Page 140 of The Mars House

“Good evening. Well, first things first, right?” they said, and the whole room laughed. “January Stirling; by Consular Pardon, you are absolved of all charges against you. You’re free.”

Numbly, he wondered what it was he was free to do.

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He wasn’t aware of being ill, or even of feeling off. He was fine when the guards led him out of the prison, fine changing into some clothes that Mx Francis had brought especially, fine on the drive to Gagarin Square, where there was a secret back entrance to Jade Hill two streets away to avoid the crowds at the front. But he collapsed the moment he walked in through the door, and when he came around, he was in a room he didn’t recognise, and Gale was sitting on the edge of the bed, reading.

They set the book aside and tapped their fingertips against the sternum of his cage. “Dr Okonkwo recommends that you eat something more often than once every five days.”

“Yeah, I . . . that got away from me a bit.” He swallowed, disorientated. It was a lovely room, all glass, with a view across Tharsis and plants tumbling down the walls, which looked alive. A little fountain bubbled in the corner. Kasha was there, studying what definitely seemed like a real iguana with her head cocked. He found his glasses; the clock in them said it had only been about twenty minutes. “When do I have to go?”

“Where?” Gale asked, with the carefulness of someone worried they were talking to a person gripped with delirium.

“The naturalisation centre. When are you—when are you banning cages, I mean.”

Gale was quiet for entire seconds in which January’s insides tied themselves up. Gale was going to say, Now. “We’re not doing that.”

It was too far from what he’d expected and he didn’t understand. “What?”

“I can’t. I can’t send you to one of those places, it’s brutal. And if I can’t send you, then I can’t send anyone. We’ll have to come up with something else.”

“People—voted for you to do that.”

“No, they voted for me because I’m married to you and because the solar rig works.” Gale smiled a little. “And—it’s a less pressing problem than it could be. I have some numbers to tell you. The Office of Statistics released them just now.”

“Numbers?”

“Yes, but it will be over soon. Lie back and think of England.”

January swiped at them inaccurately.

“Since you swore the oath and gave me your key, the number of cage-related accidents has gone down significantly. People are giving their keys to their partners, or their neighbours, or their friends. There’s a hashtag on social media, #EarthstrongHonour, and there are millions of posts. Where there have been non-lethal accidents—seventy-four per cent fewer victims are prosecuting than last quarter, because they say they can understand how it happened. The Earthstrong Rights group, which advocates never locking cages at all, has lost thousands of subscribers. The European Federation Embassy has opened a desk where people who live alone can hand in their keys, and people are starting to use it.”

January stared at them. “But in your debate, you said—whenever there’s a gigantic strength difference between two sectors of a population, what you get in the end is genocide.”

“I did. But—as you said, I was forgetting how many kinds of strong there are.”

He didn’t know what to say, and so in the end, he caught the very ends of their hair around his knuckles and pulled gently until Gale leaned down to him. He touched their heads together. “Thank you.”

Gale brushed his eyelashes. He didn’t realize they were wet until then. “Promise you’ll keep fighting me.”

“Yes, Consul.” He touched the new silver in their hair. “Isn’t there a balcony you should be giving a speech from?”

“Yes, but I’m scared, so I was waiting for you.”

“That’s a lie, though, isn’t it.”

“Is it? Can you hear that noise?”

January listened. What he had thought was roar of the storm was—not. “Ah. Well. Let’s not keep them waiting, then.”

What he had thought was lightning far away were actually camera flashes, coming up from Gagarin Square.

“I’m not ready,” Gale said, looking more anxious than they had when they had been facing straightforward death.

January took their hand and towed them towards the balcony. Outside, the lights across Tharsis were back on. Tereshkova Wharf showed water capacity at a hundred per cent on its neon sign. The Rings at the Tiangong were turning again. Gagarin Square was full of people, and like they always did after an election, they were holding paper lanterns, fires lit at their bases. As Sasha opened the doors, people started to let the lanterns go, and they floated up and up into the dust in winking swarms. “That’s a good thing.”

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