Page 120 of The Mars House

Out here in the dust eddies and forming cyclones, he had a sudden feeling he could see exactly what it might be like after it all went wrong, after Earth was dead and civilisation here failed and people retreated underground to the hidden lakes way up by the pole, and all that was left of any knowledge of magnetospheres and electromagnets was a myth-memory about how there was no Mars without Athena.

And then finally, there was the front door. Gale wasn’t hanging above it. They were waiting on the steps, with the Consul, and of all the holy things, a team of doctors, which was just as well, because right then his knees gave out.

He never lost consciousness, but he felt very, very spacey for a while until the blood transfusion started to make itself known in all those complicated halls in his heart. It was a peculiar feeling. He got sharper and sharper, and warmer, and even though Dr Okonkwo had been there all along putting a special kind of regenerative stitching in his shoulder—the first few stitches they’d done had already faded and made a wonderfully neat scar—he became aware of it properly for the first time after two or three minutes; and of the chaos swirling around them, the people trying to yell at Gale or the Consul or each other all at once.

He was under one of the willow trees in the entrance hall, and heroically, Dr Okonkwo was kneeling among the roots with their bad knee cushioned on a coat. Yuan was just next to him, snugged up close to Kasha, who was panting joyfully, tail thumping. Dr Okonkwo kept having to pause to persuade her not to try and help with the stitches.

There were bodies lined up on the floor. Natural and Earthstrong. The power was still off. People were carrying lanterns, real ones with flame. Dust had burst in when the front door opened, and now the dim light made it sparkle.

“Ah,” said Dr Okonkwo, sounding much gentler than usual. “Back with us. Can you tell me where you are?” For the first time ever, they spoke to him in English. He hadn’t even known that they could. It wasn’t American English. They had a beautiful, courtly Nigerian accent, the kind that made him think of the rich business types who visited Canary Wharf for the expensive diving trips, or the academics who all but lived on the excavations around Tintagel, being delighted by how weird sheep were.

“Songshu.” He had to concentrate to speak.

“Good,” Dr Okonkwo told him. “Now stay still or I’ll sew your shoulder to your lung.”

“Where’s . . . ?” He had been going to say, Where’s the Senator? but he could see now.

Gale was climbing stiffly up onto a table, above the yelling.

“Good morning, everyone.” Even without any intercom or microphone, they could send their voice all the way up the tower.

People stopped and straightened to listen, and around the balconies, people came to the railings. Mostly they were just points of light and the sketched angles of faces and shoulders in the gritty dark.

“I know everyone is exhausted, and scared. I know none of you want to stay in a building with people who attacked you. If anyone wants to leave now and make the run to the Valleyside, my staff will find horses for you. That goes for Natural and Earthstrong alike. If you would like to stay until the police arrive—then you are likewise welcome. I have only two conditions. If you’re Natural, you surrender your weapons. If you’re Earthstrong, you must find your cage and get it back on as soon as you can.”

January expected general disapproval from everyone, but instead there was a dead-eyed assent. With an odd drop, he came to the realization that the person in charge wasn’t necessarily the person everyone trusted most—nobody here would trust Gale much at all, surely—but the one who got up on a table and talked like they knew what to do.

Which was, a sluggish part of his mind reported, grandmother strength.

He flinched when the needle bit too deep. Dr Okonkwo patted his good shoulder. The packet of blood hooked up to him was empty now. They put a new one up.

“The doctors will be in here; they’ll see anyone who needs them. So will I. We’re going to need to move the dead to an unheated room, but anyone who needs to sit a vigil, please ask for a heat suit. There are plenty to go around. If you need a priest, we’ll do our best to get hold of someone—but bear with us, because in some cases we might have to contact Earth. The kitchens are making hot drinks and hot food; I know not everyone feels like it now, but I urge you to eat, particularly if you have no genetic modification for the cold. The police will get here as soon as they can, but it will be a while. Meanwhile—get some sleep if you can. If you’d like to talk to me, or if you have questions, I’ll be here. The Consul and their praetorians will go back to their ship, which is in the grounds. It can’t take off, there’s not enough power, but we’ll all be separate enough. Everyone is free to go wherever they feel safest.”

They were quiet for a second. “All our cameras are running again, and the internet is okay. Power will follow in a few minutes. Everything from now on will be caught in panoramic detail, which seems to me to be the best way to prevent anything else boiling over. Consul?”

“Thank you, Senator. I’d like to assure everyone that the internet outage was an accident. The iron in the dust is disrupting the satellites. It wasn’t an order of mine, or anyone’s. Both of us feel terrible about all of this. Both of us will hold nothing back from the police, and we hope none of you will either. This was a horrible tragedy, and all of you have our deepest apologies.”

January frowned. A united front; after everything. It seemed like the least likely thing in the worlds, but here it was, and the praetorians and the House Gale security staff were looking at each other with an uneasy kind of hope that nobody would pull a gun, and everyone else starting to lose the look that said they were ready to run for their lives.

Gale paused. “Now, this isn’t the ending I wanted, but I don’t think I can get down off this table.”

Incredibly, people laughed. The Consul actually reached up and lifted them down. When their hair swung across one shoulder, the Consul grinned and tidied it back like they’d always been friends.

Something in January’s insides twisted. Whatever Gale had promised to make all this happen—it couldn’t have been easy.

Cages went back on. Someone even brought January his. It ached as it locked into place; even with all the painkillers, his muscles knew he was having a difficult time already, thank you, and they didn’t much appreciate having to push three times harder than a minute ago. He was glad to get it back on though.

Guns went into a locked box in a safe. The power came back on. The internet was strong again. Soon, the night’s footage was playing on all the screens as the news services sponged it all up. January saw his own fall from the tower eight times in one hour.

Every single report ended with the journalist or the news anchor wondering seriously whether there was any truth to the rumours that this had been an assassination attempt at the eleventh hour, now that, after the amazing mammoth stunt, Gale had overtaken the Consul in the polls. If seeing the two of them talk to the scared crowd inside had Songshu had been strange, it was utterly bizarre to watch them stand together in a live news interview and swear to the whole nation that it had been nothing of the kind, their relations were actually very cordial and sportsmanlike, and everything was okay.

January wanted to demand to know what the fuck was going on, but of course it was all being filmed and streamed and scrutinised by the whole country. And it was, in one way, clear what the two of them were doing. They were calming everything down and trying to avoid another huge riot. That had to be good.

He sat under the willows with Gale well into the morning, talking to anyone who wanted to talk. Mostly, they asked about immediate painful things. Someone needed white shrouds; could they have some spare sheets? Someone else was too old and fragile to sit outside with the body of his daughter; would anyone else be willing to sit the vigil? How were the bodies getting back down to Tharsis—or was it possible to bury people here? It was expensive to call Earth, but please could they try and get hold of the family minister in Utah? January called the minister, who was perplexed to find that the colony on Mars was real and not Chinese propaganda, which was what the U.S. news said.

January felt peculiarly detached from everything. He couldn’t feel anything, not relief or worry. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and he was looking for anyone who was even a little like Aubrey, but even that didn’t come with any fear or any tension. He was just—wrung out, and half waiting for the next disaster, even though he wasn’t sure where he thought it might come from. Special forces weren’t crashing through the windows. Nobody was shooting. Tucked against Kasha, Yuan was asleep in a little ball with his blanket. Mx Ren had investigated; Mrs Li was among the dead, and they couldn’t find anyone called Jenny or Mr Hafiz. In their absence, Yuan seemed willing to make do with some Gales and a dog.

January kept hearing the snicker of bones breaking. It hadn’t sounded like his bones would have. Just little snaps, like wood getting to know a fire.