voice was shouting and whining about her money being forged, which it was, though Jaquiline had no idea they were referring to her, being preoccupied at taking her place in a short queue at the customs desks.
It looked like a fairly busy market, with travellers and uniformed officials handling goods they had shaken on to the tables, and shouting prices at each other. Now and again someone would hand over money, scoop his things into a case, clip it shut, and walk away sweating and muttering towards the door leading to the train.
A blue-uniformed customs officer, holding a clipboard which stated in bold black words, as far as Jaquiline could see, that you were forbidden to bring anything at all into the country, leaned across the table and pulled the half-smoked cigarette from her mouth. ‘You’ll have to pay duty on that,’ he said, stubbing it out, and throwing it on to a pair of scales. ‘How do you expect our nation of honest shopkeepers to live if we let you bring cigarettes into our Nihilon?’
‘They’re very strict here,’ said the stationmaster. ‘This is one of the worst frontier posts as far as the customs people are concerned. Others are quite easy.’
She took up her pad and wrote: ‘At the frontier, scenes of great confusion prevail, especially during the so-called customs-house examination. Every case and packet is opened, so that it is inadvisable for ladies to travel alone. She who has no option but to do so will see the most intimate articles of her wardrobe pawed by brutish fingers, and held up to the gaze of other travellers in order that they may leer at them. This they are too ready to do, in the hope that, having fallen in with the customs officer’s perverted sense of humour, they may be spared having to pay duty on their own goods. But one is indeed made to pay, for one is literally robbed of one’s luggage and then made to buy it back again.’ ‘It is a most degrading experience,’ she wrote later, ‘and the female tourist is advised to maintain dignity and patience through her ordeal. This, it must be said, is something of a feat, under the circumstances, for the victim is taken to a room in which her actual person is searched by two poker-faced dragons of Nihilon officialdom. At this stage one may well begin to wonder whether the country is worth visiting at all, but your correspondent had no option except to persevere in her intention to obtain information for the benefit of future travellers. The least that can be said about this infamous procedure is that a cup of coffee was provided after the experience was over, though at a very inflated price.’