Salt (11 page)

Soon enough I got up and wandered over to the dome, more to get out of the radiation for a while than anything else. There were people playing football in the area behind the entrance, so I wandered further back and into the goose farm, still wanting to be alone. This was where Turja was just beginning her morning shift.

She had scattered seed for the airborne birds, and was cleaning out the water from the troughs. I watched her do this for a while,
propped under one of the trees newly planted in this part of the dome. I still felt no fatigue from my night’s exertions; if anything, I felt rather hyper, rather keyed-up by the excitement of finishing the project ahead of time and by the morning sex. There was something soothing in watching Turja go about her duties. She moved calmly, gracefully. From the trough to the goose-gate, and then into the compounds to shoo the geese out. They came, hissing and croaking as is the goose way, and she followed, waving her arms in great sweeps and whooping to make them go. These geese were genengineered; they were the height of a man, and most weighed more than a man, but their brains were still tiny goose brains and they were easily scared. The flock started feeding, and Turja moved among them, poking and checking. She noticed one with a septic leg, and had grabbed the huge bird and up-ended it in a moment. I was transfixed. Such grace, combined with strength. She didn’t even need to sit down: the beast’s wings unfurled and struggled against the floor, its cross-looking face twisting away, its legs up in the air. Turja cleaned its wound and applied a steripatch.

‘You’ve worked with geese before,’ I shouted across the yard to her.

She wasn’t startled, which suggested she had seen me come in and had been ignoring me. But once she had right-ended the goose and watched it scurry away to join its lanky fellow, she wandered over and sat down beside me.

‘It’s on my list of preferential jobs,’ she said. ‘I’ve always liked birds.’

‘Birds, yes, I have always liked birds also,’ I said. ‘But not geese.’

‘Really?’ She turned to look at me with eyes narrowed, ready for mockery. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I think maybe it is the teeth. I find it hard to like birds with teeth. Teeth are surely for animals. They look sinister lining a beak.’

She laughed at this. ‘What a rigidist you are!’ she said. The reference was to an old sect from before the voyage had begun, a group who had preached a sort of religiously-endorsed essentialism; it was only used now in jest.

I laughed with her. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ I said, feeling warm.

‘You’re not handsome,’ she replied. ‘Not to my eyes. Although there are some who think you are.’

‘There are?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you know who I am?’

‘Of course,’ she said again.

‘But you don’t find me attractive?’

She shrugged. ‘I like my men with more muscle, larger bodies,’ she said.

‘What a shame,’ I said, laughing. ‘Because I was going to ask if you wanted to have sex, as soon as your rota shift is finished. But now I find that you only like over-developed men!’

She smiled. ‘Well, perhaps I will have sex with you,’ she said. ‘But not until after my morning’s work.’

It was as simple as that. I fell asleep under the tree, and Turja went back to her job. It felt remarkably secure, just sleeping there; popping into consciousness for a moment and noticing her about some other chore, and then slipping away into sleep.

Part of the purpose of this document is to tell what I knew of the hero, jean-Pierre Dreyfus. You will know his face, so there’s little need for me to describe it any detail, but I can say that the visuals do not capture the versatility of expression, the lively vigour of his eyes and his mouth. He was a handsome man, the perfect army officer, and there is a reason why his memory is cherished, even to the present day. That reason is that he represents something, the embodied essence of Senaar. Strong, brave, light on his feet, always courteous and glad to be of use. With his white skin and pale hair he always looked as if he belonged on this world, as if he were a true native. And in his dress uniform he was so handsome! There is no shame in a man admitting the handsomeness of a man, if there is
nothing impure in that admiration; and there was nothing but a pure delight in my breast at the figure of the warrior that jean-Pierre cut.

I promoted him from his lieutenantship to a captaincy soon after our landing, when it became clear that his skills were of an above average calibre. Sometimes people think that the soldiers of an army exist only to kill, but of course the truth is very different. The true soldier loves life, his own and others, almost as much as he loves freedom. The true soldier works and plans to avoid war, to safeguard life. The attributes he possesses are the power to command, the strength to carry out his will, and the bravery to face any consequences. jean-Pierre had all these. Superior officers would find themselves following his suggestions as if they were orders, so forcefully and expertly did he speak. His men loved him with a passionate dearness; they would have died for him at the merest hint. And the women adored him from afar.

By the second week I had put him in charge of the job of building the barracks. This took priority over even the building of domiciles, since the army must be settled and strong before it can usefully hold the umbrella under which the rest of the community may shelter. So jean-Pierre had the power, which he used judiciously, to take civilian workers on secondment (of course they were paid at the army rate, according to their skill) to help construct a secure area with all the necessary facilities. His was a model command. He was up before dusk every day, immaculately turned out in uniform, to greet the evening reveille (most construction took place during the night, of course, when the radiation levels were lower). Then, throughout the evening, he co-ordinated teams, personally gave them their orders, and ensured that the raw materials were delivered, that the Fabricants were positioned and programmed, that the site supervisors knew what was what. Throughout the night he worked tirelessly, bullying-up his men, rebuking the civilians for falling behind the military, encouraging and bringing together. The barracks and all the necessary inner installations were completed a full week ahead of schedule.

He helped me with the building of my own house after this: the man had tremendous energy. After the first month I organised a
festival to celebrate our progress, and the whole of Senaar turned out in the cool of the late evening (once the wind had died down) to cheer the torchlight parade of our army. And the loudest cheer went up for jean-Pierre.

In those early days we were all too much preoccupied to watch many Visuals, but some enterprising individuals were setting up Visual companies nonetheless, using their voyage capital to invest in transmission equipment and going door to door in the new town to sell subscriptions. The pre-recorded shows were all old news, of course: we had all had many years during the voyage to watch the soaps, the sermons, the practical shows. In order to whip up an audience the Visual companies – there were two I think: Senaar Visual and one other, that sank into bankruptcy shortly after beginning trading – anyway, to entice an audience SV hit upon the idea of Visualising our growing community. A sort of real-life soap, you see. They approached me, through my agent, the ensign Preminger, but I declined: I valued my privacy too much to consent to being filmed the whole time, and I did not need the money. I suggested they contact jean-Pierre: he was an up-and-coming man, a popular figure, but I knew he did not have a personal fortune. And so it was that jean-Pierre’s life became a Visual programme.

He came to me about a fortnight after this had begun, to ask my advice. On this occasion, I had to ask the man with the camera-spectacles to wait outside my house. I like my private conversations to be private.

‘I have come to ask your advice, Mr President,’ he said. He always called me ‘Mr President’ at the beginning of our conversations, and I always had to correct him with a ‘Call me Barlei, my dear Lieutenant.’

‘What advice can I offer you, my friend?’ I asked him.

‘It is a question of romance, Barlei,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘Of all the topics on Salt, that is the one I am least qualified to offer advice about! I have had so little experience of love affairs that I am a mere child where such matters are concerned.’

‘Nonetheless,’ he persevered. He was so pure, so manly, that the
mere contemplation of the subject was making him blush. ‘I am wondering about taking a wife.’

‘Splendid idea,’ I said, heartily. ‘You have been single long enough.’

‘Fifty years!’ he joked. This was a common joke amongst those who had come through the hibernation of the voyage. In fact jean-Pierre was biologically a little over twenty-five.

‘Why do you need my advice, my friend? Should you not rather come for my blessing?’ His parents had both died in the hibernation tanks, and on landing I had taken a kindly, parental interest in his welfare. I regarded him almost as my son.

‘Well, Barlei,’ he said, shifting in his seat. ‘I have had several offers, from several ladies. Some of them less than decent.’

‘Beware this sort of temptation, my friend,’ I suggested. ‘Particularly now that you have signed your soul away to the Visual companies! But joking aside, it would harm the morale of our nascent community if word got about that you were a man of loose morals.’

‘All the more reason for me to marry!’ he said.

‘I agree.’

‘Then this is my problem: two first daughters from prominent families in Senaar have taken a fancy to me, and I cannot decide which I should marry!’

I laughed at this. ‘Which do you love?’ I suggested.

‘I love them both,’ he said, sighing. ‘They are both wonderful.’

‘Which is the more beautiful?’

‘One is dark and one is fair,’ he said. ‘But could you say that day is more beautiful than night? Or that red wine tastes sweeter than white?’

‘This is a predicament indeed, my friend,’ I said, still laughing. ‘I think I will hold an exclusive banquet, here in my house, and perhaps I will happen to invite both of these families, and then I can really give you my opinion.’

Preminger was against this idea: he thought it would appear too elitist, too extravagant a gesture this early in the life of our land. But I
overruled him, although I did concede him one point and invite the Visuals to cover the occasion. What Preminger did not understand (he was a man of brilliant intellect, but only a narrowly conceived understanding of humanity) was how a little high living can raise a people’s spirits, even if they can only experience it at second hand. The banquet took place one night the following week, in the still air after the Devil’s Whisper had died away. The nine richest Senaarian families attended. The food was provided by my own chef, although the numbers were such that he had to borrow the skills of another three cooks from neighbouring families. A military quartet provided the music: Bach and Schubert, which I consider the most easeful for digestion. And, naturally, jean-Pierre came, with two of his fellow officers, his friends.

There was a great deal of conversation and laughter, with glasses of wine (red and white, in jean-Pierre’s honour, a little joke between the two of us; although I’m afraid it was only Fabricant wine, water-mixed powder, which never quite tastes the same) and a little dancing. Both Visual companies were there, and a large crowd gathered outside my front door, to cheer each new arrival. It was so liberating, so civilised.

‘We might be back on Earth,’ said Herr Warnke, to me.

‘Not at all,’ I countered. ‘This is distinctively Saltian.’ And, indeed, there were great dishes of differently-coloured salt, all gathered from the topsalt of the surrounding territory. There were many kilos of the stuff in each bowl, clearly much too much for condiment, but in those early days, when the food we ate was still being taken and reconstituted from the ship or the recycle farms, people used to add a little salt to taste. Nowadays, of course, everything we eat (more or less) is salty enough already, coming from the environment it does. But the platters of salt were more than a mere gesture in those days.

And so we filed in to the dinner-hall, and ate delicious food beneath plastic candles that burnt to give off the perfume of lavender and cinnamon. The light glowed on the polished quartz of the table, the Visual camera people hovered discreetly out of the way, the conversation murmured around the table. At one point I proposed a
toast to our new life, our new world, created by God’s Grace in the face of such difficulty, and everybody cheered.

But neither did I forget why I was there. I made sure to be sat within talking distance of both the women jean-Pierre was interested in. One was the eldest daughter of Herr Warnke, a very wealthy man who was already making good business from the manufacture of sorel cements, particularly promising for construction purposes and much cheaper than always mining quartz slabs, with a side-business in trace elements taken from the salts. I knew Warnke fairly well: he was a large-bodied man, with a taste in black suits and orange shirts, a fashion I was not afraid to tell him was too young for his maturity. But at this he would simply shake his balding head and laugh. We had had several meetings, because Warnke Inc. had agreed to take on board two dozen refugees from the chaos along the coast in Eleupolis. Many people wanted to get out, and as the most prosperous nation, even at that early stage, many people applied to come to us. Of course, there would be little point in them coming unless they had money (why would they want to come just to starve in the streets?) or else a guaranteed job of work. Accordingly, Warnke had sent representatives down, and the first two dozen Eleupolisians were due to fly back. This was good for them, because they got to escape the horrors of their homeland; and it was good for Warnke, and for Senaar, because he obtained the very cheapest workforce. He had explained the situation to me, and I (after all, only a military man) had not been too proud to learn.

‘Almost all native Senaarians had come on the voyage with fairly sizeable fortunes,’ he reminded me, rubbing his bald head with the flat of his hand.