Page 48 of The Mars House

Mx Francis nodded, looking much more vulnerable than a second ago. “Yes, Senator.”

“Sit,” Gale told them gently.

Mx Francis did, at last, and Gale put one arm round them. Mx Francis pulled one sleeve over their eyes.

January pushed his hands together in his lap and took out his phone to see if it worked still, and for something to do other than watching the two of them. The screen was cracked. He had to press his palm against his face. Two hundred years it had been in his family, and it had never had to be repaired. If his mother had been alive, she’d have smacked him over the head and said it was fine, they’d get it fixed, but a terrible guilt rolled over him. It was the last piece of home he had, and the last piece of her, and he didn’t think there was anywhere here that could fix it.

“It’s okay,” Gale was saying to Mx Francis. “Have you called your parents?”

“No, I . . .”

“Go and do it then, haizi,” Gale said, their voice vapouring like it did whenever they heard something really, genuinely stupid. January glanced over and swallowed. People here did mix languages a lot if they were saying something very soft and warm, but he had only ever heard it in movies before; he had never been in a situation to overhear it in real life. Haizi meant “child.” “You’re twenty-five, you’re a baby, they’ll be worried sick. This is all over the news.”

“But—”

“You’re excommunicated from this House if you don’t go and call your parents.”

“Okay,” Mx Francis said, soothed. “But—you still have to . . .”

“Hao le, hao le.” All right, all right. “I’m doing it.” Gale gave them a little push.

Twenty-five. January felt guilty. That was so much younger than he’d thought. It was because everyone was so tall; it made you assume they were all in their thirties.

Gale turned to the cameras.

“We’ve had a visit from a terrorist,” they said, dry and warm at once, in their exquisitely clear Mandarin. They pulsed calm and a kind of soft humour, like a campfire on a frostbitten night. “They fired heat-seeking grenades into an office window. No one’s been hurt, which is thanks to Mx Stirling, who got between me and a lot of broken glass.” They looked at January with a warmth that dawned before they smiled their real smile.

He bowed fractionally, still wondering about Mx Francis.

A business arrangement. That was what this marriage was. He needed to stop trying to—what was he even trying to do? Be married? He ran his fingertips over the cracks on the screen of his phone and concentrated on not crying live on national news. It was such a silly thing to cry about, a phone; he didn’t know why it cut so deep.

One of the producers made a spinning motion with the other hand to say the feed was still rolling. “Pretty heroic stuff, January. What went through your head? You acted incredibly quickly.”

“No, I didn’t. Everything falls three times slower than I’m used to. I strolled,” he said, because a joke made the segment sound finished and if it was finished, they would go away.

The producer beamed and then the camera operators relaxed. “Fabulous! I’ll post that across socials.”

It was a huge relief when they were gone. He studied Gale under his eyelashes, worried he’d hurt them more, wrenching them onto the ground, than the glass had; but he couldn’t find a way to ask. Camera drones were still floating around. He wondered if it would be all right to ask if he could go up to his room for a little while. He could cry for a bit in the shower, unobserved by millions of people, get his head straight about the phone, and—God, and change. He was still in the figure-hugging black outfit Mx Francis had put him in this morning, to dance. But when he decided to try, the idea filled him with dread. He didn’t want to do any of that. He wanted to stay with Gale. Gale was safe. It wasn’t objectively true, Gale was the person being shot at, but he would have fought anyone who had tried to make him leave just then.

Gale was looking at him too. “Thank you.” English again.

He shrugged. He hadn’t been lying. To him, it had all happened slowly. The styluses falling from the table had seemed to take years to hit the floor, and the wreckage ricocheting against the wall had bounced more than smashed. The fire from the grenade was lazy and rounded, with none of the sharp edges and wickedness it would have had in nastier gravity. He’d had time to think quite clearly: Yes, I’d probably better do something about this before that bit of shrapnel creeping up on us from over there takes someone’s head off . . .

The slowness was all in his head, though: it had to be. Low gravity didn’t make explosions less explosive. It was disturbing: he hadn’t known his brain could distort things that much.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” January said, disconcerted to be asked. Nobody else had; of course they hadn’t. He was three times stronger than them and locked in titanium armour.

Gale touched his wrist and turned his hand over to show him his own palm. Under the cage gauntlet, it was bloody; he didn’t remember putting his hand down on glass, and it didn’t hurt, but he must have. He watched, feeling like his hand belonged to someone else, as Gale guided it down into a bowl of water that bloomed red.

A camera drone came down to catch that, and he wondered if this was just setting up romance for later. Of course it was.

“I’m not trying to be—but are you and Mx Francis together?” he asked, because he couldn’t hold it in any more.

Gale looked up as though January had suggested they watch a snuff movie. “No! I’m nearly twice their age!”

“And my grandmother was a bicycle,” January said indignantly, because he had never in his life heard a more obvious lie.