Page 85 of The Mars House

“How far does that stretch the remaining power?” Gale asked.

“Another three days.”

Everyone deflated.

“Yeah,” Dr Molotov said, very quiet. “I’m sorry. Even at the rate we’re going, even if we switch off the internet completely between now and then instead of just at night—Tereshkova Wharf will run out of power on Wednesday.”

It was Sunday.

“Can the rig be finished any earlier?” January asked.

“No,” Dr Molotov said heavily. “We need power to build it. To work the elevators. We’re taking people forty kilometres up into the atmosphere. To use the equipment, work the cranes, power heat suits . . . and then to launch the fucking sun fields into orbit, don’t forget that. If we could have unlimited power, the damn thing would be done in two days. The only reason it’s taking this long is that we’re rationing.”

Silence around the fire. This time, Gale didn’t ask if anyone had any solutions. If anyone had thought of anything, they would have said it. January watched the fire dance. Everyone had spent this last week hoping Dr Molotov’s people would come up with something, maybe even feeling sure that they would. But even though the scientists had been pulling all-nighters, again and again, there was nothing.

Dr Molotov’s voice sounded like they were having to pry it out of a wall with the end of a hammer. “I’m so sorry, but Senator . . . we need to look at evacuating the whole area around Tereshkova.”

Gale was entirely still. January had to pull his hand over his eyes, as if not seeing would stop all this going any further.

“If those cooling pipes fail—the hydrogen explosion is going to destroy everything in Americatown, including the reactor building there, plus parts of Benin Gate and Dengta.”

Gale nodded slightly. A month ago, January would have thought a savage part of him would set off streamers and do a happy jig at the sight of Aubrey Gale defeated, but he didn’t feel that at all. It just hurt. And he knew why Gale was quiet. They were watching the future play out. Tereshkova would go off like a bomb. It would take out the old nuclear reactor building, which would destroy any chance of a swift power fix when the fleet from Earth arrived with uranium. Thousands of people would die in the cold and from thirst until the solar array was finally in the atmosphere and a working water factory was on its feet again. Which would be a hollow, awful victory, because by then, Gale would have been arrested for criminal negligence for letting the power to Tereshkova fail, and they would spend the rest of their life on a prison hulk orbiting Jupiter. It would be a short life.

“Could Earthstrongers lift the gravity trains?” Mx Francis asked January. “Nine hundred normal people, we said—that’s only three hundred Earthstrongers. We have a thousand. What if we diverted them from the rig? Because—look, I know nobody wants to say this, but we are not going to get that array into the atmosphere before the fleet arrives from Earth. All we can do now is tide over until the uranium gets here, and make sure Tharsis is still in one piece when it does.”

There was a ringing silence in which nobody said what that would mean, if Gale was right about Earth using the refugee fleet as a way to take over. Prison, as surely as if Tereshkova exploded.

“How would we hook three hundred people up to a gravity train windlass?” Dr Molotov said for him. “It would take longer to build something like that than we have. All we have, on site, are the cables from the trains, which are too big for a person to grip—even one link. Each one is the size of a person. The windlasses are huge, have you seen them? Maybe we . . . could find a way of hooking up enough ropes and—God knows. I don’t know if we even have rope that could be used safely in these temperatures. Maybe. I’ll look at it.” But they didn’t look hopeful.

More silence. Gale was frowning into the middle distance. If they had noticed that everyone was looking at them, waiting for them to say something, they didn’t show it.

“Senator?” Mx Ren said, very quiet.

January touched their shoulder, trying to call them back from wherever they’d gone in their head. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to stare down the barrel of all this and feel like it was your own fault. But he could see that everyone around the fire needed a reason to keep going, even when there was nothing to keep going for.

Gale didn’t move.

Well, that was what consorts were for.

“Right, let’s get the trees down,” he said. “Dr Molotov; three days is ages for a genius. You’ll think of something. Thanks, everyone. Ah—but don’t go too far. We’ll lose the internet in a minute.”

“Which means stay sitting down,” Dr Okonkwo said. “It’s going to feel like the world has died. Does anyone here not have lenses and haptics?”

January was the only one with his hand up.

Dr Okonkwo looked bleak. “Well, Mx Stirling, if you could—you know, check nobody’s choking on their own tongue then that would be great.”

January had to catch himself before he said, Come on, it can’t be that bad.

He jumped when a voice came over the house speaker system.

Internet going down in five, four, three, two . . .

Everyone collapsed.

January stood up slowly. He was the only one moving. There was no sound, no murmur of conversation, nothing except for the clicking of the fire and, from the kitchen not far away, the hiss of unattended grills. Away from the fire, the air was frozen, and winking with dust that found its way in from outside. He gazed around, half expecting to see thorns and vines climbing across everything, reclaiming it all like that cursed kingdom in the story, where everyone but the spiders slept for a hundred years.

He started to check pulses and breathing, and to help the people who were blinking and coming around again to sit up. But not many people could. Mx Francis was curled up on the floor, shuddering, and staring with an awful blind horror at the dim room, hardly breathing. January pressed a glass of water into their hands.