At one door an American waved them through a lock and into a big rover. After they were in the lock, its outer door closed and its inner door clicked and slid open, and they stepped up and in.
Here a quartet of Americans met them, two men and two women. One of the women, who looked as Chinese as Qi but spoke English with a Californian accent, introduced herself as Valerie Tong. “It’s good to see you again,” she said to Fred.
“Good to see you too?” Fred said, clearly unsure if he remembered her or not. Nevertheless he introduced Qi and Ta Shu. “We were told you might be able to give us asylum?”
“We don’t have to give you asylum,” she said to him. “For your friends here, we’ll take you all to our local station chief, and you can discuss the situation with him. I’m happy to talk with you, but policy and personnel decisions are above my level.”
Qi looked unimpressed by this declaration, and indeed Valerie saw that and seemed embarrassed to have said it. Ta Shu quickly asked, “Is your station chief still John Semple?”
“Yes. He told me he knew you, and he’s looking forward to seeing you again. He’ll be at the base to meet you.”
“Good. I look forward to seeing him too. We worked together in Antarctica, long ago.”
This little diversion seemed to have been enough to distract Qi, who had looked like she was about to snap at this helpful American woman, but was now swiping her wrist and reading what came up.
“Is anything happening?” Fred asked her.
She shrugged. “Demonstrations have begun in Shanghai and Chengdu. Big enough that they can’t shut them down. They haven’t been able to do anything about the one in Beijing either. And now… now a big crowd from Hong Kong has crossed into Shenzhen and joined a demonstration there.”
“What will the police do?”
“They’ll probably wait them out and hope they go away. But maybe this time they won’t go away. The crowds keep getting bigger. And a lot of people are taking their savings out of the banks, like the Americans. A lot of them are moving it into a cryptocurrency called carboncoin.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s a coin that is created or validated by taking carbon out of the air. Something like that. It’s a credit system, and its coins can only buy sustainable subsistence necessities, but since everyone needs those, it’s looking like they’re getting widespread buy-in and acceptance. What will happen if everyone shifts their savings all at once?”
Fred shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The rover they were in was a very slow and vibratory experience compared to the train they had been on. Nevertheless they soon reached the American base, which was a single tall cylinder standing on six legs of various heights that together compensated for the bumpy ground it stood over. The transfer into it was by way of a short tube, which extended like a jetway and locked onto the rover’s door. The three travelers followed Valerie up the shallow steps and through the station’s lock, where they were greeted by John Semple.
“Welcome to Little America,” he said, giving Ta Shu a hug. “This place kind of reminds me of Pole, don’t you think?”
Ta Shu nodded politely. “Like the galley, maybe. Thanks for taking us in.”
“My pleasure. Sit down and tell me more about what happened.”
They sat around the table in the station’s common room. John Semple brought them up to speed on events of the last few days on Earth. The fiscal noncompliance campaign was going stronger than ever in America. Markets had crashed, banks had closed to stop depositors from withdrawing amounts beyond what the banks had on hand, and now most of the biggest ones were giving themselves over to control by the Federal Reserve to make themselves eligible for a government bailout, which they all now needed. In effect these banks were being nationalized. Everyone was now trying to understand terms like citizens’ fiscal revolution, cryptocurrencies, especially carboncoin, and blockchain governance. People were also trying to figure out whether these mass actions were going to create real representation. There were a million opinions, or maybe a billion, but no one actually seemed to understand what was happening.
To add to the confusion, China’s government was buying more US treasury bonds, which in effect meant China was supporting the US Federal Reserve Bank’s “salvation by nationalization” of the private banking industry. This looked to many in America like a takeover disguised as aid, and anti-China alarm in the States was rising in some quarters, while others were welcoming the help. Whether China buying American T-bills was a help or a hindrance no one could say for sure, but whatever else was happening, it looked like the dollar might be coming to the end of its long century of global dominance, as it was now being propped up by the renminbi. The scramble to leave the dollar for more stable currencies, assuming there were any, was getting desperate and chaotic. Nothing that China or anyone else could do was going to be enough to save the American economy from a huge disruption, which was either a self-induced collapse or a startling triumph for the idea of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That it had been caused by legal actions taken by millions of Americans intent on changing the political system made John Semple think that although it was confusing, there might be some promise in it. How many Americans were part of this takeback of their federal government from global finance was unclear, but the Householders’ Union now claimed two hundred million active members.
Meanwhile, back in China, John said, individual savings accounts were shifting at such a rate to carboncoin and other cryptocurrencies that withdrawals from the state-owned banks had been temporarily banned, as well as all traffic in cryptocurrencies of any kind. But stopping speculation in these currencies didn’t actually stop people from using them for exchanges. All this was now only a sideshow to the widespread street demonstrations, but possibly more important in the end. Demonstrations came and went, but law remained, money remained. Still, it was looking less and less likely that the policy of waiting for the demonstrations to sputter out, a tactic that had worked for many decades now, would succeed this time, or succeed fast enough. But the other options were so dangerous that no one wanted to see them tried, not even the PLA—or at least a majority of the PLA. Hostile pilot syndrome was of course always a real danger.
“Nothing will stop the people,” Qi said as she looked through a selection of photos and maps. “They can’t be stopped.”
John Semple regarded her. “So what do you think will happen?”
She gave him a quick glance. “Change!”
Part of Ta Shu would have been very interested to hear what Chan Qi thought change could be in the contemporary context. Dynastic succession—really? Who or what could replace the Chinese Communist Party, which had led the country and served as “the government of the government” since 1949? He had often wondered about that himself, feeling that they were all riding a tiger together, a tiger that these days ran along the edge of a cliff. He had sometimes felt that Winston Churchill’s description of democracy was equally suitable as a description of the Party’s rule in China: the worst possible system, except for all the rest.
And maybe it wasn’t even fair to call it the worst. Socialism with Chinese characteristics: it was, he felt, a good idea. And he was quite sure that no one could rule China without the Chinese people’s consent. So the fact that the Party still ruled meant de facto that the majority of the people still wanted the Party, and approved of its governance, feeling it was their system. In that sense, as long as that feeling endured, it was a representative system.