Page 34 of The Mars House

“The relative harmfulness or harmlessness of Earthstrongers in general isn’t what this election is really about. What it’s about is that I support a continued union with China and the other states who built Tharsis; Aubrey is a nationalist who wants an independent Tharsis. Do you understand our legal position with regard to China?”

January took a slow breath and squashed down the need to say, do you really think that when I was studying Mandarin for hours every day and learning what refugees can and can’t do, and feeling space-sick quite a lot of the time, and then later when I was doing twelve hours a day at a manual labour job in a literally explosive water factory, that I went back to my room in the evenings and curled up with international legal codes? “No,” he said.

“We’re what’s called a Special Economic Area,” the Consul said. “It means we do have our own government and a certain amount of practical independence, but we pay tax to Beijing, who police our interplanetary shipping lanes and until recently, subsidised our infrastructure and healthcare and everything, really. It’s only in the last twenty years or so that Tharsis has become wealthy enough to support itself, see?”

“Okay?”

“I want that support to continue. Aubrey wants to break it off totally. Demonising Earthstrongers is a way for them to do that.” The Consul sighed. “I brought you here so you’ll remember those people praying at that temple, even once Aubrey’s put you through the Far Right Brainwashing Machine, and you’ll remember we’re talking about saving refugees just like you, not importing Earthstrong troops.”

January had to look at the floor for a second—it was a long way away—because in a small but strengthening prickle, he was starting to feel annoyed. The way Gale talked to him was sometimes blunt, a bit shove-from-the-dance-teacher-to-test-your-balance, but what was behind that, he realized now, was an absolute trust that he would keep his balance. Gale assumed he was as clever as they were, even if he didn’t know as many individual things. And they answered the bloody question, if you asked it. The Consul thought he was so feeble he’d be brainwashed soon. And they were not answering the question.

“Okay, you don’t want me to be brainwashed, but why?” he said. “Why do you care, why am I here?”

The Consul laughed, a big sudden laugh that made him jump. “You sounded dead like Aubrey just then. You’re here because I want to find out whether you’d give me a call if you learned something in the murky depths of the House Gale swamp that could help me win this election.”

He felt like he had when Gale asked him to marry them. He understood the words, but the meaning was so unlikely that it got stuck in his Sense of Reasonableness filter, the one everyone had because it was an evolutionary necessity. If one monkey thought another monkey had said to watch out for the falling cocks and looked around faithfully for chickens, that monkey got squashed by the falling rocks. You needed the filter that said: Yes, I know what I heard but it can’t be right.

Only every now and then, it really did rain chickens.

Today’s chicken seemed to be that he, January, was a significant enough figure in national politics for the Consul of Tharsis to try to talk him round.

All at once, he understood why Gale spoke so carefully. There was so much more weight on everything you said, if you were saying it not as some random factory bloke having a bit of a rant in the break room, but as someone whose opinion—mattered. It was as much of a shock as it would have been to land back in Earth’s punishing gravity. He was used to his muscles taking that weight, but not his words. It was paralysing. Feverishly, he thought it was a major omission to have a word for people from gravity three times stronger and inventions like cages to stop them doing everybody else a lot of damage, but not for people whose influence was a thousand times stronger. At least if you had a word for a thing, you could put a border around it and think about it properly, instead of flailing helplessly when you realized you were metamorphosing into it unexpectedly one Tuesday morning at Jade buggering Hill.

“What will happen to those people when they get here?” he asked finally, stepping from each word to the next very carefully, struggling under the new gravity. “If you’re still Consul, I mean: what will you do with them?”

“Build more Earthstrong-appropriate accommodation. Get them into the workforce. Try and reverse Aubrey’s naturalisation legislation. Try to make it easier to be Earthstrong in Tharsis.”

January hesitated. “Only—Senator Gale isn’t lying, about there being a problem. People like me . . . we do accidentally kill Natural people all the time. And I don’t know if that’s even the biggest problem.” He had to pause again, because Alice had shoved her head under his hand to have her ears stroked. “Anyone coming here from Earth isn’t just bringing themselves, they’re bringing God and gender too, and those things aren’t terrible, at all, they can be warm and good but that just . . . isn’t who you are here. Your whole way of life—I don’t see how you could prevent it becoming a little footnote in a history book by the end of this century. Which is going to make Natural people angry, which is why Senator Gale has a platform at all. How . . . will you deal with that?”

“We can’t. But that’s no reason not to do it.”

“Sorry?”

“The point of this colony was to get things ready,” the Consul said, tipping forward. Close up, it was like sitting with an intently interested lion, one that had decided for now not to eat you but would probably reconsider in due course. January had to concentrate to stay sitting up straight instead of shrinking back into his seat. “It’s taken a long time, but here we are. We’re ready. You’re right, of course you are. In a few generations from now, when everyone is in cages, the idea of Natural people will be a historical absurdity.” They smiled a little. “As it should be. We are here to serve those billions stranded on a dying world, not ourselves. We are the vanguard, and we are here to drop the ladder back down for the people who can’t make the climb alone. We built a little subculture in the meanwhile—and it is little, we’re only the size of Belgium—but that isn’t what’s important. Certainly it will make some people angry, but frankly, they’re cowards and I don’t give a fuck.”

January stared at them. He could see the lines around their eyes from laughing, and the ones between their brows from worrying. Maybe they were annoying and rude and graceless, but what they were saying was so noble he didn’t know how to reply.

On the screen, the church congregation were singing a hymn. It seemed mad that he could hear that live from another world. No; not quite live. There was a seven-minute delay from Earth. He might be hearing the voices of people who had already died. January watched them, not knowing what to say. It was such a vast, terrible, noble idea, and he didn’t know enough to know if it was right.

“So,” the Consul concluded gently, “if you can feed back information from House Gale to me, we can make use of it. Anything you see, any scandal, any shady dealings, maybe even something about Max—you would be doing House Song a great service.”

A thought he didn’t want uncoiled in his head and flickered its tongue at him. It said: Gale would have known what a church was.

“I don’t need an answer right now. But I do need you to understand something. The election is in two months, and just after that, a lot of desperate people from Earth will be here; and however unlikely it sounds, you might well be the kingmaker.”

January shook his head once, because he’d never liked big dramatic statements like that, but with a cold, wintery sort of dawning, he was starting to see that being dramatic didn’t stop a thing being true.

The Consul was watching him with what looked like sympathy. “I hope the wedding goes well tomorrow. I hope Aubrey isn’t as hellish as I think. If you decide you do want to help stop them: call me.” They pressed a call card and his phone into his hand.

He didn’t ask what would happen if someone from House Gale caught him. He didn’t know what had happened to Max, but suddenly, vividly, he wondered if it was something like this. Maybe Max had sat in this chair too.

January took the card, and the Consul closed both hands over his and held them. They were warm. He looked up, startled, and they smiled a smile that was full of sadness and warmth; it made them look like Val. He had to stare at the carpet. He would fall in love with anyone who was older than him and nice to him at the same time.

Of course, he was going to have to watch out for the same thing with Gale. It would be bloody typical to fall face first in love with someone who, in an ideal world, would lock him in a box and let Alice the friendly pig eat the key.

15 Olympos Mons on American maps, but whoever gets there first gets naming privileges in the real world, and although the Americans had technically started a colony on Mars first, China pointed out that this shouldn’t count because of how everyone there—having rather rushed the whole mission—immediately died of radiation. The original Mount Penglai was the same as the original Mount Olympus, though, in that it was mythical and where gods lived. January’s favourite thing about it was that according to the myths, it had a postal service run by bluebirds. In his opinion, people who wrote myths didn’t usually think enough about infrastructure.

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