Salt (6 page)

I assured him that our interest was offered in the most tender spirit of commiseration for their loss; that we wished no inappropriate curiosity into the internal arrangement of their ship; but that the safety of the whole fleet had been challenged.

At this he coughed, or laughed, or barked, perhaps. ‘This is not concern,’ he said. I remember the ungrammatical nature of the sentence particularly. When pressed, it transpired that he meant: this is no concern of mine. This was a reflection of the philosophy of these people, that the community bears no responsibility for the evil of the individual. Perhaps you begin to see why it is so difficult to relate to this nation, and why the hard path of war has been unavoidable.

I explained the decision of the Captains’ panel, that the
Als
institute government of some sort, to instil some degree of social
order and prevent catastrophes of this nature happening again. He bridled at this, but I pressed on: after all, I reasoned, it was only a few months before acceleration would be complete, and then with the crew almost all in stasis, government would become an irrelevance anyway. Besides, strong government would help address some of the unpleasantnesses inside the ship. Rumours had reached us of the high rate of crew suicide down there, and the generally low morale.

He seemed impressed by this last argument. ‘I concede that your system has meant that there has been very little suicide, very little cabin craziness amongst your people, Captain,’ he said. ‘But it is not our way, to be governed.’

‘You will adhere to this “way”, then, even at the cost of your life?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the lives of the other ship-members? Of the fleet?’

‘That means nothing to me.’

One of my officers pointed out how important discipline was going to be in setting up a city, a civilisation upon the new world, as much as in a ship. Szerelem scowled at this. I swear he prodded at his nose with his little finger, like an ill-trained child. He scratched at his shaven head, with an astonishing vigour, as if he wished to draw blood. Then he spat into the palm of his own hand and (horrible to watch) wiped it against his sleeve.

‘You people have no spirit,’ he said. ‘You could not understand.’

‘At least my people would never endanger the well-being of the entire fleet, as one of your people has done.’

At this he drained my drink in one gulp and lurched, rather unsteadily, to his feet. I tried to pacify him. I could see several of the junior officers were on the verge of striking him; understandable, perhaps, in the face of his calculated insults to the
Senaar
and those who flew her. But I tried to calm him, assured him that we wished only to reach a settlement that was agreeable to both sides.

He stood, looking down at me. There was an awkward pause, and I decided to use a little of my authority. ‘Sit down, Technician,’ I said, firmly but not rudely. The effect was striking: he obeyed, like a dog,
[
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] almost without thinking.

‘Our interest in your ship is motivated by more than disinterested concern for the fleet as a whole,’ I told him. ‘We do not forget, even if you do, that there are twenty-one of our people aboard the
Als
, the children born to fathers from
Senaar
and held hostage away from their families.’

‘No concern of mine,’ he said.

‘Perhaps you are unconcerned,’ I told him, ‘but the welfare of our people will always concern us. We are not a people to abandon our own; least of all little children, who are unable to look after themselves. We must insist that proper safeguards are put in place, to prevent the less stable of your fellows aboard the
Als
from committing any further crimes against the fleet, and to ensure that the twenty-one grow to the adulthood where they will be able to choose to return home. To
Senaar
.’

He seemed stuck on the word
crime
, which is not a concept they possess in Als. His eyebrows were twisting with the difficulty of understanding it. You can see how little attention they pay to their Bible in that place!

‘I must also insist,’ I said, ‘that the fathers of these children be granted the rights to visit the children up to the time when hibernation begins; and again, during the deceleration at arrival.’

He seemed equally puzzled by this, but also a little belligerent. ‘You can see the children if the mothers agree, but I cannot speak for the mothers.’

‘We must put in place a body that can overrule the selfish desires of the mothers, if such get in the way of internationally accepted law . . .’ I said. But at this, for some reason I have never really been able to fathom, Szerelem leapt to his feet. He seemed raging, furious, almost possessed. My junior officers surged forward to hold him away from me but he cowered back from them.

I stood. ‘What do you mean by this?’

His only answer was to spit on the floor.

Some have said that, at this affront, I should have imprisoned
Szerelem aboard the
Senaar
, perhaps used him as a pawn to force the Alsists towards reason. But this misunderstands the nature of Alsist society. Each individual cares for nobody but himself, and they would in no way be distressed by the loss of another. Perhaps I should have detained him anyway, or perhaps had him executed. Had I been able to see into the seeds of time, as the phrase goes, I would have known then that such action could have saved our people a skyful of trouble. A skyful of trouble.

Ours is a world with very little landscape. It is largely salt desert, with some localised rock formations, and the Sebestyen mountains that back us are the only real mountains. There are three small seas. Before our departure from Earth, analysis of the spectrographic data from this world suggested there was a great deal of free water on our destination world; but there is too little water. It was water that threatened, in the end, to become a currency with us – to be, that is, monies, although such a thing is alien to our way. But scarcity will disrupt the proper order of things.

Whether there had been more water on Salt fifty years ago and that water had in some manner become lost, or whether the original data were corrupted in some way, it is difficult to say. I have heard conspiracy stories from time to time, stories that suggest that Earth authorities falsified the data to encourage us to go. Perhaps such things happen. And life here has been hard enough for me to be resentful, if I were given to resentful feelings. But the finest beauty is to be found in desolation, and our world is a piece of the finest beauty. It is the silver-salt jewel of God’s creation. Smoke stretching itself in lazy curls against the mirror at three in the morning – even though you know the smoke to be toxic and bad-for-health, even though it is very late and you are exhausted, even though you are
stunned with weariness over the talking that has gone on so long – despite all this, the smoke against the mirror will shake you suddenly with its exquisite beauty. Just as a man may look down at his life’s blood draining away, and see the sun glinting in the wetness as a glossy red perfection. So it is that the green claustrophobia of the Earthly oasis, the free-standing water and the heavy wet air, the buzzing insects and the sweat; all these things are ugly, for all that they represent fertility. So it is that the wide stretch of the desert, blank and glittering in a sun that will steal your moisture and kill you, the emptiness and the waste; all this is beautiful, for all that it represents desolation.

In saying this I am out of touch with the younger generations, who want nothing more than to change the face of our world altogether, to introduce life and growth to every part of its dead face. This is a noble aim but I will be dead before it can ever happen, if it can ever happen, and I am glad of that. Do not think me perverse! A man may walk out on the surface of an alien world, and his eye may dwell on the emptiness, the desert of white aching towards the horizon, and he may feel at home for the first time in his life.

We arrived in orbit, a great procession of ships, strange and new, from another star. And we celebrated for three days and three nights; but even in the middle of celebration there were people too impatient to make merry. Those who had been allocated shuttle duties took themselves and their friends down to the surface; flew down to the shoreline of the Aradys sea, and danced in its powdery salts with masks on. They came back with chlorine irritation to their eyes, but they were envied. I went down myself, and walked for an hour and a half, wearing goggles and breathing mask; walked away from the sluggish water and past the mountain peak at the furthest end of the range. Walked into the bright east of a new day, with the sun iridescing in the early air.

It was this impatience that caused us to break with the fleet before the others, and bring our ship down to the seashore. The world was here to fulfil us; this was our chosen land. And, at the same time, we were here to fulfil it: we are its chosen people. This world had never
had a moon, and we (the fleet) brought it three. The comet, star-shaped now with its loss of bulk from its twelve thruster-sites, like twelve bites into its edge. It circled the world, and on some mornings you could glimpse it, a shining star that swooped low over the sky. Then there was the ore-anchor, placed in a polar orbit; and the frozen oxygen. Three moons. There was little life on Salt, no biology and only some botany, and what little there was lurked in the mountains, or floated insentient in the lakes, insignificant. Over time we set about our great tasks, to begin soaking up the free chlorine, filling the sky with air, bringing down water and trace elements into the world. We brought our own life, adapted and tweaked it, and let it begin its slow colonisation. And we brought the world ourselves. We added soul, God’s most precious quantity, to a soulless place. We were the spirit of Adam, passed through the finger of God into his limp body. We were creation; the morning star and the evening star. We would burn down from the heavens, balanced on a spear of oxidising rocket-fuel, slowing to meet with the ground, a shuttle filled with materials and with soul.

The calendar dates from the very date of landfall but many of us had put foot upon Salt before the
Senaar
landed on our new homeworld. In the months after arrival, and after we were settled in orbit around the planet, I was again very busy. The tasks that faced us were large, but it is the large task that draws the human spirit upwards. Humankind will always meet the challenges that face it, and will overcome, with the strength of righteous purpose and by God’s will.

The world was not as hospitable as we had hoped. Our gathered data, purchased before the voyage, had suggested plenty of free-standing water on the world. The great problem with stellar colonisation – and should you, or your children, ever think of harnessing a comet and moving to another star, then you must bear this in mind – the great problem is that data is always received out of
date. Our information left the sun twenty-five years before we began the planning for our voyage; by the time we had mobilised ourselves and arrived, another forty years had passed. The moral is: be prepared to be adaptable. You must play the music God has composed for you, and sight-read if necessary. When you stand before the great Creator at the day of your death, and he demands you explain your conduct on this world, do you think you will be allowed to stutter and mumble? No, you must sing out your life; you must read off the notes of your moral behaviour. You must make your life into music, and that music must be a hymn of praise to authority and to God. Salt was our symphony.

The more immediate problems were not those of insufficient water. There are three bodies of water on Salt, and although the water in them is supersaturated saline it is easy enough to desalinate. Of course, the lakes are not very deep, nor very wide, but they are there; and they were deeper when we arrived than they are now. But even more importantly than the native supplies, we had brought our own ball of dusty frozen water with us in the shape of the comet that had pulled us the immense distance between our worlds. The majority of the comet’s bulk had been dissipated in the process, naturally, but there were still several hundred thousand tonnes. Comet activity in the inner system is low but there are a great many comets on wide and distant orbital trajectories, and it will always be possible, if the water situation becomes too grave, to mount an expedition and retrieve one.

So I was not too worried about the water supply for our new world (these were precisely the terms in which I talked in the early days, as if our world were a house, and water merely a pipe that needed to be properly fixed; such talk raises morale). No, the water supply was not the greatest worry. More pressing, it seemed to me, was the atmosphere. The concentrations of free chlorine were relatively high, as were one or two other poisonous gases; the rest of the air was a cocktail of inert gas and fifty per cent nitrogen, but there were only trace levels of oxygen. We had hoped for more oxygen; or, at least, we had hoped for enough water to be able to derive our own oxygen. It
seemed for a time that the oxygen we had towed with us from Earth (actually from Jupiter) was not going to be enough to raise global levels but we discovered a certain amount of frozen oxides under the South Pole, protected from sun by the sheet salt-ice, and we were able to liberate the oxygen from them. And then we pushed our orbiting ball of pure oxygen downwards out of its orbit, into the atmosphere.