by Ian McDonald
‘Kiss me again,’ Robson says. Of course. The kiss seals the trick. Thank you, Robson mouths, and kisses Haider. Wagner says, you aren’t alone, Haider mouths back. The trick is done. Robson takes Haider’s face in his hands. Big eyes, freckles. Haider’s heart could burst.
‘Now kiss me goodbye,’ Robson says and he kisses Haider like the world will break, like it’s the last thing he will ever do.
* * *
The mud is dense and grey, with a lustrous mica-sparkle where its laps and folds catch the light. It is a highly sophisticated ecology of mineral supplements, dermal nutrients, scrubs and emollients, anti-fungals, anti-bacterials and phage suspensions against the most troublesome of the resistant diseases coming up from Earth, and it fills a pool in the floor of Mackenzie Helium’s presidential suite.
Bryce Mackenzie lolls back in a wave of grey mud, scoops up fistfuls of ooze and massages them into his pendulous breasts. The ignominies of the Battle of Hadley slip away like dead skin cells.
‘Bliss,’ he whispers. ‘Bliss.’
The mud was transported from Kingscourt by BALTRAN and was waiting, body-warm and unguent for Bryce’s arrival. Travel is ache and inconvenience, discomfort and dyspepsia. Over the past two years, Bryce has spent more and more hours in his mud-pool.
‘Have him brought to me,’ Bryce commands.
‘How prepared?’ Hossam El Ibrashy says.
‘The swimwear.’ Bryce’s voice is hoarse and coagulated with want. Hossam El Ibrashy dips the head and leaves. Bryce props himself up against the side of his pool. Mud slides from the mounds of his belly and breasts. Mud twinkles in the folds of his neck, the creases of his chins. He has smeared streaks of it on his cheekbones, like war-paint. His breathing is heavy but regular, his heart a tight clench of angina. Good for a hundred thousand beats yet, his doctors assure him. The people of João de Deus had better bet the doctors are right. He feels his penis stir against the warm, heavy mud.
‘Bryce.’
Hossam El Ibrashy stands behind the boy, one hand on his shoulder.
‘Thank you, Hossam.’ Bryce scrutinises Robson Corta. The trunks are minute, pure white. No footwear: he has never been able to achieve orgasm with anyone wearing any kind of covering of the feet. ‘Well, step forward, step forward, let’s take a look at you.’ He hears the pumping want in his voice. This is where he takes everything from Lucas Corta.
‘I thought I told you to put on some muscle. You’re skinny as a fucking girl.’
No answer. Defiance in the eyes, the lips. Good. Sullen is cute. Sullen is fun to break.
‘Well, it’ll have to do I suppose. Right. Take those off.’
‘What?’
‘It speaks. Wonder of wonders. The Speedos. Take them off.’
Pretty consternation on his face. A hit, a solid hit. More will come; hit upon hit upon hit.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, boy, what did you think was going to happen? Get naked.’
‘Um, do you mind?’ The boy flicks his fingers – look away, look away. Now it is Bryce’s turn for the incredulous what? ‘I need not to be seen.’
‘What you need, boy, is to get those Speedos off.’
‘Yes, yes, I will, but…’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’
Bryce rolls away. He’ll make the Corta boy pay for that later. Mackenzie. Was, is, always will be: Mackenzie. His.
‘Then get in here with me.’
* * *
When he heard Bryce order him to strip naked, Robson thought his heart would stop. It had been easy magic to hide the deaths in the tiny white trunks. He slid the bare needles through the stretchy white weave – bare needles because Robson knew when it came to the deaths he would never have time to unlock the plastic containers. Bare needles, next to his skin. Move with care and precision. No move a traceur, a magician, makes is ever careless or imprecise.
The plan had not involved him leaving his weapons on the floor of Bryce’s spa.
He must be quick he must be sure and he must be safe. Haste, incaution, inattention and it will be him vomiting, haemorrhaging, shitting his organs over the rubber matting. One at a time, make it safe, on to the next. He slips the first death, the red death, from his trunks, weaves it into his hair. Remember where it is; burn it in with body memory. You cannot afford to miss. The blue death, the green.
‘Almost ready,’ he says. The white and the black; woven into his ’fro. ‘Ready now.’
He has never felt more naked, more exposed, more raw. He is skin, he is meat, he is nothing. He kneels by the side of the mud pool. He cannot bear to touch the mud. It is pollution. Touch the mud and he will never be clean again. The man lolling in it, smiling, he cannot even look at. It is beyond pollution. It is corruption.
‘Now isn’t that better?’ Bryce slides in under Robson, smiles up at him. He puckers his fleshy lips. ‘Now kiss me like you kissed that fucking fag-friend of yours.’
Robson leans close.
‘No I won’t.’
He reaches up. The body memory is perfect. He takes the Red Death and stabs it down into Bryce’s left eyeball.
‘That’s from Rafa,’ he shouts as Bryce bucks in agony, the needle throbbing in his bleeding eyeball. The cry dies on Bryce’s lips as his body convulses, a slick of reeking liquid diarrhoea rising to the surface of the pond. The second death is in Robson’s fingers. He drives it clean and deep into Bryce’s right eye.
‘This is from Carlinhos.’
Bryce’s hands flap wildly, blindly. It is easy for Robson to restrain one as he slides the next death out of his hair. Blood runs down Robson’s wrist: Bryce is bleeding from his cuticles. Cuticles, ears, tear-ducts, the corners of his flapping mouth. Blood runs down his shivering jowls on to the heaving surface of the mud. His bowels and bladder still pump their contents into the pool.
The third death, the death of the soul, goes into the left eyeball beside the first death.
‘This is from the Queen of the South traceurs.’ Robson is bawling now, hysterical.
A tiny voice squeaks a long, keening wail. Bryce’s eyes would roll up but the needles pin them in place.
‘This is from Hoang.’ Roaring, half-blinded with tears, every muscle tight to hold the discipline; Robson drives home the fourth death: the death of self.
The hands no longer reach for Robson; they shake, beseech. Bryce’s throat convulses: a wave of bloody vomit spews from his bleeding lips, rolls down his greasy breasts. The mud spa is a putrid swamp of piss, shit, blood, vomit, liquefying organs. Robson’s sure fingers slide the final death out of his ’fro. He holds up the black needle in front of Bryce’s blind eyes.
‘And this is from me.’
He stabs the needle deep into Bryce’s left eyeball. Somehow, somewhere, a tiny voice pushes past the hells of the hallucination and pain and sensory shutdown.
‘Fucking. Corta. The bombs. City is wired. To my heart. Bombs!’
Robson freezes. The door to the spa bursts open. Robson turns on Hossam El Ibrashy charging, two knives raised. Robson scrambles away, then there is a whistling hiss, something wraps itself around Hossam’s throat. Cubes of raw rock spin in, accelerating, and crush his head like a mango.
A Mackenzie Helium blade rushes the room, buries a knife through Hossam, vertebrae to lung, but the improvised bola has done its work.
‘You okay?’ Portuguese. Wagner says, you aren’t alone.
‘The place is bombed,’ Robson whispers. His strength is gone.
Bryce Mackenzie slides, smiling, into the vile sewage of his death.
The blade is offering a hand. There are bombs, bombs, everyone must get out, and she offers a hand?
‘The bombs are wired to Bryce’s heart! If he dies…’
The blade hauls Robson to his feet. The mud closes over Bryce Mackenzie’s face, pours into his open mouth.
‘Oh those.’ She has a Santinho accent. And does Robson now hear voices, shouts, the noise of battle? ‘We found and took care of those lunes ago.’ Robs
on takes a tottering step. The blade slips off her jacket and slides Robson’s arms into the sleeves. He is shivering now; tremendous, racking full-body seisms. ‘Come on, Corta,’ the blade says. She helps him on with the trunks. She wraps his arm around her neck and they hobble to the door.
‘Corta,’ Robson whispers. The world is both very large and very small, very near and infinitely distant and he can’t stop shivering. ‘Corta.’ He collapses into shuddering sobs. He can’t stop. The fury is spent and the ashes are cold and dead.
‘Let’s get you some nice hot tea,’ the blade says.
‘Horchata,’ Robson bawls through the tears. ‘I drink horchata!’
* * *
Wagner Corta has never given thought to the zabbaleen. They are the Fifth Elemental; the strippers and recyclers, the cleaners and de-boners, the hewers of flesh and the renderers of fat. Life, memory, reduced to chemical elements.
All end this way; as a spreadsheet of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium; traces. The carbon of the dead becomes the feedstock for the three-D printers of the living.
He too will end this way; a ration, an apportioning, someone’s party dress, someone’s pull-toy, someone’s killing blade.
The zabbaleen are discreet and the zabbaleen are assiduous. Not one spot of blood, one skin cell is left in the apartment. No trace that there was a murder here. A murder and a kidnapping. Wagner imagines the smell of blood, of murder, of knives must meld with the walls, the floors. The zabbaleen are good: the apartment smells of citrus tinged with the ever-present electric scent of moondust.
The apartment.
Their apartment.
He’s glad the zabbaleen have cleared all the furniture, stripped the place down to bare architecture.
Haider found her by the door. Here. Wagner stands on the spot. He thinks of her fingers, her so clever fingers that could call the most wonderful music from warped wood and stretched wire. Those fingers trying to staunch the terrible wound, fingers fluttering, failing, soaked red to the knuckles, to the palms, to the wrists.
He can’t think too long and deep on that image.
No one deserves a death like that.
Whoever did it, whichever of Bryce’s blades or mercenaries, he hopes they tasted some of what they dealt to Analiese when João de Deus rose.
He needs to get out of this apartment. Wagner’s attention catches on a fold of paper on a shelf. There is no way that would have escaped the zabbaleen unless it was not for their attention. A note, folded four times.
I’m sorry Wagner. I can’t ever be forgiven. I’ve betrayed you, I’ve betrayed Robson. They would have hurt my family.
Family first. Family always.
The words of the betraying are handwritten, archaic marks on expensive paper.
Words like musical notes, the work of her fingers.
Robson crumples the note. He would throw it across the apartment – an affront to perfection of the zabbaleen – but for all her betrayal, she should not be left lying for strangers to find.
Bryce Mackenzie is dead. Robson is safe. Now he can close the door behind him, go on the BALTRAN and return to his family and city.
TWENTY-THREE
I’m not a fighter, he says in the rover from the BALTRAN terminal.
I’m a wolf, he says as the rovers roll down into João de Deus Lock 4.
I’m not really a Corta, he says as the guillotine gates of the outlock close and the pressure equalises.
You’re a Corta, they say and put a knife in his right hand and a knife in his left hand.
I’m not a leader, he says as the inlock opens. I’m not the Iron Hand.
You lead, says the Iron Hand. This is your fight.
And I’ve got you, Nelson Medeiros whispers at Wagner’s shoulder. You’ll just get yourself stupidly killed.
Then the wolf breathes deep of the reek and perfume of João de Deus and with a cry he leads the escoltas on to Kondakova Prospekt. The liberation of João de Deus is fast and overwhelming. Rover-borne Corta squads seize the city’s surface locks; mercenaries arrive from Twé on a chartered train. Pods of materiel drop into the electromagnetic hands of the BALTRAN relay; VTO track-queens on day-hire contracts feed it to the assault teams down on the prospekts. But there is no battle here. João de Deus has liberated itself. Lucas’s dusters and sleeper agents inside Mackenzie Helium moved to secure the city’s air, power and water. Santinhos left their work and schools and homes and mobbed the public printers to print up knives and body armour. João de Deus rose: Mackenzie Helium blades sheathed their knives. There is no profit in pointless death. The board fled at the first rumour that Bryce Mackenzie was dead at the hands of a Corta; senior management turned in their resignations and quit their offices.
Kondakova Prospekt is filled wall to wall with escoltas, dusters, Santinhos. Cheers and whistles and applause snow down from the levels and crosswalks as Wagner leads the liberating army. More join every minute. By the time he reaches the smashed doors of Mackenzie Helium’s headquarters all of João de Deus is behind him. He raises a hand. The army halts. The voices fall silent. The neon MH sign flickers on the edge of death, most of its tubes taken out by slingshots and quick-printed stonebows.
Through the broken doors come two figures: a blade and a boy. The woman still shelters Robson under her arm. He is bruised, blood-stained, broken. The woman whispers to him. He looks up. Light fills his eyes.
The blades fall from Wagner’s hands. He runs to Robson and scoops the skinny, wrecked boy up in his arms.
‘Oh you,’ he gasps. Tears stream down his face. ‘Oh you you you.’
João de Deus answers with a shout.
* * *
Revolution is so untidy. He walks through the detritus of the liberation: water bottles, knives, pieces of door frames and window surrounds for clubs; chunks of hacked-loose sinter for missiles. Placards. Items of clothing. A shoe. Two bodies. Lucas regrets those. He had intended this to be a bloodless acquisition. Bloodless, save for those whose blood had to be shed. Ahead he can still hear the singing and chanting of the crowd. An ugly town, João de Deus. He never recognised its ugliness when he lived here. The eye of the conqueror sees the cost of the conquest.
Conqueror. Salve Lucas Imperator. Lucas smiles at his presumption. He kicks a lump of stone up the prospekt. The roar of the crowd is closer, louder, rising and falling in waves. The wolf knows how to work a crowd. The bastard did well. Mustn’t let the people love him too much. After the reconstruction, after the zabbaleen have crept out of their digs and tunnels to clear away the wreckage, he must rotate Wagner back to Meridian. Some role in the civil service. Not too demanding. Plenty of time to fuck his wolf friends.
The kid: when it came to it, he had the Iron Hand.
Lucas isn’t sure he could have done what Robson Corta did.
Toquinho is ready at the edge of Lucas’s consciousness with a highlight, but Lucas does not need the hint. He knows where and when to look up. The empty windows, the smoke-blackened walls, the caved-in doors have no power any more. The best sound room in the two worlds. He made Jorge unpack his guitar in the living room so that the shape of the case would not affect the sonic landscape. Gone. He won’t rebuild it. Pointless to live in a museum. Boa Vista is his home now and he will rebuild this mean city as it should have been; tough, energetic, chaotic, celebratory. And do something – something – about the João de Deus reek.
Denny Mackenzie hung Carlinhos by his heels from this bridge. Slung a cable through his Achilles tendons. Blood from his throat ran down his arms and dripped from his fingers to the paving: here. They said he fought like a demon; killed twenty Mackenzie blades before Denny took him down and cut his throat through to the bone. As Alexia pointed out, that same Denny Mackenzie Lucas helped install in Hadley.
The old moon is dead. It died at his first meeting with the financiers, the government representatives, the military advisers, down on the hell of Earth. The new moon is not yet born. The piece is not played through.
<
br /> Duncan and Bryce Mackenzie are dead. Denny Mackenzie is the flash and dash of the old, buccaneering spirit of Robert Mackenzie while quietly competent women build a new Mackenzie Metals. The Vorontsovs reach for the worlds beyond. The Suns are humiliated, yet prepare for all-out economic war with their ancient enemies on Earth. The university stirs from its long sleep. The Asamoahs: who knows what they plan and scheme? And the Cortas? The Helium Age is over. Corta Hélio will not return.
It was never about Corta Hélio.
‘Family first,’ Lucas says. ‘Family always.’ In the corner of his eye, a new thing, strange to his memory of João de Deus. He walks to the wall of shuttering over the old Boa Vista tram station. A shrine to the Sisters who sacrificed themselves to free Lucasinho from the hands of Bryce Mackenzie. More: to the Cortas. To his family. The golden triangle. Rafa. Honest, straight Carlinhos. Lucas never told his younger brother, but he always admired Carlinhos. Carlinhos knew what had to be done and did it. No doubt, no question. In the centre, his mother. The image is from the old wild-catting days, when Lucas was the strangely silent, frowning baby in the berçario.
‘Mamãe.’
One portrait missing. Of course. The whole moon saw him as the traitor when he threw Jonathon Kayode down from his Eyrie and took the high seat of the Eagle of the Moon. Lucas crouches, brushes dust from his pants, picks up his image. So solemn, so serious. He presses it against the wall until the adhesive fixers bind. He tips his hat forward.
‘Well, I’m back,’ he says.
* * *
Two shell-suits, one blue and white, one pink and purple. The suits stand on an elevator platform, holding hands. The elevator climbs slowly up the airless shaft of Coriolis’s West Rim lock.
Blue and white are the colours of the University of Farside. Pink and purple are the colours that Lucasinho Corta picked out of the row in the lock’s suit-room.
‘Are you okay about this?’ Luna Corta said as the haptic rig enclosed Lucasinho in its silken web.
