by Ian McDonald
‘It’s a mild stimulant and concentration aid,’ she says. ‘We develop and export spiritual tisanes and matés to Earth – printer files. Everything from mild euphoric to full-on hallucinogens that make ayahuasca look like lemonade. They’re pirated the very moment they hit the network, but we feel it’s our duty to give the world new religious experiences.’
‘My mother has donated eighteen million bitsies to your organisation in the past five years,’ Lucas says.
‘For which we are very grateful, Senhor Corta. Religious orders face unique opportunities and challenges on the moon. Faith must breathe. Our funders include Ya Dede Asamoah, the Eagle of the Moon and, on Earth, União do Vegetal, the Ifa Pentecostal Church of Lagos and the Long Now Foundation.’
‘I know.’
‘She says you’re diligent.’
‘Do not patronise me.’
The attendant Sisters sit up, affronted.
‘Forgive me, Senhor Corta.’
‘Would there be any point in asking that this conversation continue in private?’
‘None, Senhor.’
‘But I am diligent. I’m the son who won’t let his mother waste her money on hustlers and conmen.’
‘It’s her own money.’
‘What do you do, Mother Odunlade?’
‘The Sisterhood of the Lords of Now is a syncretistic Lunar-Afro-Brazilian religious order dedicated to the veneration of the orixas, the relief of poverty, the practice of spiritual disciplines, alms-giving and meditation. We also engage in genealogical research and social experiment. It’s the latter that interests your mother.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The Sisterhood is engaged in an experiment to produce a social structure that will last for ten thousand years. It involves genealogies, social engineering and the manipulation of bloodlines. Europeans see a man in the moon; the Aztecs a rabbit. The Chinese see a hare. You see business and profit, the academics of Farside see a window on the universe, we see a social container. The moon is a perfect social laboratory; small, self-contained, constrained. For us it’s the perfect place to experiment with types of society.’
‘Ten thousand years?’
‘How long it will take humanity to become independent from this solar system and evolve into a truly interstellar species.’
‘That’s a long-term project.’
‘Religions deal in eternities. We’re working with other groups – some religious, some philosophical, some political – but we all have the same aim; a human society so robust and yet so flexible it will take us to the stars. We’re evolving five major social experiments.’
‘Five.’
‘That’s correct, Senhor Corta.’
‘My family are not your lab rats.’
‘With respect, you are, Senhor Corta—’
‘My mother would never degrade her children—’
‘Your mother was fundamental to the experiment.’
‘We are not an experiment.’
‘We all are, Lucas. Every human is an experiment. Your mother is not just a great engineer and industrialist, she is a social visionary as well. She saw the damage nation states, imperial ambition and the tribalism of identity groups has done to Earth. The moon was a chance to try something new. Humans have never lived in a more demanding or dangerous environment. Yet here we are, a million and a half of us in our cities and habitats. We’ve survived; we’ve thrived. The very constraints of our environment forced adaptation and change on us. The Earth is specially privileged. The rest of the universe will be like us. You are an experiment, the Asamoahs are an experiment, the Suns are an experiment, the Mackenzies are an experiment. The Vorontsovs are an extreme experiment: what happens to human bodies and societies after decades in zero-gee? You experiment, you compete with each other. It’s a kind of Darwinism, I suppose.’
Lucas bridles at the presumption. He is the manipulator, not the manipulated. But he can’t deny that the Five Dragons have reached very different solutions to surviving and thriving on the moon. His colleagues among the Vorontsovs have never confirmed nor denied the legend that Valery Mikhailovitch Vorontsov, the old rocketeer of Baikonur, has, over decades of free-fall aboard his cycler Saints Peter and Paul, become something strange and inhuman.
‘Why is one of your Sisters visiting my mother?’
‘At your mother’s request.’
‘Why?’
‘You spy on your brother but not your mother?’
‘I respect my mamãe.’
The Sisters look at each other.
‘Your mother is making her confession,’ Mother Odunlade says.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Your mother is dying.’
The moto closes around Ariel Corta. She lifts a hand: the cab opens a crack for Ariel to be heard.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I almost lost a finger there!’ The moto had closed fast and hard in Marina’s face.
‘We’d compensate you. Darling, we’ve been through this. You can’t come with me.’
‘I have to come with you,’ Marina says. This morning the printer delivered a male flamenco-style suit into the hopper. Marina very much likes the pants though she can’t stop tugging the jacket down to cover hips and ass. She’s been hacking the shoes for some time now. Not the silly heels. They are unhackworthy. The real shoes; adding a line of code here for comfort, there for custom fit, rewriting the soles for grip and acceleration. Action pumps.
‘I’m ordering you.’
‘I don’t report to you, lady. I report to your mother.’
‘Then report to her.’ Ariel seals the moto. Before she is a block away, Hetty has summoned a second cab and set it to follow Ariel.
Ariel smokes theatrically as Marina’s moto unfolds. An old-dig unit up on Orion West 65th, smartly close to the hub but faded and easily overlooked. Deliberately so, Marina thinks. The Lunarian Society, Hetty informs Marina.
‘This a private member’s club,’ Ariel says.
‘Clubs let in security.’
‘This club doesn’t.’
‘I will follow you.’
Ariel turns, hissing with fury.
‘Will you for gods’ sake just do what I ask? Just once?’
Marina swallows her satisfaction. A hit.
‘Okay. Okay. But you need to know one thing.’
‘What now?’ Ariel splutters.
‘You’ve got a ladder on the calf of your left stocking.’
For an instant Ariel might explode, eyes bulging as if in a sudden pressure-out. Then she collapses into helpless laughter.
‘Be a dear and run off to the public printer and get me a pair,’ Ariel commands. ‘Beijaflor has transfered the print file.’
‘What wrong with …’ Marina begins. Don’t finish. Hetty guides her to the nearest printer, a level down. Ariel assiduously examines the stockings, then peels on and replaces them.
‘Shouldn’t you find somewhere a little less public?’ Marina offers. She has views no employee ever should.
‘Oh for gods’ sake don’t be so Earthy.’ Ariel straightens her dress, peering with the long look of a woman being shown herself through public cameras. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’
Vidhya Rao waits for Ariel in the lobby. Ariel looks over the Lunarian Society with distaste. There is carpet. She despises carpet. This one is sickness-green, stained and mottled with decades of tread and insufficient care. Patched too the tank-skin leather sofas, of a design so outmoded it has served its time as knowing and retro and drooped into terminal obsolescence. Low lights. Collegiate, conformist, like an old colloquium house in a musty subject. There were pockets of air here Ariel suspected had circled like djinn for years.
‘Please.’ Vidhya Rao indicates a cluster of sofas around a low table. ‘Something to drink?’
‘Bloody Mary,’ Ariel says and snaps out her vaper. A bot brings her drink, water for the banker. ‘Will there be others?’
‘Just me, I’m afraid,’ Vidhya Rao
says. E rests er hands on er knees, fingers arched, a lively pose. Ariel sips her Bloody Mary.
‘A successful parley, then.’ Vidhya Rao lifts er glass. Ariel returns the toast. ‘Quite a feat. Your mother is well?’
‘It’s hard to tell anything about my mother. There’s a new corporate structure.’
‘I know.’
‘Your Three August Ones predicted that?’
‘I am an avid fan of the gossip channels.’
‘Why am I here, Ser Rao?’
‘You remember when we last met I said we wanted to buy you?’
‘Name your price.’
‘The Lunarian Society is producing a paper. We do this on a regular basis; outlining various cases for lunar independence; economic, political, social, cultural, ecological. We like endorsements.’
‘What would I be signing up to?’
‘It’s a politics paper, drafted by me, Maya Yeap, Roberto Gutierrez and Yuri Antonenko. We posit three alternative structures for the abolition of the LDC and the establishment of lunar home rule. They run from full participatory democracy to micro-capitalist anarchism.’
Ariel finishes her Bloody Mary. No breakfast like it.
‘Last time we met I believe I said I’m a Corta, we don’t do democracy.’
‘Those very words. It is only a paper. We’re not asking you to sign a declaration of independence in your own blood.’
‘Well as long as I don’t have to read anything,’ Ariel says and hands her empty glass to the waiting server bot.
*
Lucas’s tram has arrived, Yemanja announces.
‘Leave me,’ Adriana says to Heitor Pereira and Helen de Braga. Helen rests a parting hand on Adriana’s.
‘It’s all right,’ Adriana says. Lucas won’t rage like Rafa; there will be no shouting, no tantrums, no sulks. But he will be furious. Adriana waits in the Nossa Senhora da Rocha Pavilion, under the face of Oxum.
The two kisses, dutiful as ever.
‘Why didn’t you trust me?’ Direct, of course. Open with the personal betrayal. A strong card. The dutiful son, lied to.
‘I would have had to tell the others. I couldn’t have borne it from Rafa.’
‘I have always been discreet.’
‘Yes, you have, Lucas. No one’s been more discreet, or trustworthy.’
‘Or done more for the company.’ Adriana knows the high card he holds, but this is too early to play the Jack of Guilt. ‘When were you going to tell us? Another family celebration? Luna’s birthday?’
‘Lucas, enough of this.’
‘So when, Mamãe?’
‘Get it over with Lucas. I can’t bear this from you.’
Lucas bites back his anger, dips his head.
‘How long, until?’
‘Weeks.’
‘Weeks!’
‘I would have told you, before …’
‘Just enough time for goodbyes. Thank you. What did you think we would do when we found out?’
‘It would have changed everything. I see how you look at me now and you’ve known for what? Five hours? I’m not your mother, I’m not Adriana Corta. I’m death walking.’
Worse then the look of death was the look of pity. Adriana could not abide pity, its whinnying solicitudes, its patient smile over seething resentment. You will not pity me. This death was hers alone. She would have no cares or hurts encroaching on it. Her children would take her death away from her, shape it and manage it and control it until she was pruned back, an old woman dying in a chair.
‘I haven’t told the others.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I had to hear it from the Sisters of the Lords of Now.’
‘You shouldn’t have endangered their funding.’ As Lucas’s train left Hadley Central, Mãe Odunlade had contacted Adriana. Lucas knew the reason for Irmã Loa’s visits. Lucas had extorted the information by threatening to cancel funding after Adriana’s death. Adriana is furious at what Lucas did. He was always the silken bully. Whatever else she has done, she has the right to be furious about that.
‘You shouldn’t have played dynasties with our family.’
‘Lucas, it’s all dynasties, always dynasties. I wanted the best for you, for all of you. For the family.’
He’ll concede that. It’s always been the family for Lucas. He’ll play his card now. Adriana has forced his hand.
‘Is it for the family that you named Ariel as the heir to Corta Hélio?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Rafa. Not—’
‘You?’
‘Rafa would choke this company to death. You know that. Ariel has her own life and career. Do you think she’ll want to be be hwaejang of Corta Hélio?’
‘Perhaps not, but that is what I have decided. After my death, Ariel will become head of the company. She won’t be hwaejang. I’ve invented a new title and executive authority for her. You and Rafa will retain your positions and responsibilities. You’ll all work together.’
‘Is this some notion the Sisterhood whispered to you?’
‘That’s beneath you, Lucas.’
‘What about us?’
‘Us? You and Rafa?’
‘Us; you and me, mamãe.’
‘Lucas Lucas, this is why I wanted this all to wait until I’m safely dead.’
‘I think I’m owed an explanation.’
‘This is the moon. You’re owed nothing. Ariel will be Choego of Corta Hélio.’
‘As I said, I’ve told no one else. So far.’
Adriana knew he would do this in the end, but the manipulation, the oiled threat still makes her catch her breath.
‘And that is why I’ve put as much distance as I could between you and the throne, Lucas.’
This is the knife. This is the wound beyond healing. The corners of Lucas’s mouth twitch.
‘I will fight you.’
‘I’m not your enemy Lucas.’
‘If you act against the best interests of Corta Hélio, then yes you are. Even you, mamãe. You’ve hurt me, mamãe. I can’t think of a deeper cut. I can’t forgive you for this.’
He stands, purses his fingers and bows to his mother. No parting kisses. The air shivers with rainbow, struck from spray of Boa Vista’s tumbling waters.
‘Lucas.’
He is halfway to the shuttle station.
‘Lucas!’
Can I come in?
Lucas, please no. You’re not going to persuade me.
I don’t want to persuade you.
He stands before Jorge’s door-camera as if every bone is shattered like sub-regolith and only his will holds them together.
Come in. Oh come in.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t let leak any word of the devastation inside but Jorge pulls him to him, enfolds him, kisses him. Holds him. Holds him long, in the tiny smelly room, in the tiny bed.
Afterwards Lucas rests his head on Jorge’s belly. He’s fit for a musician, tuned and toned.
The apartment is miserable, high in the rafters of Santa Barbra Quadra, the rooms tiny and cramped, the air over-breathed. The bed takes up an entire room. The guitar hangs on the wall, watching like an icon or a different lover. It makes Lucas uneasy; the sound-hole a cyclops eye or a horrified mouth.
‘Is your mother still alive?’
‘No, she died in the Aristarchus quake.’ Lucas feels the gentle rhythm of Jorge’s words and breath and heart. ‘She worked for you. Selenology. Moon rocks and dust.’
Mild quakes shake the moon regularly; tidal stresses, the aftershocks of impacts, thermal expansion as the cold crust warms in the new sun: gentle trembles, a long slow temblor to remind the humans who crawl through the wormholes in its skin that the moon is not a dead stone skull in the sky. Rattlers, dust-stirrers. Once every few lunes the moon is struck with more powerful quakes: seisms twenty, thirty kilometres deep, that stop people in their business in their underground cities, that crack walls and gas seals, bring down power lines and sever rails. That collapsed the Corta H
élio maintenance and research base at Aristarchus and buried two hundred people. The base had been cheap and rapidly constructed. Some compensation cases were still working through the Court of Clavius.
Lucas turns his head to look at Jorge.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re lucky,’ Jorge says. ‘You’re lucky you have her.’
‘I know that. And I’ll look after her and I’ll defend her and I’ll be the one who sits with her and holds her hand.’
‘Do you love her?’
Lucas sits up. There is anger in his eyes and for a moment Jorge is afraid.
‘I have always loved her.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘You should. No one ever asked. Every week I go and see my mamãe and no one thinks to ask me, do I do this because I have a duty or because I love her? Rafa is the lover. Lucas Corta? The dark one. The schemer. My boy Lucasinho is everything to me. That boy is a wonder, a treasure. But when I talk to him, I can’t say that. It twists up. It goes wrong. It comes out hard. Why is it so easy for the Rafas of this world?’
Lucas sits up on the edge of the bed. The room is so small his bare feet are in the living space.
‘At least let me get you a decent apartment in Queen.’
‘Okay.’
‘You agreed to that too quickly.’
‘I’m a musician. We never turn down free accommodation.’
‘I’d like to come and listen to you. Sometime.’
‘Sometime. Not yet. If that’s all right.’
‘I’ll do that.’
Jorge pulls Lucas down beside him and Lucas curls up around him, belly to back, balls to ass, innocent and for a few moments empty of past and future, history and responsibility.
‘Sing me something,’ Lucas whispers. ‘Aquas de Marco.’
Chef Marin Olmstead is ill. Chef Marin Olmstead is not ill. Chefs are the unhealthiest trade. Their hours are sick, their workplaces cramped, uncongenial, filled with vapours and fumes. They are serial abusers of their bodies. But they never take a day off from their kitchen. Chefs never get ill. When Marin Olmstead asks Ariel take his place reporting the deliberations of the Pavilion of the White Hare to the Eyrie of the Eagle of the Moon because he is ill, Ariel Corta knows a fatted lie. Jonathon Kayode wants words with her.
Security is discreet and begins the moment Beijaflor summons the moto to the Eyrie. Ariel and Marina have been throughly scanned and checked by the time the cab attaches to the ascender and climbs the south-west wall of Antares Hub. An elegant butler in a bolero suit and hat asks Ariel to follow her please, up through the terraced gardens.
