Page 12 of The Mars House

Both of them nodded. January tried not to feel like he had been herded into the head teacher’s office.

“I’m rolling now,” the camera operator put in. “If you say something really good I’ll get it, don’t worry. We’ll put together the interesting bits later.”

January just had time to think he didn’t like the sound of that.

He must have looked nervous, because the camera operator bumped a drone gently against his nose and said, “Boop!”

He snorted.

“Okay. Well, what do you think?” Gale said. “Do you like working here? You can say no, I’ll make sure Mx Legasov doesn’t do anything unmentionable to you.”

It was hard not to feel reassured, January was appalled to realize. This didn’t come across in the news soundbites he’d seen. Those were always Gale on a podium or in the middle of a senatorial debate, monarchal. In person, they were charming.

“It’s a good job,” the other rigger said, smiling for the first time. “They’re always looking for people and it didn’t seem worth naturalising when the work was okay. You want to stay healthy if you can, right? Our boss, Val naturalised and now she’s in a wheelchair. Shit—they, they’re in a . . .”

Gale seemed unoffended. “Don’t worry. He and she is fine for animals and Earthstrongers,” they explained.

January wondered if they could hear themselves, but apparently they could not, because they moved straight on.

“And what did you do when you lived on Earth?”

January almost said no, hang on, let’s talk about how you think Earthstrongers and animals are the same somehow, but he could see exactly where it would go. Gale would say, well, that’s just grammar, and it isn’t even my grammar, I speak Mandarin, what do you want from me? And he would be suspended without pay for a month.

“Shipping, round Cape Horn. Nice to have fewer pirates here.”

Gale laughed—they had an incredible hundred-year-old-whisky laugh—and the other rigger actually went red. January had never seen a real human do that before. He tried not to hope she would be immediately hit by a bus.

“And what about you?” Gale said to January.

“Same reason,” January said, aware that he was broadcasting scepticism about the other rigger’s sanity, but he couldn’t do anything about it. “It’s a lovely place, no one cares if you’re Earthstrong or naturalised as long as you can get the rust off the inside of a biofuel silo.”

Gale smiled. It looked unexpectedly genuine. “What did you do on Earth—shipping too?”

“No, I was a dancer.”

“So this is perhaps more . . . stable work?”

“No,” January said. He had promised himself he wouldn’t get cross if Gale assumed it was the kind of dancing you did on a pole, but it scratched a nerve deep in him that he didn’t know he’d had. “I was the principal at the Royal Ballet in London.”

There was a pause. All at once the entire crew were paying more attention: the press officer, the camera operator, even the interns.

To their credit, Gale did not ask if he was joking. “Then why factory work?”

“London sank, and Earthstrongers can only do manual labour jobs here, but if I naturalised I’d never dance again. I know I’m strong, but strength isn’t just for murdering people. You need it to dance, too.” He tried to channel his inner Val. He could hear all the bitterness coming out in his voice, and he hated being like that. “And like I said, it’s a brilliant place here. Everyone’s lovely.”

Apart from when we have to talk to rich fuckwits like you, but I suppose that’s only point one per cent of the time.

Gale’s focus had intensified again. It felt like being put through an X-ray machine. “Modern naturalisation programmes are much better than those of even two decades ago. If the health effects were less severe, would you do it?”

January forced himself to smile. “They’d have to be a lot less severe.”

“That’s difficult, gravity being what it is,” Gale said. He had expected them to sound annoyed, but it was the opposite. They seemed pleased he was pushing back. It made him feel off balance. He had a sudden sharp sense that he didn’t altogether understand the rules.

Later, January remembered seeing the camera operator go very still, holding the drones dead steady, but it was so peripheral he didn’t notice.

“I just don’t want to end up broken. People have heart problems, muscle atrophy, nerve damage, I don’t want to risk a wheelchair just so I can have an office job. And I don’t think it’s fair for someone who’s never met me to decide I’m dangerous, when I’ve spent my whole life catching other people on stage, not tearing them apart.”

Every instinct in him said: stop now. Don’t get into this argument with them, not in person. The same way you don’t get to snap at a thirteen-year-old girl, even if she’s horrifying, because you’re you, and she’s her.