Page 79 of The Mars House

“How would you say it?” Gale asked January. “If you were just telling me over coffee.”

January gazed down at the script. “I’d say . . . I’d say: at House Gale, we think the best way to keep everyone Earthstrong safe during the blackouts is to open the naturalisation centres. Nobody will have to naturalise. But you’ll get a room, and all your food, and all your electricity, for free.”

“That’s great. That sounds like you. Say that.” Gale looked sideways at Mx Francis. “Which is the French and Latin translated back into conversational Germanic root words, by the way.”

“Just so you know, if I ever wanted to murder you in this election,” Mx Francis said, “all I’d have to do is release a thirty-second clip of you doing exactly this.”

“Solly,” January protested, “stop shaming them for being clever. They’re running for Consul, not Prom Queen. If I’ve got a choice between a relatable donkey and a stratospheric genius, I want the bloody genius, thank you.”

“You can’t call someone here a Prom Queen, January!”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I know. I didn’t.”

But Gale looked at him as though he had just held an umbrella over them in pouring rain, and a happy, warm, ashamed bubble swelled in his chest.

“Go and do your German speech,” Mx Francis told him, flapping him with the script.

“Does this look okay?” January asked Gale, waving at his whole self. “And my English is Deep British. There are going to be Americans watching this going, What’s that funny noise he’s making?”

Gale thought about it. “Well, it—looks like Solly’s dressed you up as a poor person and tried to make you cry.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” January said, more reassured to hear the truth than, Yes, definitely, you’ll be marvellous.

“But I think in this instance, it’s what we need,” Gale finished gently. “Are you ready?”

January nodded, and got up to stand where the camera people where pointing. He tried to breathe in deep. Even if he made the most convincing speech of all time, it would be tomorrow, or longer, before they knew whether or not people were going to the centres. At the end of the ad, they would put on a link for a virtual forum if anyone had worries or questions, and some of Gale’s aides were ready to talk to people, but he seriously doubted anyone would bother until they had no other choice but freezing to death at home. Once he’d done this, there would be nothing to do except wait, and get on with planning ballet lessons people could do while they were trapped at home in the storm, when there was power, and keep coming up with silly things the reality show people could film him doing.

And hope Gale really didn’t trap everyone in the naturalisation centres. He was only eight tenths convinced.

Gale was still sitting on the carpet, watching. When he caught their eye, they smiled.

“Five, four, three . . .” The camera drone operator counted down on their fingers, then made a spinning motion to say, Rolling.

January let Mx Francis’s script drop to his side. “Good evening, everyone. I’m here to tell you what we want to do at House Gale to help Earthstrong people through the blackouts. It’s going to sound a bit mad, but bear with me.”

As soon as he finished, he crumpled down on the floor with Gale again, not nearly as relieved as he’d hoped. Gale put one arm around him. He hugged them back, tucked against their shoulder. It was a lovely feeling, but there were needles hidden in it, and he knew that if he relaxed too much, he’d cut himself. Somewhere upstairs, their real partner would be waiting.

“Don’t be worried; I thought you were very compelling, for a cave person,” Mx Ren said in passing.

Mx Francis was running through an amended schedule. A lot of charity and politics rallies and fundraisers were going to be cancelled because of the dust; there would be virtual events instead, so soon he needed to be in a virtual fitting for virtual clothes.

“Senator?” an aide said nervously from the doorway of the VR room. It was just a big blank space with padded walls so you could walk around while you were plugged into the internet and not hurt yourself. “Would you mind coming into the forum? There are a lot more people than we . . . er, expected.”

Gale glanced down at January, full of wariness, and they both got up together. January pushed his glasses back on and Gale’s eyes flared blue with the new connection.

The virtual forum was a lovely space. It was a forest glade, in golden sunlight and part shaded by the ruins of pillars bound up in red ivy. Statistically, Mx Francis said, people were calmer and you got more agreements and diplomatic treaties if everyone talked while they were outside, or at least, if they felt like they were. If January had had the haptic engines webbing across the right part of his brain like Mx Francis and Gale had, he would even have been able to feel the sunlight, and smell the warm pollen in the air. As it was, he was well aware of being in a blank dark room with rubber pads over the walls, but even just seeing the glade through his glasses was good.

It was full of people.

Hundreds and hundreds of people.

Naturalised people were there on behalf of Earthstrong friends who didn’t want to appear even as an avatar; Earthstrong people using public VR access; staff from Songshu and the centres, marked out with red sashes and sparkling signs hanging above their heads that said HERE TO HELP.

There was a rush for January and Gale.

“That’s them!”

“Is it really true that it would be completely free?” someone said.