Page 127 of The Mars House

Aubrey was willing to admit that in theory there might exist, somewhere, an actual human being whose definition of sexy was a person whose normal dinner conversation was a rant about an inaccurate academic article on grammatical gender in Indo-European languages, but it sometimes kept them awake at night knowing that somehow, they, Aubrey, were married to that person.

Aubrey didn’t mind. You didn’t get to run a Great House and marry for love at the same time. But it stung.

“Why don’t we ask?” Max said. “I bet River has some ideas.”

It was true, River would have some ideas. River was too clever to suffer from Exploding Custard Theory; they could recognise custard anywhere.

But Aubrey’s whole soul locked up.

If they tried to involve River in all this, River would immediately offer to take over, because they were so sickeningly wholesome that nobody would ever be able to blackmail them. The only footage House Song would have about River would be of them making a flower crown for a llama, or being stolen by a baby mammoth, or talking happily to the Mormon gender extremists in that camp outside Jade Hill, so that the missionaries could practise trying to convert an atheist who really knew their Special Theory of Relativity.

And River would have no idea what to do when Guang Song found another way to get to them. Probably it would be easy. Probably all Song would have to do was yell. River had no idea what to do with someone who really was out to get them, not just someone who wanted to peacock about who had the more sophisticated understanding of the Dao De Jing.36 River was surrounded by people willing to pretend that quoting Laozi and Dostoyevsky was standard human behaviour. Song would eviscerate them.

“No, leave River alone. I don’t want them involved in all this,” Aubrey said. “Five minutes in the Senate would just upset them.”

Max gave them an odd look. “Funny idea of River you’ve got,” they observed. “They talk to everyone. Even Kasha.”

“About Ancient Chinese verbs, Max,” Aubrey said, exasperated. “That’s the opposite of social skills, that’s projectile autism.”

The odd look turned into a slow frown. “Aubrey—have you noticed how much you hate it when anyone suggests River is worthwhile? You act like there’s something wrong with them because they don’t have celebrity friends and they don’t go out and get tanked every Friday night, but that’s not really a them problem, is it? That’s a you problem.”

“And you know all about River . . . not at all because you’ve spent so much time spying on them in the sauna.”

Max made an impatient sound and turned their head away. It looked like impatience, but it was shame too. “Nothing is going on.”

“Of course it isn’t!” Aubrey half yelled. Because River was a sweet, lonely robot that collected interesting things and kept itself busy and never complained, and absolutely did not notice when anyone had a crush on it. Aubrey had a terrible feeling that it was because River knew they were a robot and that nobody liked robots, so the sheer statistical unlikelihood of it became a blinker. An affair wouldn’t even have occurred to River, and nothing Max could do would ever make it occur to them. Even if Max stood under the window and declared undying love to lyre music, River would just seek medical assistance, because the only possible explanation for this behaviour was that Max was having a stroke.

Which was heartbreaking. Aubrey wished they were having an affair. At least then two out of three people would be happy.

They hated getting angry like this. It was happening more and more since they’d taken over from Kali. Out of nowhere, they were just furious about things that didn’t matter. Yesterday they’d blown up at a legal department intern for putting something in the wrong recycling bin, and last week they’d had to go for a ten-kilometre run in order to stop being so enraged about losing—of all the stupid things—a card game with River. And now River was avoiding all human contact, because that was what happened if your Apollo didn’t just bite your head off for no reason but also mounted it on the wall and hung fairy lights on it.

“You know they’re not ignoring you, right?” Aubrey asked after a while. “River, I mean; they’re not trying to say no. They just don’t think anyone would ever be interested. I don’t think they have the right wires in their brain to even recognise what flirting looks like. You need to sit them down and talk to them. I don’t mind. I wish you would.”

“What are you talking about?” Max said roughly.

After you’d been promoted beyond lieutenant colonel, it became very difficult to have feelings, and Aubrey had a lot of sympathy for that, but it was still hard to watch.

In the following silence, which looked set to be one of those marathon silences that represented its country in the Silence Olympics and would be remembered by generations to come as a triple-gold-medal champion of all silences, the two of them reached the border between the forest and the sun fields.

It was a strange place, that threshold between the great trees where the mammoths grazed and the industry world of solar mirrors arranged in acre upon acre of concentric circles. Aubrey had always hated it. Something about gigantic stretches of machinery made the roots of their teeth prickle. It was worse now, in the mist and the fading light. The curving rows of mirrors vanished off in either direction, everything motionless, except for the tiny blinking lights of the security drones that floated overhead. Probably it had been a triumphant-seeming place once, the hope and independence of Mars: it should have felt like that now. But all Aubrey could see in those mirrors was Kali’s neglect. The steel frameworks were worn and dusty, about one in six mirrors were cracked, the circuitry wearing away. What it was, was the slow ruin of House Gale.

Way over the Plains, a mammoth called. Aubrey had worked long enough on the translation project to know she was saying that there were bears. But it was impossible to tell how far away she was. Mammoth voices carried twenty miles.

Probably Aubrey should have said something, because if there were bears anywhere nearby then the two of them needed to go back inside, but just then, the idea of being eaten by a bear was quite attractive.

Max said, “Do you want to see something good?”

Aubrey looked up, because Max didn’t do peace offerings. As far as Aubrey could tell, Max never felt bad enough about anything to bother, and to see it happen was a strange, important kind of revelation. “What?” they asked, maybe too soft, in case they scared it away.

“You can’t tell anyone I showed you, but . . .” They took a bracelet from one pocket and clipped it over their own wrist.

And vanished.

Aubrey jolted back and almost fell over.

Max reappeared again, looking bashfully pleased, and with a dawning realization, Aubrey wondered if this was Max playing. If you’d asked ten minutes ago if they thought Max was remotely capable of that—aloof, elegant, definition-of-no-fun Max—they would have howled with maniacal not-laughter. “It’s called a Hades filter. We’re testing it at the moment. It makes you invisible to anyone or anything with an internet connection. Want to try?”

Aubrey did very much. They were at the edge of the sun fields by then, and Max guided them in front of a solar mirror and snapped the bracelet onto Aubrey’s wrist.