Salt

by Adam Roberts

We are the envy of Salt, my children, my people! It is no sin to take pride in this. It is, after all, God’s doing.

‘But the economy cannot really subsist on pure wealth, you see. We need an underclass, people to do the menial jobs. There are few enough of those, but we suffer employment difficulties at the bottom level. I know I

In other lands, I know, work is a chore.

But she did not come wishing to talk, this time. She came grinning, with the after-sex grin that Senaarians adopt when they have gratified the person above them in the hierarchy; the slave’s satisfaction at having pleased their master.

‘It is nothing to do with me.’

Why should there be a special room to which people have to go to speak to God? Is any one room on Salt different from any other? As God sees it, does it matter whether a soul is in a certain room, or is somewhere else?’

Because you have a law, you naturally immediately think of breaking that law. You squash that desire deep in your heart, perhaps, because you think it wrong, but you feel it anyway. So then you have the law, and then you need police and army to prevent people breaking the law, and you need prisons and executions to punish those who do, and you need something greater than all this;

It is a stifling thing, war: it is a society drowning.