by Ian McDonald
‘What about?’ Kessie asks.
‘In class.’ Dr Nakamura’s daughter Romy and Weavyr are study-mates.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Romy says a lot of the other kids are picking on Weavyr. Calling her names, ganging up on her, shunning her.’
Marina takes Kessie’s hand in hers.
‘This is to do with you too, Marina,’ Dr Nakamura says. ‘They’re telling her her aunt Marina’s a witch, she’s a spy. Your Aunt Marina is a terrorist from the moon. She’s going to blow up a mall, put poison in the water, send a meteor to take out the school. They’re telling Romy she shouldn’t be friends with Weavyr because Weavyr is your spy.’
‘Weavyr hasn’t had Romy back recently,’ Kessie says. ‘And she won’t tell me what she did in class, she won’t give me any of the gossip.’
‘Mean girls,’ Marina says.
‘It’s more than that,’ Dr Nakamura says. ‘One of my oldest clients – the Furstenbergs – asked if I still had the Calzaghes in the practice. I said of course, Mrs Calzaghe is an important patient. They said, oh no, not her; the other one, the one who went to the moon.’
‘What’s it got to do with them?’ Marina asks.
‘Whatever it was, they’ve moved to the Oceanside practice. Three generations.’
‘I can say something here.’
No one noticed Ocean’s return, quietly opening the door, pressed against the frame half in, half out of the room.
‘My social feeds?’ Ocean says. ‘Hate storm for the past two weeks. People I don’t even know, people from the city. It’s all their business that my aunt has come back from the moon, and they have something to say about that.’
‘What do they say, Ocean?’ Marina asks.
‘The best say you should be in jail. Then it goes from that to spy to terrorist … I’m blocking them as fast as they turn up but I’m looking at closing the accounts.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marina says. They’re hanging Duncan Mackenzie print-outs from Sydney Harbour Bridge and burning them, Skyler had said. She feels small and hideously alone, a solitary woman on a hostile planet. Eyes in the forests, the mountains, the airwaves and the network.
Ocean wakes. She is bright, alert, every sense sharp and she cannot think what woke her. She remembers, the swing of light across her bedroom wall.
‘Time,’ she says and, as the house network says, Two thirty-eight she hears the crunch and rumble of tyres, the whine of an engine. She dives to the window. Tail-lights turn the corner into the trees.
‘What was that?’ she whispers to the house.
I didn’t get the licence plate, the house answers. The car was fitted with an infra-red device to blind the cameras.
The creak of her mother’s bedroom door, a line of light under her own door. Ocean throws on the biggest hoodie and slips into the hall.
‘Did you hear?’
‘Go to your room, Ocean.’
Ocean follows her mother through the dark house to the door.
‘Go to your room, Ocean.’
They wait behind the barricade of the front door, summoning courage.
Kessie flicks on the outside lights and heaves the door open. She can smell the paint across the yard. ‘Don’t come down, Ocean.’
Ocean follows her down into the yard.
‘Stay there, Ocean!’
Ocean follows her mother to the attack: a white crescent with a slash through it painted on the side of the cabin, so fresh the paint still drips.
Now Marina is on the porch, leaning on her crutches.
A slashed crescent.
No moon.
‘At least take the dogs with you,’ Kessie says.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Marina says.
‘I don’t know why you can’t just settle for twice around the yard,’ Kessie mutters.
‘There’s a whole planet out there I can walk on,’ Marina says. ‘You have no idea how liberating that is. I’m going up the track.’
‘Take the dogs.’
Ancient Canaan furrows his creased brows and rolls to his feet; the new dog, Tenjo, who has yet to form a relationship with Canaan, strolls over to see what’s going on. A walk. Exultation.
Ocean and Weavyr painted the whole cabin white over the weekend but everyone can still see the outline of the slashed moon, white in white. No matter how many weekends they paint the cabin, the affront will always be there.
The dogs follow Marina down the steps into the yard. She has the trick of it now. She has the measure and weight of gravity. The route she has planned will take her up the track, through the gate before the cattle-grid, along the part of the trail that skirts the lower edge of the forest, then left along the southern part of the river trail-turn and back to the house. Two and a half kays. It’s as daunting as a marathon. There might be some late elk under the edge of the forest. That’s a prize and a motivation. She longs to be among wild animals, nothing between her and them, unmediated, wild.
In yoga pants, a crop top and as many friendship bangles as she could borrow from Ocean, Marina sets out on her adventure.
‘Uh oh,’ Ocean says. ‘Sun block.’ She slathers Marina’s bare belly and back in Factor 50. ‘You got great definition, Mai. How did you do that?’
‘Long run,’ Marina says. ‘And since when do you call me Mai?’
‘Since Mom did,’ Ocean says.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Ocean asks.
‘I do not,’ Marina says and sets off, crutches leaving two lines of holes in the dust. Canaan and Tenjo trot at her heel. This is not the Long Run, it can never be, but it can be a ritual of another kind, her own communion with her body and her space.
Everything that is ten times more difficult in Earth gravity is twice that with the addition of crutches. The curving slope to the concrete bridge is a descent from a sheer mountain col. The potholes are craters the size of Aristarchus. The gravel and stones on the country road turn every step into torment and she forgot to bring water.
‘Tenjo, Tenjo, you’re the smart dog, go and get Marina some water,’ Marina puffs as she swings her way up the road. Gods, the gate is so far away.
Gods. Ariel used to say that.
Fifty steps and a rest. Fifty more steps and another rest. Cut it into pieces. Her feet hurt. Her feet hurt so much. How far has she come? On the moon she could blink up her familiar. Here it’s an icon on her shades, blink blink blink blink blink before she gets into the fitness app. Half a kilometre.
Gods.
The dogs look up. Seconds later Marina hears the engine that alerted them. A car coming through the trees. She sees its dust before it makes the right-angle turn out of the trees into the open. She steps back. It’s coming fast. Does it see her? She could wave a crutch. No, she would fall. It’s not slowing. It must see her. It’s coming at her. At her. Dust and speed and noise. At her. Marina throws herself into the ditch. As the car roars past, peppering her with stones and grit, she hears men’s voices.
Fuck off back to the moon!
Winded, every bone and joint aching, Marina tries to push herself to her feet. She can’t. She doesn’t have the strength. She kneels on all fours in the dry ditch, panting, trying to listen over the sound of her own breathing for the car engine. Is it going on its way or has it turned round to come back for her? Listen. Oh listen.
A crunch of tyres on gravel, a squeak of brakes and the sound of wheels sliding to a stop.
Marina can’t look.
‘Marina?’
Bending over her is Weavyr on her bike.
‘Get help!’ Marina cries. ‘Help me!’
‘Hey, Mom.’
Marina pushes the wheelchair into the dark room. Night-lights glow. She hadn’t noticed that the ceiling is covered in luminous stick-on stars.
‘You awake?’
‘No.’
Old family joke; maybe the oldest. Marina hears the head of the bed rise, lights come up to a soft glow.
‘What happened to you?’
‘A pick-up on manual drive happened to me.’ Marina wheels to the space by the side of her mother’s bed. Medical technology purrs and blinks, pumps hum. The perfumes of the essential oils, the herbs, the incenses are stronger in the night. ‘I’m all right. Dr Nakamura thinks I must be made of teak or something.’ She slaps the arms of the wheelchair. ‘I’ll be out of this thing in a day or two.’
‘I heard,’ her mother says. She lays a wire hand on the cover. Marina takes it.
‘They’re our fucking neighbours,’ Marina says.
Her mother groans and clicks her tongue.
‘Nasty saying.’
‘Sorry. They wanted to run me off the road. They ran me off the road. On crutches.’
‘The cabin looks nice white.’
‘Mom, I have to tell you something.’
Marina squeezes her mother’s hot, dry paw.
‘It’s not going to get any better. I don’t know if you follow the news, but up there, on the moon, well, things are shaking up a little. The Suns have turned on their solar power grid … What I’m saying is, when things shake up there, they break down here. I think I’m a danger to everyone in this house.’
Her mother’s mouth opens in a silent oh of surprise.
‘And there’s … business up there. I didn’t come away clean. I broke a heart. I did the wrong thing. I need to do right.’
‘But if you go back …’
‘I can never come home again. But that’s it. Mom, I love you, and Kessie, and Ocean and Weavyr are gifts from God, but this isn’t home. There’s no place for me here.
‘Mom, I need to go back to the moon.’
SEVENTEEN
The tie is the thing. The suit was never an issue, two shades darker, two cuts sharper than the old man’s signature grey. Close enough to be respectable, not so close as to mock. The shirt is simple: pure white, softened by a bias pattern. Tie. Here Darius hesitates. He wants the primrose yellow but it lacks force, presence. But the others are dull, over-patterned or so alien to him as to be painful to wear. Primrose it must be, but how to give it authority? The tie-pin will work the politics. His familiar Adelaide presents a range of variations on Australian themes. The flying kangaroo: no. Animals make Darius shudder. The Red Dog logo also, but for different reasons. It was the sigil of Robert Mackenzie. Darius wants to inherit, not usurp. A tight glitter of five jewels like a constellation of stars. This he does not recognise.
The Southern Cross, Adelaide answers. The constellation Crux, visible only in the southern hemispheres of both Earth and moon.
‘Show me,’ Darius says.
His vision soars out from the Palace of Eternal Light, away from the beacons and searchlights of the surface teams, whose mission has gone from rescue to investigation; high above the splinters of the Pavilion of Eternal Light, out among the stars. Darius peers to find Crux: there. Four bright stars against the shine of the galaxy, one lesser light.
‘It’s not very impressive.’
It features prominently on the Australian national flag.
‘Print it,’ Darius says. ‘Real diamonds?’
I could not source them in time, Adelaide replies.
He knots the primrose-yellow tie, straightens. Checks teeth, eye make-up. Runs a comb through his hair. Last of all, he slips the Southern Cross pin through his tie three centimetres beneath the double Windsor knot.
‘Okay, Adelaide. Tell them I’m ready.’
This is the Seventh Bell.
The lesson of the School of Seven Bells is that its lessons are not for the knife alone.
Be aware of the breath and when you become aware, become unaware. Over-attachment is a trap. Find your weight, your mass, understand the difference between them. Remember that we are born with our senses undifferentiated and that life is a journey away from that unity of sensation to discretion. Over-focus is an error.
Adelaide shows him the cameras. When the dot in the bottom right corner of his eye goes red, he will be live. There is Mariano Gabriel Demaria. But it is Lady Sun who commands his eye. He will not shake, he will not hesitate.
‘Duncan Mackenzie is dead,’ she said as she hurried him away from the melee in the Great Hall. At first he had not understood what she was saying. ‘Listen to what I’m telling you, boy. Duncan Mackenzie is dead. Mackenzie Metals is headless. Bryce will try and take control now. It’s why he did it.’
‘Bryce destroyed the Pavilion of Eternal Light?’
They were in a moto, hurtling through tunnels cleared of traffic by executive command.
‘We knew it was a BALTRAN shot before the debris hit the ground. Bryce wanted to make it look like the Vorontsovs but he is not as clever as he thinks. He used that trick on the Cortas.’
‘The method that won you this fight will kill you in the next,’ Darius said.
‘We must move quickly. We have a destiny for you to fulfil.’
Lady Sun inclines her head to Darius.
Countdown.
The dot turns red. The moon is watching.
‘I am Darius Mackenzie. I am the last son of Robert Mackenzie and his true heir. I claim the title of Chief Executive of Mackenzie Metals.’
Lady Sun is smiling.
The Mackenzie Helium railcar slows, drifts in to the siding and comes to a halt. At the track-side is a VTO maintenance shed bermed deep with regolith, a small solar array, a comms tower and the standard lunar scrapheap of abandoned machinery. To the west the Mare Insularum curves into the horizon, to the east rise the northern outliers of the Apennines. Nothing more.
‘I’m stating the obvious,’ Bryce Mackenzie says, ‘but this is not Hadley.’
‘The situation at Hadley is changing fast,’ Finn Warne says. Bryce shifts in his seat. He cannot be comfortable for more than a few minutes.
‘Meaning?’
‘We would not be welcomed.’
‘I don’t expect to be fucking welcomed. I expect to be fucking respected.’
‘Hadley is hostile. I can’t needlessly endanger you.’
‘Hadley won’t find me a coward,’ Bryce spits. ‘I have twenty staunch jackaroos back there.’
‘Duncan put two hundred armed jackaroos on the field against the terrestrials. They never gave their guns back.’
Bryce rolls petulantly back in his seat, notices a tic on his lens. He leans painfully forward to tap the railcar porthole. ‘What’s this?’
‘Rovers from the Wallace and Mare Vaporum extraction teams. We’re going to transfer to rovers and meet up with the Imbrium and Serenetatis squads. Two hundred and twenty jackaroos. We finish this on the ground, out in the mirror field.’
‘Siege?’ Bryce asks.
‘The siege of Hadley,’ Finn Warne says. Bryce smiles. Dust plumes from the eastern horizon announcing the advent of Mackenzie Helium.
‘Boss.’ Bailey Dane, sergeant of the railcar security squad, calls from the rear cabin. ‘Gupshup News. You got to see it.’ Bryce Mackenzie despises the gossip networks and chat channels but they react faster than any other part of the lunar media. Fake news wears fast shoes. And there is Darius Mackenzie, with his quiffed-up hair, his primrose-yellow tie and Southern Cross pin in exactly the right position, claiming Mackenzie Metals. Fucking popinjay.
‘Get me into that fucking rover!’ Bryce Mackenzie bellows.
Thadie slides open the panel and her eyes widen.
‘There’s a bar in here.’
‘Of course there is.’ Denny Mackenzie leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the footstool. ‘Fix us something, will you?’
‘What do you want?’
&nb
sp; Denny turns back to the curve of pressure glass and the northern reach of the Apennines. The railcar is private charter, not a liveried executive-class Dragon transport but still comfortable, fast and well equipped. ‘Sour. Lemon, enough to make you pucker up. A little punishment. Sweet. Syrup. Vanilla syrup. Little less than a pucker. Life is not sweet. The kick. Gin. Ice cold, of course. Four fingers. No, make that three. Gold leaf. A sprinkle. Stir, pour, consume.’
Thadie opens, prints, prepares and pours four glasses, for Denny, herself and Ji-Sung and Agneta, the two others who came down with Denny Mackenzie from Bairro Alto. The rest of you follow later. The Jack of Blades owes you. Understand? The Mackenzie debt. Last in each glass is a pinch of gold dust. It settles slowly through the cold liquid. Denny takes a sip and falls back in his seat.
‘Fucking magnificent. Been too long, lover. I need a name for you. Sunshine Express. No. Fucking ridiculous.’ He lifts the glass to the vacuum. ‘The Hero’s Return!’
Moonquakes are of four types: deep, impact, thermal and shallow. These last are the most destructive and travel fastest. Within seconds of the news breaking from the Palace of Eternal Light, Meridian shook from prospket to Bairro Alto with the aftershocks of the assassination of Duncan Mackenzie. And the people of the High Town felt them, and gathered on their staircases and catwalks.
But he made you outcast.
‘My dad is dead!’ Denny Mackenzie roared.
Told you you were no son of his.
‘I obeyed him. That’s the Mackenzie way. I was staunch.’
Disinherited you.
He held up the hand he had maimed in obedience to the Mackenzie way.
‘Blood says otherwise.’
What does it say, Jack of Blades?
‘Go and take what’s mine.’
You’ve no allies, no help, no bitsies.
‘I’ll get there if I have to fucking walk!’ Denny Mackenzie shouted. ‘Allies? Who of you is with me?’ Thadie, Ji-Sung and Agneta dropped from their roosts and perches to stand with Denny Mackenzie. Bairro Alto cheered them all the way down the staircase but one voice said, Who will defend us now?
