Page 83 of The Mars House

Gale stared at him for a second, but then nodded. “Of course.”

He took Gale’s arm and tried to make it look like he was the one who needed it. They made it to the lift, which was running on emergency power because of course Gale couldn’t very well do many stairs, and he thought he might have misjudged, but as soon as it started to rise, Gale thumped the emergency stop button and stood more still than January had known a human could, soundless—he couldn’t even hear them breathing, maybe they weren’t—and tears leaking under their lashes.

January would have hugged anyone else, but he had a horrible feeling that getting close to him was the last thing Gale wanted. He pressed himself to the wall instead, out of reach.

“She didn’t get very long in prison, did she,” he said, in Mandarin so Gale wouldn’t have to work so hard for it. “The woman who did it. I watched the trial. They said something about . . . I forget, but it meant she was a weapons-grade idiot who got all her news from social media and she thought she was on some kind of holy crusade, and it would be cruel to treat her as if she had a brain.”

“Four years for assault . . . her lawyers said that if she’d been trying to kill me she would have. It was a very political trial. The point was to calm things down.” They swallowed, and switched back into English. “And I think everyone agreed that I brought it upon myself.”

“No,” January said, very soft, so he wouldn’t yell. “You said it already: this is Mars. It’s cold here, and there’s no water.”

Gale looked at him for an expressionless age, and then stepped into his arms and locked their shoulders together.

“I’m sorry,” Gale said tightly.

“What for?” January asked, hearing his own voice go high and tight, because his throat had constricted. “I’m so relieved you’re a normal person, I’ve been going round terrified I’m married to the King of Sparta.” He realized as he said it that Gale had no reason to know what Sparta was or that people from there were infamously war-loving crazies; not when most people here didn’t even know what Europe was, except the funny bit stuck on the side of Russia. He had the familiar old tide of despair that he was never going to be able to talk to anyone properly ever again, not someone who understood straightaway everything he was likely to say, who didn’t wonder if he was being strange or aggressive. He shoved it aside. He really needed to stop moping around feeling sorry for himself; it was getting on his nerves. “I’m not a Spartan, I’m a ballet hamster, I shuffle around complaining about opera scores that are played too fast.”

Gale stayed bent forward against him. In a very deep-down simple way, it felt safe. He didn’t mind being around people who were a foot taller than him at all, because he liked them all—except Dr Okonkwo, but probably even God didn’t like Dr Okonkwo—but at some point in the last two months, he had got used to feeling a little bit uneasy, almost all of the time, because everyone’s sight line went naturally straight over his head. People let doors go just before he tried to walk through them, he had to press himself to the wall in corridors as someone hurried by, and he had to keep stepping back from Mx Francis, who spoke with their hands once they’d got to know you, because his face was at exactly flailing level. Wrapped in Gale’s arms now, it just—went away. He caught himself wanting never to come up. “Thanks,” they said against his hair.

He pressed the emergency button again and the lift sighed upward. Gale tilted back against the wall, looking to the side as though looking at January would have been too much.

“Shall we hide in my room for a bit?” he asked. “I’ve got candles. We could tell ghost stories?” He thought about it. “But—not ones that are too good, or you might have to defend me from the thing under the bed.”

Gale did look at him then. “With my shield or on it.”

37

The whole of Songshu was a scramble for the next few hours; everywhere, there were people with drills and safety checklists going in and out of rooms, securing anything that could be secured against someone three times normal strength. Yellow tape went up, and signs that said

DANGER EARTHSTRONG ONLY

NO NATURALISED PERSONS BEYOND THIS POINT

or, around the production rooms and Gale’s flat on the fifth floor,

YOU MUST WEAR A CAGE BEYOND THIS POINT

Tape went down in the dining room, the main foyer, spray signs went onto the floor, into elevators, and the big screens that usually showed interactive maps of the building flashed up reminders to keep right.

When the first people came in that night, they came slowly, looking just as uncertain as January had felt when Gale took him into the Tiangong. January stood in the entrance hall to meet people and direct them, and so did all the kitchen staff. They’d made vats of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate; toast, rice, fish, everything hot on open grills or sizzling in makeshift fireplaces. January went round as many people as he could to say hello, and make sure they had the right room keys. Songshu staff were in bright red sashes now so people could see them, although there was no real need, because of course they were much taller than anyone born on Earth.

Light gleamed on everyone’s cages. The Natural people were doing good work of not looking obviously terrified, he thought. Gale was taking round a tray of hot chocolate and coffee. January had a twinge of painful pride.

Mx Francis coughed from behind him.

“Hot chocolate.”

“Oh—thanks.”

They hesitated. They were tying reef knots into the ends of their braids again. There were three that January could see already. “Are—are you angry with me, after the meeting?”

“Am I what? No?”

“Because—I know I’m the one who thought this was dangerous.”

“It is dangerous,” January said incredulously. “Of course it is. You weren’t wrong.” If Gale had been anyone else, he would have said, Look, I know the Senator was scary about it but even they had a panic attack in in the elevator. But even the idea of saying that felt like betrayal. He looked around for Gale again. Since the Earthstrongers had started arriving, a timer had been going in his head. A quarter of an hour, half, a whole hour, because what was right in the front of his mind was: how long could I walk through a polar bear enclosure and keep pretending I wasn’t scared?

His heart stopped for a beat—it was unexpected agony, it had never happened before—when he saw that Gale was surrounded by bulky men in orange work jackets and cages dulled-down and scratched from labour work, boots still rusty with the dust of the site and clothes oil stained. But then while he watched, they all laughed.