Page 87 of The Mars House

“Okay, that’s . . . something Slavic but . . . right. That’s Czech. They might know some Russian, shall we try . . . ?”

January left the two of them piecing things together with poor Mx Molotov and moved on to other people. A lot of them were having exactly the same problem. Some people were so confused they couldn’t tell left from right. The most common haptic implant, he discovered, was a link to maps. Only you didn’t see a map. Early models had worked that way, but it was more effective now. It just fired off the part of your brain that felt like it knew the right way. But if you’d had them since you were young, then your brain used the implant, instead of assigning space in its own matter for that kind of thing.

The kitchen was in disarray, because half the staff spoke Mandarin, half spoke Russian, and nobody spoke both. January had to translate a lot just to get the kettles going. It wasn’t just that nobody understood. It was the shock of not understanding.

Even Gale looked the worse for wear when he went back out with cups and cups of tea for everyone. They were sitting with their forearms on their knees, hair in a heavy black rope over one shoulder, looking hard at a patch on the ground in the way January had used to do on the Crossing when he felt space-sick. “Thanks.”

“How is it?”

“It’s like being in a fever dream,” Gale said reflectively. “It’s not horrible, it’s just—powerfully weird.”

“You’re not as confused as anyone else.”

“Traditional education. I didn’t have proper haptics till I was older than you. Just lenses. Most of my brain does what it’s meant to by itself.”

“How come?”

Gale smiled their real smile, the shy slight one. “Because that’s what rich families do. River and I grew up like kids in the twentieth century. You know; wooden toys, running around outside, climbing trees, riding bikes. I didn’t even touch anything electronic till I was five.”

“Gross,” said January, to see if he could make them smile more.

“I know, it’s very punchable, isn’t it, I’m sorry.” They paused. “I feel like my English is—not so good, though, I don’t think I realized how much I was using dictionaries, is it . . . ?”

January kicked their ankle. “Obnoxiously perfect. And shut up about dictionaries, I bet you don’t even need a dictionary in Mammoth.”

“In . . .” Gale frowned, and stopped.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just—I have . . . River’s old research gear.”

“River’s—what, the mammoth project?”

Gale nodded.

“We can talk to the mammoths?”

“I think so.”

January tried not to disturb the idea too badly as he lifted it up. “How likely is a mammoth to agree to help turn a gravity train windlass?”

“I don’t know, but—we could ask them?” Gale said.

39

The mammoths were scattered through five or six groves among the pines. A baby was hiding in a hollow log, and some of the others were trying to coax him out, reaching in with their trunks and stroking his head and making quiet rumbles that shook the earth. Above them, the trees groaned. The wind wasn’t strong, but the cold was. There were fissures in the bark that whistled, and when the mammoths breathed out, there were no clouds of vapour, but ice crystals that made a shimmering sound as they fell. Under the permanent pall of the dust, Ariel said, the temperature was the lowest it had been on Mars since terraforming began. The mammoths were hardly more than silhouettes by the hazy light of the camping lanterns everyone had to carry outside now.

“Stay here,” Gale said to January. “The big bull gets flustered easily, he’s the one who tore up the train.”

January hadn’t realized that the bull was even there, because he’d thought what he was seeing was a tree. The bull was sitting on the ground next to it, very still, and looking miserable. A littler one, younger, was bustling around collecting pine cones, which it was stacking up next to him in exactly the same way a human might leave a plate of biscuits near someone who was having a difficult day.

The size of them wouldn’t go through his head. They had been giants even at a distance, but up close, it was difficult to understand how something so vast could have working lungs and bones. Even the littlest of the babies was taller than Gale.

“Are you really just going to walk up to the one of them and hope it understands?” January asked softly.

Gale was carrying a bag full of equipment. It was, they’d explained, a halo, or a version of one with sensors designed to fit a mammoth. “That’s the idea,” they whispered. “They know me, or some of them do. River worked with this herd for years.”

“That’s great, but that was River,” January whispered back. “What if they don’t recognise you? I wouldn’t recognise the brother or sister of some scientist I met once or twice for a couple of experiments . . .”