Page 15 of The Mars House

All told, it was fine; Tharsese medium-security prisons were nicer than most London hotels,8 everyone left him alone, and the prison reform system was all about helping you learn new skills, so he took lessons to improve his Mandarin. It was nice, too, to sleep in the same room as someone else, a cheery thief who specialised in dognapping, not to sell the dogs on but just because he really liked dogs. Despite all the good things, though, the shame of what he’d said to Gale lay on the back of January’s skull like an anvil. The language teacher, a lovely patient Natural person, watched him carefully. He kept dreaming of Gagarin Square.

Endless articles all seemed to run the same headline:

IF YOU LET ME IN A SHOP I’LL KILL YOU.

He had to ignore the internet and sink into the language classes. Going cold turkey from social media after spending his whole life addicted to it was unpleasant, but after a few days, he felt less like he might die.

But he couldn’t get away from Aubrey Gale even then, because the Consular Debates were starting.

The Consul was the Tharsese version of a president, or a prime minister. January had been distantly aware of election debates in London, but they weren’t like this.

The way people reacted, it was like the Olympic Games had arrived on Christmas Day. The warden went round in a waistcoat with sequins on it in the colours of the Tharsese flag, the guards decorated everything with streamers, the craft classes suddenly became all about making election-day paper lanterns (apparently everyone lit them in Gagarin Square and made a wish whenever a new Consul was elected, which struck January as weird and culty until someone pointed out it was kind of like the election of a new pope), and then horrifyingly, the warden announced, like it was a wonderful treat, that they would all be watching the debate.

He envisioned a screen with bad sound, but no. There was a super-special state-of-the-art media room, because Tharsis was all enlightened and Scandinavian about being nice to convicts.

He had only ever seen systems like this at the very nicest cinemas in London. It was a dome-shaped room, big, and panelled entirely in white, including the floor. The prisoners looked bright in the orange jumpsuits, and so did the warden’s sparkly flag-waistcoat. The guards appeared to be in different camps—some supported Gale, some supported the sitting Consul, Guang Song, and the Gales were in blue and the Songs were in green—and some of them had face paint and headbands with light-up antlers on, and all the things he had only ever, ever seen people wear at big football matches.

When the live feed started, it made him jump, because it was far more immersive than any London cinema.

It was surround-film. It didn’t feel like watching New Kowloon stadium; they were inside it. Up above, the stadium’s dust canopy was sparkling with lights. Around them, the seats were filled with Natural and naturalised people who were just as dressed up and just as excited as the guards. There were even kids, looking over the moon to be there, even though they weren’t going to see anything exciting, just some politicians arguing with each other. When the crowd oohed at the fireworks, the noise sounded absolutely real. January would never have known he was in a media room in a prison. He could even smell the fireworks, and the air was cold. The guards had told them all to wrap up warm, but he’d thought were just playing make-believe. He really did need the coat with his prison number on the back.

The fireworks turned into a beautiful drone display, and there was a performance down on the turf from the Tharsis branch of the Cirque du Soleil.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Not just the spectacle itself, or the quality of the footage and how real it felt, but the buzz. He had never seen people care about politics like this. He said so to the warden, who had sat down next to him, vibrating with happiness, which made them sparkle all the more.

“Well, the thing is,” the warden said, “it’s freezing here and there’s no water. What the people in charge think matters a lot more when getting it wrong could mean that everyone dies of thirst or exposure. See?”

January did see.

The stadium lights went down, and the moderator announced House Gale and House Song. A green light and blue focused on two lecterns, and then there was Gale, and the Consul.

January swallowed hard and tried not to meet the eyes of either the warden or the serial dognapper, who were both giving him sympathetic looks.

Holographic images beamed both politicians into the middle of the stadium, far larger than life. Gale was as glamorous and serene as always, and conspicuously younger than the Consul. January had never seen Consul Song before. They were a giant, hair turning from black to silver and pulled back in a military braid, good-looking in the long-established way that only middle-aged people could be. January found himself gripping the edge of his seat, praying that they had a decent strategy for taking on a Spartan who wanted to be attacked. He had no idea how they would do it.

“Here we go,” the warden said joyfully, thumping his arm, wedding ring clanging on his cage.

Even the prisoners were starting to look excited.

There were the introductions and the rules, as with any fight, but when the first question came, the rustling quiet from the crowd was deep and strange. It was the kind of quiet that January could imagine had fallen in the old arenas, when there was no political debate, but a gladiator and a lion.

“We all know immigration is going to be the key to this election,” the moderator said, voice echoing. Through the holograms of the two politicians, the smoke of the fireworks still danced. “Consul: the fact that one in two hundred and sixty-seven Earthstrong people in Tharsis has killed someone Natural is indisputable. What’s your strategy to deal with that?”

The Consul was hunched over their lectern like a lion about to spring, bolts of grey in their hair only making them look more grizzled. It had a power of its own, that posture, but there was a tension about them on stage that looked a lot like nervousness to January.

It was only sensible. Anyone not feeling nervous before trying to win a fight with Aubrey Gale probably hadn’t understood what was about to happen to them.

“The thing we have to remember is that cars are as likely to kill you over your lifetime,” the Consul said. They had a surprisingly young voice, and very smooth. “It’s a one in two hundred and forty chance of dying in a motor accident, but we’re not banning cars, are we? We just keep trying to make the roads safer and people more careful drivers. It would be silly to throw away cages because sometimes people don’t use them right. We need new colonists too, or Tharsis dies. The more people we have, the more we can expand. We can build another water factory, we can build more solar farms, and most importantly, we can do what this colony was built for: keep the gates open to all those desperate people from Earth whose world is dying and who need to come here. And we are a colony. We’re not Mars alone. We are all Chinese citizens, and we have a duty to China, and to all Earth.”

Cheers, applause. January flinched, because the House Song contingent of the guards was right in front of him and they all whooped. God, he was twitchy. He didn’t know when that had happened.

“Senator Gale, would you like to reply?” the moderator said.

“Yes, please.” Gale wasn’t nervous. January had spent enough time on stage to tell. Gale was standing at that lectern in exactly the same way January had used to wait in the wings before the Swan King’s entrance. Full of energy, but calm too, because he knew he was good. He hoped to God that was arrogance on Gale’s part and not an accurate assessment. “Firstly, the figure we have, one in two hundred and sixty-seven, is not a lifetime risk, as with cars. It’s the risk in one year. Only a hundred people were killed in road accidents last year. Almost nine hundred were killed by uncaged Earthstrong immigrants. It is the leading cause of death in Tharsis.”

There was a strange noise from the crowd, something like the noise people make when they see a wrestler smack someone face first into the ground. January winced too, willing the Consul to have something to say to that, and willing it not to be pure passionate optimism like they’d opened with. Next to someone as measured and precise as Gale, passionate optimism started looking like you were in the grip of some kind of terrible delusion.

His whole heart went out to the Consul. All over again, he could feel how it had been to stand there with Gale, seeing how good they were at all this.