by Ian McDonald
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Self-help shit,’ Ariel growls. ‘What I need: I need to be able to walk, I need to be able to take a piss or a dump without feeling something warm in a bag next to my hip. I need out of this bed. I need a bloody martini.’
You’re angry, Marina makes to say. No. ‘My brother-in-law, Skyler, was in the military.’
‘Really?’ Ariel props herself up on her elbows. The bed catches up with her. A human story. People doing things; those interest her.
‘He was working down in the Sahel. That was when they brought the army in on any kind of emergency; some multiple-resistance outbreak or refugees or famine or drought.’
‘What you people get up to down there, I don’t understand any of it.’
A spike of fury stabs through Marina. Who is this lofty rich bitch lawyer? A rich bitch lawyer on the moon. Stabbed and paralysed. Let the emotion go. Calm. Heal.
‘He was in information support. Every crisis needs information support. But he still saw things. Kids. They were the worst. That was all he’d say. He wouldn’t talk about it. They never do talk about it. He was diagnosed as a PTSD victim. No, he said. I’m not a victim. Don’t make me a victim. That’s all people will see. That will become everything about me.’
‘I am not a victim,’ Ariel says. ‘But I want to stop seeing him.’
‘So do I,’ Marina says.
‘What do you mean, you don’t do other people?’
Two o’clock and Marina and Ariel are insomniac again in a med centre room. They’ve talked people and politics, law and ambition; unspooled their stories and histories and they’ve come round to sex.
‘I’m not sexually attracted to other people,’ Ariel says. She lies propped up in bed vaping. Dr Macaraeg has given up her admonitions and warnings. Who pays for your breathing, darling? The vaper is new, longer and more deadly than the one with which Marina stabbed Edouard Barosso. Its flowing tip mesmerises Marina. ‘I can’t be bothered with them. All that neediness and attention seeking and having to think about them when they’re not thinking about you. All that having to negotiate sex, and the falling in and out of sex, and then there’s love. Spare us that. It’s so much better to have sex with someone who’s always available, knows what you want and who loves you more deeply than anyone else ever can. Yourself.’
‘That’s, um, wow,’ Marina says. When she arrived as a print-fresh Jo Moonbeam, Marina explored the moon’s sexual diversity but there are niches in the ecosystem – a sexual rainforest – she has never imagined.
‘You’re so terrestrial,’ Ariel says with a flick of the vaper. ‘Sex with other people is always compromise. Always barging and shoving and trying to get it all to fit and who comes first and who likes what and you don’t like what they like and they don’t like what you like. Always something held back; that secret thing you love or want to try or that makes you lose everything and scream yourself sick that you can’t say because you’re scared they’ll look at you and say, you want to do what? and see not their lover but a monster. Nowhere is as dirty as the inside of your head. When you’re with yourself, when you’re jilling off, flicking the bean, fishing for pearls, playing women’s handball, cutting a siririca; there’s no one else to worry about, nothing to hold back from. No one’s judging you, no one’s comparing you, no one’s got someone else in their head they’re not telling you about. Me-sex is the only honest sex.’
‘Me-sex?’ Marina says.
‘Self-sex sounds grubby, auto-sex is bots fucking and anything with the word “erotica” in it is by definition un-erotic.’
‘But what do you—’
‘Do? Everything darling.’
‘That room you wouldn’t let me into, in your apartment …’
‘That’s where I go fuck myself. The things I have in there. The fun I’ve had.’
‘Is this an appropriate employer/employee conversation?’
‘As you keep reminding me, I’m not your employer.’
‘Goodness,’ Marina says; an old grandma expression, but the only one she can think of that adequately expresses her sense of wonder and shock. It is as if she opened that locked door in the small, bare apartment and found an endless wonderland of meadows and rainbows, oiled skin and soft flesh and orgasmic choirs.
‘Who are you thinking about?’ Ariel asks.
‘I’m not—’
Ariel cuts her short.
‘Yes you are. When you tell anyone you’re A, they immediately start comparing the best they’ve done solo with the best they’re doing with their current other. Every time. Who is it?’
It’s the dark, it’s the smallness of the hour, it’s the click and whirr of lunar machinery, always present but in this room on this level loud and present; it’s the feeling that there is only her and Ariel in this whole world that gives Marina the courage to say, ‘Your brother.’
A grin of delight spreads across Ariel’s face.
‘Oh you ambitious girl. One of the family. That’s why I do like you so very much. Carlinhos? Of course it’s Carlinhos. He’s gorgeous. Really looks after himself. Doesn’t talk too much either. If I were the kind of girl who fucked other people, I’d want to fuck him.’ Ariel’s vaper freezes on its way to her lips. Her eyes widen. She sits forward and grasps Marina’s hands in her own. The gesture is startling, the skin still hot and dry from medications.
‘Oh mi coração,’ Ariel says. ‘You have, haven’t you? Please don’t tell me you love him. Oh you silly woman. Did my mother not tell you this about my family? Don’t get close to us, don’t care for us; above all, don’t love us.’
With a huff of effort, a bite of the lower lip in pain, Ariel Corta swings herself on to the edge of the bed. Marina watches in agony.
‘Can I?’
‘No you fucking cannot,’ Ariel says. She pushes herself to the very edge of the bed, legs dangling, pulls the petticoats and skirts of the full-length dress up around her thighs. ‘Come legs.’
In the corner of the room legs whirr and stir. Corta Hélio roboticists designed and built them in under a day: all other projects suspended to the imperative of making Ariel Corta walk. The legs stride across the floor to the bed. Their gait is natural, easy, human and quite quite horrifying to Marina. They’re like bones a body has stepped out of. They’ll be stalking through her nightmares for lunes. They nuzzle against Ariel’s hanging legs, open like traps and lock from foot to thigh. ‘I need your help now,’ Ariel says. Marina gets an arm around Ariel’s waist, a shoulder under her arm and holds Ariel up as the neural links spider up her spine seeking the socket the surgeons have set into her back. The woman is as light as thought; bone and air, but Marina feels her tight-wired strength. The spiders scuttle over skin beneath bunched fabric and sink connectors into the socket. Ariel hisses in discomfort. Two drips of blood.
‘Let’s try this.’
Marina steps away. Ariel drops down to the floor. The machine legs buckle, for an instant she might topple, then the gyros and servos mesh with her intentions and she stands firm.
‘Hold the dress up.’
Ariel takes a step forward. There is no hesitation or faltering in it. She takes a tour of the room, Ariel holding up the train of her dress like a courtier.
‘How does it feel?’
‘Like I’m seven years old and wearing Mamãe’s shoes,’ Ariel says. ‘All right. Make me presentable.’
Marina lets fall the dress and straightens out the folds and layers. It gives no flash of the prosthetics beneath. Ariel examines herself through Beijaflor.
‘It’ll do for now.’ The grafts have already restored some control to bladder and bowel but the voluminous dress conceals discreet colostomy equipment. ‘I’m not wearing floor-length frocks for the rest of my life. Unless I set a new trend. Please keep behind me. I want to make an entrance.’
Lucas is first to applaud as Ariel waltzes through the door into the reception room but Marina marks the momentary flicker of sour across his face. Kisses. Then A
driana embraces her daughter, stands back to admire what Corta engineers have wrought.
‘Oh my love.’
‘It’s temporary,’ Ariel chides. ‘Purely cosmetic.’
The third member of the family to have come to the med centre is Wagner. He is the most intriguing Corta to Marina. Since the party in Boa Vista, Marina has seen him only once, at the birthday celebration. Like Carlinhos he serves the family outside the board room but Marina senses this is through politics not temperament. He is dark-eyed and -skinned, long-lashed and high cheekboned, his familiar is a sphere of oily black rubber spikes and he is here when Rafa and Carlinhos are not.
Ariel sits, crosses her legs, flicks out her vaper. Marina stands behind her, enjoying the show.
‘Lucas. A proper nikah.’ Familiars flicker with data transfer. ‘That’ll keep the boy safe and happy. Don’t read it, just sign it and don’t mess around with things you don’t understand again.’
‘Have the Mackenzies agreed?’
‘They will or they’ll be years renegotiating every clause and Jonathon Kayode is very impatient for a glam wedding.’
Lucas dips his head but again Marina reads resentment.
‘Wagner has something to report to us,’ Adriana says.
‘Ariel, your bodyguard,’ Lucas says.
‘Marina stays,’ Ariel says. ‘I trust her with my life.’
Lucas looks to his mother.
‘She has saved the lives of two of my children,’ Adriana says.
‘I know I don’t have a position at the centre of this family,’ Wagner says. ‘I made an arrangement with Rafa, after the attack at the moon-run party. I’d make some investigations. My special … situation … means I can see things the rest of you can’t.’
Ariel catches Marina’s puzzled frown.
He’s a wolf, Beijaflor whispers on Marina’s private channel.
What? Hetty whispers back. Marina remembers when he had quizzed her at Boa Vista. Carlinhos had asked her whether she had any surface experience. Wagner had asked her about her engineering specialism. She sees the dark intelligence here, and the sense of something lonely, feral, vulnerable. Wolf.
‘I caught a scent of something I recognised in one of the protein processors and tracked down the designer. She led me to the people who commissioned her. It was a one-shot disposable shell company but one of the owners was Jake Tenglong Sun. I went to talk to Jake Sun in Queen of the South. He knew I was coming. He tried to kill me. The Magdalena pack saved me.’
Magdalena pack? Hetty whispers to Beijaflor but Ariel has a question.
‘He knew you were coming?’
‘His words were “You’re far too predictable, Little Wolf. The August Ones saw you coming a week back.” ’
‘Gods,’ Ariel says.
‘Ariel,’ Adriana says.
‘I’m a member of the Pavilion of the White Hare. I’m also a member of the Lunarian Society.’
‘Why was I not informed of this?’ Lucas says.
‘Because you’re not my keeper, Lucas,’ Ariel snaps. She vapes deep and long. ‘Vidhya Rao is also a member.’
‘From Whitacre Goddard,’ Lucas says.
‘E told me about an AI analytics system Taiyang designed for Whitacre Goddard. Three quantum mainframes, designed to make highly accurate predictions from detailed real-world modelling. E called it prophecy. Fu Xi, Shennong and the Yellow Emperor: the Three August Ones.’
‘The Suns are our allies,’ Adriana says.
‘With respect Mamãe,’ Lucas says, ‘the Suns are their own allies.’
‘Why would the Suns commission a device to try to kill my son?’ Adriana says.
‘To bring us to exactly where we are, Mamãe,’ Lucas says. ‘The edge of war with the Mackenzies.’
Lucas is awake the instant before Toquinho calls him. The present is an illusion. He had read that as a child. Human consciousness lags half a second behind every decision and experience. The finger moves unconsciously, the mind approves the action and imagines it initiates.
Helen de Braga, Toquinho says. Esperança Maria, her familiar, appears in the dark before him.
‘Lucas, your mother asked me to call you.’
It’s time then. Lucas feels no fear, no dread, no anxiety. He has prepared for this moment, rehearsed his emotions again and again.
‘Can you come to Boa Vista?’
‘I’m on my way.’
Helen De Braga meets Lucas on the tram platform. They kiss formally.
‘When did you find out?’
‘I called you as soon as Dr Macaraeg told me.’
Lucas has never had much regard for Dr Macaraeg. Hers is an unnecessary profession. Machines do medicine so much better; cleanly, impersonally.
‘Your mother’s condition has deteriorated.’ Dr Macaraeg says. Lucas turns the full chill of his stare on her and she flinches. Another thing the machines do better: truth.
‘Since when?’
‘Since before her birthday. Senhora Corta instructed us …’
‘Do you have ambitions, Dr Macaraeg?’
The doctor is taken aback. She flusters.
‘I’m not ashamed to say it, but yes, I have ambitions to further private consultancy.’
‘Good. Modesty is a vastly overrated attribute. I hope you’re able to achieve them. My mother must have told you about her condition. Yet you kept the full degree of it secret from me. How do you think I should respond to that?’
‘I am Senhora Corta’s private physician.’
‘Of course you are, yes. Is there any medical reason why I can’t see my mother?’
‘She is very weak. Her condition is—’
‘Very good then. Where is she?’
‘She’s in the surface observatory,’ Dr Macaraeg says and slips away from Lucas’s attention. Boa Vista’s staff have turned out under Nilson Nunes on the tailored lawns. Their questions Lucas Corta can’t answer, but he is a Corta, he is authority. He nods acknowledgement to each of them. Good faithful people. Next the madrinhas, a word for each.
‘How long does she really have?’ Lucas asks Helen de Braga.
‘Days at the most. Maybe only hours.’
Lucas leans a moment against the polished rock lintel of the elevator lobby.
‘I can’t blame her doctor for obeying her.’
‘She asked for you and you alone, Lucas,’ Helen de Braga says.
‘You!’ Lucas shouts. His eye has been caught by a movement of white: Irmã Loa blowing like paper between the pillars of the lobby. ‘Out of my house!’
‘I’m your mother’s spiritual adviser.’ Irmã Loa faces Lucas Corta.
‘You are a liar and a parasite.’
Helen de Braga touches Lucas’s arm.
‘She’s taken great comfort from the Sisterhood,’ Irmã Loa says.
‘I’ve called security. They’re not under any orders to be gentle.’
‘Mãe Odunlade warned me about your manners.’
Heitor Pereira and a smart security suit arrive. She flicks away the arresting hands.
‘I’m leaving.’
‘This woman is banned from Boa Vista,’ Lucas says.
‘We’re not your enemies, Lucas!’ Irmã Loa calls.
‘We’re not your project,’ Lucas calls back and, before Helen de Braga can ask what he means, steps into the elevator.
The Earth’s last quarter stands over the Sea of Fecundity. Adriana has arranged her seat to look full on it. Wheel tracks in the dust hint at discreet medical bots concealed in the walls. The only thing attending Adriana is a side table with a cup of coffee.
‘Lucas.’
‘Mamãe.’
‘Someone’s been up here recently,’ Adriana says. Her voice is light and weak, a husk of will and Lucas hears in it the truth that her disease is very much more advanced than he or even Dr Macaraeg suspects.
‘Wagner,’ Lucas says. ‘Security saw him.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘The same as
you. Looking at the Earth.’
The lightest of smiles crosses Adriana’s profile.
‘I was too hard on that boy. I don’t understand a thing about him but I never tried. It’s just that he made me so angry. Not anything he did; just that he was. Just him being constantly said, You’re a fool, Adriana Corta. That was wrong. Try and bring him in to the family.’
‘Mamãe, he’s not—’
‘He is.’
‘Mamãe, the doctor told me—’
‘Yes, I’ve been keeping secrets again. And what would you have done? Rallied the family? Pulled in every Corta from every quarter? The last thing I see is all of you standing looking at me all big eyed and solemn? Hideous. Hideous.’
‘At least Rafa—’
‘No, Lucas.’ Adriana’s voice can still find the snap of command. ‘Hold my hand, for gods’ sakes.’
Lucas cups the thin kite of skin between his two hands and is shocked at its dry heat. This is a dying woman. Adriana closes her eyes.
‘Some final things. Helen de Braga will retire. She’s done enough for this family. And I want her away from us; safe. She’s not a player. I’m afraid for us, Lucas. This is a terrible time to be dying. I don’t know what will happen.’
‘I’ll take care of the company, Mamãe.’
‘You all will. That’s the way I’ve arranged it. Don’t break it, Lucas. I chose this, I chose this.’
Adriana clenches her fist inside Lucas’s hands and he releases it.
‘I’m afraid for you,’ Adriana says. ‘Here. A secret just for you. Only you, Lucas. You’ll know when you need it. In the early days, when it looked like the Mackenzies would wipe us out, Carlos commissioned a revenge weapon. He planted a trojan inside Crucible’s smelter control systems. It’s still there. It’s a clever piece of code; it hides, it adapts, it self-updates. It’s very simple and elegant. It will redirect Crucible’s smelter mirrors, turn them on to Crucible itself.’
