Page 78 of The Mars House

Mx Francis crouched down close by. “Are you okay?” they said.

“No. I’m going to need more chocolate,” January admitted. “What if no one goes? There’ll be all this funding and all this effort and it will be pointless and Senator Gale will think I’m an idiot and never listen to me ever again—what if Senator Gale throws me out and I’m eaten by a polar bear, Solly, why didn’t we think of that?”

“I don’t know, I think the bear would have trouble with the cage,” Mx Francis pointed out.

“They’re wily!”

Mx Francis patted him. “It will be fine. People will go. Or, you know, they won’t, and someone will launch more missiles in through the window, but we serve at the pleasure of the House of Gale.”

“Or everyone will think it’s an evil plot to trap people in naturalisation centres and take their cages away,” January said shrilly.

“January,” said a Voice over the camera drone’s speaker system. “Can you put your microphone back on?”

He dropped his scarf over the drone so that it veered around looking like a distressed ghost, and then put his microphone onto Kasha, reasoning that nobody could really fire him at this stage.

Mx Francis was looking worried about the chocolate bar. “Are you sure you should be eating that? It kills your pancreas. You know if you’re addicted to sugar you can get virtual junk food, it’s just protein and vitamins but it’s engineered to taste exactly like—”

“Piss off with your engineered vitamins!”

“But look at the packaging, that’s why it’s got a picture of someone having their foot amputated on it.”

Gale came in through a side door and folded down next to him. Confined to Songshu, they didn’t bother with any of the Senate finery; just a plain green jumper and their hair coiled up without the official diadem or any of it, austere as a cleric. January looked over, surprised, and pleased. He wouldn’t have pegged Gale as a sit-on-the-floor person.

“Could I have some? I’m down a whole leg already, I’m owed,” they said.

The bescarfed drone zithered past, followed closely by Kasha, who was trying to catch it.

“I don’t think this sounds right,” January said, breaking the bar in half and showing Gale the script. “I don’t . . . sound like this, this sounds like—I don’t know, like a government official lying to someone.”

“It’s fine,” Mx Francis said.

Gale glanced up from the script. “No, it isn’t. He doesn’t sound like this at all. It’s all Latin and French.”

Mx Francis’s eyebrows went up. “I am ninety-nine per cent sure it’s English.”

“Which is made of four languages: German, French, Latin, and Greek, in ascending order of register. Germanic words usually sound simple and earthy, sometimes poetic. French and Latin are formal, which is why it sounds like a politician lying. Greek is scientific.”

“Oh my God, it’s happening again,” Mx Francis said bleakly. “Do I even dare ask what you can possibly mean? Will I really regret this? Will I end up killing myself with my shoelaces to escape?”

Gale looked at January. “You know this, right?”

“No,” he said, but although he didn’t understand, he felt like the cavalry had arrived. “How does it work?”

“Every time you ask them anything about language, a fairy dies,” Mx Francis told him, one hand over their face.

He tried not to be too aware that Gale was warm on his right side, or that he could feel them breathing. He wanted to put his head against their shoulder. Stupid.

“This is . . . why English has two or three words for everything,” Gale said, as though they were worried January might feel the shoelace urge too. “You get yourself a drink, but a flight attendant offers you a beverage menu. Drink is German, but beverage is French; more formal. Half of English comes in pairs or triplets with the same meaning but different levels of formality.”

“It does?” he said, to make them go on.

“It does. So . . . reckon is low register, consider is high. Watch is low, supervise is high . . . talk and converse, see and observe, place and location, shrink and diminish . . . what else?”

“Live and reside?” January said, starting to hear it, and fascinated. He knew the difference, but he would never have been able to explain what was behind it.

“Exactly. There’s always one German, and one Latin or French.” Gale was exuding apology. “This whole script is Latin and French. Complimentary, appropriate, refuge, obligation—even the words that aren’t Latin are ludicrous. Deem? Solly, even I don’t say ‘deem’ and I’m wildly pretentious.”

“Sorry, I must have left my French and Latin dictionaries at home,” Mx Francis said drily.