Page 33 of The Mars House

“How many people are being . . . displaced?”

“We think close to fifty million, but that’s literally just some of our analysts counting on grid squares and averaging. And what’s of concern to us is how many people are moving towards airports with interplanetary travel. China has already shut the border. Nigeria and Saudi Arabia look like they’ll do the same. Russia’s out, obviously. We’re going to see a boom in people-smuggling to Mars.”

The images were incredible; they might have been from drone footage taken directly above the roads. Everything the Consul had said looked right. There were cars abandoned on the verges, their solar canopies sticky-looking, some sparking fitfully. Not even that far away from the convoy of trudging people, maybe two miles or so, the fires were as high as the trees, slinging from branch to grass to house faster than January would ever have thought fire could move. By a white church, old-fashioned, all wooden, a big group of people were kneeling on the steps, not moving. Even though the fire was licking at the gate.

“What are they doing?” one of the generals asked.

The image zoomed in, but no one said anything. Everyone just looked puzzled.

“Praying,” January said, too quiet.

“What was that?” someone said.

“They’re praying. That’s a temple.”

The Consul nodded slowly. “Listen, all of you. I might not be in this chair in three months’ time. You might have five years of Aubrey Gale slamming the borders shut. But I’m in the chair right now, and those people are praying while hell comes up through the ground. This colony was built to answer prayers like that, and while I’m the one here, we’re going to. Let’s go and get them.”

January had to replay his memory of the words, because he couldn’t make them make sense at first.

Let’s go and get them.

Just like that.

With no warning, his throat closed up and he had to turn away, and he was standing there with both hands clamped over his mouth so that he wouldn’t make a sound. He couldn’t tell where it had come from. No, he could. In his mind, Tharsis was beautiful and rich and closed off. That he had managed to get here was a bizarre aberration that wouldn’t happen again.

But here it was. Someone who saw the neighbour’s house on fire and picked up the hose without charging for the water.

“We’re with you, Consul,” the first general said. “But something to consider is that we’re at aphelion. It’s going to take them more than two months to get here, even if we launch ships from the lunar docks today. If they get here, only to find a new government hostile to immigration—I mean, I don’t know to what extent Aubrey Gale would actually enact the policies they’re talking about, but we have to consider the possibility that a Gale consulate wouldn’t even allow them to land.”

The Consul was nodding. “I know. We’ll have to risk it. Thank you, everyone. If I could have the room now?”

January watched everyone else leave, ghosting by in the dark uniforms that were nothing like anything military at home. They were as heavy as senatorial robes, sashed sometimes with red or blue depending on which force they represented, he didn’t know which or why. They reminded him of priests.

He pulled his sleeve over his eyes, which were sore now.

Once everyone was gone, the Consul waved him into a newly empty chair. Like before, it was so high he had to curl up in it, because his feet didn’t touch the ground.

“I didn’t bring you in here to show off,” the Consul said seriously. “I just wanted you to see who is going to lose if Aubrey wins.” They sighed. “There is one water factory on Mars, only one, you know that better than anyone, and there’s no infrastructure anywhere outside Tharsis. No pipes, no roads. It would be great to send Earthstrongers to the far side of the planet, but we can’t. There’s no water, and no way to get them enough water. They land here or they end up in a desert. We can’t build another water factory, because guess which House would have to agree to supply it with the gigantic amount of power it would need?”

He lifted his hand to say, Yes, House Gale, I know.

“And it won’t be like the first colonists. There isn’t any money behind refugee ships, they’re not scientists and engineers and marines. They would have to survive with whatever they brought. People are resourceful, but what happens when we tell millions of people to do that? At what point does it just become easier to invade Tharsis?”

The screen still showed that white church.

January had to sit back in his chair and stop looking at it. “I know.”

“I know you know, but what do you think?” The Consul inclined their head. “Do you agree with Aubrey? Lock them out, make them fend for themselves—invite problems down the line?”

“Of course I don’t agree!” he burst out. “What, I’m marrying Senator Gale because I like them? I don’t. Gale is right, there’s a massive problem, and I’m dangerous even though I don’t want to be, but no one can tell me the solution is either to make everyone like me maim ourselves or sit on a planet that’s on fire.”

“So why are you marrying Aubrey? Money?”

“No. It’s the only way I won’t have to naturalise and I’ll have enough electricity and enough food all at the same time,” he said, feeling bleak that that wasn’t blindingly obvious. “Consul, why am I here? Why are you showing me all this?”

“Because,” the Consul said, with a pensive frown that seemed to say that the answer he had just given was somehow not what they’d thought it would be, “you’re about to marry into House Gale, and you’re going to be surrounded by people who say, as if it’s undisputed fact, that I won’t just be bringing refugees here on those ships, but probably a good portion of the Chinese army to shore up my consulship. That’s the real issue, you understand?”

“No. Sorry?”