Salt

by Adam Roberts

  Under normal circumstances council meetings are held in camera, and proceedings are secret. When (for instance) military secrets are at stake such a policy is only common sense but in this matter, directly relating to the welfare of the people, I could not keep silence. I refused to betray the community and I left the meeting determined that the people should know the truth. This was the occasion of my football stadium speech; you may have read it, may even have studied it at school. How little I relish the thought of children being schooled to learn my little speech! There are so many other great figures from history, so much more deserving than myself. Of course, the actual speech was rather different from the version that has come through history; there were many more hesitations, words stumbled over, than the records tell. But the basic thread of the speech was as true then as now: that the people’s freedom is paramount. Such hard-won, such expensively-protected freedoms, cannot ever be subject to the vagary of one man, no matter how eminent that man might be. The occasion was a volatile one, I grant: the two most popular teams on Senaar were coming together to contest the most important football cup. Almost everybody not otherwise engaged was there, and hearts were alive, spirits were thrilled with the excitement of the occasion. I took the micphone because I had organised the original tournament. And what I said received a great roar, the whole crowd shouting their approval of what I said. Tyrian, also present with me on the stadium balcony reserved for command, was furious. He stood up, and would certainly have tried to grab the micphone from me, made some counter-speech, perhaps announced my arrest. And that might have provoked a civic disturbance, maybe even a riot, so fiery was the people’s spirit in defence of what I was saying. So I made sure to round off my speech by calling the players to position, and starting the match off. With the players rushing around, and the crowd roaring for one team or another, there was nothing Tyrian could do but sit and watch. I was absorbed in the game but even so I could tell that Tyrian’s eye was on me the whole time. It was obvious now that Tyrian regarded me as nothing short of a traitor as if personal loyalty to him outweighed my duty to the people!

  Still, it would have been foolish of me to neglect my personal safety after the speech. It was only the next day that Tyrian’s men came to place me under ship arrest, and my men were waiting. Some histories talk of the battle of the parkland, but it was no battle, if that term be strictly applied (and I have seen some real battles since that time). Men were killed, regrettably, but much was at stake here. Such fighting as there was mostly took place in my quarters and the surrounding alleyways. Anticipating an attack, I had positioned six of my best men on an elevated walkway; two stood by the door, and more waited inside. Tyrian’s people were taken by surprise. Five were killed, five wounded, and the remainder fled over the parkland, where my men pursued them. It is true that a civilian was killed in this secondary encounter but the needle that killed him came from one of Tyrian’s men.

  Once the first blow had been struck, events assumed their own momentum. Tyrian, less and less in touch with reality, publicly denounced me as a traitor; ordered all the people of Senaar to rise up against me. I do believe he would have welcomed the sight of me bound and gagged like an animal at slaughter, carried shoulder-high by a swarming mob. But his actions had undone him; he was clearly no longer mentally fit for the high trust of ship’s Captain. My loyal over-lieutenants rallied to my cause, the people’s cause, and brought their troops with them. More soldiers confined themselves voluntarily to barracks, under orders from the more cautious of commanders. Tyrian’s personal troop, and Gauster’s, assembled and took control of, in the west, the government buildings and surrounding houses, and in the east the technical installations. I made my base in the southern barracks, and posted my troops in the central park. It was my most earnest wish not to involve civilian habitations in battle but Tyrian was attempting to force my hand. If I tried to take on both forces, my own army would be fighting a war on two fronts, yet if I concentrated on only one, the other could pass easily across the parkland and catch me in a vice. Heavier ordnance was available to us, in bartels in storage, but there was a clear and unavoidable danger in deploying them that the very fabric of the ship would be damaged. Fortunately, I had control of the storage, and sewage/recycling tanks, so I could prevent this eventuality. It also gave me military leverage: with food stores in my control there was always the option to starve Tyrian.

  In the end, Tyrian’s own strategic positioning was his undoing because he had sealed himself away from the people. True, he held the Parliament building, but no citizen would approach, knowing it was held by hostile troops. I was able to move amongst our people, to reassure them, and to gain the confidence and trust that has carried me through the high duties of leadership ever since. I was also able to post men in civilian housing throughout the north and north-east, for the people’s protection and reassurance. Of course, this also gave a base from which to strike down into the technical centres in the east. So, I planned my attack carefully, to minimise damage to the territories of Senaar, and extinguished the sun one day at noon. In the darkness my men broke through the walls and into the airlock hangers in the east; the fighting was fierce here, but expert command on the ground won the day. The bulk of my troops then stormed the east and claimed a swift victory. But my real genius lay in the west, where I organised a mass civilian rally outside government buildings. Tyrian could not counter-attack without first breaking through this unarmed crowd, killing many. He was too weak-willed to take such an action, and by the time the sun was re-ignited I controlled everything but the western buildings. From that moment on there was no doubt as to who would emerge victorious. The remaining over-lieutenants emerged from their barracks and swore their loyalty to me. Two days later, Tyrian resigned. I was ready to put him on trial before the people, and possibly incarcerate him for the remainder of the voyage, but he took his own life with a needlegun.

  Naturally, I needed to punish some officers, but for the men: well, men are men, they follow orders. I stripped all rankers of insignia, but allowed them to re-enlist, swear loyalty to me and go about their business. Business which was, in the first instance, clearing up the damage for which they had been largely responsible.

  And so it was that Tyrian lasted only a little under three months; the tasks of command during so elongated a voyage were too great.

  It may seem strange to you that I arranged to have all the bodies of those soldiers who had fought against me buried with full military honours. They were my enemies, I suppose, but my concern was always for the good of the people of Senaar. These soldiers had only been following the orders of their superior officers, and as such they had done their duty. What more can be asked of any person in our community, even of me? So the bodies were cocooned in military tape, their families awarded the proper military pension of monies and votes, and there was a day of official mourning declared. The bodies were released into space.

  I am not ashamed to say I cried at this ceremony. I consider it a sign of strength in a man that he is able to cry.

  The month that followed was not easy; I had to struggle to rebuild the harmony Senaar had once enjoyed. I reordered military rankings, and set up specific project targets for people to work towards, with various rewards. But the greatest danger to our voyage was not the struggle to assert the popular vote by right: the greatest danger came from outside, as it always does. The anarchy of the Als put the entire mission in jeopardy.

  One of their women, demoralised by the dissolution of life aboard the Als, experienced a psychotic interlude. She became violently insane, murdered several of her crewmates, and stole a shuttle with the intention of doing further damage to the fleet as a whole. Whether she hoped to collide her shuttle at full speed into the next ship downcable (the Babulonis) and so breach the hull and kill everybody inside, or whether her intention all along was to try to wreck the ore-anchor and so jeopardise our chances of successful colonisation, it is difficult to say. What cannot be denied is the
malign determination with which she set out: witness the way she fired her shuttle’s engines to full thrust and aimed herself at that section of the fleet downcable from her. Had her engines not overloaded and her drive buckled, I sincerely believe she would have done much more damage. As it as, we must thank God that she managed only an oblique collision against the body of the ore-anchor.

  Still, this was a near-disaster, and clearly demonstrated that the system by which the Als governed itself was inadequate to the job in hand, the task facing all of us. Of course, I believe in the rights of self-determination of the various peoples of our world; and on a planet, such liberties can be indulged to a much greater extent. But in the fragile, communal world of a starship (which is, after all, what we were) indulgence is only weakness, and the good of the all must supersede the good of any one people. I talked with most of the Captains of the various ships, and we all agreed that either myself or Dauid, the Captain of the Babulonis, must summon a senior member of the Als to a meeting, at which the united voice of the other thirteen ships could be expressed. Only a madman would wish to stand against the majority decision.

  I decided to summon Petja Szerelem. Because he had once been the tether-technician he was amongst the most recognised of individuals from the Als, and since I had already had dealings with him I assumed – wrongly, as it turned out – that I would be able to treat with him. He came, carrying some bird-carcasses as a kind of peace-offering (to be fair to him, I think even he, with his ingrained social ineptness and anarchistic disregard for the feelings of others, even he had the good grace to feel sheepish and ashamed at the action of his crew member). I returned the compliment, gifted him some of the produce from our Fabricants (we have always possessed some of the most sophisticated software for Fabricants amongst any of the ten nations) – magnifiers, a Solidus, some traction-alerters and an Aglet. We also brought out some of our supply of alcohol, and served that up, without so much as hinting at payment: it was an action of the purest open-heartedness, a gesture of friendship.

  Try to imagine the scene. Despite the hardships we had endured, including (let us not forget) a war which badly damaged a great deal of vital equipment; despite this, we prized our personal cleanliness and hygiene above everything. Senaarians are renowned for appearing neat and clean at all times. Try to imagine the stench which greeted our noses when this Szerelem came out of the airlock. The tramp-like accumulation of layers of swathed clothing, many of which were frayed and dirty, and none of which were in any sense style- or colour-coordinated. He had shaven his head bald, perhaps to appear more menacing, although the effect on his thin face was to make him appear undernourished. And the smell! The foetid rush of sweat-gone-bad and uncleanness affronted us. My officers are well trained, and did not betray their revulsion, but to think of embarking on a diplomatic mission without first washing! To go forward as a representative of your people when you smell like rotten meat! We provided him with washing facilities, though they had little chance against the accumulated grime. We also provided him – again, free of charge – with some clean clothes. To all this, as to the food and drink we provided, he said nothing. No word of thanks from his blistered lips.

  He guzzled our offered hospitality as if there were shortages of food and drink aboard his own ship (perhaps there were: I have heard no good things of the ability of Alsists to organise themselves and their supplies). He grunted and sniffed when we made polite small talk. It was, genuinely, as if a particularly well-trained animal, an ape, say, had come to visit us. My junior officers were beginning to bridle; they are, after all, military men, and their blood is hot, howsoever well disciplined they are about it. They were beginning to sense a deliberate insult to our ship, our people.

  ‘Mr Szerelem,’ I opened, ‘I trust you are enjoying our hospitality.’ I said this, not to bait him, only to remind him of the generosity we had shown him. Fresh food and real alcohol are not so easily stored and transported that a travelling starship can afford to give them away every day.

  But he said nothing to this. The principle of gratitude has been almost bred out of the Alsist mentality.

  I explained to him that, having consulted with the other ships’ Captains (a process of consultation which omitted the Als only because that ship had no proper command structures, and so was unable to tender a representative to the videophone Captains’ panel), we had decided to offer certain suggestions to his people, in the purest spirit of friendship, to help safeguard the whole fleet. He snarled at this, his chapped lips sliding up his teeth like an animal. There were stains on his teeth. I believe the Alsists used a great deal of their storage space for alcohol (important to Alsist culture, they claim) and a special kind of weed, a sort of herb that they chew to narcotic effect. Perhaps this Szerelem was affected by this drug at that time.

  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, [intertext has no index-connection for a%x‘1000dog’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig.historiograph] 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.