Page 105 of The Mars House

“Yes,” he heard his own voice say. “Um—I—some of it is.”

“That’s a gunshot wound.”

“I can’t feel anything.”

“Shock,” Gale agreed. They sounded level, but they looked worried. “That’s going to wear off in about half an hour—”

“We need to go,” he said, coming back to himself. “Jesus. It’s nuts down there. The praetorians started shooting, people are out of their cages, and there’s someone who’s—”

“This is the praetorian service,” a voice said across the house tannoy. “All Earthstrongers must report to the third floor immediately, wearing a cage. Any Earthstronger not wearing a cage will be shot. The exits are all blocked. Do not try to leave the building.”

“Chapter Four of How to Do a Massacre,” Gale snapped, more angry than January had ever seen them. “We have to get everyone out. Listen—funny question—say you fell out of a car at about forty miles an hour here. Would you survive it?”

“Sure,” January said, not following at all but too shocked and too numb to do anything except answer the question. If Gale had asked him if he liked fish just then, he probably wouldn’t have questioned why at all, he would probably have said, Yes, I really like looking at tropical ones but I don’t like eating any. “I’d just sort of bounce. What—why?”

“The tower is five hundred feet high.”

January took a breath to say Say that again, then understood. “Yes. Good idea.” He didn’t say that, his voice did. He’d heard the phrase before, to be beside yourself, but he hadn’t ever understood how literal it was. He was beside himself. He felt like he was a few feet away, feeling his body do things of its own accord but without any instructions from the part of him that was him.

“Get on the tannoy,” Gale said.

“Me?”

“Yes. No one’s going to do anything I say, they just saw me arrested for murder.”

“What about you, is forty miles an hour . . . ?”

Gale shook their head. “I’ll find another way, I’ll meet you at the big warehouse, where they keep all the heavy-weather gear.”

“Um . . . have the doors open, and the lights on, so people can see where to go. It’s cold out there,” January said. He still couldn’t quite fit himself back into all his true angles and edges. He was nearer than before, but he was sort of stuffed in, like when you hadn’t put a glove on properly. Bits of him still didn’t feel like they belonged. When he looked down at his hands, they didn’t seem like hands but bizarre monster spider things. “I don’t know how long everyone can survive without gear—maybe ten minutes?”

“I will.”

He finally got himself to fit just about right, and thinking was easier. “The second I say that people should go up to the tower, all the praetorians are going to follow.”

Gale nodded. “But it’s hard to get a clear shot on the stairs, and if they want to keep people on the ground floor exits, they can’t send many. There are only thirty of them or so in all.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“If I’m not, you’re House Gale. Get the solar array into the atmosphere.”

January stared at them. He had no idea what was happening any more and no idea what to think, except that there was someone invisible in the house doing God knew what and why, and all he could really understand just now was that Gale—who an hour ago he had been sure was a murderer—had faked a homicide to protect him.

“I will. Be . . .” He had been going to say careful, but Gale was always careful. “Be fast.”

Gale gripped his hand, brief but hard. “And you.”

January touched the intercom and took a deep breath. Gale glanced up and down the corridor, and then vanished around the corner. Despite everything, despite not knowing how to fit it all together, he found himself praying that it wouldn’t be the last time he saw them.

46

The second after his message went onto the tannoy, the praetorians cut the power. No more talking to anyone; no more lights; no more heat; and no elevators. Too late though. People were already running up the stairs, Earthstrong people without cages, at least a hundred of them. It was a sprint up the tower, stronger people stopping on the landings to shepherd the frailer ones past. January, a broad Canadian blacksmith, and three women who had used to be triathletes at home went the whole way carrying the littlest children. Behind them, there were praetorians with guns, but exactly like Gale had said, not many, and they never had a good shot, though they tried. Without cages it was easy enough to outpace them, but not by as far as January would have liked. He had a nasty feeling that the strength differential between a consular praetorian and an older Earthstronger was much less than anyone thought. There was an elderly man who was only here because he depended on his son to look after him. The son was carrying him over one shoulder. Maybe a bit delirious now, January caught himself thinking he’d like to see what sort of polar bear that poor old man was equivalent to. Maybe an asthmatic cub.

“What are we even doing?” the Canadian blacksmith whispered. It was unbelievably dark; no moonlight got through the dust, no borrowed glow from the halogens that usually lit up the security perimeter around the house. Trying not to give the praetorians a target, nobody was even carrying a lighter or a torch. The only blips came from the emergency glow-in-the-dark stripes along the edges of the floor, and from the red wire-lines of the praetorians’ gun sights, flicking a few floors below. “Is there a way down from up here—is there a helicopter?”

“No,” January said. “We have to jump.”

“What?”