Salt

by Adam Roberts

  ‘So you have become a rigidist in work, as you are already in sexual matters,’ he said. ‘I have heard stories about you from the other nurses.’

  ‘At least,’ I retorted, ‘my lungs are fully functional.’ We had almost finished growing back his lungs, but in those days (and today as well? It is a long time since I have had a medical rotation) regrown lung produced only tiny alveoli, and the lungs were less than half as efficient as natural ones.

  Lichnovski turned red at this, his sputum coming from his gasping mouth in little specks. ‘You rigidist fucker!’ he grated. ‘When I’m off my back I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you with my own hands!’

  ‘Or I you,’ I replied. ‘My lungs are stronger, after all.’

  ‘You did this to me!’

  ‘And I would do it again.’

  ‘You rigidist fucker! Do you think I don’t know you? What you are doing?’ And he started shouting to the other people in the ward, hoarsely haranguing them. ‘He has a diplomatist’s rota, does he? He’ll set himself up according to the hierarchy! He’ll turn us into a Senaar, into a slave network! Can’t you see what he is doing?’

  This was too insulting, so I went over to his bed and pushed a pillow over his face. His hands leapt up and gripped at my wrists, but I was much the stronger. I held him this way for twenty seconds perhaps, a long time for a man with half a lung; then I let him breathe again. His face was purple, and he had no energy to even curse me. He stared at me with red-veined eyes popping out of his head, hate in the look.

  But at the time I had no thought for him. I went back to Turja. For once she was in a good mood, with a glow in her eyes. We wandered out into the bright sunlight and the fierce, salty air, deciding to walk from the dome to Istenem; and as we walked I hooked my arm through hers, like an old-fashioned couple. Even the snout of her filter-mask could not reduce her beauty in my eyes; even the contacts we all wore, which protected the eyes from the sting of the chlorine, even they could not dull her glance. As we walked, we talked about Lucretius. I had told Turja what Csooris had said about this author from the ancient world, from a world now impossibly distant from us, and Turja had become interested and had got a Fabricant to print out a copy for her to read. It required translation, since Turja could not speak Old Latin. And so I had read the work, or read it again, and so we talked of it together. I considered the whole thrust of the work insufficiently religious but she insisted that when he spoke of the vital power of a human being’s spirit winning through adversity, finding its way through the flaming walls of the world and spreading throughout the measureless whole, that Lucretius was talking about God.

  ‘God as you understand It,’ I said. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  Then she quoted, rustling the Fabricant printout flimsies from her satchel; her voice was blunted by her mask, given a strangely tinny timbre. She said ‘medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat,’ reading with ponderous precision from the page.

  I said, ‘What does this mean?’

  She laughed, the sound stifled by her mask. ‘You must learn Old Latin and find out.’

  So I lurched at her, laughing, to snatch the printout from her and see for myself, and she laughed and ran off. I caught up with her, and we pressed our foreheads together, the convention that had grown up to express kissing when outside, where the masks prevented access to the lips. We were still laughing. The disappearing sunlight was on her face, given a blue-green tint by the chlorine clouds gathering on the water, through which it shone. It made her eyes seem deeper, her hair darker. The sound of the evening wind, the Devil’s Whisper, beginning to gather in the east. A sound like a huge giantess, tall as the stars and a long way off, gathering up a titanic rustling dress from around her knees. I slipped my hand inside Turja’s shirt and undershirt and ran my nails softly over her breasts. She loosened her belt, and we had love very rapidly, hurriedly, leaning against the rock at the foot of Istenem. As I climaxed, I felt a sense of falling, an inward falling away, almost a tumbling. Afterwards she said, ‘sunt lacrimae rerum.’

  This was our last happy time together.

  We went to the dorm, and slept for an hour. Then we joined a large party, and played games in the dorm hallway. After this was drinking and eating, people talking and laughing together. It grew dark. Some people set up a bonfire, and we all sat round it, laughing and drinking, playing a telling game where we had to give names to the shapes made by the fire. I lost track of Turja, and went to find her later on, in a side room away from the party; but she was quiet, her eyes red in the sudden brutal light of a ceiling striplight.

  Three days later she told me she was moving to the women’s dorm; that she wanted to close off the relationship with me; and that she was pregnant.

  ‘Which amounts to the same thing,’ she said briskly, as if speaking common sense. ‘Because, when it comes to term, I shall be living in the women’s dorm anyway, and the child will begin life there.’

  ‘But that’s many months in the future!’ I pointed out. The pregnancy was barely visible yet in the curve of her belly.

  ‘But it is over between us,’ she insisted. Her face was calm, her eyes looked hollow, as if I could see directly through her without touching her at all. I pressed the point.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because of what I want.’

  It was on the edge of my mouth to say and what about what I want? But this was too ridiculous a thing to say, of course, even in my emotional state. I sat down heavily. We were in the dorm, I think. It may have been the dome. I cannot remember precisely.

  ‘You must acknowledge,’ she said, her voice a little gentler, ‘that you have been acting almost in the ways a rigidist might.’

  I had heard as much from several people, usually as a jibe, as a dart thrown at me to try and puncture what people saw as my self-importance and ego (another archaic term, but one too complicated for me to elaborate here). This happened at the same time as I assumed diplomatist duties, and became in the eyes of other nations the ‘hierarch’ of Als. With other people, such as Lichnovski, I was able to throw the accusation back, but from Turja it struck deep. Hurt.

  ‘I have been obsessing,’ I acknowledged in a small voice. ‘You are right to end the relationship. But you have no need to go to the women’s dorm if you would rather stay here.’

  ‘I want to be with women now. I have started a relationship with Csooris.’

  I am ashamed to say I felt a corrosion in my soul, a feeling of resentment at the transfer of affections; but I ‘suppressed’ it. It was an awkward internal manoeuvre, like holding down vomit. ‘This explains your interest in Lucretius,’ I said, and my voice was strained.

  She said, only, ‘yes.’ Then she fetched out the flimsies from her satchel, the same ones as before, and gave me them. The page that happened to be on top contained the following:

  How lovely does it strike us, when the wind churns up the waves on the great sea, to watch from the land and see the great labour of somebody else, struggling with the controls of a boat or trying to keep the sails under control; not because it is enjoyable or a pleasure to see another human being in difficulties, but because it is good to realise what difficulties you yourself are being spared. How lovely is it also to witness great battle plans at War, carried out over the plains, without you yourself being in any danger from them.

  I have kept that page, bookmarked, on my own notepad.

  For three days, or more, I was in a raging and angry mood. I picked fights with people, and when passers-by or other people noted the injustice of my rage they sided with the other person, and would beat me. But, looking back, perhaps it was exactly this punishment I was searching for. After one tumble I broke a collar bone, and admitted myself to the ward to have it sutured; but luckily Lichnovski was asleep, or else he would certainly have baited me and laughed at me from his bed, and I might have killed him in my retaliation.

 
; But this is not the narrative. It was at this time, towards the end of the relationship between Turja and myself, that I first received the embassy of Rhoda Titus, and her guard of six men; and it was during this time that Senaar made official advances towards Als. At the beginning of this embassy I was happy with Turja, and at the end of it I was raging with her absence. And history records the truth of the Senaarian plans, that this embassy was the cover for the Raid.

  Barlei

  I anticipated, as it is the duty of a leader to do, that the Alsists would not respond to diplomacy, and so I brought training and planning for the Raid to fruition during the time of the diplomatic mission. But, for the purposes of show and in the nature of politics, I gave the embassy all my backing. I met in military council, broadcast throughout the Galilee basin on all Visuals, and debated the best actions. It was decided that, Als being in effect a matriarchy (for all its pretensions at anarchy) the best thing would be to send a woman, but as Preminger pointed out, it would be madness to send a woman alone into such a place (the stories of sexual immorality that filtered out were truly heartbreaking). It was agreed that an honour guard would accompany her.

  Rhoda Blossom Titus was the president of the Women’s League of Senaar, an organisation she had herself put in motion during the voyage. I had consulted with her myself after I had assumed the burdens of command, and she convinced me – most straightforwardly, with none of the evasions and flatteries that women are prone to – that her dearest concern was for the unity and order of the nation. She held back from actually joining the Women’s Corps of the army (although, she said, she was happy swearing public allegiance to me), and I suppose there was no official reason for me to expect her to recruit. I was, after all, convinced then of her devotion to our nation.

  I made her a public offer of this embassy, and she accepted; and in conference afterwards I made plain to her that I had little hope of success, and that it was paramount she discover the disposition of the hostages. Our best men were ready to fly in, release them, and be back in Senaar within the hour. They had been training under jean-Pierre for many weeks.

  Petja

  Rhoda Titus came in great pomp, in a shuttle plane. It contained her and a small retinue of personal servants and secretaries, all army people; it also contained a body of blue-uniformed men, with visors to cover their eyes and make them look more inhuman, more alarming to their foe. Each of them carried a short ceremonial sword strapped tightly to their back, between their shoulder blades, so tightly indeed, that I remembered wondering whether it was possible for them to unbind them in the heat of battle. Each of them wore a sidearm dangling from a holster. And each of them hefted a needlegun, bearing it at all times in their hands. They marched down the ramp of their shuttle in order, and stood like trees along a country road as Rhoda Titus walked down. There was that smile on the face of Rhoda Titus that I recognised then as the distinctive expression of high caste Senaarians: the smile of pride.

  I had been contacted and told of her arrival (the Senaarians had specifically requested me, and it was chance, fortunate for them, that I was on rota) and I was waiting for her. I think she expected a crowd to have gathered, or for there to have been other members of the diplomatic party, but there was just me. This was my rota, and I was fulfilling it. In fact – and this will seem ironical to you to hear – I was grateful for the visit, since this work rota had hitherto presented me with little to do, and I was bored.

  There was a crowd, that day. A few people stopped what they were doing and came over to look when they heard the approaching shuttles; and then when the soldiers marched out, they were struck by the sight. Some went to fetch their friends, and people began speaking to one another. One or two even picked up rocks and started throwing them at the shuttle, which caused the soldiers to take up offence positions, aiming their needleguns at Alsists. But the rock-throwing stopped, and name-calling began, and the Senaarians lowered the sights of their needleguns. But before this I met the diplomat.

  The first thing Rhoda Titus said to me was, ‘Where is the rest of your delegation?’

  I only shrugged and smiled at her. Remember, at this point I was still happy in my relationship with Turja, happy in my rigidist paradise. I looked and I saw a neatly-presented, short but pleasant-looking older woman. Womankind delighted me in all its forms, because Turja was a woman so I was minded to be polite to Rhoda Titus. ‘There is only me,’ I said.

  ‘I am Rhoda Blossom Titus,’ she said.

  ‘I know who you are,’ I said. ‘Who else would you be, arriving in a military shuttle with armed invaders?’

  She bristled up at this. ‘This is my honour guard. They are here purely for my protection.’

  I shrugged again.

  ‘You are Petja?’ she asked.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well,’ and her official mask fell away a little, ‘why don’t you tell me so? This is most awkward, standing about like this.’

  ‘I clearly didn’t need to tell you,’ I said, ‘since you knew anyway. But if you feel awkward we can go inside. It is doubtless not good to be standing in the sunlight, soaking up so many rems.’

  ‘You have facilities prepared?’ she asked, straightening up again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘What do you mean, “why”?’

  She wore no mask, even though we were outside, because the Senaarians had this sinus technology; she simply mopped at her nostrils constantly with a handkerchief, and squinted at me in the high-chlorine sunlight by the lake. It meant I could watch the precise motion of her face. Her mouth wrinkled up prettily when she was puzzled.

  ‘Why do you want facilities?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she snapped, her official mask dropping a little again. ‘So that we can begin negotiations! Unless you have prepared a reception for me? Food? Drinks?’

  ‘If you want a drink,’ I said, ‘then I’ll stand friend. But we have nothing prepared.’

  ‘Well, are we to negotiate out here? In the radiation, and the heat?’

  ‘Negotiate?’ I said.

  At this point somebody threw a stone, and it clanged noisily off the side of the second shuttle, sitting by the waters. The guards twitched. Another stone came flying. Another. Rhoda Titus whirled around, and around again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘I am doing nothing,’ I said.

  ‘You are attacking our shuttle! This is an outrage!’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not doing anything of the sort.’

  The captain of the guard of six muttered something, an order clearly, and the soldiers adopted their positions: three dropped to the ground, the remainder standing behind them. They had lowered their rifles at the stone-throwers.

  ‘Tell them to stop!’ insisted Rhoda Titus.

  My mask was itching me a little, so I shifted it slightly on my face. ‘It really has nothing to do with me.’

  The rock-throwing had stopped now; maybe people were bored with it. It was a hot day, and throwing stones is heavy enough work, but the commotion had brought a few more people out, and some were calling names and shouting abuse. The soldiers, I suppose, did not speak our tongue. But they looked nervous.

  Rhoda Titus made little noises in her throat, as if nervous. She hurried back over to the soldiers, and the captain of the troop started, as if electrically jolted. He moved between the stone-throwers and Rhoda Titus. It occurred to me he was protecting her but the crowd was in flux, people coming and going now, and there were no more stones. Rhoda Titus was looking at me. I was laughing, indeed, with the comicality of the bustling Senaarians.

  She came back over to me, cross now.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rhoda Titus said to me, ‘perhaps you think this suave, but believe me, no leader in the sight of God would tolerate such lawlessness.’

  ‘What can you mean?’ I asked. I was not asking her, I was merely speaking my thoughts aloud. But her bleary eyes lit up.

  ‘I’ll
tell you what I mean. I mean the divinely ordained duty of leaders to provide a good example to their people. I mean the necessity of order and harmony. Why did you not restrain those hooligans? The stone-throwers? What if they provoke my guard? What if they were to get themselves killed? What then? This would have stained your honour and mine, both, and possibly started an international incident. Why are you not calling your police, to have these people arrested?’

  But I was bored by this time, so I turned to go inside. In those days it was never a good idea to stay too long in the sunlight.

  I heard Rhoda Titus give a little yelp of outrage behind me, and then she hurried to catch up. I could hear the klink klink of the uniform buckles as the honour guard jogged into position behind us.

  ‘Are you trying to insult me?’ Rhoda Titus demanded, pulling alongside me. ‘Are you trying to insult Senaar?’

  ‘You said you were thirsty. Shall I stand friend and get you a drink? Your people too? But they are soldiers, so perhaps they have their own rations.’

  We came under the Istenem overhang and so out of the sun and into the dorm entrance. There were people gathered, sitting in the shade and watching the comings and goings by the seashore below; people standing and talking; a game of five-a-side played over by the other wall, with a goal chalked against the rock. But people stopped what they were doing when I came in followed by half a dozen armed soldiers. There was some muttering, a sense of communal displeasure. The Drinks Fabricants were on the other side of the seal-door, so I went through, and Rhoda Titus and her entourage followed.