Page 122 of The Mars House

Gale stepped away from him again and back to the edge of the pool to sit down. The water levelled at shoulder height for them. He tried not to stare, but it didn’t work. They looked different to how he had thought. The way they dressed made them broader and more solid, but without the heavy dark layers, they balanced right on the knife edge between strong and fragile. For the first time since he’d known them, they weren’t sitting bolt upright, posture just loosely bad in the way all tall people seemed naturally to fall into after a while, and it made them softer. There were scars that looked like claw marks across their shoulders. That must have been from Gagarin Square. And now they were studying him with the beginnings of a frown etched between their brows, the same one they aimed at reports about problematic taxes or mandatory minimum prison sentences. He had to pretend to be interested in the garden again. He was just beginning to grasp how he looked to people here; not wrong exactly, but a relic of something ancient, from a time and a world where everything had been feral.

He thought they would ask about Earth and what the gravity felt like, to hammer out human beings with forty-inch chests and bones that looked like they’d come from a foundry. He was wrong.

“You’re covered in bruises,” was what Gale said. “Where the cage is.”

“I . . .” He was. “I’ve been wearing it for a few weeks now. You’re supposed to take it off for a couple of hours a day, really.”

“You—didn’t say.”

He shrugged, which ached.

Gale didn’t have to lean forward much to touch the release. Then it was hushing open all around him, and he felt like he was floating, and he had to step back as his arms lifted of their own accord and the silver gauntlets slipped back from his hands. He froze, not knowing what to do, at all. He looked at Gale and there must have been raw fear in his eyes, because Gale held out both hands.

“Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He swallowed hard and had to talk himself into it. He hovered his hands over Gale’s, staring down at the clear straight bruises that traced where the gauntlets had been. Very gradually, feeling exactly like he would have if he had been about to touch a hot stove-top, he flattened his palms to theirs. Gale pressed their hands upwards to make him push down. They were shockingly strong.

“Come on, more than that,” Gale said, not seeming afraid at all. They pushed up harder, and January actually had to try to push back. There was no way he could have hurt them by accident.

Gale clenched both fists and pushed them against to his to let him push back. If it had been a real test of strength, January would have won, but it didn’t feel like he had thought. If he’d closed his eyes, he would have thought he was pushing against a teenager new to the ballet corps. Someone slighter than him, but definitely not weak.

The last test, the one he had never done, was to lace your fingers through the other person’s and squeeze.

They told you only to do that if you were thinking about living with someone.

“I’ll break your hand,” he said, not able to bring himself to exert even the slightest pressure.

“You won’t.”

He squeezed slowly, and Gale shrugged a little, and then more, and more, well beyond the point he would have thought it must hurt.

“There,” said Gale, “that hurts.” But they didn’t pull their hands back. Instead they only kept his once he let his grip fade.

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” he asked helplessly.

Gale had been studying his hands, but they met his eyes now. Theirs had stars in the black; the only light in the room was from the candles. “The Swan King is one thing at night, and another in the day. One is . . . wild, and one is familiar. But neither means anyone any harm.”

He hesitated, then stepped into Gale’s arms and kissed them, as light as he could and scared that that wasn’t what they’d meant at all. He drew back again quickly in case, but Gale caught him.

He’d never been so relieved.

Or so hopeless, because not for a second did he really think it meant anything except that Gale was relieved too, to be alive. He wanted to ask how anyone was supposed to live like this and still tell acting from real, and how he was supposed not to feel devoted to someone who put hours of work every day into looking like they cared what happened to him and what he thought, but it would have been childish. His feelings weren’t Gale’s problem. All he had to do was keep them to himself. That was an old chore.

He didn’t know what time it was when someone tapped on the door. He started to get up, but Gale touched the side of his skull and pressed to make him stay where he was. Then there was a tug round his knuckles and Gale made a quiet surprised sound, and had to unwind a ribbon of their hair from around his hand. Half awake, he remembered taking it so he’d know if they left.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

Gale only kissed his knuckles, and then hinged his arm gently back against his chest.

“Senator,” Mx Ren’s voice said when Gale tilted open the door. They sounded strange. “We’ve got some news.”

“The mammoths have taken over?” Gale said. “Someone else has been shot. The house is on fire. I’m on fire.”

“No, no.” When January sat up, Ren was grinning. “It’s good news. The tower—it’s above the dust. We can launch the solar array.”

51

One of the meeting rooms was set up for surround-film calls, and by the time January and Gale arrived, the scene at the other end—at the control room of the interplanetary sky harbour in town—was bustling but calm. Everything was nearly ready, an engineer promised.