Salt (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  I cannot forget.

  Representatives from all eleven communities met, and all satisfied the Convention and Allied legal establishment that we could live in peace together. It is no small undertaking, to travel to another star, to make home upon another world. At this early stage in the pre-voyage, spectrographic [intertext has no index-connection for a%x ‘1895spectrographic’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig. science] data suggested there was more water on Salt than in fact there is (and, the logic went, where there is water there is abundance and plenty). Accordingly, it seemed likely that we would be able harmoniously to share the planet between us, to build another outpost of Zion in the skies. Pre-voyage negotiations were accordingly smooth.

  I met Petja Szerelem twice before the voyage actually began. At this time I had not risen to the rank of Captain, and was an over-lieutenant in the ship’s crew. As such it was my duty to liaise with the command officers in the other thirteen ships, to set up channels of communication should we need them during the voyage. In most cases this was straightforward: New Florence and Eleupolis were similar enough to our own. And my stays aboard Yared and Smith IV were particularly stimulating and pleasant. But no ship was as awkward as the Als. To begin with, I had dealings with a woman called Marta Cserepes, but she had no official standing, because (of course) the Alsists have no concept of officialdom, or government, or anything else. This Cserepes had been assigned the job of liaising with other ships in a work rota allotted by a computer program that could not (amazing!) be rewritten without destroying all its files. There was so little flexibility in this arrangement that, midway through my initial connection, the Cserepes was assigned on some other task, some menial cleaning chore in all likelihood. I was presented with another liaison officer, whose name I forget. But I took action. I approached Szerelem, who was at that time chief technician. He had been voted by all the ships as best qualified to supervise the tethering operation, making certain that we were all securely attached to our comet. It seemed to me that, as the most eminent, or at least, the most famous among the Alsists (of course, we didn’t think of them as a nation at that time, but it is convenient to use the present terminology), he should assume the mantle of command, at least for the duration of the voyage. It seemed to me then, as now, that the rigours of deep space require a firm hand, a structure of command; and that if anarchy were so precious to these people, then they could reinstate it in their own kingdom when we arrived at our destination. I explained this to him, cordially. But he frowned, like a child.

  ‘I cannot comprehend,’ he said, with his clogging accent.

  He was then much younger, a small man, rather too dapper for my own notions of manhood. He wore the peculiar accumulation of thin clothes, many ripped and dirty, layer piled on layer that is so characteristic of Alsists (of course we offered him some disposable clothes after he showered). But at least his face was washed and his hair clean and cut (unusual amongst them, I believe). His face was narrow, and his nose came down like a ship’s anchor, straight and clearly defined. The lines running down to the corners of his mouth, those lines that divide the upper lip from the rest of the face (what are they called?) were very deep and pronounced. But his eyes were a woman’s eyes, soft and blue; they had none of the steel of true leadership, the blue I am confident I shall see when I look into God’s own eyes at the day of my death. Still, I found his attitude bewildering, and possibly he was insulting me, in that serpentine, awkward manner of Alsists, who take such perverted delight in bending language, in laughing secretly at you, behind their teeth.

  ‘I cannot comprehend,’ he said, with his sneering voice, but I was, then, a diplomat and I said nothing. Only smiled.

  ‘But surely,’ I pointed out, ‘as a scientist, you understand the importance of order in any organism. There cannot be such a thing as a chaotic organism; it is a contradiction in terms. Surely you can see that together we will form a huge organism, tied together on the umbilicus?’

  But I was wasting my speech. He lectured me a little on the ‘freedom’ those people profess, on the incapability of human governance, of the need to abdicate all such political structures, to trust the primacy of the individual (he said the word ‘political’ as if it were some mild blasphemy). There was more in the same vein, but of course we know that their professed theology of abdication is only a licence to allow themselves any and every immorality.

  Whilst the ships were being constructed, there was a certain amount of fraternisation between peoples. Some ships (William de Morgan, Grey Lantern and Crow I remember) imposed curfews and denied access to all but essential crew. Usually such quarantine was for religious reasons, and as such we respected it. But the Als had no restrictions at all. Many people came and went, many of our people included. Now, the immorality we all associate with Alsists has a particular sexual component. Many of our men were tempted, and many fell.

  This is evidently an awkward matter and whilst it must be faced, as the egg out of which all that destruction hatched, I have no wish to dwell upon the specifics of so sordid an affair.

  Unlike most civilised society, the people aboard the Als deny contraception to the men. The men have access to none of the divinely sanctioned forms of birth-control. Instead, contraception is completely the business of the woman; she need not even tell the man whether she has decided to conceive a child or not, nor would an Alsist dream of asking such a question. Fathers have no rights. We might remember that human beings have no ‘rights’ as such in Alsist anarchy, and these two facts cannot be unrelated. But, however repelled we may be by the behaviour of some of our people, the point is that there was a misunderstanding between a number of my crew members and women on the Als. As a result, there were a number of pregnancies.

  This occasioned my second visit to the ship, a few weeks before final launch. I spoke with several technical members of the crew in an attempt to reclaim these children as ours: according to all rules of law, the fathers have rights equal to the rights of the mothers. Several possibilities existed; we were prepared to offer homes on Senaar to the mothers, or even to set up reciprocal arrangements such that fathers could visit. But nobody would meet my diplomatic mission on any official level. Wherever I went on Als I was met with blank faces, non-comprehension. Not only did they seem certain that children belong only to the mother until puberty (after which time, it seems, they belong to nobody), but they seemed incapable of understanding that their perspective was anomalous, or even unusual. I argued over and again the rights of fathers, of families (for what is a tribe if not a family written large?), but nobody would listen. Or, to be exact, they would listen, but they would not hear. And here is another habit of the Alsists that demonstrates their lack of civilisation. When you engage them in conversation they will listen, with their head tilted slightly, and answer, but only if they are immediately interested. If they are bored, even bored a little bit, then they will simply walk away, without so much as a polite goodbye. I encountered this rudeness many times.

  The business with the children was a great scandal at home, and it was only the fact that we were underway, chasing our comet (with all the hurry and business associated with that) that crowded it out of our minds. The timing was unfortunate. Once we were underway, all personnel were recalled to Senaar and contact with the children was lost. I sometimes think to myself that had we struck then, early, and recovered the children before the voyage, the current state of affairs need never have happened. But there was nothing to do. We caught our comet, and soon we were away, leaving the system of our birth for our new world.

  The year-long acceleration is a difficult time. There is little work that is necessary, and too easily idle minds will brood on injustice. So it was with the business of the children. The officers (there were some) who had fathered these boys and girls were disgraced, of course; but they were still part of the crew. The most senior was the under-Captain, who was reduced to Major; and I was promoted to under-Captain myself. Most of the fathers were
military men, some were civilians and technicians. They banded together, would meet after chapel and at other odd moments and grieve together. Many sympathised with them. It was in large part the environment of the ship during acceleration, the close confinement and the ensuing near-claustrophobia, that encouraged this dissolute thinking. Perhaps it was also the closeness of the scandal to high command. I had known under-Captain Beltane personally, and had once respected him. But his wife had recently died, and some Alsist woman had worked her sensual spell upon him. It was as if his career meant nothing.

  This was a time when people were combustible, and with such a spark, something approaching a scandal, matters could easily have got out of hand. It was a time that required strong leadership, an immediate example. But Captain Tyrian was a brooding man, a difficult individual. And this was a troubling time. He could only see the betrayal of his men; he could not see the larger issues.

  As under-Captain I attempted to settle the people. I organised sporting and musical competitions. Chapel choirs competed for a silver cup. There were individual piano recitals. A football league, consisting of seven teams, was assembled and two separate competitions were set in motion. The football gaming was especially popular, so much so that I agreed to turn over part of the central parkland to construct a second football pitch. Military physical regimes were set up, and ancillary training regimes opened to those civilians interested in perfecting their bodies.

  Let me describe to you how the Senaar was before we landed it and converted it into our beautiful city. It was a small space, then: a dome hung within a larger semi-vacuum canopy in which cargo was stowed. The dome was laid out around a central park of great beauty: green lawns dazzled, crisp white paths of marble paving cut sharply through. There was a central canal, winding from fountain to lakelet (and, through underground piping, back to the fountain) stocked with large carp and trout, who swam lazily and sometimes turned their pink bellies uppermost at the water’s surface. Open lawn stretched up over hillocks; shrubs and trees promised shade, quiet, mystery. There were three bandstands; an athletics track. People swam in the river, and tickled the bellies of the docile fish. People walked with their lovers through the park, and kissed in the shade of trees, or listened to recitals, sitting on the lawn. From the very centre of this Eden rose a single silver needle, four hundred metres tall (kept in place by a wire that went on upwards to the roof of the dome), and at the summit of this needle was a golden ball of light, the finest artificial sun money could buy. It gleamed out upon its little world, and people basked in its brilliance. It even possessed artificial clouds, the size of toys, that came out from a device in the top of the sun to dangle in front of its face, and cast immense shade upon the world, according to a carefully programmed routine. And at sunset, the light slowly glowed redder and redder, and then faded slowly to dusk and darkness. And at sunrise, the light would begin in a pink-pearl glow, and build slowly to the bright sunshine of day. I mean it quite literally when I say that no expense had been spared.

  Around this park, carefully planned and structured, were the residential areas: dormitories for single men and women, apartments for the partnered or married. Apartments were available to anybody willing to accept the associated work regime, but most unattached people were content to stay in the dormitories. There were seven chapels, each spaced equally, and all were full of a Sunday, with hymn music shining in the air. The two chief barracks were north and south (notional compass points, of course, but helpful for orienting oneself), and backed onto training grounds: a mock-town, all stone and concrete in the south, a wilderness of scrub and trees in the north. And, some might say, the most important of all was the complex of government buildings. They were westward: court-house, Parliament and civic centre. The court-house sat every week, not every day as is now necessary: but with a proper sense of discipline and purpose, crime was small-scale and infrequent on our voyage. The parliament was open to all. Every citizen had his or her votes, bought with their own monies or earned in lieu of wages for work, to spend as they wished on whatever motion was called. And, perhaps because of the lack of real work, many citizens took a healthy interest in their government, and attended all debates, whether legislative or merely planning and anticipatory. To the east were the shuttle bays, the airlocks, and the hibernation tanks.

  All was carefully and orderly in its layout. A perfect town, an Eden.

  Of course, there were losses. It is one of the perennials of space travel, of any travel that involves locking people into a small space for decades. Sadly, one or two accidents, and from time to time a citizen who lost their sanity, resulted in death. But keep this in proportion: understand the overall mood of determined strength, of the depth of our joy at this Divine Mission, this journey to another star! You will never undertake such a journey, and it is unlikely your children will, either. Maybe your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, but this is a privilege that comes only every four or five generations. We worked as a community; we maintained the infrastructure and interstructures of our ship; we kept the gardens, operated the necessary machinery; we prayed and worshipped; we talked with friends and spent time with the people we loved; we played sport and competed with love in our hearts; we played music, and listened to our friends and spouses play music. Children were born, bonds strengthened, but because of the cross-section of people we had chosen to undertake the passage there were no people to die of old age, no senescence. Ours was a youthful, vigorous Eden.

  It was also true that I was in touch with the will of our people, where the Captain was not. He became increasingly reclusive, locked away in his apartment with only his partner for company. I was forced into the position of seeming to canvass the people; of walking amongst them, chatting with them in the park to learn their unofficial opinions and views; of attending many open-floor debates in the Parliament; or visiting the technicians. I felt this my duty. I also issued a number of community-service broadcasts, explaining various aspects of the ship’s functioning. Naturally this gave me a higher profile than the Captain, which some of the other senior officers thought objectionable. It is true that I was the member of senior staff that civilians and ordinary military ranks felt they could approach without inhibition, to tell me their grievances or express their opinions, or even simply talk. It is true that my popularity was high. But I considered it important that at least one member of the council of six have this degree of susceptibility – for the good of the ship. Of course, I spoke to the Captain on this matter, several times in fact, but little I could say made any difference. He became odd, even quirky. He took to cutting out the pages of his Bible and rearranging them at random, working on the mistaken belief that God made His will known through such random things. He tried to read significance into the gibberish this made of holy writ.

  I suppose it is true to say that, as Captain, and given the generally good morale of crew and citizens, there was little for Tyrian to do. This does not excuse him, of course: rather the reverse. It is more important, much more, that a captain demonstrate fibre and character during the quiet times than at the pitch of incident or excitement. Anybody can lead in a crisis; it can be easily trained into a person. But to maintain the courage and leadership at all times, to keep people on the road, the purposeful road that leads them through life with joy: that is the real task, the point of leadership. Was Moses the greater leader as the salt water parted and the Egyptians hurried at their back? Or was the greater task to keep his people together, focused and straight, during their decades of Sinai exile? Was Napoleon [intertext has no index-connection for a%x‘50Napoleon’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig.historiograph] the greater before or after Moscow? [intertext has no index-connection for a%x‘60Moscow’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig.historiograph]. The question answers itself.

  Well, it seems that Tyrian was not capable of facing the demands of the quiet, happy time that I had engineered. As is common with leaders at such moments, he grew restless with h
is people’s happiness and tried to force change. He called council meetings to talk about establishing military schools for all children, both during the voyage and after arrival; about altering the hierarchies and routes for promotion of army officers; about setting up a panel to vet all possible marriages. Naturally, at these meetings, I was forced to speak against such absurd suggestions. I could do no more than point out how little the people would welcome such oppressive statutes. It was not that I wished to prevent the Captain from proposing legislation – which was, after all, his right of command – but (and this was the length and breadth of my disloyalty to that once-great man), I insisted that such legislation be placed before Parliament, for the people to spend their votes upon if they so wished. Tyrian wished to pass the legislation under the Necessity rubrics, which would have meant no vote.

  It was, I remember, a difficult session of council. Two of the over-lieutenants sympathised with me, although they had to preserve decorum and side with the Captain. One of the over-lieutenants, a man named Gauster, was vocal and unpleasantly loud in his support of the Captain to do whatever he wanted. Two were undecided between us. The Captain – let me say this, to give some sense of how far he had lost the necessary grip – was unshaven. He was a tall, thin man, and he grew a great deal of facial hair; unchecked his beard would have been extremely thick, and would have covered his neck, chin, lips and grown up his cheeks almost to his eyes. Obviously he shaved, twice a day, but for this meeting – a meeting of all senior staff, I need not remind you – his face was blurred with stubble.