Page 20 of The Mars House

“So just to be really clear about the health consequences,” he said quietly.

“Well—”

“Look, being honest,” the American man said kindly, “it’s horrible. It’s irreversible. Your muscles will atrophy and you’ll feel dreadful for about a year. Common knock-on effects are depression and anxiety. You’ll be prone to colds, flu, everything like that, and you’ll be lucky to live to sixty. The good news is that cells called telomeres, which cause ageing, lengthen in low gravity, with means you’ll look quite young while all this happens. And it looks to me as though mental health and social support have a big effect on how tough it is for you. I’m a doctor,” he added. “Well. I was. Can’t practice here till I naturalise.”

Yan sighed, adjusting their glasses again, even though they didn’t need to adjust their glasses.

January gathered up his thoughts into a rough bale. “I’d like to check in on Monday then, if you have space.”

They took their glasses off and polished them. “Look, I . . . rarely do this, but I’m going to urge you to reconsider. I’m not supposed to say this, and it’s not written down anywhere, but Mark’s right.” They nodded to the American man. “If you go in with depression, you’re coming out in a wheelchair.”

January could feel his voice disappearing. “I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m . . . not realistically going to get another job after being in prison. Nowhere that’ll take an Earthstronger. Will I?”

“No,” Yan said quietly.

“So either I punch a police officer and go back to prison or I come here,” January said.

“But you don’t want to naturalise.”

“No, but that doesn’t matter now.” He pushed his hands over his face. “And—after everything with Gale, I feel like I’m evil here, just for being. I know that isn’t right, I don’t believe anyone is bad just for existing, but feeling things isn’t very voluntary, and . . .”

There was a terrible silence in which everyone sat frozen, watching him trying not to cry.

“I’m really sorry,” Yan said, “that it’s like this.”

“Also,” Mark said, knocking him softly, “there’s real ice cream.”

“I can probably live with all the other stuff then,” January said, not completely lying.

“Oh my God, you lot and ice cream, what is wrong with you?” Yan sighed, looking hugely relieved.

“Do you know how hard it is to find anything derived from a cow here? You’re all evangelical hipster vegans who’ve banned sugar, it’s an absolute atrocity,” Mark declared.

“But all that lab-generated dairy stuff might have all kinds of horrible artificial things wrong with it,” Yan tried.

They both looked at January, clearly praying for him to join in. He smiled. It wasn’t that much effort. “I hate to tell you this, Yan, but weird frozen tofu is not ice cream, it’s what you threaten to feed to murder suspects to make them confess faster.”

Everyone laughed, and it was easier this time.

10 January had given it some thought when he first arrived, but decided that he didn’t mind what anyone called him so long as he was allowed to keep up his intrinsic January-ness, which was much less about modes of address and much more about his lifelong resolution to one day own a pedigree house chicken.

11 Mars’s two moons took only a day to zoom around the whole world, so there were no meaningful months at all. Instead, the Tharsese calendar was just seasons. It took some getting used to, because they weren’t all the same length. The orbit of Mars was elliptical, set right on a slant from the sun—so in the southern hemisphere where Tharsis ill-advisedly sat in the Mariner Valley, winter took ages, while summer was a five-minute window where you could just about make it down the street without a coat if you walked fast. You ended up writing truly depressing dates on work emails, like 241st of Winter.

9

At home, January had to peel off his clothes and shake the dust off in the lift to keep it from going everywhere inside the flat. Everyone else had clearly been doing the same, because the lift floor was starting to look like a mini desert, with its own dust-dunes in the corners.

The flat was cold. He didn’t dock his charge card into the wall for power. Spending two weeks in prison had saved him some money, and going to the naturalisation centre would save him three months’ more, but then there would be almost nothing left. He wouldn’t be able to keep paying the rent here while he was at the centre. Still, that was all right. Once he was naturalised he wouldn’t be able to come back here anyway. The furniture had come with the flat, and all he owned were his clothes and the crockery. He didn’t mind about the crockery. He could leave that for the next person.

The simple task of transferring his clothes from the drawers and into the bag under the bed loomed huge. He had to stop thinking about it. He got out of his cage, shoulders and hips aching after walking so far in it, sank down at the table, and tried to remember if he had already taken his vitamin supplements. It was important, because without them there was a host of things that went wrong with a person in the perpetual late-afternoon dimness this far from the sun even when the weather was clear, never mind in a dust storm. But he couldn’t.

Three months living and eating for free at the centre; that meant three months in which he wasn’t going to end up at a homeless shelter. Or deported. That was good. And he had liked Yan. And there was the American doctor. It would be nice, once he got over his stupid reaction to it, to be flirted with. It would be lovely to have an actual human who wanted to have a January.

His phone rang. He glanced at the number—unknown—and declined the call. It was beginning to make him feel shaky, hearing that benign little buzz. Since the debate, journalists had been calling him all the time, and the prison service saying things he didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He should switch it off. But then he wouldn’t know if Val tried to get in touch. He had written her a long apology, but she hadn’t answered.

The bell on the lift made him jump.

The Visitor sign was lit up.