Luna

by Ian McDonald

  The Eagle of the Moon takes tea in the Orange Pavilion. His Eyrie is a series of sinter-glass kiosks and belvederes set among tiered gardens, each themed around a colour. The Orange Pavilion is set at the edge of formal citrus trees; orange, kumquats, bergamot, all dwarfed to human scale by AKA geneticists. The view is stupendous; the Eyrie sits half up the central rotunda where Antares Quadra’s habitats meet, high enough for panorama, low enough to be aristocratic. The breath catches in Ariel’s chest. This is stepping out on to the edge of forever. Antares Quadra is eight hours behind Aquarius Quadra and the sunline wakes, casting golden light the length of the five Prospekts. Lights shine in the gloaming, dusty as stars. This is the Eagle’s preview and the Eagle’s alone.

  ‘Counsel Corta.’ Jonathon Kayode plucks a bergamot. He digs his fingernails into the green rind, releases a spray of aromatic oil. ‘Smell.’ Ariel bends to the fruit.

  ‘I can’t describe it.’

  ‘No, it’s impossible, isn’t it? Sensations and emotions, there is no way to express them except in terms of themselves.’ He throws the fruit away. Ariel doesn’t see where it falls. It could have gone over the edge. ‘Will you?’

  The Eagle indicates a small domed pavilion at the very edge of the central rotunda, big enough for just a low table and two benches. Ariel settles her layered petticoats. A Dior circle-dress today, floating and cinch-waisted; its flagrant femininity intentional deception. The butler brings mint tea for the Eagle, a spanking dry martini for Ariel. It’s always cocktail hour in some Quadra. Ariel flicks out her vaper.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘You’re my guest.’

  The sky is already busy; cable cars swing across the canyon; bicycles and scooters skim across the flyovers; high above, in the poor town, Ariel can make out figures running the rope-bridges. Drones and fliers flash through the golden space.

  ‘My sincere apologies for not making it to your mother’s birthday. The world will miss her at the head of Corta Hélio.’

  ‘My mother kept her distance from the world, so I very much doubt there will be weeping on the Gupshup network.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ Jonathon Kayode says. For the first time Ariel feels his physical mass: Earth-born weight and muscle. He intimidates her a little.

  ‘So tell me what you want,’ Ariel says. ‘What you really want.’

  Jonathon Kayode’s smile could dazzle worlds. He sets down his tea glass and claps his hands in delight.

  ‘So forward! I want a wedding.’

  ‘It’s a day out for everyone.’

  ‘I want a Corta-Mackenzie wedding.’

  ‘I annulled the nikah between Hoang Lam Hung Mackenzie and Robson Corta on grounds on parental neglect of his sexual rights and Luna is only five.’

  ‘I mean Lucasinho, with Denny Mackenzie.’

  ‘Another one of Bryce’s little orphans.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you what Lucas will say?’

  ‘Lucas will say yes, after you’ve explained to him that if he declines, I will instruct the LDC to review the Mare Anguis licence for procedural irregularities.’

  ‘Corta Hélio has deep pockets.’

  ‘But not bottomless ones. How rich is your war chest when we impose an interim embargo on your helium-3 exports, until the investigation is concluded?’

  ‘How long will you stay in this lovely palace when Earth goes dark?’

  Jonathon Kayode leans forward and takes Ariel’s hands in his. His skin is soft and very warm.

  ‘But none of this has to be, Ariel. Lucasinho marries Denny Mackenzie. You even get to draw up the nikah. And we have peace between Cortas and Mackenzies. A dynastic marriage. I want peace, Ariel. I want a quiet moon. I know what you and Mackenzie Metals have been doing out in Mare Anguis. I will not have corporate war on my world. A simple union of houses. Two beautiful princes. I’d even provide them with an apartment right here at Antares Rotunda, so that neither side would have a claim on them.’

  ‘Two beautiful hostages.’

  ‘Ariel, this is disingenuous of you. How many nikahs have you drawn up?’

  Ariel takes a long draw on her vaper. Her martini is untouched on the low table.

  ‘Are you threatening Mackenzie Metals with similar sanctions?’

  Full morning now, another glorious day in Antares Quadra.

  ‘I sometimes forget how new your family is to real politics.’

  Ariel slowly exhales a spiral of blue vapour. It curls out over the stupendous drop down through tiers and platforms, buttresses and pillars to glittering Han Ying Plaza.

  ‘Fuck you, Jonathon.’

  ‘I want you to take this message to your mother.’

  ‘I’m not my mother’s tell-tale.’

  ‘Really? I think you’re quite the cunning little spider.’

  ‘If I can find for my people I will.’

  ‘Of course. You acted ethically. But I do know that the Mare Anguis tip-off didn’t come through the Pavilion of the White Hare.’

  Ariel coolly takes her first sip of her martini. She wants it to restart her stone heart. He knows. Plead guilty. Bargain. Her gloved fingers set the glass down without a ripple.

  ‘There’s no law against the Lunarian Society. Gods save that there ever should be. Too many laws make bad justice. It’s not even a conflict of interests.’

  ‘But it does conflict with my interests, the interests of the LDC. You are not citizens, you’re clients. Never forget that. That tract you put your name to: fascinating. Quite fascinating. Quite irrelevant: political theory? We’re pragmatic people up here. It’ll be read by the usual chatterati. But if you started attaching your name to subjects that really affect people, like the Four Elementals. Well, that might cause unrest, even panic. The LDC couldn’t overlook that. You aspire to the judiciary. Don’t deny it, Ariel. Your ambition is admirable but, never forget, appointments to the Court of Clavius are made by the Lunar Development Corporation.’

  ‘Jonathon, once again …’

  ‘Fuck me. Yes. Talk to your mother. Persuade your brother. Invite me to the wedding. Make it big. I do so love a big wedding.’

  The butler arrives. The audience is ended. Jonathon Kayode plucks a second bergamot from his tree and presents it to Ariel with the delicacy of a baby or a heart.

  ‘Do take this. Place it at the heart of your home and its fragrance will fill every room.’

  The event may be the Modi reception or the Colloquium ‘79 reunion but it’s the tenth in five days and it’s one thirty and Marina wants her home, her bed, so much she could weep. She sits in a Jacques Fath dress at the bar with her glass of tea, tracking Ariel as she moves from group to group, conversation to conversation. The same faces, the same talk. The banality is crushing. It’s a skill, Marina supposes. It can’t be what’s said; it’s who it is said by, and to whom. Marina tries to find a millimetre of forgiveness inside her red stiletto-heeled opera shoes. Marina squeezes off the heels. The pleasure is so great and immediate it’s pain. Her feet are swollen, agonised, her muscles relax from their taut ballet and she almost cries out. She winces as she pulls on each soft heel-less ballet slipper.

  Ariel wafts through her entourage.

  Marina looks up from pulling in the glorious kind shoes and sees the knife. The suggestion of knife; the movement of the hand, the tucking back of the clothing, the flash of metal from within the entourage. Knife. The draw.

  The lunge.

  Jo Moonbeam muscles. Marina launches from the chair. The dive carries her a quarter the length of the room. She piles into the attacker as he drives the knife at Ariel Corta’s heart, knocks him so the strike goes awry. The knife goes through layers of Givenchy lace and bodice into Ariel’s back. Blood. Blood sprays high and slow on the moon. Ariel is down. The attacker reels and comes up for another strike. He’s moon-born, tall, light, fast; faster than Marina. He shifts his grip on the knife. Marina’s weapons are locked inside her stupid clothing. She looks for a killing thing t
o hand, finds it. The attacker comes up, knife-ready. With all her strength, Marina drives the vaper up under his chin. The full length. Her fists jerk against his chin-stubble. Crunch of bone. The tip punches through the top of his skull. The assailant spasms. Marina holds the vaper, holds it firm, holds him impaled on it, holds his gaze until she knows there is no life in it. She lets go of her spear. The body slumps on to its side. Blood has run down the titanium spike of the vaper over her hands. Blood from Ariel’s wound has sprayed across her face and dress. Ariel lies in dark blood, panting, twitching. The entourage stands in its eternal circle, looking down. We are aghast. We are concerned. We don’t know what to do.

  ‘Medics!’ Marina screams. She kneels beside Ariel. Where to press, where to hold, how to staunch the flow? So much blood. Flaps of skin and flesh. ‘Medics!’

  NINE

  He’s been here all along, sitting waiting for me to call him in, listening to all my stories and digressions and smiling because I’m the engineer, I’m the one who’s supposed to be no nonsense, get-to-the-point. He always was patient to a fault. Carlos, you’ll have to wait a little longer. But not much longer.

  Achi left and I never saw her or talked to her again. I worked. I had things to do. No time to miss people. Look at my productivity! I didn’t miss her at all. It was a good thing she had gone; love would only have been a distraction. I had a business to build.

  I was so busy, I missed my Moonday.

  That’s a lie. It’s a lie too that I didn’t miss Achi. I missed her so hard the loss was an ache in me; a vacuum. I missed her sweet seriousness; her tiny kindnesses like tea by my bed every morning or laying out my surface suit neat and right; her tidiness where I was a slob, her attention to detail, the way she would straighten things if we were in the apartment or a hotel or a pod; set things square to the walls of the room. Her inability to get my jokes or pronounce Portuguese. So many things! I pushed them all down in my memory, did not think of them because thinking of her made me think of all the things I would lose forever on the moon. Breathing free. Sunlight on my naked face. Looking up into an open sky. The far horizon; the moon at the edge of the world laying a silver path out across the ocean. Oceans of water not dust. The wind: listen!

  I worked like the devil; modelling and designing and planning. It would work. It was simple. But you can only work so much before it eats your stomach and soul. I took a break. An Adriana Corta break. My old mining school mates from DEMIN would have been proud. I worked the twelve bars of Orion Quadra. I fell in through the door of the ninth. By the tenth I was taking bets on how high a tower of shot glasses I could build on the bar – fifteen. By the eleventh I was in an alcove touching foreheads with this sweet big-eyed Santos boy and burbling all my plans and ambitions with his big eyes wide and pretending he was interested. I never made it to bar twelve. I was in bed with the Santos Big-eyes. I was a lousy lover. I cried all night. He was sweet enough to cry along.

  I didn’t call my family for a long time after Moonday. I was afraid I would realise I had made a terrible decision, one that I could not reverse. Then I thought, for most of human history, migration has been a one-way trip. Old Portuguese families would hold funerals for children going off to a new life in Brazil. Agency is a comforting fairy story. Life is a series of doors that only open one way. We can never return. This is the world and we must live in it the best we can. But I did listen to a lot of music from the old world, the music my mother loved and sang around the house, and it was as if it floated up from that blue planet down there and settled itself over a new landscape, not the grey hills and scarps and rilles and all that ugliness, but the people. The only beautiful thing on the moon is the people.

  So, I was a woman of the moon now. I had committed myself to a new world and a new life. I had an idea and I had money – if you emigrate, the return part of your fare, minus any outstanding balance and the inevitable fees, is refunded to you. I bought convertible LDC bonds. Safe, solid, with a high return. I had a stable of legal and design AIs and a model I was itching to test out in the real world. What I didn’t have was a clue. More specifically, I had no idea how to turn all this into a business. I didn’t have a plan. It was engineering of a kind different from any I knew; how to plan a company and make it work.

  Then I met Helen. I had cast a dark net for potential finance directors – none of my people was ever any good with money and I was no exception. It was all deliciously clandestine; encrypted messages – this was before we had familiars – and secretive meetings in teahouses that shifted location at the last minute. I could not risk Mackenzie Metals discovering my plan. You think we live in a wild world now; it’s nothing like the frontier days. But there she was, this woman from Porto and she knew all her stuff and she knew which questions to ask and which not to ask but, can I tell you? What really decided me to take her on was that she spoke Portuguese. I learned English and I was learning Globo – it was beginning to take over as the common language, especially because the machines understood the accent – but there are things you can only say with your own words. We could talk.

  I have worked with her every day since. She is my oldest and dearest friend. She will never disappoint me, though I know I have disappointed her many many times. She said, you don’t talk money. Ever. You don’t pay anything unless I tell you to. Ever. And you need a Project Engineer. And I happen to know one, a Brazilian boy, a Paulistano, three months up.

  And that was Carlos.

  Oh but he was an arrogant bastard. Tall and good looking and funny and knew it. He had that Paulistano sense of superiority: better educated, better food, better music, better work ethic. Cariocas lived on the beach and sat around drinking all night. Never did a stroke of work. We met in a bar, we ate shirataki noodles. You wonder that I remember we ate shirataki noodles. I remember everything about that meeting. 1980s casual was the look then and he wore chinos and a Hawaiian shirt. He treated everything I said as if it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. He was arrogant and annoying and sexist and he made me so mad. I was a little in hate with him.

  I said, ‘Is it all women you have a problem listening to, or just this one?’

  Then he spent the next hour laying out the business plan that would become the foundations of Corta Hélio.

  Oh but it was fun, that year when we chased our ideas all over the moon. Gods know how we managed to keep breathing. A fare refund is significant money but it runs from you like dust, even when your Finance Director and Project Engineer are only taking for the Four Elementals and sleeping on friends’ floors. The meetings, the pitches, the prospectuses, the promises. The rejections, the realisation that a quick no is better than a long maybe. The thrill when we pinned down an actual, real investor and tasted her bitsies. I was clear: I didn’t want Earth-based investors and equity funds, I didn’t want to be like the Suns, constantly fighting their way out of control from Beijing. I wanted to be like the Mackenzies. There was a proper lunar corporation. Bob Mackenzie had sold his entire terrestrial operation, transferred the funds to the moon and said to the rest of his family: Mackenzies are moon people now. Move up or move out. I had committed to the moon: I could never go back to Earth, I didn’t want Earth coming to me. They would be customers, not owners. Corta Hélio would be my child. Helen de Braga is my dearest friend, she’s a board member but she has never been an owner.

  Helen and I worked on the money while Carlos developed the prototype and the business. The moon was a much smaller place then, we couldn’t have built and trialed an extractor without word running round the Farside and back again before we’d even locked helmets. So we went to the Farside and hired a couple of units from the faculty. It wasn’t the university then, it wasn’t much more than an observatory and outpost for research into lethal pathogens. If anything went wrong, it was as far as you could get from Earth and you could dump, DP and irradiate the entire site. The tunnels were far too close to the surface; every night I imagined the radiation sleeting through my ovaries
. We coughed all the time. It could have been the dust but we suspected it was some little souvenir from the pathogen lab.

  Carlos built the prototype extractor. I say built, I mean, he hired the contractors, the bots, the quality control teams. He showed it to me and I said no no no, that’s not going to work, that’s not robust enough, that process is inefficient; what about maintenance access? We fought like crazy. We fought like a married couple. Still I didn’t love him. I told Helen this. Over and over and over. I must have driven her mad telling her how stupid and arrogant and obstinate he was but she never once told me to just shut up and sleep with the guy. Because I was crazy about him. He could not have been more different from Achi. She went from friend to lover. He could be a lover but never a friend. The attractions were all different, all wrong, and real real real. I thought about him in bed. I thought about him naked, I thought about him doing something stupid and uncharacteristic and romantic like bending over the schematics to see what this annoying woman was on about and now and then kissing me. I flicked off to him. I think he heard. What is it about attraction?

  I’ll tell you where I first kissed Carlos: in a little dome on the Mare Fecunditatis that he built for me. Not even a dome, it was a couple of rover pods bermed over with regolith that we used as a base for the field trials. We broke the prototype down and shipped it from Farside in anonymised crates by BALTRAN, jump after jump after jump so it looked random, yet they all ended up where we wanted them, when we wanted them. Then we ran them out by rover to our little base and our team put them all together, in the ass-end of nowhere, where no one would ever look.

  We were burning money like oxygen by now. We had enough left for one field test, one tweak and our VIPs. It had to work. We all huddled in our pod and watched the extractor rumble out across the mare. I fired up the extraction heads, the separator screws. Then I hit the switch on the separator and the mirrors swivelled and caught the sun and turned it on the separator and I burst into tears. It was the greatest thing I had ever seen in my life.