Salt Read Free

particular technicians (myself, and the thruster-woman who was called Tatja, and the three geophysicists and land-maintenance people) convened a commune panel to weather the storm of so much self-harm. Some tried to encourage group panels, assemblies of people to talk and play; some tried setting up football matches. And, to be safe, we denied shuttle duty to all but ourselves, which was not popular. There was talk. They said that I did so because my name had not come up on the rota before – as it had not. But I had no respect for that rota, on account of the way it had been abused, with favours and promises traded to those notified of duty to pass it over silently to others.
    It was this way that I took my first shuttle duty, and flew upcable to dock with the Senaar , with messages and what they call ‘tradeables’; mostly it was cages of birds and bird-meat, because the Senaar had not brought birds. And it was on this occasion that I first met the Captain Barlei. I think, indeed, that he and I had spoken once or twice whilst the ships were assembled but when I had liaised with the Senaar ’s tether-person at the beginning of the voyage, there had been a different captain then. Understand the Senaar , where they live by the hierarchy and they passed their acceleration time with politics and intrigues. The captain that had been before was called, I think, Tyrian, or Turian but he was dead when I flew upcable that time.
    They washed me in their airlock soda-shower and then gave mepaper clothes and invited me through to talk. And they gave me a glass of lukewarm vodjaa, except that it was barely a glass, hardly a thimble. And they sat and crowded about me, with all their uniforms and rank-insignia, that meant little to me, except that it made it difficult for me to know to whom to talk. And Barlei was there, and introduced himself. Oh yes, I met him. He was a flabby man, but his clothes refused to recognise the fact and pinched at his flappy throat, and squeezed his fluid belly. Accordingly, his face was grape-coloured, and his eyes bulged forward out of his face. But he had played their game, whatever their game was, and risen to the top of the hierarchy, and Tyrian, Turian, was no more.
    Of course, all they wanted to know about was the death of Katarinya. Every ship had cast eyes upon it, naturally. It was the event of the voyage. But where another ship might have poured us cold vodjaa, or whatever their drink, with the liberality of the wake, and wept with us, and laughed with us, and swapped stories of the dangers of cabin craziness – where another ship would have done this, the Senaar did not. The staff officers all sipped their drinks, and scowled and put the thimbles down on the table as if they were unpleasant things, and then Barlei began talking with a rasping voice about the dangers to the voyage that our ship had brought with it.
    ‘Cabin craziness is indeed a dangerous thing, Captain,’ I agreed.
    And he replied but did not, as I had done, address me by any title or name. This, according to his own schema, was a bad error although it could hardly bother me. He said, ‘We must take precautions to safeguard the voyage as a whole. What if this person had flown upcable? What terrible damage could have been done then?’
    I had thought this myself, of course, but I said (because this is how the game must be played on Senaar ), ‘You misunderstand the case. This Katarinya was sick, homesick. She had left a baby girl with a partner who refused to join the voyage. She lost her mind over this baby and thought to rejoin it. But she was a poor pilot and burnt out the engines, and so she crashed.’ There was an awkward silence, andthe staff officers looked at me. So I said, ‘You may replay the visuals to see for yourself.’
    ‘Our problem, Technician Petja, is . . .’ began one of the officers but he was clearly a junior one, because another broke in upon him.
    ‘It is clearly a matter of discipline, is it