Salt (25 page)

Not (I flatter myself) that anybody in that meeting room realised that I was anything other than simply and clearly resolute. The time was for action, and I was ready for that time.

The meeting was hot-tempered. Most of the people in that room had been awake all night, many of them commanding troops to deal with fire and try to save lives. I myself had slept poorly. The first reaction of warriors is to action, and the mood of the group was that we should counterattack Als at once. The reasoning behind this was most eloquently expressed by a young officer called Ets. He reasoned that Als had perpetrated a deliberate act of war against us, and that they would do so again if we did nothing. The best course of action, he said, was an immediate strike at the heart of their power to disable them. This proposal was hurrayed with loud cheers.

I waited for the tumult to settle down, and then spoke. What my braves were ignoring, I said, was the nature of Als. This was not a people who were capable of acting in concert. The bombs planted in our city were certainly the action of individual fanatics, not of a planned military exercise. Of course we must retaliate, but our retaliation must be carefully planned. The point, of course (and it may seem obvious in hindsight, but it requires a good eye to spy this out in advance), is that the larger power structures must be taken into account. Acting against Als now, after so shocking a terrorist outrage, would win approval from the South, and it might be thought only
justice by many inhabitants in the northern cities. But any large-scale military assault on a city on the shores of the Perse would also certainly arouse the unease of the other northern states, who might (they would reason) be next to fall to the military strength of our great nation. Perhaps (I spoke loudly to quell an approving clamour that arose at this thought), perhaps this was indeed the Senaarian destiny, the manifest Will of God for this world. But in this, as in all political matters, timing is everything. If we attack Als and we draw in the military responses of Convento and Smith, then we have straight away declared war on the whole of the Perse, and not just on renegade anarchists. If this is what is to be, then so be it and amen: but we must be prepared for this. We must send in a force large enough to deal with all three nations, and not just the one. Conversely, if we could achieve our immediate end (bringing justice to Als) without involving Convento or Smith, then we would have cut by a third the power of the northern basin; any future development in that area would consequently be one third easier.

Viewed in this fashion, it was clear that how we acted now carried tremendous implications for the future. Haste was not wanted.

We discussed the matter all morning, until lunch was brought in, and after lunch we called up projections of netscreen models. The first alternative was, briefly, to attack Als swiftly from the air and then retreat, such that the other nations of the Perse would not fear invasion, but would instead acknowledge that justice had been meted out. This would reduce the northern threat, and leave us unblooded: but it would also surely provoke retaliation from Als, and possibly from other northern states hoping to use the occasion as a pretext, and to reduce the glory of Senaar a little.

A second alternative was a full invasion, pinpointing Als from above with barrage, and then occupying the broken city with a large force of men. The advantage of this was that we could deal once and for all with Als, and also reduce the chances of their retaliation. Perhaps, indeed, we could civilise these people, bring them discipline and order and take them closer to God. But so aggressive an action would be much more likely to draw out Convento and Smith in what
they would term a defensive war. Some of my juniors were less worried than others by this possibility. Their reasoning was that war was inevitable anyway, and it would be better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. It is true that we would be fighting a war far from home, but so long as we maintained a supremacy in the air our supply lines would be easily maintained.

We argued back and forth between these options, and eventually it fell to me to make a decision. Inescapable power of command. My solution to the problem was, I think, elegant: history has acquitted me of the charges sometimes made by the jealous, that in compromising I weakened the force of both alternatives and gained nothing. Indeed, little could be further from the truth. In fact, my command gave us perfect ground, although I will concede that a certain ineffectiveness on the ground watered down my plan. I was easier in myself, knowing that jean-Pierre – who was present throughout the briefing – backed me throughout. His faith in me never wavered.

This, then, was the action I ordered: Als would be attacked from the air, her major buildings pulped, her will destroyed. Simultaneously we would send (unarmed) ambassadors to the other Perse nations to hold them at bay with intensive negotiations. We would vigorously present the attack as just retribution, and we would explain the presence of a (relatively small) group of armed men on the ground in terms of policing the area, and providing humanitarian aid. This way, I reasoned, we would break Als, and be able to place a force of men on the site to keep them down, without seeming to pose a threat to Convento and Smith. If all went according to plan, we would eliminate Als as a military threat, and simultaneously create a base for further military operations, without antagonising the neighbouring states.

The rest of the day (and I won’t labour this narrative with all the tedious details of discussion) were to do with ordnance, numbers, statistics. It is no easy task to organise a large-scale operation, to bring all the hundreds of separate components together (and each individual soldier is a component as well) and achieve the desired consummation. It took us three days.

That afternoon I made another speech for the Visuals; the speech which perhaps you have read in your schoolbooks. I would like (each of us has a little kernel of pride, I think) to claim each of those words as my own, but the truth is that I wrote the speech very rapidly with three or four aides. I even did without help from Preminger. The smell of that room – the salt-polish on the black wooden table (wood that had flown all the way from Earth with us), the close smell of men together – I think that smell will stay with me until my dying day. The words were well chosen, though (or else why would you be studying them in your schoolbooks?): the point of that speech (and perhaps you will forgive me from making comment upon it) is that each of the words I spoke in it was about
action
, was about bringing all the atoms of state together in a unified effort of will. Strike at Senaar, I said, and you will hurt your hand; because her breast is stony with resolve and God’s justice. Our enemies had sowed the seeds of fire and death, but this was a crop we would not harvest on our own.

After the words had been recorded for netcast and for use on all Visuals at basic fee (jean-Pierre thought I should have charged artists’ rates, so powerful was the effect of my words): after this I toured the city. The speech was injuncted to be broadcast only in the after-Whisper of evening. People, outside now, trying to rebuild wrecked lives, would go indoors for the Whisper, and the audience would be that much larger. Moreover, my words would be followed by news reports of the retaliatory strike against the Alsists. My afternoon tour was partly to allow me to survey the damage at close quarters, but also an opportunity for my people to see me. Rumours had circulated, shortly after the bombs, that I had been wounded, or even killed. Rumour, as many military historians have noted, is a dangerous pathogen, a virus that rattles through the body politic. Visuals, denials of my death might be considered merely politic, but my actual presence in the city was a different matter. A tonic for my people. It was for this reason that, much later, I instituted the anti-rumour legislation, my personal project, paid through the Senate with my own personal votes, because other politicos were too timid to see the wisdom in this legislation. But you, you live amongst a
nation shaped by the outlawing of spreading vicious or malicious rumour that might damage the Senaarian polity. You know how much more wholesome our nation is since that day.

But I am getting ahead of myself. On that day, I selected my open car, with only a web of perfectly transparent woven-fibre covering between myself and the world at large (we had been attacked so recently, it would not do to be careless), and drove down the main street, the one that had recently been renamed in my honour. It was late in the afternoon, and the crowds were coming out from their midday-sun rest period. The cheering! It brought tears to my eyes, to think that the spine of Senaar was so strong. Steel, not to be snapped. By the time I reached the central square, word had spread of my progress, and a great mass had gathered to wave and cheer me. The canopy did not permit me to say any words, but I was able to stand and to wave at the crowd. The courtesy guard had to hold some of the crowd back (excess of enthusiasm; not what my enemies have sometimes called it. I know it was merely an excess of enthusiasm; I was there, after all).

Afterwards, I toured the concert hall, the barracks, the justice centre. The guards cleared me a space, and I got out of the car to actually go amongst the rubble with some of the military workers, the life-savers. A huge crane had been erected over the mess of broken concrete and some sappers were constructing an industrial-scale Fabricant to take the broken stone and rework it into usable rebuilding slabs. I was so overcome I bear-hugged the under-Lieutenant, a moment captured on several Visuals for later display. I am a large man, and I entirely obscured the little fellow from the camera eye.

I was frankly exhausted by so much gadding about, and I retired to my second home; my official residence was now deemed too liable to attack, and I had moved to a secret second residence. Afterwards, scurrilous news-reporting suggested that I had ordered the family out of this second domicile under pain of imprisonment. But there is no truth in this piece of anti-propaganda. The family were too happy to move from their home. Of course they were. Try to understand the
mood that gripped Senaar now. Young boys presented themselves to army offices, eager to serve the nation in war despite their youth. Women organised spontaneous support groups recording net-messages to be sent to single soldiers. There were mass rallies in support of the campaign. People donated some of their votes – entirely free of charge, mark you! – to the military treasury to ensure that certain of the less obvious military legislation be passed without eating into military vote budgets.

Of course, I am going forward a little here in my narrative, and on this particular afternoon war had yet to be declared. But we were eager, we were eager. When news of other Alsist atrocities became common knowledge (and some of these had to be censored before being put out on widely viewed Visual services), they met a resolve already firm. When Rhoda Titus, for instance, made her way back to her home – after imprisonment and torture by the Alsists (and she an accredited diplomat!), and following a daring escape – her trials were greeted with a resolute determination to avenge her suffering that was very different from the hysterical mob action of a less disciplined people. And, after my sleep, I was roused by my aides shortly before the Whisper, and I went through to a room decked out hastily with the necessary surveillance equipment, to watch the seven ships set out on their mission.

I was in the wilderness for a number of days, driving north-east. The land rises from the Southern Ocean for about two hundred miles, the tip of each dune marching inches upwards from its predecessor. I drove and drove, as if escaping something, and by the third day I began to feel the echo in my own soul that presaged a sort of emptiness. I woke, ate, slept, drove, and each activity was as full of nothing as the other. I achieved a genuine hollowing out; a paradox, at once a fragile state, since any self-reflection would have polluted the internal emptiness I was experiencing, and yet a strong state of
mind, because in it there was the profoundest sort of escape. It is difficult to put into words, twice as difficult into foreign words, but perhaps it approached the state the soul feels as it exits the body, with a rustling sound like dead leaves, or the sprinkle of water at the little waterfall. As it leaves the hubbub of sensual noise for the calm static of the spiritual world. Words abandon their post. It was a mystical something.

Travelling forever in the edenic nothingness. Driving slowly, the wheels slipping a little, up the face of the dune; in shadow, perhaps, with the car lights (always on) punching holes of light through the shadow-grey salt bank ahead of me. And then, with a tremendous sense as of a blossoming, a coming-up to the top, so that the whole landscape sweeps into view, lit white-golden by the low-slung sun.

Sometimes salt gusts in the distance, or perhaps the retreating Whisper would hang like a strip of semi-transparent tape along the horizon. It was beautiful. Beautiful. It is still beautiful, here, here in my memory. A memory cannot be accessed, cannot be churned out by a Fabricant.

The next thing to come to my memory, as I try to stitch together a sequential narrative, is battening down, prior to the Evening Whisper. I could not say how many days into my travels this was, because the essence of the salt desert had become a part of my perceptions. A wilderness inside matching the wilderness out: perhaps that balance, that spiritually osmotic neutrality, gave me the windy inner freedom. I imagined my brain white as salt, each of the ructions in its surface a bonsai dune of heaped salt, blown to perfect curvature by the winds. A white world of dryness, barrenness. Freedom from thought, from the parasites of doubting, hurting, hating, that infest the healthiest of minds.

So I battened down, with no sense of portentousness. I had no knowledge of where I was; although it might be better saying no conscious knowledge, because my fugue state had brought me back, and how can we say this was without reason? I climbed inside, and prepared food. I could not tell you what manner of food, or how I received it, whether it spoke to my tongue as tasty, or whether I even
noticed I was eating. Maybe I drank some vodjaa; certainly my Fabricant records suggest I made up a great deal of this over my travels. Maybe I sat, blank, or took out my notepad to read, or do some work. I cannot say.