Travels in Nihilon by Sillitoe Alan;

Author:Sillitoe, Alan; [Sillitoe, Alan;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

There was a humming in the air. It was pitch dark, but by the light of his luminous watch, Adam saw that it was four o’clock. He had been asleep for only three hours, but was suddenly awake, and no longer tired, in spite of his exertions on the previous day. The warm body of the reception-girl lay beside him, her straight black hair spreading over the pillow like a fully opened fan.

His one thought while dressing was to write more notes concerning his travels in Nihilon. There was much to record for the intended guidebook, and he considered his present inexplicable wakefulness a good opportunity to get some of it done. But the humming, which he assumed to come from the giant generators at the dam, disturbed him. Opening the window he stepped on to the terrace. The sky was raddled with stars. He looked up the valley hoping to see the actual wall of the dam, but though the whole sky in that direction was lit up, a block of flats hid it from him.

The generator noise frightened him, especially when he suddenly remembered the story of the dam being unsafe, which he had heard from both the waiter and the pretty girl still sleeping in his bed. The thought of it releasing a ferocious amount of water on to him and thirty thousand others filled his soul with such anxiety that he was ready to vomit. But he fought it back. He didn’t want to believe it. Yet why should they lie to him? Was it merely a complex trick of the town council to make life more exciting for thrill-seeking visitors to Fludd? Nothing seemed strange any more. The previous day’s travel had shattered his standards and expectations, and made him feel both cowardly and ready to do something about his possible doom in the town of Fludd. The fact that thirty thousand valiant people were sleeping around him, and disregarding such danger to their lives, only made him want to get out of the place as soon as possible, for they seemed because of this to be absolutely insane in their passivity, and a positive menace to those, such as himself, who still felt a human twinge of self-preservation. He packed his few belongings into the panniers and, without further looking at his companion of the night, opened the door and pushed his bicycle outside.

In the corridor he could not find a light-switch, and was unable to remember the way to the lift. When he struck a match and found a switch, no bulb lit up. The match burned his finger, and he was in darkness again. Perhaps there was a power failure, he thought, yet how could this be, with the hotel so close to the largest electrical generating plant in Nihilon?

He sat on his cicyle, and pedalled along the corridor, his dynamo lighting all in front. Reaching a cul-de-sac, he turned and rode the other way, close to panic, wanting only to get out of the hotel, the town and valley before the dam burst.

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