Page 69 of The Mars House

Just do your job. You do what you have to do. You don’t need to die for this.

“I think this storm was caused in order to force Senator Gale to allow a fleet from Earth to land here, even if they are Consul in a few months’ time,” he said, carefully. He couldn’t bring himself to say, I agree with everything Senator Gale says, it’s all definitely a great idea. “I think if enough people are coming, that places Tharsis in a great deal of danger. Even if there are no soldiers, even if it’s just desperate, innocent people fleeing fires—we are dangerous, even if we don’t want to be, and we will see accidental homicides go right up. I don’t know what the solution is in such a short time frame, but I’d like to know what the Consul thinks it is, because we are going to need one.” And it’s going to have to come from the Consul, because honestly, hell is going to freeze over before Gale even thinks about it.

Gale bent very slightly over him, an inch off kissing the top of his head. The falling angel on their coat was just at his eye level now. He cast his eyes down. He shouldn’t have cared whether they approved of what he said or not, especially when it probably just a piece of acting for the press. He did, though.

“And does House Gale have its own solution to the energy crisis?” Professor Shang asked into the silence.

January looked up at Gale, but Gale didn’t speak, and only nodded a little at him.

“Yes. House Gale is building a new solar array in the atmosphere, above the dust. The process will take two months. All we have to do is last until then. And we can. We have the gravity trains, we have some light, and people here are rock hard. You’re the people who came to an airless desert and built a city. We can do this.”

“That’s all we have time for,” Gale said, and below the level of the cameras, they squeezed his hand hard. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

25 Every year, healthy people donated genetic material to the Genesis Institute, and anyone with a Child License could go there and design their own embryo (free, funded by the government), which was then grown in a glass pod. There was a public gallery of babies-in-progress, a very popular part of any Tharsese sightseeing tour, because going to look at babies makes you feel better about everything even if you think you wouldn’t like it. Every year, there were always some abandoned babies, because the parents died or circumstances changed, and it had been the policy of Great Houses for generations now to choose their heirs from among those up for adoption. You could, of course, have a baby in the traditional way if you wanted to, but trying to tell a Tharsese person that this was a good idea usually provoked the sort of reaction that everyone else would have if you tried to convince them of the nurturing, character-building virtues of medieval torture chambers.

26 光, Guang, meant “light,” January’s new glasses told him helpfully, and then, because the translation software was a bit overenthusiastic after being asked to provide information useful for recent immigrants to Tharsis, explained that depending on social context, lots of Tharsese people used translations of their names in different languages, and in fact many felt there was no “true” version. It was usual to use the Mandarin one in a formal context like this, or in writing; outside a bar, they’d be more likely to use the Russian, and if they were signing a piece of graffiti, English. This was why, it enthused, you almost never saw Senate records refer to “House Gale,” but “House Dafeng,” the Mandarin translation, and why lots of conservative news outlets talked about the disappearance of Jiang Dafeng rather than River Gale—and why they were calling him Yiyue and not January.

30

The first thing they had to do was face Mx Francis, who met them at the doors of Songshu furious.

“What the fuck just happened? You just committed us to solar power in the atmosphere in two months live on—”

“Solly—” Gale started.

“If that doesn’t work, you’re dead! I don’t just mean the campaign, I mean face down in a well dead, because we’ll be part of fucking China again—”

“Solly,” Gale tried again.

“Don’t you Solly me! I’m the one who’s going to be up all night drafting the press release that explains exactly how we’re going to pull this off!”

“It was very quick, I wasn’t altogether at my leisure to call for my press secretary’s approval,” Gale said.

“I hate you and I hope you’re trampled by righteous llamas,” Mx Francis told them. “Both of you. Now go away, I have to call Dr Molotov and get them to walk me through how this is going to work. You can’t announce this and then not say how you’ll do it . . .”

“We’ll get out of your way then—”

Dr Molotov came out of the lift then, looking like they might go and fling themselves off a cliff right now to beat the rush. “Mx Stirling! I said two months was the best possible scenario! That’s if nothing goes wrong! Nothing!”

“I know, I’m really sorry—”

“Mx Francis wants you,” Gale put in.

“I don’t have time to explain everything to a publicist, I need to talk to Dr Chen at the House Tesla launch pads . . .”

“You do have time to talk to a publicist, you weird little mole person,” Mx Francis told them. “If you still want a roof to live under in two months—”

Gale gave January a wry look and pressed the house intercom. Their voice smoked around everything, echoing from every floor. “Sorry for the late hour; senior staff to the dining room please; thank you.”

Mx Francis and Dr Molotov looked around. “Senator?”

“Now,” Gale clarified.

“Um—right,” Mx Francis said, looking worried.

“Probably we should make everyone some coffee,” January murmured.

“Let’s do that,” Gale agreed seriously.