Page 130 of The Mars House

Between spikes of the urge to claw out their own eyes so they wouldn’t have to watch what would have to be the total bankruptcy of House Gale in the extremely near future, Aubrey waited for the ensuing explosions. River should have been mauled for it. Senators always were, if they admitted making a mistake, or worse, admitted to fraud committed in their own House.

But somehow that wasn’t what happened at all.

People were overjoyed with all the money they were getting back, and the new lower prices for power. Representatives of other Houses who tried to say that Aubrey Gale was clearly buying their way out of a scandal were just—not even shouted down. Attacked. People got death threats. House Gale was everyone’s favourite thing in the worlds.

And insanely, the most insane thing of all—House Gale revenue went up.

Aubrey stole into the meeting where the engineers and finance people explained why. It was because, they said, a swathe of people who were usually priced out of using much power at all were now using it plentifully. It was Earthstrongers; suddenly, an extra two hundred and fifty thousand people were turning on the heating. Even with the new repairs to the neglected fields, which were now running at higher efficiencies than they had in the last decade, the array was struggling to cope with demand. No sooner had someone said that than River was ordering the construction of a new field. As if investing a billion yuan was an ordinary thing to do over coffee.

All the headlines, all of social media, all of everything, was suddenly about the new honour code that Aubrey Gale was single-handedly enforcing on Great Houses. Other Houses found themselves forced to invite people in to scrutinise their own finances. To no one’s surprise, House Song were involved in much more fraud than House Gale. Millions that had been meant for its military defence contracts were being channelled to Earth. It was, the economic analysts said, the biggest money laundering operation in Tharsese history.

Consul Song had never been so unpopular.

The next day, River announced they were running for election.

Aubrey had to sink into a chair and stare at nothing.

They’d left it too late. They couldn’t make the switch now. They’d end up stuck in the middle of a consular campaign. They couldn’t make the switch and say, No actually, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to be Consul; that was far too suspicious. They’d have to live with it for at least a few months just to protect the reputation of the House, and consular campaigns were punishing. They’d have preferred to live in a tent in the woods than live like that.

Kasha put her head on Aubrey’s knee, looking sympathetic.

“No,” Aubrey said to her, quietly, because they were in the dining room and people were everywhere, opening bottles of champagne to celebrate the launch of the campaign, which was apparently already wildly popular, “but—this is River. They can’t keep this up. They’ll screw it up. I just need to wait a few months. They’ll drop out.”

They will. The wise thing is to wait. You’re not a coward just because you don’t snatch it all back now. This is called prudence.

Though River would have taken it all back by now.

Kasha panted optimistically and took Aubrey to look at the fish in the entrance hall. River had put a halo on her once or twice and what they’d learned was that Kasha felt that most problems could be solved by the sufficient contemplation of fish.

Aubrey waited for a month with increasing nerves, and River failed to screw up with increasing confidence, when the riot happened at Gagarin Square.

Aubrey sat by River’s hospital bed, watching them, and trying to come to terms with how there would no switching now for at least two seasons. They had listened to the doctors. It would be winter before the amputation site healed enough to start using a prosthetic. To use it with confidence, longer. However determined Aubrey was to get House Gale back, they were not willing to cut off a leg to make it look convincing.

They were trying, too, to accept that they couldn’t keep up that early level of fury all the time. Sitting here, they didn’t feel angry. They didn’t even feel like River had got what they deserved. It was just horrible, and if they could have undone what had happened, they would have.

Because River was drugged with enough morphine for nobody to think it was odd for them to be hallucinating, Aubrey took their hand where it lay on the mattress and held it. River squeezed it.

“Hey,” River said sleepily. “You said you’d kill me. Is that why you’re here?”

Aubrey smiled a bit. They hadn’t forgotten saying that. They had meant it; they still did, but differently. It was a serene iceberg of an idea that wandered through the archipelago of all their other thoughts. They would do it one day, but it wouldn’t be today. Not like this.

“I don’t need to, you’re doing great by yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“This’ll make you Consul.”

“I’ll screw it up, don’t worry.”

That brought Aubrey up short. “Why are you running then?”

“Prevent wholesale colonisation from Earth,” River whispered. “Earth is about to catch fire. They need to come here. They will. Song thinks we should die for it. Noble cause. I’d rather not.”

Aubrey snorted. “Don’t be dramatic.”

And because River was a machine, even lying in a hospital bed—because they didn’t have the basic emotional intelligence to just say, Yeah, you’re right, I know I’m being annoying and exaggerating things for the sake of provoking people—what they did, was think about it, and frown, and in that measured way they always delivered whatever loony conclusion they’d decided would be most irritating, they said: “Dramatic isn’t the same as unlikely.”

Aubrey walked away. If they stayed, they’d suffocate River right here and now, and it would be hollow and stupid and meaningless, because River still didn’t understand why they were unbearable.