Page 128 of The Mars House

Aubrey disappeared. It was so complete that even moving suddenly produced not the barest ripple in the air.

“If you hold something close to you, it goes as well,” Max said, handing over a stylus, which also disappeared. “But if you hold it right out . . .”

Hazily, the stylus reappeared, floating.

“One bat, two bats, fifty bats, ah-ah-ah,” Aubrey couldn’t help saying in a Dracula voice, because really, what sort of human wouldn’t.

“You know,” Max said, starting to laugh, “the way out of all this mess with my House is really simple.”

“It is?” said Aubrey, still invisible and playing with the solar mirror and the stylus. To the security drones, Max must have looked peculiar, talking to themselves. Actually, they wouldn’t: the mist was too dense.

“Well,” said Max, “the real problem is money. You could weather a scandal if you played it right. But you’d get all my money if you just bumped me off.”

Aubrey laughed too. It was nice to laugh, even just briefly. “Who knows, maybe the next tour will get you.”

“Or a wandering polar bear,” Max said, smile fading and they gazed into the mist. “It’s hard to see out here. I don’t think this is a very good idea. There . . . could be anything between these mirrors.”

Aubrey hid behind a mirror a few to Max’s left. “Good for hide-and-seek.”

But Max had had enough of playing. “No—I mean it. This is a security risk. Even the drones can’t see in this. It only takes one crazy person . . . Aubrey. Aubrey?”

Later, when Aubrey tried to think about it, they didn’t know why. But they didn’t say anything. They just stood, silent, behind the mirror, watching. It was sort of a game, and it sort of wasn’t, either. Max deserved to be wound up every now and then. Anyone did, who took themselves this seriously.

And who was complicit in horrible blackmail.

No, it was just playing. Looking back—which they did every day at least ten times—they had just been playing. They didn’t mean anything malicious.

Max sighed. “Aubrey, come on. Sasha will crucify me if anything happens to you.”

Aubrey ghosted another few mirrors along, so that if Max had heard them shifting, they wouldn’t be on that spot any more. Max turned around, looking less certain that what was happening was a joke.

“Aubrey?”

Max was right, there could be anyone out here. A random crazy person. If you were in a Great House’s line of succession, it was bound to happen at some point. Aubrey had once been bundled into the back of a van outside a club and rescued by a gang of unexpectedly kind Earthstrong drug dealers. River had been held at knifepoint in these woods.37

“Aubrey, you need to say something if you’re okay,” Max said, sounding urgent. “If you don’t say anything I’m calling security.”

It was a little bit satisfying to see Max get flustered.

Leaning to the side to ease the muzzle of the gun up past the edge of the mirror, Aubrey sighted carefully, just as a thought experiment to see whether it would be difficult or not. It wasn’t. Max was right there, bang in the middle of the iron sight.

The urge to pull the trigger was independent of their normal thinking. It was the same as that monkey need to jump off a cliff. They had to laugh at themselves. Imagine; wow. Imagine if they did.

They never meant to do it.

36 Quoting in the original unabridged version from 500 B.C., because—ha ha—anyone who needed a translation into modern Mandarin was basically a gorilla.

37 By an unfortunate person who had not realized that River was on conversational terms with several mammoths, who had been pretty firm about getting their special talking ape back.

53

After River stole everything and threw Aubrey out of Songshu, getting back in was simple with the Hades filter. Aubrey walked straight back into the building and moved into Kali’s old room—River had turned off the power, so the waterfall was frozen, but the cold felt like penance—invisible to everybody but the dog. Then they started what they knew very well might be a good week or so of following River about, learning who they’d spoken to and what they’d been doing this last month, and getting ready to switch back. It would be weird, a week being invisible. But it would be a week at most. At most.

On the first night, Aubrey stole into River’s room behind the dog and stood still, heart galloping. River was at the desk, studying something from the Senate. Any second now, any second, they would look up and know someone was there.

But they didn’t. They just worked into the evening and stopped at about ten. When they disappeared into the shower, Aubrey risked ghosting across to see what was on the desk, pulse throbbing in their temples, flooding with adrenaline-heat, and wondering if actually, now was the moment: if they should get to grips with what River had done for the last couple of days, then just—what? Knock them out in the shower and tie them to a chair until they changed everything back again? Say, okay, River, all the filters, all the DNA stuff, passwords, bank accounts; you and I are going to go through it piece by tiny piece and change everything back so I can have my name back and my life and everything . . . I’m . . . just going to have to trust that you’ll get it all, because I didn’t

(this is why you won)