Page 83 of The Salt King

Cai didn’t need to see the map on his phone to know he would have to pan west for Khewra.

West again. Ukraine.

West again. Poland.

Someone else had noticed too. “It’s moving east to west?”

“It appears to be,” the minister said, “although we don’t yet have enough to data to be certain.”

Holy Mother of God. He wanted to run out, demand to be taken to England, sprint across the fen, and haul Avelyn out of Hreodwater before—before. But maybe it was too late, and maybe Avelyn was already dead. How would anyone know if this had happened to Hreodwater? No one would find out until relatives didn’t turn up after a pilgrimage.

“We believe there may also be a site in Russia too. And beyond that . . . everything is unclear. It’s unclear how solid brick and steel have turned to salt. It’s unclear what is reacting to electronic devices, or why. It’s unclear how it killed everyone beyond that line. There have been no survivors so far. We don’t yet know if something inside the mine caused this, or if the mine was a target of something external. All of you are here to piece together answers. Any questions?”

Cai was staring hard at his own memory. Unless all this had happened to Amman while he was on a flight, it wasn’t moving east to west. Jordan was further east than Ukraine or Poland. When had their ministry called? It had to be about quarter past six this morning.

He raised his hand, feeling like an imposter. “What was the exact time of the disaster here?”

“Five twenty-one,” the minister said.

People gave him odd looks, and he wanted to melt into the floor.

Poland was in the same time zone as Rome. Jordan had still been fine when this happened here . . . even though Jordan was four thousand kilometers further east.

He hesitated, then slipped outside and walked fast away from the salt border before turning his phone back on. He strung together a probably incoherent message, and sent it to his friend at the Vatican Observatory. The Observatory was run by the Jesuits, and Cai and Steve, one of the astronomers, had been in the same class during their formation. They had done their pilgrimage in poverty together, and slogged all the way from Rome to Istanbul on the sporadic and unreliable goodwill of the general public. Steve had loved it, what with sleeping out under the stars. Cai had retreated immediately into the diplomatic service to avoid seeing the stars ever again.

I know all this sounds bananas, but is there any chance we have access to satellite imagery that could show up any of these disasters in the southern hemisphere?

“Are we sure it’s salt?” someone was saying when he came back, a scientist for sure; he had the close-cropped haircut and bad dress sense of somebody who never had to speak to anything more judgmental than an electron. “It’s not chemically possible for anything that isn’t an alkali metal to have that reaction.”

“Unfortunately, of that we are certain. This is halite. NaCl, same as table salt. We have no idea how it happened.”

Cai waited to see if anyone was going to mention salt light, because surely they were going to. The glass stained violet, the salt, the electronics . . .

“Has any area been discovered where the damage is less—total?” someone else said.

“There’s a jewellery shop round the corner,” a British voice called back. “The velvet beneath the christening gifts is fine, and we even found one super lucky spider inside a silver cup, but we don’t know why.”

Cai had that tight feeling in his chest he used to have as a student when he wanted to ask a question but couldn’t bring himself to because he shouldn’t really have been in the class at all. They were all scientists here. Someone would know about salt light.

“Okay,” the Defence Minister said, “I’ll hand over to our administrative team, who have put together a database which we can all access, and upload findings for . . .”

Not quite able to believe that was it, Cai looked around desperately, but everyone else was already noting down the log-in directions from the dry admin man. He cut through the crowd, aiming for the Minister, who was pouring herself a cup of sludgy coffee from the jugs keeping warm on tripods set up over real fire braziers.

“Excuse me,” Cai said.

“If you’re going to ask why you’re here, it was decided by the Prime Minister,” she said, with only half a glance at his collar. “He’s a devout man.”

“No, no,” he said. “It’s, um . . .” He had a flash of impatient despair with himself. If you put Avelyn in front of a group of people who had no interest in what he had to say, he did not care: he could speak without once saying um, or seeming worried, or laughing nervously. It wasn’t arrogance—he just knew exactly what his mind could do, and that it could do a great deal.

Cai, who had had to learn over decades to stop exuding an air of apology just for existing, wished he could learn how to be like that. He took a deep breath and tried to channel Avelyn. But thinking of him only brought on a new, useless wash of fear. Oh God, my boy, my lovely boy, please be all right . . . “It’s just that I know what caused the salt and why the electronics won’t work.”

She straightened up slowly. She was tall anyway, but she was wearing high heels, and so she was almost head and shoulders higher than him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve seen it before. I’m—sure some of the scientists know this too. There’s a place in England called Hreodwater. A salt mine, like this. Electricity doesn’t work there. They use halite in the windows, because glass turns violet, steel tools degrade there because of something they call salt-tarnishing . . . and three days ago the Vatican sent an inquisitor, because a man turned to salt just outside the mine.”

She was staring at him. “Is that true?”

“I’ve been there. My best friend is from there. There’s something there that the indigenous people call salt light. It’s what disrupts electricity and all the rest. Earlier today I had a call from Jordan to say some nuclear inspectors at a site there experienced the same conditions, and . . . well.” He showed her the map he had made for the Secretary. Her eyes sharpened as she took his phone. There must have been a wisp of salt light in the air, because the screen fuzzed. “A social media trawl showed similar conditions across about fifty salt mines worldwide. They all seem to be experiencing the effects of salt light. Some low-level, some high.”