Page 115 of The Mars House

“Sorry,” January said. “No, it—so for a while now, you’ve had trouble sleeping, right?” he aimed at Gale, hoping for help. And under that, in the weakest, wintery sunbeam, a tiny warmth started to break across him when he realized what this actually meant. It meant Gale didn’t have someone else. This marriage wasn’t quite such a spectacular lie as he’d thought. All this time, it had been in good faith. He wasn’t just an inconvenience to the side of their real life together with somebody else.

A bit wryly, he reflected that in the history of finding out an unwanted person was living covertly in your house, probably nobody had ever been as happy about it as he was now.

“You thought it was hallucinations, Dr Okonkwo thought it was trauma from Gagarin Square. But it’s not like a real sleep disorder, you don’t have any other symptoms and all the scans are clean. Because it’s not a sleep disorder. There’s—Senator, there’s someone living in your room with you.”

The others started to talk and ask questions, but January didn’t really hear, because all he could really take in was Gale’s expression. Gale had gone very still, their focus somewhere in the far distance, and he could see them listening to their own memories.

“They comb your hair,” January added, very quiet.

“There was someone there,” Gale said to him at last, more of a question than a conclusion. “They were—really there. You saw?”

“They’ve been there all along.”

“I thought I was . . .”

“This is true?” Sasha asked, voice going high. “Senator! You’ve never said anything.”

“No, because it would have sounded like I was convinced Songshu is haunted,” Gale said.

January swallowed. “There’s a bit more.”

Incredulous looks.

“They showed me where Max’s body was. I couldn’t see them, I was wearing my glasses, but . . .”

Sasha had both hands clamped over their mouth. Mx Francis looked scared. Even Mx Ren shifted, uneasy. Dr Okonkwo had gone a horrible colour, and Dr Molotov was staring at the ground, fingertips twitching in a way that made January wonder if they might be doing some maths in their head.

“And it was them who shoved me into the Consul today. That was why the praetorians shot me, they couldn’t see what had happened. That was why someone threw something, and . . . that was why they fired on the Earthstrong people.”

“So it’s Aubrey,” Gale said at last, very quiet. They closed their eyes for a second as if seeing the world was starting to sting. “They even told me they’d drive me mad before they killed me.”

“What—what I don’t understand,” Sasha managed, voice fraying, “is how the fuck they did this. I’ve been military since I was eighteen, I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“It’s completely possible,” Dr Molotov said. It was the first time they’d spoken, and as they always did if everyone’s attention was on them, they pushed one hand awkwardly through their hair, clearly wishing there was a blackboard to hide behind. “The technology does exist; it’s called the Hades filter.35 It’s top secret, but the marines use it to ghost security cameras on black ops. I used to build this stuff for House Song. It’s not even revolutionary, we could have made it a hundred years ago.” They looked around at everyone else, nervousness seeping gradually away. “Basically, the only reason it hasn’t been developed before now is that it only works if everyone is perceiving the world through lenses, you see? They’re banned in a lot of countries, because obviously you need a heavily regulated internet in order for people not to go completely insane. Where they’re not banned, most people can’t afford them. If you’re rich in Beijing or Lagos or Riyadh then sure, but filters like this are damn all use if you’ve got loads of people walking around not using lenses. Tharsis is . . . well. We’re the only country in the worlds where most people use them.”

“I feel like there’s a lesson in this about getting too rich and clever for your own good,” Mx Francis mumbled.

“It came from Max, right?” January said. “Max was a marine.”

For the last couple of minutes, Sasha had sunk into a deep, painful silence, but now, they sat forward.

“Doesn’t matter how, for now. While the internet’s out—if you’re right—then we’ll all see them.”

“If Aubrey wanted to kill you,” Mx Ren said to Gale, “then it sounds like they could done it a thousand times over. Why haven’t they?”

Nobody said anything.

“Anyway,” Gale said after a long silence, “I don’t know if the Consul can find a way to track us out here, but—we’re going to have to hope that they can’t. I know I can’t go any further like this.”

Everyone else looked some awful catch between scared and relieved. January drew his knees up and put his head on them. His whole arm was throbbing. He couldn’t tell if that was just what happened if you’d been shot, or if, jumping off a tower and rolling around in grass and dust, he’d got something in the wound that he shouldn’t have. It was only when he moved that he realized Yuan was tucked up against his left side, asleep, and still holding on to handfuls of his shirt.

35 The scientist who came up with it had actually been in the same Ancient Greek class as River as an undergraduate, and had felt extremely cool to have thought of a name that (a) sounded awesome and (b) was also technically accurate. Hades, the Greek word for the underworld, was actually a description, from ha, not, and eido, to see; Hades, ha-eides, was the Unseen.

49

The tent was so warm inside now that Gale was in shirtsleeves. Between the two of them, a little stove boiled some water, shushing cheerily and sending a soft glow around the silver walls. January was quiet, shifting a heat pack around and around in his hands. He was warm enough, but he couldn’t put it down; he felt panicky whenever he thought about it, and not, he suspected, because he was scared of freezing to death. It was something to do with his hands and it stopped him disturbing Yuan, who was still asleep against his knee.

They had been sitting in exhausted silence. January didn’t know what to say, except ordinary things like, How does this stove work?