Page 76 of The Mars House

“No,” January said, getting in the way. “Wait, please. I’m sure you know this already, but Earthstrong immigrants use kilowatts as currency; we’re paid in power. To avoid having bank accounts, to be off grid, so that the immigration bureau is less likely to notice us. But if the electric supply is decreasing, and the cost per kilowatt is rising, then their wages are going to sink to nothing. Even normally, I barely earned enough to half heat my flat. And now ration cards, but only for citizens? People aren’t going to live with this, they’re going to die with it, and . . . really soon. Someone’s addressing that. Right?”

Gale took a breath, but then stopped and held it, and looked down at him as though they were trying to rearrange what he had just said into something that made sense. He saw them decide it was too mad to be what it sounded like.

“Say that again? Immigrants are using . . . power . . . as currency?”

For a second, January was paralysed by the gap between the two of them again. Given that Gale owned the power grid, he had thought they must know all about electric-wages. It seemed insane that they wouldn’t. But then, you’d have to know Earthstrongers to know that, you’d have to spend time in factories and on building sites and in refugee housing. A mean, angry part of him pointed out that when you were in Gale’s position, you had a duty to bloody well find out this stuff.

But that was him. That was why he was here, because Gale wanted to find out.

He switched into Mandarin so there couldn’t be any confusion. “Yes. On the Crossing, there are charities and lawyers who give you advice about how to get by here. Their advice is not to open a bank account. Even before Gagarin Square, you could be deported if your name sounded too American and terroristy. But industries that employ Earthstrongers who aren’t citizens always offer to pay in kilowatts.”

Gale sat down again, slowly. “Okay. I’m going to need you to explain how that works.”

He had never spoken to someone who took notes before. Not only did Gale take notes, but they also drew diagrams as January described how the charge ports worked in a residential building, and then they showed him the diagrams so he could check, all labelled in their immaculate handwriting.

“So,” Gale said at last. “All . . . Earthstrong immigrants are funnelled into government-approved housing. That housing has to be designed for you to move around there uncaged, so things like taps and fittings need to be built for you or everything breaks.”

“Right.”

“But within those designated buildings, it’s common knowledge that people don’t want their names on any records they can avoid, so the landlords fit extra machinery to the electrical systems that allow you to pay your rent in power. Because all buildings in Tharsis are allowed to sell their excess power, if they’re generating extra from their own solar panels or their own whatever, that works: those landlords then sell that power you pay in rent back to the Songshu grid, which returns its yuan value at a perfect exchange rate.”

“Exactly,” said January, embarrassed he hadn’t been able to explain it in that straight a line.

“It’s an extension of the system everyone uses on trains and in convenience stores. The charge cards are actually from the rail network.”

“Right.”

“God,” Gale said, sitting back. They looked up. “If people don’t have bank accounts, how are we postulating that they’re paid now?”

“And that’s if the industry they work in can even still run,” January said, feeling more anxious the more he had to think about it. “Heavy industry is shutting down, you said—it has to? Well—that’s where we work. Shipping, factories, farming.”

“I mean clearly there’s going to need to be some kind of furlough for the workforces affected,” Gale said, “but how are we supposed to find the people who need it? If it’s a sign-up system there’ll be widespread fraud, but then I imagine if you’re avoiding bank accounts then you’re not filling in the census either, are you? The Interior Ministry must have a database of Earthstrong immigrants?”

January shook his head. “They do, but it’s worthless. A lot of us came from refugee camps, we don’t necessarily have passports or ID or anything. The lawyers actually tell you not to give your real name on the ships’ manifests. They make up something that sounds more Russian or more Chinese, if you’re from—you know, the deep West.”

Gale gave their stylus a frustrated look. “Why? The immigration bureau isn’t that powerful.”

January shifted. “When . . . we go aboard the ships, the charities give us classes about things we need to know. One of them is the chance that in the next few years, the government is going to make naturalisation mandatory for anyone staying more than a year.” He said it to the edge of the table, because saying something like that straight on made it sound like smug exaggeration. “So we try and keep off government lists and registers.” He took care not to say, Which is why I’m not convinced by that rubbish you like to spout about how naturalisation will stop this being such a two-tier society. Not only does it not work, it’s making things worse.

Gale stared at him. “So what we’re saying is that we have a population of about two hundred thousand people who are going to need help very soon; and no way to find them; and it’s my fault.”

He wanted to say, No, of course it’s not just your fault, but that would have been very close to lying. “That’s about it.”

“How do we reach them?”

“Do we have to work this out on our own? Surely this is the Consul’s job, surely we should be calling other people?”

Gale gave him a rueful look. “The Consul might have deliberately overlooked this. If we ask for help, it will generate news headlines about how I’m personally killing all these people. And then they’ll die, because unfortunately it was too late to fix my error.”

January watched them for a long second. Part of him said, Don’t do it, what you said yesterday is still true, you don’t know what happened to Max. But after talking to Gale in the night, he was coming, tentatively, around to the idea that though they very definitely might still murder him, it wouldn’t be because he argued with them. Maybe if he found out something bad, yes, maybe if he tried to sabotage House Gale—but with a strange clarity now, he could see that the last thing that would upset them would be disagreeing. They wanted him to disagree.

Here we go then.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the Consul because if they swoop in and save the day, you’ll look incompetent?”

He had expected Gale to put him firmly in his place. But instead, he saw something that might have been close to happiness go through Gale’s eyes. They were pleased. He had a fizz of answering happiness in his chest. “Let’s call them and find out.”

The Consul laughed at them and hung up, and about thirty seconds later, there was a sort of primordial howl from down the corridor, which was Mx Francis seeing the Consul post a recording of Aubrey Gale asking for help fixing a mess of their own creation on social media.