Read Online Salt by Adam Roberts - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Adam Roberts
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Life on other planets, Space colonies, War and civilization
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levels, it would leap up. Like a live thing, like a salmon, which is a fish that used to hop out of the waters for joy on Earth. A receptor was embedded in your tooth, a tiny device: the homer was in the mask. And it would leap up towards its mate and there the mask would be, clamped over your mouth. You needed to remember to breathe through the mouth only, of course, but it became a sort of reflex. To feel the gentle smack of mask over the lips, and then to take a deep breath through the mouth. Then you had the leisure to take some nose-clips out of your pouch and fit them over your nostrils. Chlorine up the nose is not a pleasant thing. It is a gas that irritates the lining of the nose.
Barlei
It was characteristic of the Alsists that, without compunction, they stole the land east of the Perse Sea. It is true that protocols signed before the voyage were, shall we say, vague on the subject of exactly how the land was to be allocated although they did stipulate that all nations were to have equal access to water, arable land, mineral resources and the like. But on arrival, it was generally accepted that all ships would remain in orbit until negotiations had reached a consensus concerning land apportioning. Of course, I agreed to host such negotiations aboard the Senaar . But the Alsists, and Szerelem in particular, flouted the process of democracy. They took their ship down and landed on their present site without so much as informing the other captains of their actions. I remember the day; being woken by my PA in the early hours of ship-time, and hustling up to the command bridge in my uniform dressing-gown to watch the Als bruising the atmosphere purple and red with the heat of their entry. And by then it was too late to stop them.
Today, when it is generally accepted that Senaar is the most advantageously positioned nation (rooted as we are on the fertile east coast of the eel-rich Galilee), it may be difficult to understand why this Alsist manoeuvre caused such outrage. But think yourselves back. With so little by way of geographical features, Salt’s weather is dominated by the coriolis force. The winds in the northern hemisphere are prevailingly western; and Als is positioned at the back of the Samson mountains (the Sebestyen, as they call them), which represent a sort of natural windbreak. But the winds in the southern hemisphere come mostly from the east. East of Senaar there was nothing but a thousand miles of salt desert, stretching on and on until eventually you reach the broken hills north of the De Morgan Sea. Often the weather was calm, but when the winds got themselves roused up they could be fierce indeed.
There were two times of great wind, of what used on Earth to be called typhun [ intertext has no index-connection for a%x‘160typhun ’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig.vocabhyp ]. One would happen shortly around sunset, when the cooling air of the nighttime out east would sink and push great howling winds towards us. These would last for an hour or so. Then there would be a dawn wind, less savage but just as unpleasant. And wind off the desert is much worse than wind off the water. As you know, the waters of Galilee are supersaturated and will barely take on more salt; salt blown on to them sinks to the bottom as a sort of sludge, which is one of the reasons why the Galilee is so shallow at our end, and why the water is constantly, yearly, creeping westwards. But in open desert, the driest place in the world, winds break the tiny particles of salt into even smaller microparticles of salt that can be as little as a few atoms across. On exposed bluffs, which act like rock anvils for the hammering wind, these tiny specks are blown up by the billion, a stinging, coruscating blizzard that looks like smoke and feels like a million insects eating the skin from your flesh. At its most intense, the east wind will blind the unwary watcher; will make any exposed skin bleed from a thousand scratches.
Barlei
It was characteristic of the Alsists that, without compunction, they stole the land east of the Perse Sea. It is true that protocols signed before the voyage were, shall we say, vague on the subject of exactly how the land was to be allocated although they did stipulate that all nations were to have equal access to water, arable land, mineral resources and the like. But on arrival, it was generally accepted that all ships would remain in orbit until negotiations had reached a consensus concerning land apportioning. Of course, I agreed to host such negotiations aboard the Senaar . But the Alsists, and Szerelem in particular, flouted the process of democracy. They took their ship down and landed on their present site without so much as informing the other captains of their actions. I remember the day; being woken by my PA in the early hours of ship-time, and hustling up to the command bridge in my uniform dressing-gown to watch the Als bruising the atmosphere purple and red with the heat of their entry. And by then it was too late to stop them.
Today, when it is generally accepted that Senaar is the most advantageously positioned nation (rooted as we are on the fertile east coast of the eel-rich Galilee), it may be difficult to understand why this Alsist manoeuvre caused such outrage. But think yourselves back. With so little by way of geographical features, Salt’s weather is dominated by the coriolis force. The winds in the northern hemisphere are prevailingly western; and Als is positioned at the back of the Samson mountains (the Sebestyen, as they call them), which represent a sort of natural windbreak. But the winds in the southern hemisphere come mostly from the east. East of Senaar there was nothing but a thousand miles of salt desert, stretching on and on until eventually you reach the broken hills north of the De Morgan Sea. Often the weather was calm, but when the winds got themselves roused up they could be fierce indeed.
There were two times of great wind, of what used on Earth to be called typhun [ intertext has no index-connection for a%x‘160typhun ’ suggest consult alternate database, e.g. orig.vocabhyp ]. One would happen shortly around sunset, when the cooling air of the nighttime out east would sink and push great howling winds towards us. These would last for an hour or so. Then there would be a dawn wind, less savage but just as unpleasant. And wind off the desert is much worse than wind off the water. As you know, the waters of Galilee are supersaturated and will barely take on more salt; salt blown on to them sinks to the bottom as a sort of sludge, which is one of the reasons why the Galilee is so shallow at our end, and why the water is constantly, yearly, creeping westwards. But in open desert, the driest place in the world, winds break the tiny particles of salt into even smaller microparticles of salt that can be as little as a few atoms across. On exposed bluffs, which act like rock anvils for the hammering wind, these tiny specks are blown up by the billion, a stinging, coruscating blizzard that looks like smoke and feels like a million insects eating the skin from your flesh. At its most intense, the east wind will blind the unwary watcher; will make any exposed skin bleed from a thousand scratches.
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