Luna

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Leave these,’ Rafa says, touching the cocktail paraphernalia. ‘A bucket of ice for the gin. I’ll let you know when we need glasses.’

  She moves the Fendi. Rafa’s invitation to sit.

  ‘So did you invent these?’ she asks after the third.

  ‘Ask them at Sasserides Bar in Queen of the South. Do you know what the expensive part is?’

  Sohni shakes her head. Rafa taps the lemon peel.

  ‘It’s the only bit we can’t print.’

  ‘Your hands are very steady,’ Sohni says as Rafa performs the spoon and Curacao trick. Then she gasps as Rafa snatches up a glass, slings the gin across the bar floor and slaps it upside down on the bar. Inside, under-lit, buzzing: a fly. Rafa turns to the guards quiet at their tables.

  ‘Do you know what is in this glass?’

  His escoltas are on their feet.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down!’ Rafa bellows. ‘Tell my brother I know his little spy has been buzzing around since Ku Lua.’

  ‘Senhor Corta, we don’t—’ the woman starts but Rafa cuts her off.

  ‘Work for me. Doesn’t matter. You let it get close. You let it get close to me. You’re fired. Both of you.’

  ‘Senhor Corta—’ the woman guard starts again.

  ‘You think Lucas wouldn’t fire you for that? You stay with me until I get replacements from Boa Vista. Socrates. Get me Heitor Pereira. And my brother.’ He looks over at the family, sheepish at their table. ‘Where are you going?’

  They mumble the name of a restaurant, a song bar.

  ‘Here’s three thousand bitsies. Have the best night of your lives.’

  Socrates transfers the money. They bow themselves out of the bar. The bartender rearranges the bottles while Rafa withdraws to speak with his head of security and then, in less reasoned tones, with his brother. Sohni rests her chin on the bar to stare at the fly.

  ‘It’s a machine,’ she says.

  ‘Half machine,’ Rafa says. ‘One of those things almost killed me. I’m sorry I scared you. You shouldn’t have seen that. I’m not sure I can make it up to you.’ He summons a clean glass and pours ice-chilled gin. Splash of lemon. Tendrils of dissolving Curacao. ‘Not a tremor.’ He slides the Blue Moon across the bar to Sohni. ‘One wife has left me, my other wife is dead, my daughter is afraid of me and I hurt my son because I was angry at someone else. My brother spies on me because he thinks I’m a fool and my mother is halfway to believing him. I just lost a deal, my enemies have fucked me over, my security guards couldn’t find their own asses in the dark, someone tried to assassinate me with a fly and my men’s handball team is bottom of the league.’ He raises his own glass. ‘But I still invented the Blue Moon.’

  ‘I could be an assassin,’ Sohni says. ‘I could pull out a knife and open you from here to here.’ She runs a finger from chin to crotch. Rafa arrests her hand.

  ‘No you couldn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  Rafa tilts his head at his former guards.

  ‘I may have fired them but they still scanned everyone in the place.’

  ‘You infringed my privacy.’

  ‘I can compensate you.’

  ‘Everything really is a contract with you people.’

  ‘You people?’

  ‘Moon people.’

  Rafa still hasn’t let go of her hand. Sohni still hasn’t slipped it from his grasp.

  ‘I know I should feel privileged to be working here, but I can’t wait to get back home,’ she says. ‘I don’t like your world, Rafael Corta. I don’t like its meanness and tightness and ugliness and that everything has a price.’ She lifts a finger to her eye. ‘I can’t get used to these. I don’t think I could ever get used to these. You’re rats in a cage, one look, one wrong word away from eating each other.’

  ‘The moon is all I know,’ Rafa says. ‘I can’t go to Earth. It would kill me. Not quickly, but it would kill me. None of us can go there. This is home. I was born here and I will die here. In between, it’s people, all the way up, all the way down. At their best and at their worst. In the end, all we have is each other. You see contracts for everything; I see agreements. Ways we work out between us to live.’

  ‘Okay then. Compensate me.’ Sohni frees her hand to tap the gin bottle. Rafa seizes her hand, so firmly her lips part in small shock.

  ‘Don’t you ever pity me,’ he says and in the same instant releases her. A click of mechanisms releasing: an awning unfolds from above the bar and extends over bar and drinkers.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ Rafa says, looking up. ‘Have you seen it rain on the moon?’

  ‘You haven’t been to Farside Array, have you?’

  ‘I’m a businessman, not a scientist.’ Slug of gin, plash of peel, the trick with the spoon and the slow Curacao.

  ‘It’s tunnels and corridors and cubbyholes. I feel like I’ve been stooping for six months. I’m amazed I can straighten my spine.’ She turns on her barstool to look out at the stupendous vistas of Aquarius Quadra. ‘This is the furthest I’ve looked in six lunes.’

  Sudden drumbeat on the canopy. Beyond its shelter, rain drops like glass ornaments, detonating softly on the terrace.

  ‘Oh!’ Sohni raises hands to face in delight.

  ‘Come on.’ Rafa extends a hand. Sohni takes it. He leads her out into the rain. Fat drops splash Blue Moon from their glasses, detonate around their feet. Sohni turns her face up to the rain. Within seconds they are soaked through, expensive clothes clinging, wringing. Rafa brings Sohni to the rail.

  ‘Watch,’ he orders. The vault of Aquarius hub is a mosaic of slow-falling, quivering drops, each a twinkling jewel in the night lights of Aquarius. ‘See.’ The skyline comes on, momentarily blinding. Sohni shields her eyes. When she can see again a rainbow spans the vast space of the quadra’s hub. ‘Look!’ Down on Tereshkova Prospekt traffic has come to a standstill. Passengers, pedestrians stand motionless, arms outspread. From stores and clubs, bars and restaurants, others stream to join them. On the terraces and balconies children run out to cavort and yell in the rain. The rain hammers Aquarius Quadra, drumming, booming from every roof and awning, gantry and walkway.

  ‘I can’t hear myself think!’ Sohni shouts and then the skyline fades to dark. The rain ends. The last drops fall and burst on her skin. The world drips and glistens. Sohni looks around her, dazed with wonder.

  ‘It smells different,’ she says.

  ‘It smells clean,’ Rafa says. ‘This is the first time you’ve breathed air without dust in it. The rain scrubs out the dust. That’s why we do it.’

  ‘How can you afford to waste the water?’

  ‘It’s not wasted. Every drop is collected.’

  ‘But the expense. Who pays for this?’

  Now Rafa touches a finger under his eye.

  ‘You do.’

  Sohni’s eyes widen as she reads the charge to her water account on her chib.

  ‘But that’s …’

  ‘Nothing. Do you begrudge it?’

  ‘No. Never.’ She shivers.

  ‘You’re wet through,’ Rafa says. ‘I can print you something fresh at my club.’

  Sohni smiles through the shivers.

  ‘That’s a pick-up line.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  Socrates throws a big tip to the bartender and Sohni and Rafa dash back through the dripping city to the PHO Club. The spying fly remains, buzzing in its glass bell-jar.

  Lucas returns to the listening room and sits on the acoustic centre of the sofa.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is in order. Please start Expresso again.’

  ‘It’s just that you don’t take interruptions.’ This is Jorge’s third listening room session but the pattern is established. He plays for an hour unbroken, Lucas listens for an hour undivided. But in the third bar of Expresso, Lucas had risen abruptly from the sofa and hurried from the room. Jorge could not hear Lucas’s business
but he was gone several minutes.

  ‘Expresso, please.’

  But the disturbance has thrown Jorge and it takes him a few moments to work out the tension in his fingers and body and throat. Fingers find the chords, voice the syncopation. There are no further interruptions but the flow of energy from performer to audience and back to performer is disturbed. Jorge finishes Izaura with a muted cadence and packs away the guitar.

  ‘Same time next week, Senhor Corta?’

  ‘Yes.’ A hand on Jorge’s shoulder as he turns to go. ‘Stay for a drink.’

  ‘Thank you, Senhor Corta.’

  Lucas guides Jorge, guitar in hand, to the lounge and brings him a mojito.

  ‘I have got the proportions right?’

  ‘It’s perfect, Senhor Corta.’

  ‘Taste it first.’

  He does. It is.

  Lucas takes his own drink to the window. João de Deus whirls past, movement and light, level upon level. Blue neon, green biolights, gold street lamps.

  ‘I apologise for taking that call. I could see it threw you.’

  ‘Being professional is not letting it throw you.’

  ‘It threw me. I must still be an amateur audience. Do you have brothers, Jorge?’

  ‘Two sisters, Senhor Corta.’

  ‘I would say you’re lucky, but in my experience, sisters can be as difficult as brothers. Differently difficult. The thing about brothers is, the rules are set in place at birth. Firstborn is always firstborn. Always golden. Are you firstborn, Jorge?’

  ‘I’m in the middle.’

  ‘That would be me and Ariel. Carlinhos is the darling. The youngest always is.’

  ‘I thought there were five Cortas.’

  ‘Four Cortas and a pretender,’ Lucas says. ‘I see you’ve finished.’ Jorge gulped his mojito. Nervy drinking. ‘Have another one. Try to enjoy it this time. The rum really is good.’ He brings the second drink and with it lures Jorge to the window. ‘My mother was a pioneer, an entrepreneur, a dynasty builder but in many ways quite traditional. Those things are not incompatible. The firstborn will run the company. The rest serve as their talents allow. I do. Carlinhos does. Even Wagner serves. Ariel. I envy Ariel. She chose her own career outside the company. Counsel Ariel Corta. Queen of the nikahs. The toast of Meridian.’ Lucas raises his glass to the teeming, dusty street. ‘She is a White Hare.’

  ‘Anyone who says they’re a White Hare—’

  ‘Almost certainly isn’t. I know. If Ariel says she is a White Hare, she is. What do you think of my rum, Jorge?’

  ‘It is good.’

  ‘My own personal brand. When you were a boy, did you have pets?’

  ‘Only machine ones.’

  ‘Us too. My mother wouldn’t have anything organic about the place. All that shitting and dying. The Asamoahs gave us a flock of decorative butterflies for Lucasinho’s moon-run. My mother complained about the mess for days. Wings everywhere. Machines are cleaner. But they still terminate. They die. They make them die, you know? To teach kids a lesson. And then someone has to put them into the deprinter. That was my job, Jorge.’ Lucas takes a sip. Jorge is nearing the bottom of his second mojito. Lucas has barely tasted his first. ‘The Golden Boy has made a dreadful mistake. He has managed to alienate the Vorontsovs. He let his feelings get the better out of him and has jeopardised not just our expansion plan but our shipping deal with VTO. We rely on VTO to ship helium containers to Earth. And it’s up to me to repair the damage. Think of a solution. Upcycle the dead. Clean up the mess.’

  ‘Should I be hearing this, Senhor Corta?’

  ‘You’re hearing what I want you to hear. Jorge, I fear for my family. My brother is an idiot. My mother … She’s not what she was. She’s keeping something from me. Helen de Braga and that fool Heitor Pereira will never tell me, no matter what levers I apply. The company will fall unless someone deals with the shit and the death. Do you have any children, Jorge?’

  ‘I’m not on that spectrum.’

  ‘I know.’ Lucas takes Jorge’s empty glass and sets a fresh one in his hand. ‘I have a son. I find myself unexpectedly proud of him. He ran away from home. We live in the most enclosed, surveilled society in human history and young people still try to do that. I cut him off, naturally. Nothing fatal, nothing health-limiting. He lives by his wits. It seems he has some. And charm. He doesn’t take after me in that. He’s making some success of it. He’s become a minor celebrity. Five days of fame and then everyone will forget him. I can pull him in any time I want but I don’t want to. Not yet. I want to see what else he finds inside himself. He has qualities I don’t. He’s kind, it seems, and quite honourable. Too kind and honourable for the company, I fear. I fear a lot for the future. What do you think of this one?’ Lucas tilts his glass towards Jorge’s.

  ‘It’s different. Smokier. Tougher.’

  ‘Tougher. Yes. That’s my own cachaca. It’s what we should be drinking when we make bossa. I find it a little uncouth. So, I must stage a board-room coup. I must fight my family to save my family. And I’m telling all this to a bossa nova singer. And you’re thinking, am I his therapist, his confessor? His minstrel, his fool?’

  ‘I’m not a fool.’ Jorge snatches up his guitar. Lucas stops him three paces from the door.

  ‘In old Europe the king’s fool was the only one the king could trust with the truth, and the only one who could tell the truth to the king.’

  ‘Is that an apology?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I should still go.’ Jorge looks ruefully at the glass in his other hand.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Same time next week, Senhor Corta?’

  ‘Lucas.’

  ‘Lucas.’

  ‘Could we make it a little earlier?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Mamãe?’

  Adriana wakes with a small cry. She is in a bed in a room but she doesn’t know where and her body will not answer her though it feels light as a dream, insubstantial as fate. A presence over her, close as breath, breathing in as she breathes out.

  ‘Carlos?’

  ‘Mama, it’s all right.’

  The voice is inside her head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mama, it’s me. Lucas.’

  That name, that voice.

  ‘Oh. Lucas. What time is it?’

  ‘Late, Mamãe. Sorry to disturb you. Are you all right?’

  ‘I slept badly.’

  The light swells. She is in her bed, in her room, in her palace. The looming, breath-eating ghost is Lucas, rendered on her lens.

  ‘I’ve told you to see Dr Macaraeg about that. She can give you something.’

  ‘Can she give me thirty years?’

  Lucas smiles. Adriana wishes she could touch him.

  ‘I’ll not disturb you then. Get some sleep. I just want you to know that we haven’t lost Mare Anguis. I have a plan.’

  ‘I’d hate to lose that, Lucas. I’d hate that more than anything.’

  ‘You won’t, Mama, if Carlinhos and those damn fool dustbikes of his are up to it.’

  ‘You’re a good boy, Lucas. Let me know.’

  ‘I will. Sleep well, Mama.’

  Marina rides back with the corpse strapped beside her. It’s close enough to rub thighs and shoulders but that is better than it facing her in the opposite seat. The suit, the featureless helmet, the seat harness restricting movement; there is little to distinguish the meat from the dead. Knowledge, that’s the horror. Behind that blank face is a blank face: dead.

  Cause of death was a swift and catastrophic rise in body temperature that cooked Paulo Ribiero to death in his suit. Carlinhos sifts data, trying to discern what went wrong. If a duster with a thousand surface hours on his log can die inside three minutes, anyone can. So can she, Marina Calzaghe, strapped into an open, unpressurised roll frame; hurtling at one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour through hard, irradiated vacuum. Nothing between her and it but thi
s flim-flam suit, this bubble of helmet visor. Even now, a thousand tiny failures could be conspiring, multiplying, allying. Marina Calzaghe bolts back panic like yellow bile. In the Sea of Tranquillity she had almost taken her helmet off.

  ‘You all right?’ Carlinhos on her private channel.

  ‘Yes.’ Liar. ‘It’s a shock. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re fit to continue?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘We’ve been redeployed.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m going to turn you into a drinking game,’ Carlinhos says. ‘Every time you ask a question, I take a drink. We’re catching a train.’

  Marina can’t discern any change in the rover’s course but an hour later it skids to a halt at the side of Equatorial One. Seat harnesses lift, the squad disembarks shaking stiffness out of their limbs. Marina gingerly rests a foot on the track, feeling for the vibration of an approaching express. Nothing of course. And the outer rails are reserved for the Mackenzie mobile foundry – Crucible, Marina remembers from her briefings. The expresses runs on the inner four maglev tracks. She can see the adjacent power tracks. Touch a foot to those and your death would be clean and instantaneous and light up Carlinhos’s hud like Diwali.

  ‘It’s coming,’ Carlinhos says. An atom of light appears on the western horizon, becoming three blinding headlights. The ground is shaking. At maglev speed, with so tight a horizon, the train is on them before Marina can make sense of her impressions: size, speed, blinding light; oppressive mass and utter silence. Windows blur past, then slow. The train is stopping. Marina sees a child’s face, hands cupped against the glass, peering out. The train comes to a halt. Two thirds of its kilometre-length are passenger carriages; freight and pallet cars take up the rear third. Carlinhos waves his crew across the tracks to the very last flatbed. Marina easily vaults up the sintered track-bed and hand-over-hands up the side of the open car. Motorbikes. Big, fat-tyred, studded with sensors and coms equipment, ugly and unaerodynamic, but unmistakably motorbikes.

  Wha— she starts to ask but that would only gift Carlinhos another win in his drinking game.

  ‘We’re claim-staking,’ Carlinhos announces on the common channel. Rumbles of approval from the old dusters, squad and those who have come with the bikes. ‘Lucas tells us we’re heading to Mare Anguis. There’s a claim that Mackenzie Metals thinks only they know about. But we do, and we can steal it out from under them. They’ve got VTO’s surface fleet in their pockets but we’ve got these.’ He pats the handlebars of one of the motorbikes. ‘Corta Dustbike Team will win it. First, we ride train.’ A roar of approval. Marina finds her voice among them. Without lurch or jolt the train moves off. Marina watches the rover power up and swing away from Equatorial One, carrying its sole, dead passenger back to João de Deus.