Read Online Salt by Adam Roberts - Free Book Online

catalyst rovers, to travel the depressions and dry sinks in the desert and do the same job there. There were, I believe, other projects launched in the north. But this business of clearing away the poison was very large-scale; it was going to be many years before we saw a significant reduction.
    So there was a second strand to our approach. We fitted our people; we altered ourselves! If Moses will not come to the desert, the desert must come to Moses, a proverb of which my old grandmother was particularly fond. The devices we used are antiques now, of course; at the time they were the highest of high-tech. We would take a person, and sedate them, and under surgical conditions we wouldremove much of their sinuses and fill the space with a carefully grown filter. An organic substance this, derived I think from coral (you will not know what coral is, of course, but you can check it if you are interested), that scrubbed out the chlorine. And because it functioned as a sinus, the removed chlorine was washed out of the nose again in mucus suspension. A self-cleaning lifelong filter-mask. Perhaps you say: what was wrong with the ordinary masks? Was it so much bother to have to put them on? Well, today (and because of us) you can walk about your homeworld as God made you, you don’t understand the irritation of the masks. The way the edges rub the skin, bringing out welts and infections in the flesh. The uncomfortableness, the sense of constriction. And, of course, the danger: they could fail, fall off; you could be at home when your window is breached and your mask not to hand. Worst of all, I suppose, they were symbolic of our incapacity; they squashed against our faces, artificial pig-snouts, a reminder of our imprisonment. How could we bear to be imprisoned on our own world?
    Of course, the Alsists mocked our new technology. It is in the nature of anarchy to fear new technology. Their propaganda satirised us: whenever the visuals were set in Senaar the people always had runny noses; always dirty noses when they represented us! But they did not understand that mucus was only produced when one had been in contact with chlorine; and then it was simply a matter of carrying a handkerchief in order to wipe it away, in the thoroughly civilised manner. With some people, it is true, the implant would cause minor infections, and this would involve them in continual production of mucus; but whatever the Alsists have said, for most this was not a problem. I myself was fitted with an implant (it has since been removed) and I experienced no discomfort or side-effects at all.
    My first walk in the open air was televised throughout Senaar, of course. And what an experience! I fitted my contact lenses, and put in place a gum-guard, to inhibit me breathing through my mouth (it is surprisingly easy to forget to breathe only through the nose and a lungful of chlorine is an unpleasant thing). Then I stepped throughthe airlock on the crystal-salt beach. To be able to walk down to the water, to feel the wind gently on my face, to breathe deeply (through the nose) of the air of our world! To watch the sun, still white, settling towards the horizon, throwing long black shadows behind us all. I would have stayed longer, but the Devil’s Whisper starts up at dusk.
    You may have seen the representation of me contemplating Galilee, with the sun just clipping the horizon, and a crowd gathered to watch me. They were going to put it on our banknotes, but I stopped them because I considered it would have been vainglorious of me to allow such a graven image on something so important as money. But it is commonly reproduced, and there is a mosaic of the scene, assembled from different shades of salt, glued to the wall of the primary debating chamber.
Petja
    Our solution to the chlorine problem was a mini-mask. It was a clever thing. You would wear it about your neck at all times, like a pendant, but when its sense-cell detected chlorine, at even the most minute