Page 65 of The Mars House

January laughed, because he could see exactly why. The Speaker hadn’t really looked at him before. He was literally beneath their notice. “It’s all right.”

“Do—we all look the same to you?” the Speaker asked, still amazingly embarrassed, given it didn’t matter what January thought.

He shook his head. “No, but . . . all the good movies come from Tharsis, right? We grow up seeing you, but you don’t grow up seeing us.”

“Well that’s dreadful, isn’t it,” the Speaker said unhappily. “I, um . . . well, I’m glad to have bumped into you. Would you—mind dancing with me for a moment? Oh. Can you?”

It made him smile. He loved it when people had no idea he was even acquainted with the thing he was world-class at. It felt like being a secret agent. People thought you were a normal person but really—even if it was only for a hundred seconds at a time—you were something else altogether. “I can give it a whirl.”

They shot a strange, hunted look to one side, even though the dance was an easy waltz and there was no danger of bumping into anyone. “Mx Stirling, do you know about Aubrey’s last consort?”

“Max. Ran away with River Gale.”

“Yes, that’s the story, but they’ve vanished off the face of the planet. They’re both dead.”

“The . . . police seem to have some pretty thorough tests to make sure people can’t lie about things like that,” January pointed out, the back of his neck prickling.

“Yes, the bastard halo. Look, I want to show you something.” They pressed one hand over their own eye, the left, and then touched the left lens of January’s new glasses. An image shimmered into it, clear without completely obscuring the real world. It was a halo scan, just like the one of his that House Gale had released to the press. “This is the scan that cleared them.”

“Okay?”

“Let me tell you something about Aubrey. Two years ago, Aubrey Gale was a political nobody. Senators have to attend House sessions, and they have to table a certain number of motions every year. Aubrey always tabled the same one about prisoner rights on hulks and never finished anything to do with it. That’s what hereditary senators often do; they inherit their seat, they attend, but they never do anything except run their own House. Aubrey barely even did that. Why? Drug addiction. Unofficially in and out of rehab for years. Officially it’s called taking a spell of contemplation at a wellness centre.”

January frowned, because he couldn’t imagine Gale being addicted to anything, except maybe competitive spreadsheet organisation.

“Any kind of addiction shows up on a halo scan,” the Speaker said urgently. “It affects your whole mind, it changes all kinds of pathways. But that scan you have there—that’s from the mind of someone who’s never been addicted to anything.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” the Speaker said impatiently, and in that impatience there was the ghost of all those back room conversations they must have had with other politicians, the ones where it was important to let everything rest on everyone’s common, gossamer understanding of everyone else’s intent, instead of actually saying anything aloud. “I’m saying that they faked their scan. Whoever took this test: it wasn’t Aubrey Gale.”

“How have they explained this? The Senator, I mean. You must have asked.”

“That’s the thing. The addiction was never a matter of public record. They can dismiss it in court as malicious hearsay. Nobody at Songshu would testify, they’d lose their jobs. Medical records are sealed.”

“So how do you know?”

“Max was my Apollo.”

January stopped moving. “I’m so sorry.”

The Speaker nodded and put their back to the wall, near a waterfall stand of champagne. They glanced down at January. “Max wouldn’t have run away. Max was a marine, they didn’t run from anything.” They smiled faintly. “I saw what you said on the news: Max would have said exactly the same thing, the two of you would have got on wonderfully. They would never just vanish. And—do you know anything about River Gale?”

“No. Well. They were a linguist, they worked with mammoths?”

“A profoundly boring person. Second heirs always are, and Gale ones more than anybody. Cloistered in the university forever, made of tweed and Tang dynasty poetry. At House Gale dinner parties, we all used to draw straws to be the one to sit next to them and spare anyone else having to talk about verbs. Not run-away-to-a-lunar-cruise material . . . at . . . all.” They had pressed their hands over their eyes, but they took them away now. “I’m sorry, you don’t know me. I could well be a passing political rival who wants to sabotage Aubrey’s marriage, so I don’t imagine for a moment you’ll take any action, but—I wanted to warn you. And I hope that if enough people warn you, we’ll . . . reach some kind of critical mass.”

“Thanks,” January said, because he didn’t know what else to say. So far, people had warned him based on a kind of general understanding of Gale’s character—Yan at the naturalisation centre, Consul Song, Professor Shang—but a halo scan that must have been faked; that was more difficult to put in the “hearsay” evidence pile.

He couldn’t imagine Gale with a drug addiction. But then, if it had led to murdering someone, maybe that had been the jolt they needed to get clean. A political nonentity who suddenly became a superstar—he had to admit, that did sound like they’d made some big change in their life.

The trouble was, it was all moot. Even if he found a dungeon under the dance studio where all Gale’s previous partners were mummified in iron maidens, he couldn’t leave. He had signed a contract, he was in this for five years. If he tried to get away, even if Gale didn’t have him hit by a bus before he could tell his story to the press, he would be right back where he started. Sure as hell House Gale would find a way to get the money back from him: he’d be penniless and looking at deportation or naturalisation.

That was still more frightening than living with Aubrey Gale.

“I’m really sorry about Max,” he said at last.

The Speaker gave him a watery smile, the kind of water that only just filmed over the shore when the tide was low. It barely covered the grit of the grief below. “You know, that’s the most sincere thing anyone from House Gale has said to me about it.”