Salt by Adam Roberts

trouble. A skyful of trouble.

2

The Fox and the Lion
Petja
    Ours is a world with very little landscape. It is largely salt desert, with some localised rock formations, and the Sebestyen mountains that back us are the only real mountains. There are three small seas. Before our departure from Earth, analysis of the spectrographic data from this world suggested there was a great deal of free water on our destination world; but there is too little water. It was water that threatened, in the end, to become a currency with us – to be, that is, monies, although such a thing is alien to our way. But scarcity will disrupt the proper order of things.
    Whether there had been more water on Salt fifty years ago and that water had in some manner become lost, or whether the original data were corrupted in some way, it is difficult to say. I have heard conspiracy stories from time to time, stories that suggest that Earth authorities falsified the data to encourage us to go. Perhaps such things happen. And life here has been hard enough for me to be resentful, if I were given to resentful feelings. But the finest beauty is to be found in desolation, and our world is a piece of the finest beauty. It is the silver-salt jewel of God’s creation. Smoke stretching itself in lazy curls against the mirror at three in the morning – even though you know the smoke to be toxic and bad-for-health, even though it is very late and you are exhausted, even though you arestunned with weariness over the talking that has gone on so long – despite all this, the smoke against the mirror will shake you suddenly with its exquisite beauty. Just as a man may look down at his life’s blood draining away, and see the sun glinting in the wetness as a glossy red perfection. So it is that the green claustrophobia of the Earthly oasis, the free-standing water and the heavy wet air, the buzzing insects and the sweat; all these things are ugly, for all that they represent fertility. So it is that the wide stretch of the desert, blank and glittering in a sun that will steal your moisture and kill you, the emptiness and the waste; all this is beautiful, for all that it represents desolation.
    In saying this I am out of touch with the younger generations, who want nothing more than to change the face of our world altogether, to introduce life and growth to every part of its dead face. This is a noble aim but I will be dead before it can ever happen, if it can ever happen, and I am glad of that. Do not think me perverse! A man may walk out on the surface of an alien world, and his eye may dwell on the emptiness, the desert of white aching towards the horizon, and he may feel at home for the first time in his life.
    We arrived in orbit, a great procession of ships, strange and new, from another star. And we celebrated for three days and three nights; but even in the middle of celebration there were people too impatient to make merry. Those who had been allocated shuttle duties took themselves and their friends down to the surface; flew down to the shoreline of the Aradys sea, and danced in its powdery salts with masks on. They came back with chlorine irritation to their eyes, but they were envied. I went down myself, and walked for an hour and a half, wearing goggles and breathing mask; walked away from the sluggish water and past the mountain peak at the furthest end of the range. Walked into the bright east of a new day, with the sun iridescing in the early air.
    It was this impatience that caused us to break with the fleet before the others, and bring our ship down to the seashore. The world was here to fulfil us; this was our chosen land. And, at the same time, we were here to fulfil it: we are its chosen people. This world had neverhad a moon, and we (the fleet) brought it three. The comet, star-shaped now with its loss of bulk from its twelve thruster-sites, like twelve bites into its edge. It circled the world, and on some mornings you could glimpse it, a shining