Salt

by Adam Roberts

  It was jean-Pierre who had the command, of course; his number Two (nowadays this rank would be called ‘Point’) was carrying one of the two recording chips; the sub-sergeant the other. All these men were the finest. They flew due north in their sound-damped military shuttles, two of them; they could have fitted into one, but redundancy is an important thing, particularly with respect to machines.

  They flew directly into the middle of the Alsist camp, and landed within metres of the entrance to their women’s dorm, the prison in which the hostages were kept. They landed next to the Senaarian shuttle already present, with its contingent of honour guard for Rhoda Titus. These men, apprised of the shuttle’s approach, were ready. Their job was to provide a rearguard, protecting all three shuttles from any attack, jean-Pierre marshalled his men and moved in. Surprise was absolute. The recording chips reveal only a few people gathered about the cave entrance, around a primitive little camp fire. They stare, they stand up. One starts shouting. But jean-Pierre’s men have already moved through at the double and are at the entrance of the dorm. There is no door. Three women are standing on the inside.

  Silently, jean-Pierre moves through. The chip on Point records the astonishment on the faces of the women. One starts shouting, her fist up, her beautiful face contorted with the hatred and violence that is the disease of every Alsist. But then the soldier carrying the chip moves on, and the face disappears from view.

  The room inside is long and low, part carved and part adapted from a natural formation. Glowlamps are bobbing up by the ceiling at intervals; visibility is good. There are beds throughout the space, and at the far end further rooms; presumably kitchens, shower-rooms, child spaces. Each glowlamp carries an echo-breaker to keep the sound intimate and small. There are maybe four hundred women in this huge space, and more than a hundred children. The men fan out, their discipline perfect. Each of them carries a specially designed DNA test button, on the end of a long prod. People are rising from their iniquitous beds, couples (unmarried, of course), children: voices are raised, fists shaken, people start forming angry-looking knots, taking courage from one another’s outrage, but there is no discipline, no master-will guiding them. Our boys start to identify children amongst the throng, and move towards them. Sometimes this is a simple matter of one man taking an infant, touching him with the prod and getting a result: if negative then the soldier moves on; if positive, then the hostage is reclaimed. Of course, we had anticipated that so many years of Alsist brainwashing might have disposed the children to stay in their Sodom, and the hostages were mostly sedated, another painless jab with the DNA prod. Then the soldier would pick up the body of the infant and carry it back to the muster point near the door.

  The efficiency and purpose with which jean-Pierre’s men manage this difficult task is wonderful to watch on the tape made from the recording chips (several versions of this have been circulated; indeed it became something of a bestseller. My favourite is cut to a stirring soundtrack from the final movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto – the build up and then the release of action). Within minutes jean-Pierre musters his men, fourteen young bodies carried in their powerful left arms, their right arms aiming their needlerifles. They defend themselves against savage but uncoordinated attacks by several waves of banshee women.

  The initial task completed, jean-Pierre gives his orders in a clear voice, and the squad moves as one being towards the exit. The element of surprise has given them the edge, and the Alsists have barely registered what is happening. A few more well-placed needles (wounding, I should stress, not killing) mean that the path to the exit is through twin rows of fallen bodies; excellent strategy this, since it provides a barrier to other Alsists wishing to impede the march to the shuttles, and provides a certain degree of cover to jean-Pierre and his men. They move swiftly, despite their burdens, and with few stops to bring fire to bear on attackers they soon make the outside. Light flares in the image we watch, the recording chip takes a moment to adjust to the light outside. The shuttles are visible in the middle distance. The operation inside the Alsist cave has been carried out without a single casualty.

  Sadly, the rearguard, left by the shuttles, had not been so favoured by fate. Their job was to hold the shuttles until jean-Pierre and his men could make it back to them. But in the event a small group of Alsists surprised us. We had not reckoned on any of them being able to put together a fighting unit in time, given their well-known hatred of discipline. But whilst jean-Pierre went through the cave with such efficiency, a small band of Alsists attacked the shuttles. To begin with, they were armed only with stones and one or two axes (which they threw; regular barbarian tactics). The rearguard, taking position around the shuttles, and finding their cover mostly by fitting themselves under the curving prows of the shuttles’ front ends where they arched down towards the salt, were able to keep these marauders at bay with barrages of long-needles. They retreated, and the men started to pull themselves out of position, standing up. Then two of them were shot through the throat with needles fired from long distance – a remarkable piece of sniper accuracy, it must be said; although the very fact that the Alsists possessed firearms in the first place testified to their theft of Senaarian technology. The number of times they had denied stealing this technology! Still, we can expect little more from the amorality of these people.

  The snipers were positioned over the lip of the cave entrance, and it is remarkable that they were able to bring together arms and men so quickly, but then war is about adapting to new situations. The men in the rearguard took what cover they could and concentrated fire on the cave mouth; as they were doing this they were rushed by an ugly-looking mob of Alsists, who came tearing along the strand from down by the water where they had been lurking. Our boys, caught in a primitive pincer movement, were forced to divide their fire. Many Alsists fell groaning, heaped on the salt, filling the air with their foul curses and unrepeatable imprecations (tapes of the raid have had to be edited to remove much of this appalling language: some of it was in the common tongue). But some reached the fallen bodies of the slain soldiers and stole their weapons. Now a real crossfire began, with more and more Alsists swarming in from all over their camp, taking positions behind what cover they could, even behind the fallen bodies of their fellows.

  This counter-attack was made with enough vigour, and with such a superiority of numbers, that things looked difficult. But jean-Pierre, emerging from the cavern, took in the scene with a practised eye. What was needed here was speed. He called for the charge, and the advance guard started running, carrying their burdens and firing from the hip with their right hands, pounding the ground between the cave mouth and the shuttles. This sudden infusion of force tipped the balance. The mob surrounding the shuttles was startled, began losing cohesion. The snipers over the cave-mouth began firing again, of course, and several of jean-Pierre’s men were wounded. The Alsists (this shows how little they truly cared for those hostages, howsoever much they called them ‘their children’) even put a needle through the arm of one of the young people being rescued. But with dispatch jean-Pierre was at the shuttles. There was some hand-to-hand fighting now, as our boys pressed their way onto the shuttle bays; and then, with a rush, the recording chip on Point’s helmet carries the picture of the ground angling, dropping away, of the lake at the mountain coming into shot, with the light from the setting sun falling beautifully upon it. The raid was over, and it had been a triumph. We carried our own dead and wounded back with us, and we also carried the children, freed from their bondage.

  The shuttles landed in secret at the central barracks, the men were debriefed, and the children hospitalised before news was released to the community as a whole. And then, there was such rejoicing! Crowds thronged the streets, singing hosannas and cheering over and over. All newscast channels were given over to reporting the event. It was a moment of tremendous joy for our people, an historic moment. I stood on my veranda before crowds of people so huge that extra police had to be draf
ted in to control them. I spoke, my words amplified by a dozen newscast microphones, and once again I wept. True tears.

  Petja

  It was dusk, and Rhoda Titus was about to return to her shuttle for the night, perhaps to order a flight back to Senaar, I do not know. We were in the office assigned for diplomatist duties, and she was saying something to me of a diplomatic nature. But before she could finish her little speech and leave, someone (I no longer remember who) put their head through the door and said, breathlessly, that soldiers were going about the women’s cave, shooting people. We went at once; even Rhoda Titus came with us, except that seeing the commotion outside she shrank away from the bloodshed and went back in.

  We dashed over the salt towards the women’s dorm, but by the time we arrived the raid was well into its progress. Three shuttles stood a hundred metres from the entrance, with a loose company of Senaarian soldiers huddled about them. These soldiers were firing at the growing crowd of Alsists, some of whom were stretched on the ground by the water, some of whom were about the higher ground above the entrance, and some of whom in their rage were making forays towards the shuttles with rocks, and hurling them ineffectually against the bellies of the machines. But news was spreading throughout the immediate vicinity; I could see people in the distance turning, people emerging from tents and buildings

  What had happened, we later discovered, was that the Senaarians had carefully planned the raid to arrive in Als shortly before the waking time for night shifts. In the dusklight they had forced their way into the women’s dorms where they went from child to child stabbing them with needles to take DNA and straight away test it. The mothers, obviously, fought to prevent them, but were unarmed; many were shot with needles, and eighteen died. Afterwards, impromptu hospitals had to be established to help all the wounded, for there were too many for the two wards that we already had. But this came afterwards.

  Shall I tell you what my first reaction was, seeing those soldiers huddling under the curve of their metal hulls, or dropping to one knee to steady their needleguns and fire towards the margins of the water? My thoughts were not for the wounded, although I could see people crumpling as needles penetrated them; nor did I stand idly there, or stunned (although the person I was with seemed dumb-struck, trying to decipher what was happening). I had no care for this. Instead I felt a weird bubbling in my belly, as with excitement; and in my nostrils (even though I was wearing my mask) I had the savour of a weird smell. I felt a spiritual click, as if I were suddenly home. And I could see what to do.

  The shuttles were between me and the water, and most of the people were on the shore. So I began running, sprinted towards the entrance to the dorm and darted in front of it. There were sounds of screams coming from inside, and the occasional hish of a needle fired. Some women were stumbling out in the light, one or two were coming down from the heights above to see what was happening. ‘Never mind what is happening in the caves for now,’ I said. ‘They came in the shuttles, and we must disable the shuttles first of all.’

  People around me stopped, turned to me. One woman, I think called Dharc or Dharse, said, ‘There were some needleguns fabricated after we arrived. They are in the farm. I think some have gone to fetch them.’

  From the darkened cave mouth still the cries, the sounds of battle. But surely they would not stay there long; they would soon be bursting out into the open air.

  ‘Hurry,’ I said, gripping this woman by her elbow. ‘When they bring the guns, position them along the lip over the dorm entrance. Tell them to concentrate fire on the shuttles.’

  It was as if I energised her, as if electricity passed through my hand into her arm. She nodded once, and loped off towards the farm buildings made from the shell of our spaceship. The others were all looking at me. ‘What shall we do?’ said one of them.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘We need numbers by the lake.’

  I sprinted off, and these others followed. We made a crocodile of people running over the open land between the dorm and the water, which was not good. Looking back, I should have ordered them to stagger their coming-over but at the time it was pumping in my head that I needed to rally the people by the water. As we ran, some of the guards by the shuttles began firing at the target we represented. One of the women following me was dropped by a needle to the head, another took a needle to her hip: it went through the ball of the joint and lodged deep in her pelvis; only a half-inch sticking out – she fell screaming and lay on the salt, although she had the sense to dig herself into the grains a little, to dig herself a little cover. Afterwards, I found myself in a bed next to her in the hospital.

  Needles whished past me. They make a distinctive sound in the air when fired, one not easily forgotten: a sucking sound, and if they pass your field of vision you see them as a sort of instantaneous glowing streak, a retinal flash. And I heard and saw several pass, but none hit me. I was running under fire, for the first time in my life, and yet my sense was of the rightness of what I was doing.

  I reached the water, and threw myself forward where the ground dipped down towards the sea; the slope gave us only meagre cover, and so people tried to bury themselves deeper into the dune of salt, paddling with their hands to open the ground by their heads and duck deeper down. People were stretched there, their masks giving them snout-faces, but their rage clearly visible.

  It took a moment for my breath to return to me. I crawled on my belly towards a knot of people. ‘We must attack,’ I said. ‘We must do it now. Our chance is to take the shuttles and prevent them from leaving. Only by doing that can we win.’ But in the flurry, and with so many people talking and no centre to the group of people, my words were heard only by those immediately next to me.

  People were shouting and bickering all at once. Some yelled how they wished for nothing better than to beat out the pigs’ brains with a rock; one even started to get to his feet. Others were less coherent, and some seemed frightened. I wriggled forward suddenly, like a striking snake, to grab the leg of the man who was clambering to his feet.

  ‘No, no,’ I cried out. ‘We must all attack at once, or it will be luckless.’ I began calling out to all the people about me, telling them to pass the news along. ‘When I stand, we all stand,’ I shouted. ‘When I rush forward, we all rush.’ The men were lodged in close to the shuttles, and our best chance was to draw them out. Then we might pick off one or two, seize their guns, and give ourselves some of their firepower. I could see no other way to success, but I could see that; it was present in my head, complete, like a finished piece of music.

  I tried to pass out orders, but none of the people were trained. Most had been brought out in curiosity at the landing of the shuttles; some had come afterwards, when the fighting had started. Few even had weapons, except some saltstone rocks, or the tools they had happened to carry with them. Quickly I slid backwards into the water and ordered some others to help me tear apart one of the osmotic tanks floating in the sea. We broke the spars of the construction from their floats, and passed them among people. This commotion behind them, our shouts and splashes in the water, drew the attention of some more of the crowd gathered.

  ‘We’ll rush them,’ I cried, trying to ensure the words carried, howsoever muffled by my mask. ‘We’ll attack! Try to keep to a bunch: if we run as a line they’ll have more of a target. But if we all rush at once, we can overpower them with our numbers.’ Only numbers were any use in this conflict. But I could not impress the plan upon the furthest of the gathered people. The fear twitched in my belly that when I rose and ran forward only a few would follow, and we would be easily cut down. But note this: my fear was not that I would be killed, but that the plan would fail. Fear in battle is a strange thing. Let nobody tell you they face battle fearlessly, for the greatest of warriors feels that abdominal commotion, that simultaneous tightening and loosening. But the fear becomes displaced, away from personal injury and death, and onto larger questions.

  I was prepared to stand up and forward
the change towards the shuttles, when I noticed people dropping into positions over the cavemouth. Two snipers had taken position behind the lip of rock, and without pause they began targeting the shuttles. This drew the fire from the Senaarians, and suddenly, my blood pounding so loud it sounded like a great machine in my ears, I stood up. The people rippled upwards beside me until we were all standing. I lifted my spar, and started running.

  And a crowd followed. We started over the few hundred yards of salt desert, the grains giving under our heels. It was only the sloppy running that is possible over loose-grained salt, but we were making towards the shuttles.

  I was screaming, as we all were. Many brandished their clubs or stones over their heads, and I felt my spar become heavy and deadly with my rage, filled with the power to kill. Ridiculous, in truth, that a man might think a simple lump of plasmetal the equal of armed and armoured soldiery, but this is the way adrenalin takes a fighting man. The men by the shuttles, torn between two targets, reacted without cohesion. Some focused their fire on us, and needles began whipping amongst us. People dropped straight down when hit, or else fell backwards with their legs kicking forwards.

  Many people dived to earth in death or injury between the water and the shuttles, but a group of us had almost reached the Senaarians, had come close enough to see the fearful eyes of the enemy. With maybe fifteen metres to go there was a shift in the dynamics of our band. Being untrained, we were, after all, a system governed by chaotic logic, whose courage wavers between killing and self-preservation according to an algorithm difficult to determine, and the evanescent common will that held us together suddenly failed. It is a strange thing to watch, because on the surface there is no change: indeed, if anything, we had surmounted the greatest difficulty. Covering the first stretch of ground was the most dangerous, and now that we were within striking distance the Senaarians would have found needleguns more difficult to wield. But it is not a matter of logic. At one point the adrenalin keeps the soldiers mostly in the fight dynamic; and then at the next, with a mysterious flip down, they find themselves with the overwhelming inner urge towards flight.