Page 61 of The Mars House

How does an artificial dust storm start? Did you start it? Was it Earth?

Did you just—sorry, but I have to ask—try to kill us and blame it on me?

But none of those were questions the Consul would realistically answer. What sort of person looked guilty and said, Yes, whoops, sorry, that was me trying to murder the opposition, won’t happen again . . .

He was starting to feel very, very frustrated by all the things he didn’t know. He wished he could just dose everyone with some kind of truth serum. It would be unethical and dreadful et cetera, but at least he’d know if he was now this second standing on quicksand.

Max was wearing the Gale pearls in that picture upstairs.

“Okay. We’re ready,” Mx Francis said.

It was a little shock to come back to himself and remember he had to do some acting now.

“Just try to imagine how you’d be if you’d never taken any drugs and you didn’t live in a dumpster,” Mx Ren told him brightly, with a glitter that said: Look, I’d never say it if you looked in any way like that. I’m saying it because you’re worried you look like that and I think that’s obviously hysterical.

“Oh my God, you can’t say that,” Mx Francis said, going high.

“Or I could imagine how you’d be if you weren’t possessed by Baal, eater of children and prince of the toad-infested swamps of hell,” January suggested.

Mx Ren pretended to bite him, and January grinned.

Mx Francis looked a bit wobbly about what was happening. “Could we have less . . . er . . . open abuse?”

“You look great,” Mx Ren said gently, and clapped January’s shoulder. “Right. And . . . rolling.”

Everyone else got out of the shot. Looking like an interested crystal ball, a camera drone lifted above January’s head, and he pretended to be concentrating on the livestream, where somehow the influencer was still talking about pearls. Immediately on cue, Gale sent him a text. It said, Could you come down to my room? I need to ask a favour.

“Probably about Earth etiquette for the ambassador of somewhere important,” he lie-speculated to the drone as it followed him out and down the corridor to Gale’s room, past more of those wonderful tiny courtyards of bonsai forests and hummingbirds. Mx Francis ghosted after.

The door was already resting open on its latch. He tilted it open.

People at home wore less at formal events. People showed off their shoulders and their arms. Here, formal clothes meant more clothes. Gale was in layers now. The fabrics were fine and airy, but together they had a rich weight, fitted close at the waist and shoulder but loose from the hips down, like a much heavier, conservative version of a gown, only slit up both sides to show flashes of trousers the same colour underneath. The amount of fabric was incredible; metres and metres of it, pooling and glinting in the soft light of the lamps. It was what happened, January realized with an odd jolt, when you had the money to have metres and metres of fabric. He knew what it cost; he had been friends with the costume designers at the theatre. Gale was wearing more than the worth of a house in Cornwall, even one with a vineyard.

He stopped in the doorway, though, because contrary to the script, Gale wasn’t alone. They were sitting at a dressing table, straight and taut. Someone else was combing their hair.

It was the security officer who always took their journal everywhere. He hadn’t seen them since the grenades had come in through the meeting room windows. Puzzled, he wondered if they weren’t security at all but some kind of stylist, but he didn’t think so; he’d never seen them do anything glitzy for anyone heading towards any cameras before.

It was all long steady strokes with a bright silver comb, slow, in a way that looked both ritual and somehow as though it might be a punishment. The more January watched, the more uncomfortable he felt.

Gale had those famous pearls wrapped around both hands. It was the way priests held rosaries.

“Hi,” he said tentatively. “You, er . . . asked to see me, Senator.” He held up his phone as though Gale might somehow have forgotten in the last three minutes, and still not sure he should be interrupting. There was something private-looking about the two of them there at the mirror, and he couldn’t shift the sense that he had appeared immediately after a bitter row, for all he hadn’t heard a sound from the corridor.

“Yes, of course,” Gale said, and looked relieved.

The security officer stepped away and folded into a chair a little way away. It wasn’t, January thought suddenly, how an employee would move about. He’d made a mistake about who they were, he could see that much. Family, they must have been.

Or real partner. They were the right age.

Gale didn’t introduce them, though, and the other person didn’t introduce themselves.

“Is there—something I can do for you?” January asked, as a drone floated in over his shoulder. For all he knew what Gale was going to say, he was nervous. It was difficult to imagine that anyone would believe what was about to happen, because it was stupid-unrealistic. The beautiful lord of the beautiful manor house did not take any interest in the mousy governess, and goddesses did not court shepherd boys from fields. Those things wouldn’t have been good stories if they ever really happened.

“Only if you’d like to.” Gale turned away from the mirror, and January couldn’t help thinking they looked grateful to be allowed to stop seeing their own reflection. “There’s an event at the Tiangong tonight, it’s a charity fundraiser. It’s going to be—monstrous, and I was going to go by myself but then I couldn’t face it. I’m sorry to ambush you at such late notice, but would you come with me?”

Remember to look surprised . . . “Would I what?”

“Only if you’d like to,” Gale said again. A pause. “There’s going to be a lot of free wine and pretentious food, some of which will be cake. That’s as much as I can really . . . sell it to you. The people will all be politicians and trade CEOs unfortunately.” Gale did amazing work of looking hesitant. “It would be good to have some normal human company, though. If you didn’t have other plans.”