Page 118 of The Mars House

“Today, earlier. By the piano. You looked scared. It’s hard to convince Solly about . . . cultural differences.”

He had to frown into the memory, because it didn’t feel like it came from earlier tonight at all. It was a thousand years ago. He had some dim recollection of carols. “How do you mean?”

“Well, the . . . I was reading, and the consensus on Earth seems to be you need to know if someone’s a man or a woman before—and keeping that from you is—something between deeply weird and quietly violent?” They sounded uncertain, watching him for any sign it was right or wrong.

“That definitely isn’t the consensus, there is no consensus, that’s . . . but you don’t need to be reading any of it,” January said, shocked that this was what Gale was worried about when, for all the two of them knew, the praetorians were minutes away from the tent. “It’s a cesspool, just—don’t—worry. All those things . . .” He shook his head a little. “They’re important at home, and there have been riots and laws and fights for centuries about giving people the freedom or not to choose one kind of human or another, but none of it was ever thought of with someone like you in mind. You’re outside it.”

“But you aren’t.” Gale hesitated. It was exactly the way January found himself talking to very religious people; wanting not to offend, but not understanding where the logic of offence might live, because if you weren’t in it, it all sounded made up and arbitrary. “I can tell you. If it would . . . help.”

“No. It doesn’t matter.” January pushed himself upright on his good arm. His head swam and reported he really shouldn’t do that just now. “Because you don’t even understand any of it. You’re so clean. If you’d asked me two years ago I would never have been able to imagine—” He stopped himself before he could say what he had been going to. “I would never have been able to imagine someone like you. But now I’m here, and you’re you—there’s nothing better, honestly. I didn’t look worried today because of any of that, I looked worried because I’m chronically scared of being flirted with, I always feel like someone’s coming at me with a knife. I don’t know why, I just always have been. Probably linked to my punishing issues about my dad and whatnot.”

Gale gave it more thought than most people ever gave anything. They always looked down when they were thinking, and when their eyes came up, it was a good few seconds later. “What issues?”

January had a surge of love for them then. It was the contrast between who Gale was, and how they sounded. An annihilatingly clever scholar who had no self-consciousness at all about asking simple questions. He didn’t know anyone else who didn’t care if they sounded like they didn’t know something. He’d never known anyone else like that.

“No idea, I don’t need to be poking around in there.”

“Mm. I’m sure there’s a reason I’m an unfeeling drone but I don’t need to know it.”

“Never discuss it and hope it goes away by itself, it’s the best way.”

“It’s fine.”

“We’re fine.”

“Exactly.”

They both laughed. It made something in January’s head twang.

He was shivering, even though he could still tell, objectively, that the heated ground sheet was warm and the sealskin was doing its job. Gale must have seen, because they set Yuan gently aside and moved nearer, and tilted him half upright so they could sit behind him and he could lean back against their chest. He should have said no, because he still wasn’t convinced he was very coordinated, but it seemed like a faraway concern, and all he could really do was sink into how much better and safer it felt to be cradled against someone so much taller. When Gale closed one hand over both of his, they were warm. He could feel them breathing. He’d always thought their bones must be fragile, but they lifted easily against his back for all he was heavy here, strong and sure. Then they pulled the blanket over him again, though that must have been far too hot for them.

He swallowed. “Thanks.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Just cold.”

Gale made a quiet sympathy sound and stroked his hair back. He shut his eyes under their hand, and his whole skeleton relaxed, even though he hadn’t noticed he was holding himself tense. Part of him faded away with it. The world felt far off; the heat of the ground sheet, Gale’s hand, the softness of the sealskin blanket catching on the new stubble under his jaw. He was seeing it from underwater. The cold was worse, but he minded it less, and all at once, despite the chaos of the night, he was so tired he couldn’t think. But he was happy. Despite everything, he would have done it all again to be here, like this; no cameras, just them, and Gale’s ribs lifting under his. He tried to gather up the memory so he could save it for later.

Gale was squeezing his hand, hard enough to hurt, but like the cold, the hurt didn’t feel very attached to him. “January. January? Can you hear me?”

He wanted to say, Of course I can hear you, but his voice had shimmered off somewhere else in the cold ocean.

“January!”

“I’m okay,” he said, or he thought he did. His voice sounded imaginary.

Gale tucked Yuan against him. “Would you look after him for a minute?”

Him; God, what grace.

He nodded, assuming they meant to go and find more water or something, and it was only once Gale had gone that it occurred to him they were doing their chivalric trick of making him feel less useless while they went to find a solution to the uselessness.

Only there wasn’t one. Dr Okonkwo had done everything they could. All there was left now was to wait it out and hope the internet came back on.

Gale didn’t come back, and didn’t come back.

It was in stages that January started to see what they’d done. He snapped back awake as completely as if he’d dumped a bucket of water over his head.