Page 93 of The Mars House

People were hurrying up to ask how it had gone, if it had worked, was the power coming back on, was the internet coming back on.

While January said yes to as many people as could hear him, Gale went to one of the tannoy stations on the wall. “Good evening, everyone. It is my very great pleasure to announce that thanks to the local mammoth herd, all the gravity trains have been raised. This means that not only is there plenty of power for heating and internet, but also the solar rig is likely to be finished sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”

As they said it, the electricity whirred back up, the lights glowed, the heating system made a wonderful singing noise, and a joyful cheer went right up and down the tower, from the dining room, up round the balconies to the Earthstrong floor, the glass-decked production room, and the scientists higher up. Someone had come prepared, because indoor fireworks started going off, bursting fantastic colours all up the tower. Gale laughed, looking more relieved than January would ever have expected given how calmly they had taken all the bad luck so far, the fireworks zinging mauve and amber lights across the black of their hair.

“We’ll get changed and then champagne in ten minutes?” Gale said to January, who had never more wanted to throw his arms round someone, and never been so scared to.

“Oh, God, yes,” January said, extremely ready to be drunk.

The third floor was given over to Earthstrong people now, and there was a strict no-naturalised-people-past-this-point rule, so that you could go about without your cage and not worry about hurting anyone. January glanced into rooms and coffee stations as he passed, checking that people were all right and, more tacitly, that nobody was deliberately destroying anything. Mx Francis had not been wrong to worry that somebody might come here with a grudge and a silent determination to start a riot. But so far, nothing like that seemed to be happening. He found a gang of hulking teenagers by the glass wall that looked into the hummingbird garden and looked over their shoulders, suspecting something terrible, but actually they had sketchbooks and they were all drawing the birds.

In one of his lenses, Sasha appeared too, to watch and sometimes to ask tersely for him to take a closer look at something. They had aged in the last day. It seemed insane to look at every shadow and oddly shaped bag, but he had a feeling Sasha would have a full nervous breakdown if he didn’t. They were right. Anyone could have brought a bomb in here. Everyone had gone through a sort of airport-type security check on the way in, but even so. You could, Sasha said, going very high, print a sodding bomb out of carbon parts, and that wasn’t going to show up on any scan.

“What are those men doing?” Sasha asked sharply.

“Those boys,” January said gently, because they were only about eighteen, just old enough to work, “are playing conkers. All right gents?”

“All right Mr Stirling,” they said happily. One of them was wearing a sparkly pink party hat.

“How do you even tell how old they are?” Sasha sighed. “They all look like they’re forty-five.”

“Practise,” January promised, and turned sideways to let some very little kids zoom past. A lot of the contractors had brought their children with them to work; nobody liked the idea of leaving them alone at the naturalisation centre, just in case.

Everything smelled wonderfully of fireworks and beer in paper cups. Everyone looked happy.

Good; good. He went downstairs again once he was in fresh clothes and back in his cage—God, it felt stiff now—to the dining room, looking round for Gale, and feeling warm with knowing they’d be looking for him too, soon, and he wasn’t just doing what he usually did, which was casting around for an unsuspecting victim to sit with. It was crowded. People were making the most of the heated floor, having picnics.

The only piece of strife he noticed was an older lady bothering one of the Songshu interns, who she’d cornered at a hot chocolate station.

“Come on!” she protested. “Why can’t people say what they really are? All I want is a straight answer! Biology!”

“It’s not about biology,” January said, directing the intern away with his eyelashes. The intern bowed a little, irritated. “Look, asking people here that is like me asking you what your blood type is and then deciding what you should be like just based on that. It’s no one’s business except a doctor’s.”

“Nice of you to mansplain it to me,” she snapped, with the whiplash of a person who had suffered because of someone who looked like him. “D’you have any idea how threatening it feels, not knowing? Any idea at all?”

He watched her for a second, thinking of those enormous dogs who had been terrorised by cats when they were puppies, and who still remembered being helpless and scared, even though they could easily have eaten a cat now. “You’re three times stronger than people here. Who’s threatening who?”

She slapped him, not very hard, but she was wearing gauntlets and it hurt, and he had to step right back and clamp down the instinct to hit back. She was smaller than him; for all he had got used to being little here, he was in fact six foot two.

“Do it again and you’re out,” he said wearily, and traipsed away with one hand over his cheekbone where it stung to see if there was any food left at the big buffet, which looked and smelled like the best kind of market grill. Around the room, the security people were scanning everyone, watching for anyone who’d forgotten their cage. Nobody had so far, at least.

“Again?” Sasha said to him, unimpressed. “We’re just going to let her wander around harassing the interns, are we? Get rid of her.”

He had to laugh, although not really with humour. “Sasha, come on. She’s frightened of men in the same way the Senator is frightened of Earthstrongers. Probably one hurt her once, and now she thinks none of them should be allowed to walk around without a big sticker that says CAUTION, and ideally they’d be kept in cages all the time as well. I think you’d want to know, if there was a secret Earthstronger in the room who looked like a Natural person? That’s what she’s seeing. I know she’s wrong, I know there’s no one here who could hurt her, but yelling at her won’t help.”

Sasha looked down at him, very hard. “That’s the enormous difference though, isn’t it: no one can hurt her. The Senator’s fear isn’t irrational.”

“I didn’t say it was,” he said, regretting having said anything. Sasha was never going to understand. He pressed his hands over his eyes and wished there was a way to translate properly. He couldn’t help thinking that that was most of the problem between Earthstrongers and naturalised people. People could say the same words, but they meant such different things.

After he poured himself some hot chocolate—he wanted to wait for Gale for wine, and he couldn’t see them yet—he took off his glasses to polish them, and to give himself a break from all the glittering virtual overlays of art and artificial sky, all vivid and glorious and a little bit overwhelming now the internet was alive again. It seemed healthy to remind himself what was actually there. As he did, Kasha trotted by, wearing tinsel round her collar and trying to get into the pockets of Gale’s real partner, who was dressed for outside, plainly hoping to persuade her to come for some exercise. January hinged forward awkwardly, a quarter-bow, not knowing if it was better to apologise for existing or to just be quiet. But they only bowed back, and then smiled when a very tiny person in a party hat asked seriously if Kasha would mind being made available for rides. Kasha, always thrilled with new humans, snuffled around and all but shoved the little boy onto her back, then ran away with him looking triumphant.

January wondered about the party hat until he saw people toasting.

Of course.

It was Christmas Day.

Hah.