Luna: Moon Rising

by Ian McDonald

  No Bryce, Alexia whispers to Lucas across the room.

  He would have been invited, Lucas says. The Palace of Eternal Light is punctilious.

  Sun Zhiyuan raises his hands and the party falls silent.

  ‘We will be taking you up in groups, as space is limited in the lantern,’ he announces. ‘But rest assured, everyone will have a view of totality.’

  ‘I fought my way into this dress, for this?’ Alexia says. Her working of the room has brought her back to Lucas.

  ‘That’s not why we’re here,’ Lucas says.

  ‘And though you are all busy people, we’d be delighted for you all to stay for the reception afterwards,’ Zhiyuan continues.

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Lucas says and Yevgeny Vorontsov bulls his way through the guests to press Lucas on when he will put that business to a vote in the LMC.

  ‘I’m trying to decide if it would be better before or after you announce your off-world venture with Duncan Mackenzie,’ Lucas says but before Yevgeny can fluster and bluster, Taiyang staff, immaculate and androgynous, herd their designated lists to the Mount Malapert shuttles.

  Alexia has one clear sighting of the Pavilion of Eternal Light before the tram car enters the tunnel to the elevator hall. It is very much larger than she thought, a weave of spars and construction beams like a great Eiffel tower, gripping the summit of Mount Malapert, half in darkness, half in glowing light. The spear of God.

  The tram arrives in the elevator hall. The young Suns steer their guests with smiles and small touches.

  ‘Omahene Asamoah?’ says a Sun escort, showing Lousika Asamoah the waiting elevator car.

  ‘Is she taking her animals up with her?’ Alexia whispers. Lousika Asamoah lifts a finger and the raccoon curls up, the parrot tucks its head under its wing, the spider turns into a ball of wire and venom and the swarm dissipates.

  ‘Next car, our Mackenzie friends, please?’

  Duncan Mackenzie leads his bright young Ozzies through the lock into the second car, newly arrived.

  ‘Every Sun is brought here as a child to feel the power of the sun and understand the source of their power,’ Lucas says to Alexia.

  ‘House Corta?’ a smiling, sexless staffer says. Elevator doors seal.

  ‘I’m excited about this,’ Alexia says as the car climbs. Through the spidery girder-work Alexia watches Shackleton crater resolve, its depths in darkness, its rim ablaze with light. Higher still and the surface furniture of Queen of South, comms towers and BALTRAN stations, power plants and docks and the long revetments of surface locks. Now she begins to make out the interlinked crater-scape of the Aitken Basin.

  A colossal explosion. The elevator car is shaken as if by a fist. Alexia reels into the Taiyang worker: then she is in freefall. The lights go out. The car is dropping free. Emergency brakes engage, Alexia hits the ceiling, then the floor. Lucas is on top of her, the Taiyang kid a tangle of limbs in the corner. She can hear emergency brakes screeching: unmediated metal on metal. Impacts, loud as gunshots. Cracks. A volley of blows beat on the roof. The elevator jolts. Alexia raises herself to her elbow, the elevator glass is crazed with cracks. She doesn’t know what’s holding it together. Beyond the webbed glass Alexia sees a bright cloud of tumbling sparkles arcing away over the foothills of Malapert.

  What?

  The network is down. The elevator crawls down to dock. So slow. So killing slow. If this maze of crackled glass blows she joins the bright glinting things spinning out over Shackleton.

  ‘The top of the tower,’ Lucas says.

  Alexia leans against the solidity of the elevator frame and peers up into tangled, bent, warped girders. The bright diamond, the lantern, she can’t see it. Why can’t she see it?

  ‘It’s gone,’ Lucas says. His brown face is grey. He scrabbles for his cane. For anything that might give him security. There is no security, nothing to cling to.

  ‘Who was up there?’ Alexia asks.

  ‘Duncan Mackenzie, Lousika Asamoah,’ the Sun kid says.

  Alexia swears in Portuguese. The elevator judders into the dock. The wait for the lock to seal and cycle is endless. As Alexia, Lucas and their Sun escort stumble out on to the concourse the elevator car shatters like a crystal trophy into a million glittering crumbs. Medics and bots rush to give aid and oxygen. Alexia tries to wave away the mask, the anti-shock infusions but the machines insist. She catches a glance from Lucas, his eyes above his own oxygen mask. Look. Lousika Asamoah sits on an upturned medical hardshell, vapour pluming from her mask. Her eyes are wide with shock, her animal retinue crouches behind her, restless. She made it down.

  Dragon security arrives, pouring out of the tram cars to tangle with Sun wushis. Nelson Medeiros and his escoltas surround Lucas, check him again for medical distress. The elevator lobby thunders with shouting voices. A shriek of noise cuts into every familiar. The network is up again, and ordering everyone to be quiet. Sun Zhiyuan stands with hand upraised.

  ‘Please. Your attention. There has been a major integrity violation. The lantern … the lantern has been destroyed. We don’t know the details but we can confirm that people are missing.’

  Voices babble, Sun Zhiyuan raises his hand again. No one wants to hear that shriek in their implants.

  ‘VTO has dispatched a moonship from Queen of the South and we are sending rover teams to the site. The terrain … The terrain is difficult.’ His voice falters, he is visibly sweating. Alexia has never seen a Sun flustered before. ‘We will transport you and your entourages back to the Palace of Eternal Light. If you require any medical assistance, do not hesitate to make yourself known to our staff. We will update you when we have more information. At the moment, this area is structurally insecure so I would ask you all to comply with our assistants and return to the Palace.’

  They have that information now, Lucas says on the private channel. They’re just trying to think how to manage it.

  ‘A bomb?’ Alexia asks when the tram-car doors have sealed and only Cortas and escoltas can hear.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lucas says. Nelson Medeiros nods.

  ‘An impacter,’ Nelson Medeiros says. ‘Not a bomb. A shot.’

  ‘Who has that kind of weapon?’ Alexia asks.

  ‘First thought, the people with the big space-gun.’

  ‘The Vorontsovs?’ Alexia is incredulous.

  The car emerges from the tunnel and Alexia again looks up. The Pavilion of Eternal Light is shattered, its top third missing, the shaft a shivered stump of jagged beams and twisted girders, stark in the resurgent light.

  ‘Why would they try to kill you?’ Alexia continues as the tram re-enters the tunnel. ‘They need you for their Moonport deal.’

  Lucas and Nelson Medeiros exchange glances.

  ‘It wasn’t Lucas,’ Nelson Medeiros says.

  ‘Who then? Duncan Mackenzie?’

  A nod.

  ‘But who would … Fuck.’

  ‘Fuck indeed,’ Lucas says and the car slides into the platform. The Great Hall is thronged with bodies and voices and desperate activity. A dozen security squads, Sun staffers, reporters and columnists hoping to peel back the smooth skin of Taiyang corporate communications, hungry lawyers with notions of lucrative compensation cases mill and shout. Dragons and executives. The network groans under slow heavy traffic. A chime on the common channel sends every hand to every ear. Sun Zhiyuan will speak. Bodies encircle him.

  ‘Honoured guests,’ he says. ‘I have more information. We can confirm that the lantern of the Pavilion of Eternal Light has been destroyed in a targeted attack. We are still examining evidence, but what we know is that the Pavilion was struck at 16.05 by an object on a ballistic trajectory. There have been at least seven casualties; Robert Mackenzie among them. Our search and rescue have turned up a number of bodies in the debris field. We have no hope of any survivors. Our thoughts go to Mackenzie Metals in the loss of its CEO and its generation of brilliant young talents. Trams will be arriving to take you back to Qu
een of the South. The Palace of Eternal Light is now a major incident zone and I would ask you to vacate it as quickly as possible. This is tragic time for us and for Mackenzie Metals. Thank you.’

  And Amanda Sun is there, a guiding hand in the small of Lucas’s back.

  ‘I was afraid, Lucas.’ She steers him towards the airlocks. Wushis in sharp suits wait at a discreet distance. ‘I was so relieved when I heard you were safe. Oh, you are a sight. I wish I could offer some place for you to clean off the dust. And, Alexia, your lovely dress.’ The hated frock is torn where Alexia’s feet tangled with the hem, the ludicrous cinch between wrist and skirt ripped, seams split, the ivory fabric smudged with the black dust that works its way from vacuum into every part of the human moon. And her hair is a mess.

  ‘We have facilities on the railcar,’ Lucas says.

  Alexia tries to hang back. She has spied Lady Sun and her protégé being hurried through the crowd in the opposite direction by a squad of suits. They are fast and determined and brook no hindrance. Neither do the Taiyang staff who move her politely but firmly towards the tram airlock. Sun security creates a space for Nelson Medeiros to move the Eagle and his Iron Hand on to the railcar.

  ‘Remind me again,’ Lucas says as the car arcs around the waist of Shackleton crater. The black sky is filled with moving lights: moonships on landing burns. Lucas counts them. Every Vorontsov ship on the moon is over the Palace of Eternal Light. ‘Who wasn’t at the party?’

  SIXTEEN

  Every day, a new handle appears in Marina’s room. They start in the ensuite, at the toilet, in the shower, then they spread to her bedside, then to the closet, then around the switches and sockets, then sprout in a fungal line along the wall to the door.

  ‘Get rid of them!’ she rages and from the way Ocean and Kessie flinch she knows the responsible parties. ‘I’m not a fucking gibbon in the zoo! I’m trying to learn crutches. Is all.’

  She rages not because of their misplaced care, but because the hand-holds remind her too much of the tiny apartment in Bairro Alto, three rooms scooped out of raw rock and cheaply sealed. They remind her of Ariel’s cableway of loops and lines strung across the ceilings; of Ariel hauling herself from her seat and swinging from room to room. Ariel, dressed and made up for the clients where the cameras could see, disreputable in borrowed leggings or track pants where she was not visible. The two of them trapped in their high exile, bitching and bickering and needing each other. Eighteen lunes, scraping and scratching. Only the foolishly optimistic or the terminally nostalgic would call that time happy. But the colours were bright, the tastes flavourful, the smells aromatic in a way that nothing is in this house. Damp, cold, softness, murk. Everything muted and hushed.

  In a night, like a trial from a fairytale, the handles are gone.

  Crutches are bitches. Marina can’t trust her weight, her strength, her balance. Her legs are too weak, her upper body is too strong. She is too moon-shaped. She swings up and down the hall, through the room, along the porch, a sweating, swearing circuit.

  On the third day she slathers up in sun block, pulls on a hat and shades and embarks on an adventure across the yard to the swing-seat. She makes it to the top porch steps, feels too tentatively with her crutches, loses her balance and goes down.

  Dr Nakamura scans her on the porch lounger while Kessie makes coffee.

  ‘You’re intact,’ she says. ‘Use the walking frame.’

  ‘That’s for old people,’ Marina says. ‘I am not an old person.’

  ‘You have the bones of a ninety-year-old.’

  ‘I have the heart and sex life of a nineteen-year-old.’

  Ocean sniggers and flees, embarrassed by her aunt.

  ‘Sit down, will you?’ Dr Nakamura says as Kessie serves the coffee.

  ‘You have that doctor-needs-to-have-a-serious-talk tone,’ Kessie says, but she closes both porch doors and sits.

  ‘Has Weavyr said anything to you?’ Dr Nakamura says.

  Kessie pours coffee. Every cup is still a shot of electric joy to Marina. She inhales the aroma. If only it tasted the way it smelled.

  ‘What about?’ Kessie asks.

  ‘In class.’ Dr Nakamura’s daughter Romy and Weavyr are studymates.

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘Romy says a lot of the other kids are picking on Weavyr. Calling her names, ganging up on her, shunning her.’

  Marina takes Kessie’s hand in hers.

  ‘This is to do with you too, Marina,’ Dr Nakamura says. ‘They’re telling her her aunt Marina’s a witch, she’s a spy. Your Aunt Marina is a terrorist from the moon. She’s going to blow up a mall, put poison in the water, send a meteor to take out the school. They’re telling Romy she shouldn’t be friends with Weavyr because Weavyr is your spy.’

  ‘Weavyr hasn’t had Romy back recently,’ Kessie says. ‘And she won’t tell me what she did in class, she won’t give me any of the gossip.’

  ‘Mean girls,’ Marina says.

  ‘It’s more than that,’ Dr Nakamura says. ‘One of my oldest clients – the Furstenbergs – asked if I still had the Calzaghes in the practice. I said of course, Mrs Calzaghe is an important patient. They said, oh no, not her; the other one, the one who went to the moon.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with them?’ Marina asks.

  ‘Whatever it was, they’ve moved to the Oceanside practice. Three generations.’

  ‘I can say something here.’

  No one noticed Ocean’s return, quietly opening the door, pressed against the frame half in, half out of the room.

  ‘My social feeds?’ Ocean says. ‘Hate storm for the past two weeks. People I don’t even know, people from the city. It’s all their business that my aunt has come back from the moon, and they have something to say about that.’

  ‘What do they say, Ocean?’ Marina asks.

  ‘The best say you should be in jail. Then it goes from that to spy to terrorist … I’m blocking them as fast as they turn up but I’m looking at closing the accounts.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marina says. They’re hanging Duncan Mackenzie printouts from Sydney Harbour Bridge and burning them, Skyler had said. She feels small and hideously alone, a solitary woman on a hostile planet. Eyes in the forests, the mountains, the airwaves and the network.

  * * *

  Ocean wakes. She is bright, alert, every sense sharp and she cannot think what woke her. She remembers, the swing of light across her bedroom wall.

  ‘Time,’ she says and, as the house network says, Two thirty-eight she hears the crunch and rumble of tyres, the whine of an engine. She dives to the window. Tail-lights turn the corner into the trees.

  ‘What was that?’ she whispers to the house.

  I didn’t get the licence plate, the house answers. The car was fitted with an infra-red device to blind the cameras.

  The creak of her mother’s bedroom door, a line of light under her own door. Ocean throws on the biggest hoodie and slips into the hall.

  ‘Did you hear?’

  ‘Go to your room, Ocean.’

  Ocean follows her mother through the dark house to the door.

  ‘Go to your room, Ocean.’

  They wait behind the barricade of the front door, summoning courage.

  Kessie flicks on the outside lights and heaves the door open. She can smell the paint across the yard. ‘Don’t come down, Ocean.’

  Ocean follows her down into the yard.

  ‘Stay there, Ocean!’

  Ocean follows her mother to the attack: a white crescent with a slash through it painted on the side of the cabin, so fresh the paint still drips.

  Now Marina is on the porch, leaning on her crutches.

  A slashed crescent.

  No moon.

  * * *

  ‘At least take the dogs with you,’ Kessie says.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Marina says.

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t just settle for twice around the yard,’ Kessie mutters.

 
‘There’s a whole planet out there I can walk on,’ Marina says. ‘You have no idea how liberating that is. I’m going up the track.’

  ‘Take the dogs.’

  Ancient Canaan furrows his creased brows and rolls to his feet; the new dog, Tenjo, who has yet to form a relationship with Canaan, strolls over to see what’s going on. A walk. Exultation.

  Ocean and Weavyr painted the whole cabin white over the weekend but everyone can still see the outline of the slashed moon, white in white. No matter how many weekends they paint the cabin, the affront will always be there.

  The dogs follow Marina down the steps into the yard. She has the trick of it now. She has the measure and weight of gravity. The route she has planned will take her up the track, through the gate before the cattle-grid, along the part of the trail that skirts the lower edge of the forest, then left along the southern part of the river trail-turn and back to the house. Two and a half kays. It’s as daunting as a marathon. There might be some late elk under the edge of the forest. That’s a prize and a motivation. She longs to be among wild animals, nothing between her and them, unmediated, wild.

  In yoga pants, a crop top and as many friendship bangles as she could borrow from Ocean, Marina sets out on her adventure.

  ‘Uh oh,’ Ocean says. ‘Sun block.’ She slathers Marina’s bare belly and back in Factor 50. ‘You got great definition, Mai. How did you do that?’

  ‘Long run,’ Marina says. ‘And since when do you call me Mai?’

  ‘Since Mom did,’ Ocean says.