The ship sailed along the inhospitable wall of coast, three-quarters around the country of Nihilon to get to the principal seaport in clear weather. Edgar was busy with plane-table and telemeter, compass and camera, sketching in the white spaces on maps he had bought before setting out. He worked in secret, plotting caves and tidemarks, capes, headlands and lighthouses, filling notebooks with data so as to compile his own maps down in the dimly lit cabin. The floor was covered with heavy and conspicuous equipment, and he used two trunks pushed together as a table on which to spread out his papers.
A few days later the same officer greeted him. He was now smoothly shaved, but his clothes were crumpled and dirty, as if he had slept in them since the last meeting. Edgar asked why there were no good maps of Nihilon.
‘No authoritative, authentic maps, you mean,’ he said with the same sly smile. ‘Well, isn’t that as it should be? Why does anybody need maps? If an individual wants them he’s a spy. If a country needs maps it’s moribund. A well-mapped country is a dead country. A complete survey is a burial shroud. A life with maps is a tyranny!’
He lit a pipe, well satisfied with his rabid lunatic speech, then raised his voice even more as he blew out smoke. ‘However, don’t think we have no great geographers in Nihilon. There are at least six really inspired ones, and each has his own department in which he endeavours to produce beautiful maps from the imagination. Each seeks to outdo the inaccurate productions of the others. I even believe they’re for sale in the shops, though they won’t do you much good, because, being works of art, they’re too expensive.’
‘Which shops?’
The naval officer gave a gentle push. ‘Look for them. We’re all Nihilists in Nihilon! I have to mark up yesterday’s false progress on the saloon chart. Goodbye!’
Such fruitless interviews saddened Edgar, and he tried to keep out of this naval officer’s way, an intention in which he was not always successful, so that he was glad when the ship turned the headland into the Bay of Shelp and steamed towards the port at five o’clock in the afternoon.
The city extended nearly five kilometres along the coastal plain, a zone of white buildings behind the docks, with villa suburbs rising on the green hills behind. Ash-grey mountains with jagged summits spread across the sky, and almost surrounded the deep wide bay. Edgar noted forests on the lower slopes, and with binoculars memorized the width and direction of certain roads so as to decide whether or not they were fit for motor lorries, or even a heavier type of vehicle.
The main highway out of town went into a broad valley on its way to Nihilon City, the capital of the country which, as far as he knew from the various maps, appeared to be about two hundred kilometres away. These new views were a feast for his surveyor’s eyes, and he was too busy scribbling in his notebook to think of getting luggage-boxes on deck.
Only two other ships were in harbour, one bearing the distinctive blot-emblem of Nihilon on its funnel, the other flying the Cronacian flag of an olive branch from its stern. Women were busy along the wharves, working cranes and driving trolleys, and when the same young officer tapped him on the shoulder, Edgar put his book away, and asked why so many women were toiling on the shore instead of men.
‘Well, you see, the women of Shelp were very revolutionary. They demanded equality with men, so we gave it to them — building, digging, driving, carrying, rowing, hauling. Now they are happy, because they are equal.’
‘What about the men?’
‘They are happy too. They sit in cafés, and work in offices all day. They are not equal with the women, but they are generous and don’t mind. Everybody works hard in Nihilon, otherwise we wouldn’t have such a good standard of living.’
A dozen small rowing boats came towards the ship, and stout, smiling women at the oars called in throaty melodious voices for the privilege of taking luggage to the shore. ‘I thought we tied up at the quay,’ Edgar said, a chill vision of his bulky and precious luggage balancing on such frail craft. ‘At least that’s what it said in the brochure.’
‘I know, but the quay is under repair, so you must make your own arrangements to get off.’
‘That’s scandalous,’ he cried. ‘I thought the Nihilon Line was a reputable shipping company!’
‘If you aren’t careful,’ said the officer, ‘all the boats will be taken, and then you won’t get off at all. In an hour our ship sets out on another cruise, and you’ll come with it if you’re not ashore by then. Nihilon waits for no man.’
Going down to the cabin Edgar had to fight his way past an elderly traveller struggling up the companionway with two formidable suitcases. A sharp corner of one bruised him in the chest, and while he pressed it back the old man used considerable force by leaning on his upturned suitcases as if he would stay there and push forever. Neither of them spoke, but breathed hard, and glared, and sweated, till Edgar managed to hold the suitcases to the wall, almost crushing the old man who, nevertheless, bit him savagely in the arm as he went by.
Edgar cried out, and turned to retaliate, but the old man faced him with such a goodnatured smile that he was disarmed, and realized that to begin a fight just now would delay getting his own luggage on deck.
He had read in his preliminary notes, issued by the Chief Editor of the guidebook before setting out, that it was inadvisable to put one’s luggage into large trunks because Nihilon porters were afraid of being ruptured, and so might refuse to handle them. But such was Edgar’s fragile equipment, and his lack of apposite travel gear that he had been forced to use bulky pieces after all. But since no porters were available, he need not worry for them, though being thrown on to his own strength was something he hadn’t bargained for either, as he pulled and struggled with one of the lighter trunks up the stairs. When a job had to be done, no matter how arduous and unpleasant, Edgar set about it methodically as the best and indeed only way of doing it. Nothing could stand in his path, and he began in the finest of spirits to tackle his daunting work.
The first trunk was placed by the gangplank, where it would stay till a stout boater could assist him with it and others into her craft. Such was his system. He then went below for another box, considering it safe to leave the first where it was because no one, in view of its weight, would be able to walk off with it.
Through the open cabin door he saw a middle-aged man wearing a mackintosh looking into one of his trunks (which he had left locked) and casually sifting through a notebook, examining its cyphers with the aid of a torch. His brown lustreless eyes gazed up: ‘Don’t reproach me. I’m only doing my duty.’
‘Get out,’ Edgar said, filled with rage.
‘You’re a spy. You’d better give me thirty thousand kricks to keep quiet. We put spies up against a wall in this country.’
‘I’m not a spy. I’m an ordinary traveller.’
‘You’re lying. Look at those pretty little maps.’
Edgar rushed forward, and shut the lid of the trunk with such force that if the man hadn’t withdrawn his fingers in a practised fashion, they would have been smashed to splinters. ‘You’re not playing fair,’ the man cried out, stunned by this belligerent action from such a fair frail person as Edgar. ‘You’re supposed to plead with me, or at least haggle about the price.’