Page 36 of The Mars House

The train’s announcement chime sounded and an automated voice said: “Caution: you are now entering the House Gale Sun Fields. Do not try to leave the train. Temperatures even at ground level among the mirrors can reach fifty degrees Celsius.”

He could see it, too: the heat waving in the air as the mirrors channelled the fantastic high-altitude sunlight up to a point on those towers. The nearer to the top of a tower you got, the hotter the air would be—and, beautifully, ribbons of dust outlined those thermals. They were making fingerprint whorls in the air.

He had no idea how these things worked or what those towers did, but it was strangely good not to know. They were primordially weird, one giant spar after the next, field after mirror field, mile after shining mile. The sunlight was all being concentrated to the tops of the towers, he could see that, so it must have been heating something up there and that must have made electricity somehow, but it might as well have been magic. He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t get much in the way of magic.

Songshu, the word, meant “pines.”16 January had known that, but he hadn’t put two and two together, and so when the train passed into the shadows of a forest of titan trees, he twisted round, surprised.

The roots made arches so high the train passed comfortably beneath. It was slowing down now, and slowing and slowing, and then they were at the end of the line, at the foot of a shallow hill.

“It’s only a little way to walk,” Gale said to everyone.

January followed them out.

A path led away through the forest. As everyone else came out and laughed about difficult clothes and the cold, he stood looking around for a full minute, insides gone fluttery. Until now, the mission had been getting here, the wedding, all the build-up. But now; there was nothing ahead except what he’d agreed to in that contract. All at once, he didn’t want to go any further. He’d teased Gale about bodies in the cellar, but now that he was standing here, none of it seemed very funny.

When he started to walk, the cage felt heavy. Usually he wore it without noticing it, but he was having to push hard at its tendons now. He had to drop back behind the others and lean against a tree. He felt like he’d been sprinting. The bark felt funny under his glove and when he looked, he smiled, because someone had carved a very good bear there. It was a silly small thing, but it made everything feel more normal. Someone had come out here with a chisel and a mallet and a certain amount of confidence about not buggering it up. That was a nice human thing, not a terrifying Gale thing.

Having crept up behind him in total silence, a hopeful llama leaned over his shoulder to see if he might have been hiding some good grass. He laughed and stroked its neck. Dust puffed up from its coat and hung in the air. There were others dotted around, roaming about among the tree roots.

“Are you all right?”

Gale had been quiet too. It made him jump. Senators, he thought a bit wildly, ought not to come in stealth mode.

But it gave him a little hum of happiness too, which shocked him. The marriage was pretend, neither of them knew the other, he hated everything Gale thought and Gale hated everything he was—but they were married. He hadn’t thought it would mean anything, but it did. It mattered that they’d come back for him.

“Just—I don’t think that shot has kicked in yet. The altitude has, though. Don’t wait for me, they must want you up there.”

Gale managed, without speaking or moving, to pulse the certainty that nobody wanted that. “Let’s just go slowly. Whenever I came back here from college I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, it isn’t just you.”

January tried to crush down the dread that was building under his ribs. Altitude, just altitude. He was fine. And anyway, he had no choice.

A pair of bright drones floated down to look at them. With the barest, half-visible bow, one that said, Right, once more unto the breach, Gale took his arm, and they walked together. Beside him, though, through his sleeve, he could feel Gale’s bones gone tight with what he was almost certain was the need to run away. He wanted not to care, but it made him feel even worse than the altitude. He took his arm back.

“Don’t,” he said. “If you’re scared, please don’t. I know the cameras are here and everything, but I feel sick watching you make yourself do it. I don’t mean metaphorically, I mean actually ill, it’s . . .” He didn’t know how to explain.

Gale looked confused. “My being scared is my problem, not yours.”

“Who raised you?” January demanded. “Get away from me.”

Gale stepped to one side. “I don’t think I really understand what’s happening,” they reported in their straight frank way. It was such a balm after talking to the Consul yesterday that it made him smile.

“What’s happening is that it bothers me that you’re scared, so I would feel better if you weren’t scared. Stay over there.”

“But . . . why would it bother you?”

January blinked, then had to laugh. “When they teach psychologists about horrible emotional neglect in childhood, do they put a picture of you in the textbook?”

“What are you talking about? I—wait. I hear it,” Gale admitted. They paused. “Sorry, I’m just . . . having a bit of an epiphany about my own character.”

“No, no, take your time,” January agreed.

“It wears off, though, we think, the neglect?” Gale asked speculatively. As always, they looked bone-deep neutral, but January had spoken to them just enough now to have a sense of when they were joking.

“Yeah, definitely,” he said. “I don’t spend my life trailing devotedly after people who are much older than me because my dad didn’t like me, it’s all good.”

Gale looked they might be rolling the necessary gears to smile their real smile. “But don’t tell anyone that, it’ll go in the show.”

“Why?”