by Ian McDonald
The delegation from the Lunar Mandate Authority huddles from the rain under streaming rain-capes. The cuffs and hems of their ugly, poorly printed business suits are soaked.
‘Impressive work, Senhor Corta,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘But might we continue this discussion out of the rain?’
‘I’m enjoying the novelty,’ Lucas says. ‘I’m trying to decide whether to make it a feature of my redesign. My mother didn’t trust climate.’
The terrestrials shuffle, shoes spattering new-formed mud.
‘I note you’ve been spending more time here at Boa Vista,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘We don’t appreciate having to haul ourselves all the way out here to see you,’ Monique Bertin says.
‘I am always available through Toquinho,’ Lucas says. The terrestrials know as well as Lucas that Boa Vista is Corta-owned airspace, immune to LMA surveillance drones.
‘Expensive work, this,’ Anselmo Reyes says.
‘It is,’ Lucas says. ‘Thank you for unfreezing the Corta Hélio accounts.’
‘I’m concerned that over a prolonged absence from Meridian, details might slip your attention and become more than details,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘The Eagle of the Moon has never been found wanting in diligence,’ Lucas says.
‘Then you will make arrangements to clear the thieves and criminals from Bairro Alto. Its continued existence is an affront to the authority of the LMA,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘I hear they have an impressive water distribution system,’ Lucas says.
‘Theft of resources weakens morale,’ Monique Bertin says.
‘It rewards dishonesty,’ Anselmo Reyes says.
‘It sows disharmony,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘They are well defended,’ Lucas says. ‘The Jack of Blades, I hear. It has a ring to it.’
‘A thief and a murderer,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘Contract mercenaries.’
‘The last mercenaries you sent up came down in pieces,’ Lucas says. ‘If you’ll forgive my graphic imagery.’
‘Hire better mercenaries,’ Monique Bertin says.
‘I shall inform my Iron Hand.’
‘We require your personal attention,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘My Iron Hand is already in Meridian,’ Lucas says. ‘Is there anything else?’
Anselmo Reyes starts to speak as Lucas turns his back. His escoltas move to escort the delegation back to the lock. The rain is easing, torrent to downpour to soft-splattering drops. A small ecosystem like Boa Vista can only hold so much water. Lucas turns his face to the rain. The drops are heavy and full. Water runs down his face, his neck, across his chest. Such a strange thing, rain. He is glad he could share this unrepeatable moment with others.
* * *
In the end, she brings insects.
The escoltas were openly relieved when Alexia declined a bodyguard. They didn’t want to face the Jack of Blades. You’ll need something, Nelson Medeiros said, fixing the sheath to her forearm. They’ll attack anyone not you. One shot use but that’s enough for you to get away. It takes a second for them to key to your body odour.
Alexia imagines she can feel the combat insects buzzing next to her skin in their container as the elevator climbs towards Bairro Alto. She is the sole occupant: the Iron Hand has privileges.
Your heart rate is elevated, Maninho says. Your blood pressure is high. You are displaying symptoms of stress.
‘I’m fine.’
You are not, Alexia. There is a public printer on 56th, I can preorder pharma.
‘Take me all the way up.’
As you wish.
The ring of the mesh decking beneath her boot soles is painfully familiar. She touches the white waterpipe as she climbs the staircase. It is cold, trembling with running water. She follows it to where it bifurcates, trifurcates, branches into a tree of piping. The best work of her life is up here, plumbed into the roof of the world.
They’re on the mirador, perched on steps, hanging over railings, crouching on ducts. There is an arrow aimed at her from a platform two levels up.
He makes his signature entrance, dropping from a height to land sprung and muscular on the mesh. He sits loose-limbed, lithe on a step. He is more beautiful and broken now she knows who he is, now she understands his gold tooth, his maimed knife-hand.
‘Can they take us all?’ Denny jerks a thumb at the launcher strapped to her arm.
‘Probably not.’
‘Your lack of trust hurts me.’
‘I know who you are.’
‘And I know who you are, Mão de Ferro. Once again, I am in the debt of a Corta. Have you any idea how inconvenient that is to the right and proper working of revenge?’ The thumb now indicates the pipe-tree. ‘This is amazing work. A thousand people depend on it. I owe you a Mackenzie debt.’
‘I’m here to warn you,’ Alexia says. ‘The LMA is sending fighters to break it up and clear out Bairro Alto.’
‘We’ll send them back as we sent the rest of them back.’
‘They’re coming in force. Professionals, not whatever the zabbaleen can afford. Combat bots. Drone support.’
‘We’ll fight them!’ a woman’s voice calls from the duct overhead. ‘We’ll show them who we are in Bairro Alto.’ The cheer is ragged, uncertain, short of breath.
‘Go on, Mão de Ferro,’ Denny Mackenzie says.
‘I don’t have the details. But the contracts are signed.’
‘Who wrote the contracts?’
‘The Eagle of the Moon.’
‘Are you betraying your employer, Mão de Ferro?’
‘You have to go!’ Alexia shouts in frustration. ‘Shut down the network, take it apart, take it with you, take it far from here. Here’s the plans. I know you have to stay off the network.’ She places an old memory card on the mesh. The least movement could it send it tumbling to the throbbing air-plant far below. Denny Mackenzie scoops it up in one sure, liquid motion.
‘Thank you.’
‘Denny, can I put this down?’ The bow and arrow waver. ‘My arm hurts.’
Denny Mackenzie raises a hand. Fingers uncurl from concealed hilts, hidden tasers.
‘I met your father. At Crucible.’
And the air freezes again. But she has to say this.
‘He told me that the feuds have to end. We have a bigger enemy.’
Denny Mackenzie does not speak.
‘Fucking trap!’ The unseen man’s voice echoes down from the high machinery. Others join him until the high pipes rattle and roar with anger. Denny Mackenzie lifts a hand.
‘Bigger enemy?’
‘The Dragons are making alliances. The LMA is divided. The Vorontsovs are about to switch sides if Lucas approves their space elevator project. It’s changing.’
‘Free air and free water, that’s how we’ll know it’s changed.’
‘This warning; it’s from Lucas.’
Denny makes a circle with a finger, a small gesture but the Bairristas melt back into their city.
‘So noted, Iron Hand.’
And he’s gone. Alexia is alone on the platform.
‘I came back for you!’ she shouts. Her voice rings from the industrial metal. ‘I came back.’
* * *
How he detests these soirees. Every other day there is a reception, a banquet, a party or celebration that requires the Eagle of the Moon. Every other day some trade delegation, representative, academic or social ascendant. Always petitioning, always wheedling, always needing. Of human asking there is no end.
‘Whose party is this anyway?’ Lucas asks Toquinho.
Yours, Toquinho answers.
‘Is it my birthday?’
No. Alexia’s.
‘I’ll apologise to her later.’
Lucas’s social secretaries have booked a set of suites on Orion Hub. Rooms open on to galleries and balconies; curtains of flowering climbing plants screen the vistas from the more vertiginous guests. Water burbles, a bossa trio plays soft and sad.
Through the screens of society and LMA and business, Lucas spots Alexia. She has invited her new friend, the Asamoah-Vorontsov girl she met at St Olga. She’s a spy of course. Everyone’s a spy. They draw eyes and admiration in nearly-but-not-quite matching ballgowns. Martini glasses in hands. The Blue Moon is enjoying a comeback. It can be drunk either patriotically or ironically.
‘Do excuse me.’
The cloud of well-wishers, sycophants and spies parts for the Eagle of the Moon.
‘Congratulations on the day.’
‘You forgot, didn’t you?’ Alexia whispers.
‘I forgot.’
‘I’m twenty-eight, by the way,’ Alexia says as Lucas swings on to the next social orbit. A touch on Amanda Sun’s arm cuts her free from her coterie. Lucas parts a curtain of sweet hibiscus with his stick to take her on to a balcony. The sunline has darkened to indigo, every slow-moving light is soft as dust. Meridian gloaming.
‘Well, we looked a pair of fools,’ Lucas says.
‘I looked the fool. You weren’t there.’
‘Viego Quiroga counselled against that.’
‘Sound advice. Your sister fucked me in the ass.’
‘She fucked us both. I hear the Asamoah girl’s zashitnik took out your drones.’
‘She was never in any danger,’ Amanda Sun says. ‘As long as her aunt is Omahene, the child is deathproof. We wanted to see how she would react.’
‘Rather well, it seems.
‘I hear Lucasinho didn’t mention you in that party piece from Coriolis,’ Lucas says. ‘He did say hello to me.’
‘He did,’ Amanda says, ‘but he’s still not here, is he?’
‘It’s a preliminary hearing,’ Lucas says. ‘We play the long game. You could be a while in Meridian. I have a thing to ask you.’
‘Favours, Lucas?’
‘Not at all. Cortas pay their way. A potential contract. I need a coder – is “hacker” still a word?’
‘It is.’
‘My mother once buried code inside Crucible’s mirror control system, for the hour of extremity. I want to follow her example.’
‘What do you want, Lucas?’
‘Fifteen thousand terrestrial combat bots.’
Amanda Sun smiles.
‘Declaring allegiances, Lucas?’
‘Thinking of the hour of extremity.’
‘It won’t be free.’
‘Name it.’
‘I want to see him, Lucas.’
‘I can’t stop you.’
‘I want someone from the family in residence at Coriolis.’
‘Your ambassador?’
‘Do we have a deal?’
‘We have a deal.’
‘Then you have your bots.’
A dip of the head, a fold of the fingers in the Corta salutation and the obligations of office and society call the Eagle of the Moon on.
‘Madam Asamoah.’
Abena makes apologies to her fellow guests. Lucas takes her on the loop past the musicians. Head nods, foot stirs to the subtle syncopation.
‘You like this music?’ Abena asks.
‘You don’t?’
‘I think it’s pretentious to admire something you don’t understand.’
‘I was that way with jazz. A whole musical world alien to me. I understood a tiny part of it – where it merged with my own bossa – but I also admit that I knew what I didn’t know. I decided to teach myself jazz – a tiny part of jazz. Eleven months of Saints Peter and Paul and I could only scrape the skin.’
‘Was it worth it?’
‘Here I am, back with bossa. My legals tell me you have the makings of a fine lawyer. You work a court well.’
Abena Asamoah has the grace to look embarrassed.
‘Thank you, Senhor Corta.’
‘It made me keen to meet you, Senhora Asamoah.’
‘Know your enemy?’
‘You’re not my enemy. You may become my enemy, and that would be regrettable. What is it they say about my family?’
‘Lucas Corta doesn’t know what people say about his family?’
‘Humour me, Senhora Asamoah.’
‘Cortas cut.’
‘Family affairs are best kept in the family.’
‘Senhor Corta,’ Abena says as Lucas closes his fingers in farewell, ‘Forgive my bluntness, but Lucasinho will never be safe as long as you are Eagle of the Moon.’
Lucas circles the band, pausing to admire a heartbreaking minor 7th chord sequence in ‘Ao Pes da Cruz’ to arrive among the LMAs. The same faces he saw dour under rain-capes at Boa Vista. The same niggardly business attire. Only one of them, the French woman, is drinking.
‘My own gin,’ Lucas says to Monique Bertin. ‘The João de Deus recipe. I had a designer recreate it. Quite floral, with an almost cedarwood finish.’
Monique Bertin mumbles appreciations. Lucas draws Wang Yongqing to a second, more private balcony.
‘We are vexed, Mr Corta. Expensive mercenaries with bot support and once again we fail to liquidate the Jack of Blades’ rabble.’
‘They know every nook and cranny of the high city.’
‘They were tipped off.’ Madam Wang clings to the rear of the balcony, by the window. Lucas perches on the balustrade. ‘Someone in your office?’
‘Institutional loyalty is alien to us. Families, contracts and lovers. These hold our hearts.’
‘Was it you?’
Lucas maintains a cold stare until Wang Yongqing looks away.
‘You know who this Jack of Blades is? Denny Mackenzie. You think I would lift a finger to help the heir of Mackenzie Metals?’
‘The disinherited son.’
‘Denny Mackenzie is easily dealt with. Simply put up the price of air. I read somewhere once that China built its great imperial power on monopolising water. Breathing is so much more reliable a motivator than drinking.’
‘The scholarship on China is Orientalist,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘The sentiment, however, is admirable.’ Lucas summons a server and offers fresh, cold martinis. Wang Yongqing waves the glass away. ‘We will agree an immediate increase of the Four Elementals. We expect a corresponding resolution of the Bairro Alto question.’
Wang Yongqing moves towards the door and the security of her colleagues but Lucas has a parting shot.
‘I hear that Duncan Mackenzie has been meeting the board of VTO.’
‘We understand it was to contract the Crucible replacement,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘Your information is out of date. That order has been cancelled.’
She is good. He has just told her that her hired guns, the Vorontsovs, are untrustworthy and she betrays no tremor of surprise, no emotional tell. But she has been shaken. Tell that to your cronies.
The band takes its break. Lucas follows its leader to the bar.
‘Your chord sequencing is exquisite,’ Lucas says. Jorge leans on the bar, Lucas stands back to it, they catch each other peripherally, edge-of-eyeball. ‘You’ve simplified it since I last heard you.’
‘Last time you heard me play you stuffed the club with Corta goons,’ Jorge says.
‘It still is,’ Lucas says. Lucas slips into Portuguese. ‘I hoped you’d come.’
‘Jaime and Sabrina told me to turn you down. I almost did.’
‘Yet here you are.’
The bar-keep slides a glass across the glowing counter. Jorge looks at it like poison.
‘I recreated the cachaca.’
‘I have a confession…’
‘You never liked the cachaca.’
‘You’re not good at cachaca.’
The bar-keep pours a neat gin. Jorge sips, slips a wry smile of remembrance.
‘But you are good at gin. Thank you for noticing. The chord sequences. I’ve learned you suggest more with less. It took me a long time to learn that, and that there is too much in the guitar for a single life. That’s when you find your voice, your guitar. I was waiting for you to get in touch.’
‘I thought about
coming to Queen to hear you.’
‘Instead, the royal summons. You are the only one in this room listening to us. You look like shit, coraçao.’
Lucas levers himself on to a bar stool.
‘It gets easier every day. A little. I tell myself that, but there was damage done on lift-off from Earth. Deep damage that won’t heal. The Earth will kill you, they say. It’s true. Just not immediately.’
Drums and bass have returned to their instruments, tuning, riffling, bouncing notes from each other.
‘I have to get back,’ Jorge says.
‘Of course of course. Jorge, afterwards, would you…’
‘It’s over, Lucas. You made it be over, if you remember.’
‘Just a drink. That’s all. Somewhere quiet. As quiet as I can get.’
The band looks over.
Again, the painful half-smile.
‘All right. Just a drink.’
‘Jorge, a request. Could you play…’
‘“Aguas de Marco”?’
‘Yes.’ Adriana’s favourite. She had asked for it at the end, play it, play it again, Lucas. He had turned away to bring her coffee – coffee and bossa – and she had gone.
‘Always a pleasure to play “Águas de Março”.’
Lucas sits at the bar listening to Jorge tune and fall into harmony with his band. A nod, they lead off the second set. Lucas listens until the first repeat, then hauls himself painfully from the stool to the duties of the party.
* * *
The bar-keep has adjusted the bar lighting so that Lucas and Jorge drink in a pool of soft gold. They sit in adjacent sides of a corner. The keeper tends to the small acts of theatre that make under-employed waiting-staff look busy.
‘The cafe is still there,’ Lucas says. ‘Rua Vinicius de Morais. Number 49. On the corner. You can pay for the window table where he sat and wrote the song. She is long gone but the family still lives in Ipanema, they say.’
‘Did you go in?’
‘No. I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the legend,’ Lucas says.
‘I can understand that.’
‘The Brasil of the heart is always more perfect.’
The bar-keep serves two fresh shots of Corta gin. Mist wreathes from the frozen glass.
‘I hated you when the terrestrials came,’ Jorge says. ‘Their fucking bots, looking into every eyeball, logging every soul. Queen never was a Corta town, but it hates you now.’
