Page 17 of The Salt King

“Oh, God, what?”

“For Instagram,” he said. “I run an account about radiation and what nuclear scientists and inspectors do.”

“Are you allowed to do that?”

“Sure. Actually it’s part of my remit at the ministry. There’s like a . . . transparency drive,” he said, making a face. “I don’t know why the King doesn’t put up a big neon sign above the palace that says ‘Nothing to Do with Iran—Honest.’ ”

“Iran?” Tallis said, lost.

“You know. Big authoritarian theocracy, quite near here, ambitions to become a secret nuclear power, not at all daydreaming about nuking Jerusalem, which is about ten minutes over there?” He nodded behind them, over the Sea. “In Israel, famously a little bit bomb-first-ask-questions-later, therefore very concerned that other nearby kingdoms aren’t also . . .?”

“Oh, I see. Wait. The government wants to make sure Israel knows they aren’t doing anything dodgy, so the answer is to have nuclear inspectors who are also . . . influencers?”

“Oh, yeah. They only hired me because I have ten thousand followers. I don’t even know any nuclear science. My degree’s in photography and interpretive dance.”

Tallis blinked.

He kicked her. “Oh, my God! Of course I have a PhD in nuclear physics, you absolute . . .” He trailed off into grumbly Arabic, which was more inventive at swearing than English. Then, lifting the phone again with a distinct air of revenge: “Hello everyone, I’m here at a mystery site in the desert with our special guest star, Dr Tallis Osho, an unbearable snob from the UK. Tallis, what’s going on?”

“Well, we’ve just left some dosimetry tests on a site with possible radioactive contamination,” Tallis said ruefully, “which is unusual, because usually we’d take readings with hand dosimeters—Geiger counters—and spectrometers, but this site is very strange. Anything electrical stops working once you get closer than about twenty yards away. We have to wait for them to develop now, which might take a few hours. So, here I am, marooned in the dark and working at night with your delightful host, Dr Akhbar, who—I don’t know if this shows on camera—is an irritating foetus person who I may or may not lose in the Dead Sea before the morning.”

“But don’t worry, because old ladies can do what they want, and even if they do send you to prison, it’ll be a really nice prison, with, like, a knitting club and stuff,” Sally said brightly. “More from us later when we have the test results!”

Tallis mimed punching him.

Sally cackled and set the phone down. “That was great. It took me ages to learn to speak to a camera. Do you run a channel too?”

“No, I did a music degree.” She looked above his head into the sky, because threads of light were arcing over the lake in the west, above Israel. “Hey, look, fireworks.”

He looked. “Missiles,” he said, quite gently. “A music degree?”

“I—yeah,” she said, feeling hopelessly naive about the missiles. “No stage fright.”

He paused. If he thought she was stupid, he didn’t show it. “I can’t tell if you’re lying as revenge for the interpretive dance thing.”

“I’m not, I’m not. My family are all musicians, that’s why I’m named after a composer. Thomas Tallis? I play the violin.”

“Is it here?” Sally said, as if that was much more interesting than a war going on behind him.

“What?”

“The violin.”

“It’s in the car—”

“Get it right now! How have you had a violin all this time, and we’ve just been sitting here like giant irradiated lemons? Play things!”

And that was how there came to be a social media video of Tallis playing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” in the dark on the shore of the Dead Sea, a week before Christmas, by the light of missiles over Jerusalem, the strings singing across the lake and the desert with no one there to hear—except Sally, who was filming with his cheek resting on his hand, and smiling a strange sad smile she couldn’t read.

6 Although, nigglingly, she’d always felt that was flawed, because . . . well, the cat knew, didn’t it? Cats counted as observers. It was a little bit worrying that a pillar-thought of modern science rested on some tunnel-visioned physicists not realizing what any small child could have told them, which was that cats were crafty and this whole don’t-look-in-the-radioactive-box business was just a clever way not to be taken to the vet.

7 May the Mass Times the Acceleration be with you!

8

Hreodwater, England

Avelyn was confused when Jericho took down a lamp from the wall and lit it with a silver lighter—the way was plenty bright—but of course it was only bright by salt light. Although there were lamps in the courtyard, and even a lamplighter out trimming the wicks from a long ladder, it wasn’t electric light. It was strange, seeing light in layers, but he could. The lamplight looked high and shallow, and very different to the deep strength of the salt light that glowed from the halite stonework and swam in the air.