Page 68 of The Mars House

“What’s this you?” Gale asked him, voice smoking higher with irritation. “We are House Gale. Roll your sleeves up and show me some plans.”

He had never been so instantly furious. He hadn’t known he could be. “I shouldn’t be the one doing that! I’m just a dancer—”

Gale half laughed. “Come on. You can’t just sit on the side of the ring and complain while I fight, that isn’t fair.”

“I can’t fight with people like you!” January whisper-snapped. “I don’t have a PhD in Generally Everything, I don’t know a quarter of what I need to know, I’m at such a crippling disadvantage against—you don’t understand!”

“You’re afraid people will—what, ignore you, laugh at you?”

“Send me back to prison? Deport me?” His ribs had seized up with everything he wanted to say and everything he didn’t dare to ask, and with hating that he didn’t dare and hating that he wasn’t any good at saying things when he did.

“I see,” Gale said, steady and hard. “I’m afraid someone will kill me.”

January didn’t know what to say any more. There was a tornado in his head now and he couldn’t catch any of his thoughts, except in disjointed scraps as they tore past. He didn’t want Gale to be afraid all the time, it made him feel sick to think of that, but he would rather shoot himself than say that being afraid was a good reason to maim someone else. And there was something like grief in there too. He had loved having that new bridge between him and Gale, it had been precious, and now he was watching it burn.

“All of which,” Gale said, sounding tired, “is irrelevant, because we only have a month to come with up something, not ten years. You don’t have to come with me for this if you’d rather go back to Songshu.”

Maybe it was just because of what the Speaker had told him, but that last offer sounded more like a trap than a way out. He could see vividly that if he took it, he would be saying was that he was happy to take Gale’s money without doing the job it paid for. He might as well declare he wanted a divorce right now, and if he did that, he had probably better enjoy what few of his very numbered days remained.

“I said I disagree with you, I didn’t say I wouldn’t do my job,” January said, very quiet. He had felt less trapped in the prison cell. At least there he’d had the friendly dognapper.

Gale bowed slightly and opened one arm to invite him to go first.

On the steps of the hotel they walked into a wall of people all yelling so many questions it was impossible to distinguish any single voice. All he heard was a swarm roar.

“Good evening, how is everyone?” Gale said, not even fractionally stirred by it.

There was a story from somewhere, about a king who had tried to stop the sea; January thought of it then, because he had a feeling that the sea would have parted for Gale.

“Senator, can you comment on what the Consul just said?”

“The Consul has just announced that a fleet from Earth is coming here with uranium. And well they might; this storm is artificial, caused by the release of silver iodide, which does not naturally occur on Mars or anywhere. This is clearly a pretext by which to bring as many immigrants from Earth here as possible before the election, under the guise of help in an energy crisis.”

More noise than January had ever heard before. It had hurt less to stand right under the engine of an idling interplanetary liner. He felt painfully detached from it all.

“Senator—”

“Senator!”

“Senator—”

“Mx Stirling?”

Gale pointed to that last voice, and January had a drab little tide of gladness when he recognised Professor Shang, wearing a badge that said they were reporting for, of all things, a neurology journal, and beaming out that same Paddington Bear warmth they’d had in the interrogation room, still in that same purple scarf.

“Mx Stirling, what do you think is going on?”

Gale was looking down at him, as suddenly silent as everyone else.

A quiet voice in his head said: You know, if you say, don’t be silly, there are no crazy conspiracies, you could pull the rug out from under all this. Songshu is failing, aid is coming; what’s the problem?

He could see the future, as clear as if it were playing across the inside of his new glasses. If those ships landed, more would follow. China and Russia and India and all the rest wouldn’t want Tharsis to become American overnight. With them would come their governments. Tharsis would be a true colony again soon, and that would be that. People like Gale would never have any power again. People like Gale, sixth- or seventh-generation Natural, would find themselves at the very bottom of the pile, and maybe even forced out of the city. The world would turn upside down and everyone who had scraped along the bottom would have a chance to get to the top. The Senate would become Earthstrong heavy, cages would be here to stay, life would be—maybe not brilliant, but better. The naturalisation centres would close. Perhaps funding would go to making more buildings like the Rings. He could go in shops. He could get work again, normal work. With the money he already had from his single month working for House Gale, he could start a dance company.

He wouldn’t need to be tied to a nationalist who wanted him to wither away behind a fence.

He wanted to think that if he said that, he would be safe, there could be no garbage truck accident, because that would be too ridiculously obvious—but he could see that that was naïve. Money like House Gale’s was power. Gale could do what they liked. There might be a scandal, but he’d still be dead.

He drew his breath in slowly.