Here’s another article from Odessa Moon about her Steppes of Mars series. This time, she focuses on the free city of Panschin and Veronica Bradwell, the owner of the White Elephant.
When you’re done, why not read Odessa’s next book? For several months, chapters from “The White Elephant of Panschin” has been appearing weekly on both Wattpad and Archive of Our Own (AO3).
Panschin is a huge free city in the far north. It is not at the polar latitudes but getting really close up there.
It is far enough north that the horse lords (rulers of the Northern Ranching Tier or Ennaretee) no longer hold sway. In this area of Mars, everybody lives in tunnels and domes. It’s surrounded by the Northern Mining Region or Ennemar. Due to the climate and location, the Ennemar has many of the same living problems that Panschin does and many of the same work-arounds. Panschin is too far north and too cold for even the hardiest nomads to live outside year-round. There are outdoor areas and parks but they freeze over in the winter. They are summer-use only. This is still a long time since a Martian year is 668 Martian days long.
Agriculture and Mining
The neighboring demesnes are all tunnels and domes, underground mostly. They are dependent primarily on mining and growing whatever they can in the tunnels. Agriculture does take place outside as feasible. There is a lot of moss for reindeer so some herding takes place. It is too cold for horses unless they’re throughout the endless winter. Most livestock has to be sheltered over the winter.
A lot of the local agriculture on the northernmost demesnes is exclusively fodder for livestock. The northern mining demesnes such as Maerski use animal power wherever they can, unlike Panschin which has a lot of electrical overflow from the mines. People can eat yeast and algae but animals don’t do as well. Yeast and algae food stocks are still widely used close to the poles as those can be grown without much light or soil. This is also true close to the South Pole, particularly in Southernmost.
Panschin, by an accident of geology, is a free city located on top of extremely rich ores, all of them accessible.
Panschin is loaded with money and as a free city, it is wide open. The mines need a constant influx of healthy, desperate men to work them. There is a very high sex imbalance because of the mines and the imported labor to work them, say ten to one. This is much worse than any of the other regions on Mars, including the Ennaretee and the Essaretee, both of which regions tend to run to boys.
Women in Panschin
The widely told story, particularly outside of Panschin, is that it’s easy for a woman to make plenty of money, but she often does it on her back. This isn’t true. Decent women, of whom there are plenty, do live in Panschin; they’re careful about where they go. Some areas can be risky. It is not nearly as risky as most decent women (like Veronica Bradwell and family) believe, but it is dangerous enough that being wary is safer. Lurid stories in newspapers help foster this attitude. Lurid stories help sell newspapers, thus the slant on the news and on how Panschin is perceived outside the free city limits.
A woman screaming for help can be assured that some man (or several) will race to her rescue. What the rescuer expects in exchange for his service might have to be negotiated.
Transportation
Panschin supplies ores, raw and finished, of every kind to much of Mars. This production has fostered a burgeoning rail traffic both on the horizontal line leading out from the pole-to-pole corridor as well as the vertical line leading from Northernmost to Panschin all the way south to Nourz, at the equator. In fact, the Panschin railroad line extending from Northernmost, through the free city, and southwards is the third-busiest government corridor on Mars, after the pole-to-pole corridor running from Northernmost through Barsoom to Southernmost and then the Equator corridor running from Easternmost through Barsoom to Westernmost.
As with any city, Panschin has businesses, schools, churches, farms, etc. The difference in Panschin is they are all under the glassteel domes and tunnels. Due to the mining, there are a lot of tunnels in Panschin. Many tunnels have been repurposed so the city is laid out in three dimensions, above ground and below.
Power Generation
Power supply isn’t as much of an issue as it is elsewhere. The ores are so rich that Panschin runs its own nuclear power plant for electricity. The mines need light (non-explosive!), the refining operations need power, everything under glassteel needs constantly pumped air, and the overflow provides power to run a tram system (mostly to transport ore but there is public mass transit via the metro) and to pump water. The glassteel domes are electrified as is much of Dome Six (to keep them free of terraformers). Leftover electricity is available to the citizens for lighting, if they are willing to pay for it. Lots of people don’t.
Domes and Transport
The six domes are connected to each other via a complex web of tunnels on multiple levels, some of which have glassteel roofs or glassteel skylights. These tunnels are NOT living or working tunnels; they are transportation only and are referred to locally as transtubes. Transtubes can contain roadways for walking, skateboards or scooters, bicycles, rickshaws, sedan chairs, and palanquins. They may be lined with billboards and maintenance can be haphazard. Narrow transtubes for local use are only for pedestrian use. Larger transtubes contain underground trains, powered by electricity.
Every dome is connected to every other dome by at least one transtube line big enough to contain an underground train and a road large enough to allow motorized vehicles. Thus, Dome Six has five major transtubes leading from it to the other five domes, plus one more leading to the main Panschin train station, plus all the smaller lines.
The underground trains may be referred to as “metros” to distinguish them from having to walk. Mined ores and minerals are transported via their own electrically powered trams which may or may not run alongside the people moving transtubes. Transtubes can be crowded and noisy.
There are elevators but only in the tunnels and only for moving freight and people up and down in and out of the mining and housing tunnels. The Twelve Happiness Luxury Hotel has an elevator (the only one in Panschin!) and the hotel owners paid handsomely for it. Above-ground buildings use stairs, like the rest of the planet. Since much of Panschin is underground, it is perfectly possible to routinely climb multiple stairs a day, going from the roof deck (six floors up in the Twelve Happiness) to the sub-sub-sub-basement (four floors down in the Twelve Happiness). This makes for a fit population.
There are no animal-powered vehicles in Panschin. All transportation is human powered (rickshaws, sedan chairs, and palanquins) or metro cars in the transtubes.
Electricity use is closely monitored and there are often brownouts and rolling blackouts if the mines need the power. Next comes air supply, refining, then agriculture (food production), pumping water, and other uses. The mines get electricity for lighting but underground housing doesn’t necessarily get as much. Electricity is expensive.
Water is pumped up from aquifers. It does rain (and snow) in the Panschin area but because everything is under glassteel, the rain is captured and stored in cisterns and then pumped to where it needs to go. That is, if you have outdoor garden areas that are exposed to the sun, you still cannot rely on rainfall. The dome or the tunnel roof blocks all the rain.
So Veronica Bradwell, like everyone else, pays for her water, every single drop. She can’t catch rainwater to supplement what she needs and so she is rabidly conservative in her water usage. This is normal in Panschin. All her sinks and basins are lined with catch bowls and all that gray water is strained and reused to water the vegetable beds.
There is extensive agriculture in Panschin and the surrounding demesnes. The brief summer season (for Mars) allows for a wide range of cold weather, cold-hardy crops grown outdoors. Remember that Mars has much longer seasons than Olde Earthe so a growing season can be four or five months long, even as far north as Panschin. Anything grown outside has to be planted, grown, and harvested in the brief summer. Frost can always be an issue and comes in virtually any month during the summer. The winter is much too harsh to winter over anything, even with cold frames and hotkaps. Those extend the season but only by a month or two on each end.
Panschin and the surrounding quadrant still rely extensively on yeast and algae, along with mil-rats (military rations). Yeast and algae are grown in tanks, along with many varieties of edible mosses. Everybody eats them even if they don’t care for them very much. Yeast and algae are cheap and nutritious.
Veronica Bradwell grows a wide variety of food crops in the yard area she has, along with baskets at every window of the White Elephant. Veronica grows far more produce than she needs and trades or sells it to her neighbors for things she can’t grow.
Veronica is fortunate in that she knows how to do this (not everyone does), she has the time (not everyone does), and more importantly, she has the ground space and soil to grow in. The White Elephant came with several hundred square meters of land exposed to the sun through the dome. She has gradually built up her soil with compost, terraformers, Humanure, all the usual things. All of her beds are sunken to ensure that every drop of water goes into the bed and none is wasted where there are no plants. She rotates her beds, like any good Panschin farmer, by growing the terraforming algae and fungi, when she is not growing something edible. No green manure for Veronica or anyone in Panschin! The terraforming plants make soil, make oxygen and most importantly, they can manage on the ambient moisture in the air along with condensation so she doesn’t have to water them.
The terraforming algae, fungus, and lichens grow anywhere there is sunshine. They grow on rocks, on sand, everywhere. They do not grow in the mines unless there is a daylight shaft. Those shafts have to be cleaned regularly to prevent buildup that will eventually block the sunlight. This is another reason for Veronica to regularly whitewash the White Elephant. She has to sweep her white gravel paths regularly to keep the terraformers from taking over.
Crime in Panschin
Panschin has tons of money flowing through it. There is a lot of crime in Panschin, prostitution, drugs, pornography, etc. There are plenty of saloons for the miners to spend their paychecks. The dominant criminal syndicate is (loosely) allied with Blue Sun. But the local crime bosses tend to be very independent minded. They are a long way away from Barsoom and the controlling gangs. This can cause conflict with visitors as the local boys don’t care much what goes on in Barsoom or what Barsoom needs. The local gangs are more closely allied with the Panschin chamber of commerce than they realize: they both dislike and resent their supposed bosses and both groups know that their faraway bosses don’t understand what goes on in Panschin.
The four demesnes surrounding Panschin (Atto, Maerski, Davis, and Fuziwara) have a tumultuous relationship with the free city. The daimyos don’t enjoy as much control or influence over Panschin as they would like. The city government is irritatingly independent minded. The daimyos have to be subtle in how they wield their power. They need the free city to supply their own needs. They just wish they needed it less and had more control. The daimyos agree with the Panschin city council (one of their rare points of agreement) about two things: They would both like less crime and more responsible citizens. The four daimyos in the Panschin quad also agree with the chamber of commerce (and the local criminal elements) that Barsoom doesn’t understand them.
The horse lords to the south dislike everything about Panschin as the government corridors are always full of foot traffic heading to and returning from Panschin and that leads to bandits and other problems. They despise the concept of men huddling in tunnels instead of outside like real men.
Because of its size, Panschin also operates as a feeder city for Northernmost, the Icicle Works, the Nitrogen Factory, and the Magnetron. Some of what is mined in Panschin goes into running the terraforming processes.
Panschin is loud, noisy, overcrowded, and dirty. It is the largest free city on Mars outside of the equator zone. The city likes to boast that if you can’t find it in Panschin, you don’t need it.