Page 64 of The Mars House

He nodded, and they started up the steps, to shouts to pause for the photographers who wanted to catch what they were wearing.

Watching the person in the luminous robe was hypnotic. Most people in the train of politicians and celebrities climbing the steps had something illusory on. The heels of someone’s shoes swam with goldfish. He had to keep tilting the glasses down to see what was really going on, then looking through them again. Before long, he realized that the reason nobody wore makeup or dyed their hair here was that they didn’t have to bother actually doing it. It was all filters. You could tweak your nose or your eyes, things that would have meant surgery at home. As a security guard paced by, giving them a nod, January blanched. Through the lenses, the guard had no face. None of the security people did.

Around them, photographers were getting too close, and it felt even closer because everyone was so much taller than he was. Everything was too tall; the stairs, the great glass doors ahead of them, even the handrails.

Gale must have noticed he’d gone tense. “Watch for kids,” they said. “Their filters are better than ours. Adults aren’t allowed to shift too far away from how they really look, it gives you virtual dissonance syndrome, but five-year-old me went round as a tiny fluffy dinosaur for a while.”

January laughed. He couldn’t imagine Gale as a child. In his head, Gale was a static thing in time; they’d just appeared fully formed one morning out of the desert.

Security officers were holding the doors open, and then the roar of the press faded into music and the quiet murmur of hundreds of people being careful not to drown out the orchestra.

24 The encyclopaedia hadn’t been updated for a while and so the entry for the Inferno explained that it was “a folk rhyme from a small extinct state in the Mediterranean, sinking into such crushing religious extremism that it has been banned in most modern countries.”*

*Later that night, one easily angered journalist wrote a whole piece about how Gale was clearly out to promote God and gender. The following morning, someone (January always suspected Gale, because there were only about eight people who actually knew any Dante quotes and he was pretty sure the other seven lived on Earth) graffitied ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE above the door of the broadcaster’s offices.

29

The Tiangong had a ballroom. January had seen the space when he had stayed here in the month before the wedding, but it had been dark and empty then. Now it was glittering, partly with its own chandeliers and the medals on the chests of soldiers in dress uniform, but partly from camera flashes. January had never been anywhere like it. The ceiling was the roof of the tower, which on Earth would have been impossibly high even for the grandest dreams of sheikhs and presidents, and lights winked all the way up around the balconies to a glass dome at the top that reflected all those lights twice as long again. It was like standing inside a kaleidoscope.

As always, Gale caused a stir, and the second the two of them were inside, they were surrounded by people—other senators January recognised from the debates, diplomats, donors, people who might have been movie stars. There was nothing so indecorous as gasps about January. But people looked, and looked very close, when Gale introduced him. Someone, and then someone else, brushed his arm and said how lovely he looked; mainly it was curiosity and completely benign interest, but once or twice, not always from older people, he saw flashes of something like offence. He ignored it. He was in this for the cake. It was important to remember your priorities.

“Quite a stunt, Aubrey,” said someone who his glasses helpfully labelled as the Speaker of the House, either not caring that January could hear or assuming he couldn’t understand. It was something he enjoyed about being foreign. Being underestimated was a convenient thing more often than it wasn’t. “Verging on acrobatics.”

“Damn it all,” said Gale, switching into their pristine Mandarin as easily as putting on different gloves. When they switched, it wasn’t only the words; they changed their manner too. It became instantly more imperial, more graceful, more still. In English, they bent slightly, maybe to keep meeting January’s eyes, and they moved more. Mars was quickly teaching him how different you had to become in different languages, because the same expression and the same posture meant radically different things, just like the same vowels did. What looked pretentious, speaking English, was only polite in Tharsese. He found himself staring hard, taking internal notes. He had never seen anyone do it so perfectly before, or make it look so natural. But that was what he needed to learn. That was the difference between being understood and being heard.

“I didn’t think to tell the caterers to get live goats.”

“I beg your pardon?” the Speaker said, arch.

“You must be starving after escaping from the dinosaur park. I’ll see what I can do, shall I?”

The Speaker smiled a shark smile. “I hope you’re gored by a ram. The children shall sing in the streets.” They glanced January over. “Alas, it is not to be; you won’t live long enough. Consul’s on the warpath. Solar power in a dust storm and only vague promises from Songshu? Excuse me, I really must find a good spot from which to watch your crucifixion.”

January watched them go, wishing he had brought popcorn. It was already a much better show than he’d expected.

“All right?” Gale said quietly. Back to English again, and their English self.

“Are you joking? I love it. And there’s cake. Speaking of . . . quickly . . .” He motioned them towards the amazing buffet and had a little fizz of happiness when they came with him.

Gale looked relieved he wasn’t already leaving.

January stood out, or rather, stood below. Everyone here was fifth- or sixth-generation Natural. Security people watched him sometimes, with sceptical, attentive stares he could only see if he took his new glasses off. Other people got a lot closer than they would have normally, and someone asked if they could touch his hair. He understood why, but he said no, because he’d just seen them eat bits of pineapple off a sticky-looking stick.

Some portly people with the internationally too-well-fed look of major business CEOs introduced themselves after that and asked January lots of questions about life at Songshu and being arrested and wasn’t he unexpectedly charming on the news programmes. The subtext was that they had expected him to swear at the audience and rob someone on the way out. He didn’t mind. They were silly and naïve, in the way that people who had always had everything were, but they did seem honestly interested, and that, he felt strongly, was all you could ask of anybody.

Gale knocked his arm gently. Doing well so far.

A famous actor got Gale by the hand then and pulled them away to dance, and January shook his head, grinning, when Gale messaged Help me to him in the new lenses. A banner unfurled across the left one.

People here—or at least, very wealthy people—must have taken dancing seriously, because they were all good at it. He leaned back against the wall to watch. Gale was still trying to say no and the actor was having none of it and, in time with all the other pairs, lifted them up right off the ground in a spin of jewel-bright silk and, through the lenses, a wake of falling golden feathers from the angel on Gale’s sleeve.

He let his head bump back against the wall to try and chase off the familiar old sadness he’d often felt waiting to go on stage. It was a funny thing, but what dancers were, really, were creatures who spent most of their time in the shadows in the wings, waiting to pretend for a few minutes to be another kind of person altogether. He could pretend to be the Swan King, but a hundred seconds later he was just January again. But Gale was the real thing. They were never going to match, and he was never going to belong. Even if he went across the floor right now and asked the actor for Gale back, he wouldn’t belong.

“Where are your parents? You shouldn’t be here by your—oh, I’m so sorry!” someone gasped, when he turned around and they realized he wasn’t an escaped child.

He bowed, quite grateful to have his thoughts interrupted.

“Oh, Mx Stirling,” the Speaker said, looking even more mortified. “I didn’t recognise you.”