by Ian McDonald
‘It tickles,’ Lucasinho said.
‘Only for a minute,’ Luna said. She was an old hand at the haptic rig, at the whole shell-suit thing now. A true duster. ‘If you feel weird, we can stop.’
‘I don’t want to stop,’ Lucasinho said. His face twitched. Still the spasms and tics as the protein chips forge new pathways in his brain. ‘Luna, if I do…’
‘I’ll be right there.’
He looked nervous as the suit began to seal up around him; legs, hips, torso. Arms, shoulder: he gave a small cry as the helmet folded around him.
‘You all right?’ Luna asked on the common channel. Lucasinho’s right glove formed an ‘O’ with thumb and forefinger: the ancient pressure-suit sign that everything was all right. But on the far side of the lock, on the elevator platform, he took a clunking step closer to Luna and held out a hand. She took his armoured gauntlet in hers. Shell-suits are all the same size; it is the bodies and hearts inside that differ.
The elevator climbs, the two suits emerge into the surface clutter and debris of Coriolis’s crater-rim.
‘On top of the world!’ Luna says as the platform stops and locks. The view is stupendous, far far over the too-close horizon, across an endless panoply of craters, craters within craters, rilles and broken rim-walls, strongly shadowed in the light of a sun halfway to the zenith. Beyond, on the far edge of seeing, the mountains of Farside.
‘You okay?’ Luna asks. She squeezes Lucasinho’s hand. The haptics will turn it into reassurance.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Let’s try a walk,’ Luna says. She leads Lucasinho a few paces off the elevator on to the rim. The crater-top is an undulating upland curving almost imperceptibly on either side of them. Comms dishes occupy the higher summits. The shadow of the eastern rim lies long across the crater floor: Luna points out Equatorial One, the station, the magic-box glimmer of the cable-cars spinning down from Coriolis’s campuses and districts. Lucasinho is spellbound. Luna squeezes his hand again.
‘Look up.’
‘Up?’
‘Look up.’
She sees his helmet tilt back. There is a long silence, then a longer, amazed, sighing breath.
‘Nothing but stars!’
* * *
From Rozhdestvenskiy to Schrodinger, from Mare Orientale to Mare Smythii, in the biology labs of Mandelshtam and the antennae arrays of Muscoviense, Farside is in uproar. A muted, unrushed, considered uproar, but Ariel has dwelt in the halls of the university long enough to read the upswing in conference calls, the bustle of senior academics and facultarians through Farside train stations, the recall and dispatch of ghazis. A political impacter of world-breaking mass has struck Nearside and the moon is ringing like a terreiro bell. A seism greater even than the War of Mackenzie Succession.
She likes that term. She might have Beija Flor flick it over to the history faculty at Mare Ingenii.
Vidhya Rao, Beija Flor announces.
‘Fuck.’
State-of-the-planet surveys are best taken from the perspective of one’s own bed. Ariel swings out from beneath the sheet and summons clothes.
Vidhya Rao has now been waiting for ten minutes, Beija Flor announces as Ariel dresses.
‘Face first,’ Ariel says.
By the time she is dressed and faced, she knows exactly what has hit the world.
‘Clever, clever boy,’ she whispers as she adjusts the sit of her hat.
‘Did your August Sages foresee that one?’ Ariel asks as she sweeps into her drawing room.
‘I no longer have access to the Three August Sages,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘Lunar politics has entered a critical stage.’
‘Most people would look at it as a robust change of management.’
‘The Eagle of the Moon is independent, impartial and does not involve themself in corporate politics.’
‘Jonathon Kayode was an enthusiastic meddler in corporate politics. He was married to a Mackenzie, for gods’ sake.’
‘There is a difference between dropping hints and slipping information, and assassinating your rival and taking his corporate headquarters.’
‘“Slipped information” about the Mare Anguis licence sparked the Corta-Mackenzie war,’ Ariel says.
‘He also suggested the Corta-Mackenzie marriage to end the bloodshed.’
‘Knowing full well that it would never happen. Knowing full well that the repercussions would lead to war. Your point?’
‘It’s started. What I saw. Those futures, with the cities full of skulls; they begin with the death of Bryce Mackenzie and Lucas paralysed politically by the LMA. He has been ordered to refuse the Vorontsovs’ Moonport proposal. He will side for the terrestrials against the Dragons. He will sanction the Lunar Bourse proposal and the genocide as the terrestrials rationalise the market.’
‘Vidhya. I ask this every time you wedge yourself into my life. Why are you here?’
‘To ask you to stop him. Because you’re the only one who can. He needs to step away from the Eyrie, but he can’t because the terrestrials will seize power. He needs an heir he can trust, Ariel.’
‘Leave me,’ Ariel orders. ‘Go.’ The sudden verbal aggression rocks Vidhya Rao. Never seen this before, have you? Never considered I could be anything other than composed, calculating, courtroom. But it’s in me, it always has been in me, years deep, like geology. The layers warp, the stresses build. The surface cracks. Marina saw this me. Abena saw this me. Now you see it. ‘Enough of your shit. Enough. My family are not your dolls to push around your playhouse. Out!’
Gods she would love a martini. Good and pure and the most marvellous thing in the universe. Outside the slit window, the gondolas swing up and down their cables. Carnival lights, festive lives. She should apologise to Vidhya Rao. She will apologise to Vidhya Rao. Not yet. Let er suffer in er sanctimony for a little longer. E was right. Ariel has always known that the final battle would be between her and Lucas. Sister and brother. Two reefs of human wreckage, ruined by family.
‘Lime spritzer,’ she orders Beija Flor. ‘In a martini glass.’ It looks good in her hand. It feels good, right. Here is clarity and precision. She has known what she must do for a long time. Now she has the idea of how to do it. She looks out over the Coriolis crater and sips from her martini glass and ideas flow to her.
It is insane. Only insanity will work now.
‘Beija Flor, get me Dakota Kaur Mackenzie.’
The ghazi is on Ariel’s lens in a heartbeat.
‘What can I do for you?’
Ariel smiles.
‘Issue a challenge.’
A subtle shift in the air conditioning. A door is open.
‘Luna?’
‘Tia.’
‘Come on in, anjinho.’
‘I heard you shouting.’
‘Were you spying?’
A pause. A small yes.
‘Do you have tunnels everywhere?’
‘Yes.’
The girl is at her side. Ariel runs fingers through Luna’s hair.
‘I thought you were going to clean that stuff off your face when Lucasinho was safe.’
‘He’s not safe yet.’
Ariel laughs small.
‘True. But he will be. Very soon.’
* * *
The girl parts the curtain of streamers and leads the ghazi by the hand into the carnival. The musics of a dozen sound systems assail them: old school samba from the station plaza faces off funk from the First Street Bridge; deep bass shouts bravado across the prospket to the impudent house foro on Second East; neo-Tropicalia blasts horn stabs from a pulpit at the Primeiro Serviço intersection while a waggon pushed by devotees blowing handball whistles circles it, laying down a bombardment of baile. Everywhere: the drums the drums the drums. Hand in hand girl and ghazi flit through rhythm and beats: they slip between the marching ranks of a batteria of drummers, close as the stick to the drumskin, completely unseen. Where music plays, humans dance. João de Deus is a working town, not a danci
ng town: all the better to party. It dances with delight and without inhibition. To each music its dancers. The smash and crush of bodies in booty-shorts and glitter around the baile-funk systems; old-school samba squads in body-paint and feathers and the stuttering hip-flick of the marching dance. The sweet sway of couples to the syncopations of bossa and jazz Brasiliera. The stomp and sashay of the batterias. Sweat and perfume. Hair flying; legs wide, feet planted. Shaking it, shaking it. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, tongues protruding; bodies leaning in, taking the rhythm of each other, swaying back and forth. Almost but never touching. Through them all ghost the girl and ghazi. The prospekt is ankle deep in paper streamers, street-food wrappers and discarded cocktail glasses. The girl kicks them away, kicks through.
And the voices the voices the voices. Shouting over the beats, shouting into each other’s faces, laughing, yelling. The girl cannot make herself heard to the ghazi: they communicate by flickers of familiar-to-familiar traffic, by look and touch and intent.
Inflatable icons of João’s heroes bob over the heads of the revellers: handball stars, musicians, telenovela actors, dustbike racers, gupshup channel celebrities; legends of old Earth: Ayrton Senna, Capita Brasil with his fists on his hips, Pele, Maria Funk Fujiwara, one-legged Saci Perere with his hat and pipe. The orixas: fierce Xango, gracious Yemenja. More than any of the others, there is an armoured fist, clenched. The Iron Hand. A Capita Brasil breaks loose, unmoored by children. It wallows up to the sunline to join the cumulus of escaped balloons. Up on the Level Four crosswalk kids open up on it with slingshots.
The girl halts as a dragon loops its coils around Third Bridge, swoops, hovers a moment before her, eyes glowing, daring her to pass, then arcs up and away, sweeping its hundred-metre length past her. It glowers at her from the top of the city, then undulates down the prospekt.
And the food! Oh, the food! The city’s hotshops have taken in their tables and seating – this is carnival! – and rattle twenty cuisines over their counters. Here are tacos, there noodle boxes. Dumplings and salads. Soup for those as must; doces and baklavas, flatbreads and tofu kofta. The biggest crowds are around the churrascarias. Smoke plumes from their electric grills filling the air with the illicit perfume of danger and burning flesh. There is meat here. Real meat!
The girl’s step falters – she last ate half a world away, and she loves the doces. The ghazi squeezes her hand and she remembers: she is on a mission. They press on, towards the great knot of bodies and lights at the heart of the carnival
What is food without drink? João boasts a thousand duster bars and each one of them has spilt on to the street in impromptu barzinhos: a folding table, a door across two trestles, the back of a misplaced rover. With furious concentration, the bar staff mix, muddle, macerate. They pour from height, they drizzle over ice, they add fruit and decorations. But this is carnival for them too and even as they stir, shake, serve they nod to the beat, sway and murmur lyrics.
The girl keeps a distance from the bars. She leads the ghazi a long way around, up a level, along a higher street. She has seen what alcohol does to people. It makes them not people any more. The girl knows this city, but the high streets do not feel comfortable either. The people here wear body-paint and masks and look at her and the ghazi as they speed past. The eyes behind the masks are filled with wants. Up here everyone is looking: something new from the narco-DJs, a partner, quick sex; everyone is weighing and assaying. A wolf-face appears in front of her. She stops with a small cry.
‘Your face.’ The wolf-mask moves closer, inspecting her. A man’s voice: he is naked apart from a thong. His body is painted grey like the wolf. Highlights glow along the contours of his muscles as he crouches down to the girl’s level. ‘What are you?’
The ghazi steps forward.
‘Death,’ she says. The wolf leaps back, hands held up in supplication.
‘Sorry, sorry … didn’t mean to … Fuck. That’s not a costume.’
‘No,’ says the ghazi.
‘Let’s go down again as soon as we can,’ the girl declares. A ladeira brings them down within a hundred metres of their destination but here, around the old Mackenzie Helium offices, the crowds are at their most dense. The girl gives a small cry of exasperation.
‘We’ll never get through this,’ she says.
‘We will,’ the ghazi says and steps forward.
The girl has brought baggage to carnival: a long, flat case slung across her back from a strap. The ghazi turns back to offer a hand, the girl accepts. The music is loud, the voices are stupefying and the crowd is terrifyingly close, but they part before a ghazi. The girl follows footstep close; she smells sweat, vodka, cheap perfumes, then she is in the lobby. She has never seen this place when it was the headquarters of Mackenzie Helium, so she does not know that the neon letters recently had different shapes, that logos and branding have been hastily removed from doors and walls and glass. She looks up at the pulsing neon: C. H. C. H. Yellow green. Yellow green.
Escoltas in sharp suits move to block entrance.
‘There is a dress code,’ says a sharp suit to the ghazi. ‘And an age limit.’
‘Do you know who you are speaking to?’ the ghazi says.
‘They do now,’ the girl says. Her familiar has flashed the escoltas her identity.
‘Apologies, Senhora Corta. You are welcome.’
‘Dakota is my personal bodyguard,’ Luna says.
‘I’m not your bodyguard,’ Dakota Kaur Mackenzie hisses as they cross the decorporatised lobby to the grand staircase. Beyond the doors the thunder of carnival give way to voices, glass chiming, bossa nova. The dress code is 1940s movie-star glamour. White tie and tails for the men, spats and top hats, canes and gloves. White teeth and pencil-line moustaches. The women glide in ballgowns and cocktail dresses; sweeping, sumptuous, caressing close, flaring out into folds and flounces. The field of vision seethes with a luminous host of familiars. Luna Corta freezes, very much the Farside parochial in her grey dress and very sensible boots. Dakota Mackenzie, in pragmatic riding breeches, boots and check print, stops dead. A young woman, her dark skin glowing against her ivory gown, stoops to wonder and smile at Luna.
‘Fabulous face art,’ she murmurs, then sees beneath the art and jerks upright in astonishment. Her surprise ripples across the room. Glasses halt at lips, conversations evaporate in puffs of gossip. The band puts up its instruments and stops playing.
‘I think you got them, chiseller,’ Dakota says.
Then someone runs out from among the frozen socialites and snatches her hard into his arms and throws her up in the air and as she comes down she sees hair, she sees Mackenzie green eyes, she sees freckles. She sees Robson. Luna squeals and laughs and he catches her and holds her so close she can feel his heartbeat, feel his breath tremble, feel him shake and now they are both shaking and crying and laughing. The party erupts into cheering and applause, the band picks up instruments and plays something loud and joyful. Robson steps away, elegant and awkward at the same time in his white shirt and tails. He looks to Luna as if every bone has been broken and reset out of true. A pale, dark-haired boy comes to him, stands with him.
Faces from her memory push through the crowd.
She sees Alexia the Iron Hand in a long, tight dress and opera gloves. She sees the wolf, the dark legend that haunted the edge of her life, the tio she never really knew. She sees a raccoon push its masked face between immaculately trousered ankles. A bird swoops over her head: she sees her mother, a sunburst in gold. Her swarm forms a halo around her elaborate hair-sculpt.
She sees her Tio Lucas. He is not the uncle she last saw at the wedding at the Eyrie, dapper and composed, joking with her father. Years have fallen on him; his body is broad and bulky with muscle but it weighs him down; he is stiff and bent, leaning on a cane, his face drawn down, his eyes dark.
Sorry to piss on your happy reunion, Dakota says on Luna’s private channel, but we have business here.
‘Tio Lucas,’ Luna declares. ‘
Listen.’
‘I am Dakota Kaur Mackenzie, Ghazi of the Faculty of Biocybernetics, School of Neurotechnology of the University of Farside,’ Dakota announces. ‘Before these witnesses, I am charged to deliver this formal challenge to you. In final settlement of the custody case of Lucas Corta Junior, in a mutually acceptable court and legislation at a time not exceeding one hundred and twenty hours, Ariel Corta will meet you in trial by combat.’
The music ceases, mid-beat. Lucas Corta is smiling.
‘I accept,’ Lucas says.
Gasps. Glasses drop from hands. Luna slips the case from her shoulder and presents it in her two hands to Lucas.
‘You will need this.’
Lucas accepts the gift. Luna observes that it is heavier than he thought.
‘Careful,’ Luna says as Lucas opens the case. He holds up the knife of meteoric steel. It glitters in the mirror-ball party-light. His breath catches.
‘Carlinhos’s knife.’
‘Mãe de Santo Odunlade gave me the battle-knives of the Cortas. She said they could only be used by a Corta who is bold, greathearted, without avarice or cowardice, who will fight for the family and defend it bravely.’
Lucas turns the blade in the light, fascinated by its vicious beauty, then lays it across the palm of a hand and offers it back to Luna.
‘I am not worthy of this blade.’
Luna pushes his hand away.
‘Take it. You will need it.’
TWENTY-FOUR
The rule is this: women of a particular status, in their ninth decade, do not hurry. They do not scurry. A fussy bustle is permissible but it is the limit. A lady never rushes.
Lady Sun rushes, heels clip-clopping in an undignified trot down the palace’s curving corridors. Caught between walk and run, her entourage struggles to keep pace with her. The message on Amanda’s secure channel had ordered her to come at once. Her granddaughter’s suite is too near for a moto to arrive in time, too far to avoid the shame of haste. A palanquin, like the dowagers of old China. That would be the very thing. Like the Vorontsovs use to gad around St Olga, powered by Earth-muscle and youthful enthusiasm. Perfidious Vorontsovs. Lady Sun will not soon forgive the humiliation of the Battle of Hadley. Marooned by VTO, taken in an upholstered cage to Hadley. The smirking politeness of the Mackenzies. Denny Mackenzie grinning his ghastly gold teeth. Grin while you can, golden boy. The power rests elsewhere and when you have served their purpose, the women of Hadley will arrange a boardroom coup, and it will cost you more than your finger. The ransom was insultingly low; Taiyang will recoup it through the breach of contract case against VTO, but it is another unforgivable offence. Fucking Australians.
