Page 43 of The Mars House

Mx Francis and the production crew had decided that they could reach a lot of people now if they could film January dancing; just an ordinary practise, but work it into the show as a way to help people get to know him, in a nice cultural way, rather than a steal-your-wallet-behind-a-convenience-store way.

The light, they said, was perfect early in the morning, and he was so excited about it that he was vibrating. He hadn’t done any proper exercise since arriving on Mars, unless you counted lifting heavy things at the factory. You couldn’t really go running in Tharsis, as an Earthstronger; you just scattered terrified people even if you were in a cage, and while there were some Earthstronger gyms, they were invariably fronts for organised crime and full of people who looked like they might feed you through a wood chipper if you got in their way.

There was an ice rink in Songshu’s sports complex. And a gym, with beautiful surround-film treadmills so that you could run in the forest, or on a lake trail if you liked. There was a rock climbing wall, tennis courts, other courts, and then, right at the far end, one wall looking into another enclosed garden of red bonsai trees and tiny streams, a dance studio.

“Listen,” Mx Francis said to him as the producers flew the drones around, taking light levels and sound levels, “I’ve been watching our footage, and I’m just wondering if there’s any way to set your cage to be a bit less obvious?”

“Obvious?” echoed January, starting to smile, because Mx Francis was the one who’d put him in skintight black that showed every single joint of the cage. Long sleeves, though. He had a feeling that showing your arms was indecent here.

Mx Francis, incredibly, looked awkward. They had long cornrows, and now, they were tying reef knots in the ends of some. He watched, half fascinated and half worried. People like Mx Francis didn’t fret about anything except giant publicity catastrophes. A crocodile could amble in right now, making numnumnum noises, and Mx Francis probably wouldn’t think anything about it except what a fabulous pair of boots it would make. “It’s just, um . . . you’re—obviously lovely, but it’s not the most—subtle? look, and if you could perhaps change the settings to something a bit lighter—”

“That’s naturalisation,” he said, confused now.

“No, not naturalisation, just a bit, just to bring you in a little narrower—”

“You mean lose weight.”

“Right.” Another reef knot. “Only for an environment like Songshu, the optics just seem—not quite as—elegant as—”

Someone else clapped Mx Francis’s shoulder. They were shorter, maybe only third-generation Natural, and more rounded and homely-looking than most of the desperately chic people here, but they seemed, even at first glance, like the kind of person who was probably a lot bigger on the inside. “They mean a good chunk of the internet thinks you look like a hooker turning tricks in Americatown,” they said cheerily, in a voice like acid rain.

Mx Francis deflated. “This is Mx Ren, the Senator’s chief of staff.”

“You look like a giant Moomin,” January told them, to see if they could take it as well as dish it out.

“That,” Mx Ren said, hooking both thumbs under the straps of a pair of pink dungarees clearly meant to strike terror into the hearts of more junior staff members who were required to dress smartly, “is true. But irrelevant.”

“I can be thin, but I still wouldn’t look Tharsese. Look.” He searched his own name on his phone and held out a picture from a show ten years ago.

“Oh,” said Mx Francis, deflating.

“That’s atrocious,” Mx Ren reflected. “Well, never mind, I’m sure people will get used to you eventually, even if they do judge the Senator horribly meanwhile.” They moomined off. January suspected he was going to quite enjoy them.

“Ready,” one of the producers called.

January realized he was grinning.

Well then.

He had thought his body would have forgotten everything. He hadn’t so much as done a drill for a year. But it was there. His bones still knew, and God, but the strength was there too. What he had forgotten was what it felt like to stretch out as far as he could without touching the paper walls of his tiny flat, or how it felt to move, properly, without stepping around furniture or stairs. You needed an incredible amount of space just for the first few steps of the most ordinary drill, never mind anything else. Nobody had that, nobody ordinary; you spent your life keeping yourself small under ceilings that were high enough to stand under but not to leap, and inside walls that let you cook but not spin.

He went all the way around the room, turn after turn, just because he could, and by the time he’d come back across the diagonal, he couldn’t stop smiling. He hadn’t been lying to Gale at the factory: you needed to be strong to dance.

One of the camera crew’s drones was following him. He put his arm up so it could come and look at him if it wanted, then ducked it and spun by it the other way to see if the producer controlling it wanted to dance it with him.

“Ready?” he asked it, and pointed upward to say where he was going. “And . . .”

It arced up to follow him up, and spiralled around him once he landed. He laughed. It was like playing with a curious crystal ball. He took it around the room again to see if it could keep up.

At the end of the room, by the door, he was aware that more people than before had filtered in to have a look at him; some of them must have been watching initially on the screens upstairs, some just passing through and curious about why the gym was suddenly full of cameras. But he didn’t pay it much attention until he saw the little crowd part. It was Gale, dressed normally for the first time since January had met them, not in senatorial finery but black jeans and a green jumper with a diamond pattern on it, hair down, all the way down, over one shoulder like they’d escaped before anyone could chase them into the normal formality. He faltered, not because Gale was watching him, exactly, though that was always nerve-racking enough, but because they looked like they were seeing something they had never seen before.

He stopped on the cross of tape the producer had put on the floor to mark four metres from everyone else and went down on one knee, in case they were also nervous to see him move as strongly as he could, without the normal moderation. It didn’t matter that he was wearing the cage. It must still have been—well, not frightening, but ominous.

He had expected Gale to nod at him and then go on their way, but they didn’t. They came out to him and took his arms without hesitation, and levered him upright. Their hands were warm, and lot stronger than he had thought; they could have lifted him. He froze, not convinced they wanted to be touching him.

“I didn’t mean to stop you. I just saw the feed and I thought they must have doctored it.” They smiled a bit. It was Aubrey’s smile, not Senator Gale’s, the slow careful one. They weren’t the King yet this morning, not quite. “And now I feel stupid.”

“You’re lying, you’ve seen ballet before,” January said, and it came out too exaggerated, because he was trying to hide how flustered he felt, seeing Gale in a normal jumper with their hair down. It seemed like the kind of thing he shouldn’t have seen for months yet. They didn’t know each other well enough. Which was a ludicrous Victorian thing to think, but it was amazing how fast you acclimatised to the strict ritual formality of everything here. For all Gale had chosen to come out like that, he felt like he ought to look away. “There’s a company here, isn’t there?”