Free Salt by Adam Roberts Page B

that the children’s choir was practising in the dome, and people would slip away from their work for half an hour, and gather by the wall to listen. Music is the soul of mathematics, somebody once said, and work is mathematics; energy expenditure, efficiency curves, technology and science, the geometry of building, the topography of city-plans. And people would sing as they worked, God’s plan manifesting itself in this new city. Musicwould soar from the half-finished houses, the squat office buildings without roofs, the public areas.
    Praise.
    For the first month I was busied with establishing the superstructure of government: another building, if you like, but a metaphorical one, set up on the base of my people. But I also travelled. I visited the building of the dyke many times, and put myself about amongst my people, often physically lending a hand. Everywhere I went were happy faces, joyous women wiping sweat from their faces to shake me by the hand, reedy men laughing at my jokes. I visited the hospital many times, greeting the sick and confined. Mostly it was the radiation-foolish, people who were too sloppy with the necessary protocols. Many burns, depilations and cataracts; but even in the venue of sickness there was joy. People would grasp me by the hand with tears in their eyes, even though the skin of their palms was coming away beneath their bandages. I remember particularly leading a ward in prayer; one woman sang loudest of all the worshippers, and the nurses told me afterwards that they were astonished by her vigour, that until my visit she had hardly been able even to raise herself from her bed. She died later that day, I believe; I like to think of her exertions as proof that the spirit can be stronger than the body.
    Within a month of the landing of the Senaar I was beginning my first Galilean journey. The number of times I have travelled around and over our sea but I shall never forget the first time! I flew by shuttle to Yared, on the north coast: from the first, our closest ally and dearest nation-friend. I was there officially to initiate negotiations for the North Coast Spinal Railway, but in fact there was more joy, celebration and praise – and more trade negotiated – than can be suggested by that rather bland official label. I was banqueted every night, shown the plans for their city. The land north of Yared is bitter, without even the limited algae fertility that we enjoy east of Galilee. Accordingly, Yared hemmed the coast, kept close to the water that gives life: few buildings were more than a hundred metres from the waters, and the Yaredish had their gardens in the front: not faux-grassand flowers growing weakly in hastily-assembled soil, but portions of the shallow sea boxed off and desalinated, places for waterlilies and big-fronded leaf plants, for eels and tiny genengineered sticklebacks. I visited many of these homes, met many of the Yaredish people. There was a great televised summit meeting between myself and the Yared President, Al-Sebadoh, at which the treaty of accord was signed. In all the vicissitudes that followed, the years of war and hardship, this treaty between our two great nations has never been breached.
    Of course, Yared is a much poorer nation than are we and most of the trade we undertook on that first visit was symbolic; from the Yaredish artefacts and statues that do indeed possess a certain beauty but are of little practical use, from us Fabricant programmes of tremendous and immediate use. But although enemies of mine have sometimes stigmatised my dealing with the Yared as unprofitable, you must understand that profit is not always measured in terms of money. With Yared we have always had the staunchest of allies, and our alliance is partly founded on their sense of indebtedness. And if some of the more hot-headed Yaredish factions have resented the Senaarian dominance of the Galilee basin, most have recognised the force of necessity, have understood the good