Page 25 of The Mars House
Gale’s black eyes slipped past January’s shoulder, and when January twisted back, he saw some teenagers blinking and giggling, the amber flare going off in their eyes; that was the legal warning that someone was taking a photo through their contact lenses. He moved his chair to block the view. Gale was probably used to it, but he still disliked the idea. However rich and annoying you were, you deserved to sit and have a cup of coffee in peace, and Gale looked brittle this morning.
Probably it had a lot to do with entering into marriage negotiations with somebody they felt belonged on the other side of a barbed wire fence.
“There’s a reality show about us. House Gale.” Another pause. The waiter was removing the teenagers. A lot of them were dressed in the odd way January kept seeing in the nice parts of town; plain, skintight black jumpsuits, even though they must have been freezing, and plain and black wasn’t the way any teenagers from anywhere usually liked to dress. He had puzzled about that over the months, but never felt confident enough to ask anyone.
“It’s popular,” Gale continued carefully. “As part of the election campaign, I signed up to let the cameras into the house. It was successful, my press secretary made their opinions known and the cameras never left.”
“Why in God’s name would you let that in your house?”
Gale tilted their head to say, yes, obviously it was very odd. “People only vote for you if they know who you are.”
“So you send out a polished version of whatever goes on?”
Gale looked exactly like they had in his flat then; glassy, as though there was something urgent they weren’t telling him. “The producers like to call it documentary. They don’t arrange things overtly, there isn’t a script. But they do like to run narratives. A romance, or a feud.”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
“I was scared you’d throw a shoe at me and run away,” Gale said, completely serious.
He snorted, and then coughed, because the joke had taken him by surprise. “No, I see, that’s reasonable. It’s okay, I’ll have to do this even if you run a segment where I’m attacked by tigers.”
Gale studied him quietly, not like they believed him, but they didn’t say it. “There are cameras everywhere. Everyone wears microphones. Most of what they film is never aired, but anything they film could go out.”
“It sounds like a prison,” January said, shocked.
Gale didn’t agree or disagree. For the third or fourth time since they’d sat down, they glanced into the far corner by the ceiling, but when he looked round, there was nothing there. Or maybe there was virtually, if you were wearing lenses. Maybe it was a distracting sign. “It’s also a gift. It means everyone can watch how a famous arranged marriage turns out.”
“Are people really that interested?”
Gale hung over the edge of smiling in the way January imagined that archangels there to report on the state of things hung suspended above the towers of Pandemonium. “Fifteen teenagers just followed us into a bar.”
January shook his head. He was never going to get used to the glamour of Tharsese politicians. Ever since he’d arrived, he’d wanted to corner someone local and ask where they kept the real ones, the sleazebags who bubbled up through scandals like smug hippos.
Right on cue, one of the teenagers escaped from the waiter and hurried over, and January had a painful twist, because their shoes had toecaps that looked like pandas. Kids here stayed kids for a lot longer, he’d noticed; especially in rich Natural families, they treated eighteen-year-olds like he’d been treated when he was about twelve.
“Um, excuse me, Senator, I was at the debate the other day, I love you, can you sign my hat?”
Gale smiled, unexpectedly gentle, and took the pen. “What’s your name?”
“Sid. I want to be a senator too,” they added proudly.
Gale wrote Vote for Sid! and gave the hat back. Sid squeaked and ran away.
January was glad for the interruption. It had given him time to think. “I shouldn’t be saying anything in front of any more cameras.”
“Mx Stirling. You didn’t do or say anything wrong.”
Gale breathed in and held it, and over in the other corner, there was an explosion of joy among the teenagers. Sid was showing off the hat. “Everything you say in front of any camera can be very carefully curated. My press secretary will always be there to help you. It will be much less intense than what happened at the factory. It isn’t going to be me dissolving you in front of the internet.”
January didn’t say “that’s a relief,” because it would have sounded sarcastic.
Gale paused again. There was something teacherly about them; they were used to explaining things. It wasn’t patronising, just careful and precise. “Do you have questions about anything we’ve said so far?”
January thought about it. “You keep talking about the house, the show, characters—but . . . it sounds like a lot of people live there. Is it—do your staff live there? I don’t really understand how . . .”
“Yes.” Gale nodded once. “Songshu is the seat of House Gale, which hereditarily runs the Department for Energy. House Gale oversees the sun fields, which is why we’re on the Plains, not in the Valley; sunlight is stronger at altitude. We provide the power that runs the whole of Tharsis; we also run and fund experimental research in new power production technologies. It is primarily a scientific institute. About five hundred people live there.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in.
