Page 39 of The Mars House

A blossom petal fell on her nose and she sneezed and, looking embarrassed, hid behind him. Because she was a Mars dog, she was huge, and from there she could lean around and get her nose on Gale’s hip. Gale stroked her ears and gave her a piece of sushi, and then, seeming to realize that maybe if she looked sad at other people there might be more sushi, she hurried off to beg from the silent security officer who was always with Gale and who, despite the occasion, was still in that rust-coloured jumper.

Feeling worried that he shouldn’t, but starving now, he twisted off the gauntlets of his cage so he could eat. They locked on over your hands, twisting into brackets like manacles. It was possible to eat with them on, but because the steel strips went right over your fingers, it was hard, because you couldn’t feel anything. He set them carefully aside and flexed his hands twice, which felt peculiar. Unlike taking off the cage altogether, it didn’t make them feel light exactly, but it was noticeable, and straight off, his grip was much stronger. He’d have to be careful with the dog. He saw Gale watching him, and he smiled a bit to try and reassure them. They didn’t look worried, but he knew them just about well enough to know that how they looked and what they felt were two completely separate things. They said nothing about it and turned back to the Chinese ambassador.

It was only when he picked up a set of beautiful silver chopsticks that it floated to the top of his mind that everything was easier than he’d expected. It was a weird thing to notice, an absence of difficulty, but it was distinct, and it took him a good few seconds to trace what it was. When he’d seen the Consul at Jade Hill, he’d been uncomfortable all the time because it was freezing and the chairs were too high. But there were no chairs in here; everyone was sitting on the floor at traditional low tables, which had heating filaments underneath. And the chopsticks, and the glass, and even the plate in front of him—they were all weighted for him. He turned the glass around to see the stamp on the stem. It wasn’t from the Earthstrong Living company, the one that did basic stuff and thought he didn’t want to drink coffee. It was handblown; the maker’s mark was an Italian name. Everyone else’s, now he was looking, was different.

He looked across at Gale and almost said, did you have this made for me, but then realized it would have been a stupid question. Of course it was made for him. He nearly burst into tears. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so welcome.

God, he needed to pull himself together. If a person who wanted to cripple him could win him over with nice clothes and specially made cutlery, he deserved to end up naturalised.

He blinked hard, because although it was only just getting dark, he was exhausted. Altitude. His head was filling up with fog.

Gale leaned a little to catch his eye. Even though the two of them had been sitting side by side, they hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of words. Too many other people were talking to them both. “Shall I say my leg hurts and we have to go?”

“Oh, but—you seem like you’re having a nice time?”

“I’m glad I’ve been convincing, but nobody has a nice time trying to talk to the Chinese ambassador,” Gale said, and the honesty made January smile.

“She does seem . . .” January hunted for something Tharsese and diplomatic to say.

“Like the most boring human ever to have lived, having transcended making people just die of boredom but to projectile-haemorrhage it Ebola-like to others nearby; yes she is,” Gale agreed, bowing a little to someone passing by, entirely straight-faced, even while January slid down onto his tailbone trying hard not to look like he was dying with the effort of not laughing. “Let’s go. I’ll show you your room.”

He would be staying on the third floor, in a room with specially reinforced fittings. There were portraits on the walls of previous Gales, going all the way back to the first colonists, but it was the most recent one that made January hesitate. It was Aubrey and Max, and River, all together. They were all the same age. But he couldn’t tell who was who, between Aubrey and River. Neither of them looked particularly like his Gale.

“You look different,” he said.

“I don’t wear filters any more,” Gale said.

“Filters?”

“Ah . . . virtual . . . overlays,” they said, like they’d never had to explain it to anyone before. “People make themselves look different, they do it instead of—I guess you have plastic surgery?”

“Just on pictures though?”

“No, always. You’ll see if you look at people through your phone.”

“Oh,” said January, disconcerted to think that what he was seeing and what everyone with lenses was seeing were different things. He’d thought it was just virtual extras, like signs and subtitles.

In the middle of the picture, Max gazed out quietly, looking the way people from Great Houses were supposed to look. Cultured, well dressed, tall, slim, glamorous. Beneath the military dress coat, they were wearing—it looked like a necktie from any distance—a rope of pearls, looped round and round, just showing under their collar. That kind of person . . . they never vanished. Someone noticed them, somewhere. Maybe Max was alive, maybe he was wrong and if you were clever enough you really could just disappear altogether, but in this day and age . . . he didn’t think so.

It took him a second to realize that while he was studying Max, Gale was studying him. It was less alarming now than it had been to begin with. It was still an oil-rig drill of a stare, but he was getting a sense that Gale didn’t do it on purpose. They were far too courteous to pull stupid tricks to make other people feel small.

“Wondering if you need to hit me over the head with a shovel and bury me in the garden yet?” he said cheerfully, because if you’d married someone who might have killed their last partner then there really wasn’t any point in edging around it like a worried rabbit. “What could he uncover? What if he finds the special secret dungeon? What if he talks to a cleaner I forgot about?”

Gale kind of laughed. “No. I . . . think I’ve dispatched all the chains and errant cleaners.”

That, thought January, was a real Rubik’s cube of a joke.

Probably ill-advisedly, he quite liked it.

The room Gale took him to was easy to remember, because it was opposite a glass wall that looked into an incredible courtyard. It was densely packed with a whole bonsai forest, the trees only a little taller than him, tiny streamlets running over rocks and moss and vines, and among it all, hummingbirds floated among purple flowers. One of them reversed out of a flower to have a look at him. Reversed. He had never seen a bird fly backwards before, and it looked impossible, only, there it was.

The room was bigger than January’s whole apartment, and it had a view out over the house. He could make out other rooftops, and then the great pines.

There was a camera in the corner. He smiled at it. He was looking forward to coming up with fun ways to screw with the producers, who fully deserved it if they were putting cameras in bedrooms. He could feel some erotic fruit displays coming on.

Because he had seen too many movies, he scanned around for any sign that this had used to be Max’s room, having visions of clues left scratched in the skirting boards or a trapdoor, or finding that Max wasn’t dead after all but locked in the attic and prone to sneaking down and setting fire to people they disapproved of; but there was no sign of anyone’s personality in the space at all. If there ever had been, it had been cleaned away, and there were no interesting trapdoors either. Just a lovely array of plants in glass pots, a tabletop fire with real fire, a basket full of fruit and expensive chocolate, and a proper coffee machine.

“Well,” Gale said, turning up the thermostat—set, as always, far too low. “I’ll leave you to it.” They paused, and floating in the air between the two of them was the somehow abrupt fact that as of now, he was living here, and they were going to have to see each other all the time, and start the whole bizarre show of the story to come. “Anything you need, there’s someone on the security desk all night.”