by Ian McDonald
You’ll see me.
Ariel, Maninho announces.
‘Final pre-flight checks, darling. Do you need to go to the washroom? Don’t. Rhetoric works better with a full bladder. Gives it a sense of urgency. Now, I know you haven’t taken anything, but if you’ve brought some little upper or focuser or concentrator or soother or relaxer, don’t take it. In fact, get rid of it. Kweko despises pharmacological enhancement. Which is ironic for a handball fan. He stuffs his courtroom with sniffers so don’t chem. Couple of final dos. If it gets away from you, do move for an adjournment. Do go off-script. Malandragem, the fly move, is the heart of the Court of Clavius. But you must use it well. Bad malandragem is no malandragem. Do keep me on. Better safe than sorry.’
The Suns arrive. They are elegant and aristocratic and immaculate. Abena has memorised the names and the faces. Amanda Sun takes the counsel box. She catches Abena’s stare and returns it with frozen disdain. House Sun has always looked down on House Asamoah. The company from the Palace of Eternal Light fills the galleries. There is Lady Sun, leaning on a stick. Who is that young man helping her into the box behind Amanda and her advisers?
Darius Mackenzie-Sun, Tumi says. His mother was Jade Sun. He is the last child of Robert Mackenzie. After Ironfall he was taken back to the Palace of Eternal Light where he has become the protégé of the Dowager of Shackleton. He is studying at the School of Seven Bells under the personal tutelage of Mariano Gabriel Demaria.
Adopting the inheritor, Abena muses as Tumi prepares a full briefing on Darius Sun. A mistake to work the same trick twice.
She watches Lady Sun take a tiny sip from an exquisite porcelain flask. The finest, hardest porcelain is made with bone ash. On the moon, those bones are human.
The usher calls, the courtroom rises. The bench zashitniks enter first, for everything is on trial in the Court of Clavius, including the judges. They take their places in the fighting pit. Now come the judges, their white gowns brilliant in the harsh light of the court-arena. Valentina Arce calls the court to order, Kweko Kumah lists the actors, their biases and the agreed legal framework, Rieko Nagai reads out the case. And the hearing is on.
Viego Quiroga buries Number Two Court in medical detail and appeals to fatherhood, to family, to healing and unity. Lucas Corta appears in a pre-recorded statement that all he wants is his son, with him, where he could be, being cared for by his loving father. Abena notes, the judges note, all of the public and the reporters and gossip-mongers note, that Lucas Corta is not present before the Court of Clavius to make this profession of paternal love.
Now Amanda Sun steps down on to the D of polished moonstone. Murmurs scurry around the galleries. She gives each judge a long look.
The bench zashitniks stir, down in their trench.
‘Our law is good law because it forbids prejudices while recognising biases. I am biased. How can I not be biased? I am a mother. I want my son with me. That’s all.’
She goes on to paint Lucas as a bad father; an absent father; a reckless father and worst, a dangerous father. What kind of place is the Eagle’s Eyrie for a child, with blades concealed in every hand, assassin drones in every half-glimpsed, darting movement?
A father you tried to kill, Abena thinks. A glance to the bench tells her the judges are keenly aware of that, and to the rumour that the Suns engineered the war between Cortas and Mackenzies.
‘The Palace of Eternal Light is strong and stable, a safe place for my son to heal in the security of his family. Family matters. The university is many things but it is not family. Ariel Corta – who this court knows well – claims to represent Luna Corta’s assumed contract of care for Lucasinho Corta. I ask you; when did Ariel Corta ever show any interest in her neice, much less her nephew, until a time when their safety might ensure her own? Who was it turned her back on her family to pursue her own glittering career as a celebrity lawyer? Ariel Corta. When Lucasinho was under the protection of the Asamoahs, where was Ariel Corta? The interests she has only ever truly represented are her own. Look at the public interest in this hearing – a preliminary hearing. Ariel Corta thinks she’s clever to remove herself from scrutiny by making her niece Luna Corta the guardian but surely the court is not deceived by such transparent scheming. Ariel Corta intends to use her own nephew as a ladder to climb her way back to the top of the social hierarchy.
‘Family first. That’s the rule. But let’s look at this family. An absent father and a status-hungry aunt. We Suns understand family. We are old, we are strong and we are together. We know the truth, that, in the beginning and the end, there is only families and individuals. Family first, of course. The Cortas are not a family. We are.’
Amanda Sun dips her head to the bench and returns to her pew.
‘Counsel for Luna Corta?’
Abena gulps. Her stomach tightens. The moment is here and her statements, her arguments, her persuasions have flown from her head.
Call Ariel.
The order to Tumi is on the tip of her tongue. She swallows it. She doesn’t need Ariel Corta.
Strike, axe of Xango, give me strength for the battle.
She steps down on to the shining stone.
‘I represent counsel for Luna Corta, who claims a continuance on a pre-existing informal contract of care …’
Viego Quiroga and Amanda Sun are on their feet.
‘Your Honours, really …’
‘Madam Asamoah is not qualified to plead in this court.’
Abena hisses a thank you to Xango. Her enemies have fallen into her trap.
Judge Rieko looks at her.
‘Madam Asamoah?’
‘Ariel Corta is Luna Corta’s counsel. I am her agent here on Nearside. For personal security reasons, Ariel chooses to remain on Farside.’
‘Senhora Corta could make her representation through a network link,’ Kweko Kumah says.
‘As you know, Ariel Corta has always preferred the physical over the virtual.’
Rieko Nagai suppresses a smile at the effrontery.
‘You are a lawyer?’ Valentina Arce asks.
‘I am a political science student at Cabochon Colloquium,’ Abena says.
‘No legal qualifications,’ Judge Kumah says.
‘None, madam. I believe I don’t require any.’
Intakes of breath from all five tiers of Number Two Court. Once again Rieko Nagai smiles.
‘Our law stands on three legs,’ Abena says. ‘In the Court of Clavius everything, including the Court of Clavius, is on trial. Everything, including the law, is negotiable, and furthermore – and my argument – is that more law is bad law. To insist on a legal qualification to plead in this court is establishing a right of audience. That right has not been negotiated; it makes more law, not less, and it hasn’t been tried. Until now.’
Rieko Nagai conceals an outright laugh with a sip of water.
‘This court will take a short adjournment, after which we will rule on Madam Asamoah’s position,’ Judge Arce says.
Number Two Court erupts with voices. Abena slips down beside Rosario in the zashitnik pit.
‘You all right?’ Rosario asks. Abena is shaking. She cannot speak. She nods. ‘You’re making some enemies,’ Rosario continues. ‘Contracts have gone out. Just to say. Don’t worry, we’ll buy them out. Think of it as a professional compliment.’
Camera drones hover in her face. Tumi notifies her of a dozen interview requests, twenty invitations to society events that would never have admitted her, even as the niece of the Golden Stool.
The chatter is silenced as if cut off with a blade. The judges have returned.
‘Madam Asamoah.’ Valentina Arce beckons her. Abena reads the body language, the hold of the limbs, the set of the faces. She’s got this.
‘The bench will hear you,’ Judge Rieko says. The court murmurs and mutters.
‘Malandra
gem,’ Kweko Kumah says. ‘Now, we’ve wasted quite enough time on this. I’d like to get this all wrapped up before lunch.’
‘That’s not a problem,’ Abena says. ‘I have only one submission to present.’
Tumi opens the link to Farside and the Court of Clavius network patches it into every familiar in Number Two Court. Murmurs turn to gasps. There in every lens, every eye, is Lucasinho Corta. He sits on the edge of a medical bed, haloed by the outstretched hands of med robots. His chest, his face are sunken, his eyes are distant and lost. His cheekbones are as beautiful as they ever were to Abena Asamoah. He waves.
‘Hi,’ he says.
A noise between a sigh and a cry runs around the galleries of Number Two Court.
‘Hi everyone.’ His words are painful, slurred. ‘Dad, hi. Love you. Can’t come now. Need to get better. Remember better. Work to do. I can walk. Look!’ He rises unsteadily from the bed and takes an uncertain step towards the camera. ‘Long way to walk. Still. Just to say: Luna saved me once. She’s saving me again.’
Abena cuts the link.
‘Family is family, but the only consideration is Lucasinho’s welfare,’ she says. ‘Look at what has been achieved. But as Lucasinho said to you, long way to walk. Even if both the Suns and Lucas Corta agreed to keep him on Farside, there is no guarantee that they would continue to do so. Lucasinho has to be beyond politics. For his own well-being, I submit that this court recognises, extends and codifies the existing contract of care that Luna Corta established when she rescued Lucasinho Corta and brought him to Boa Vista.’
She bows to the bench and returns to the seat. The judges look at each other.
‘We have a judgement.’
The three advocates stand.
‘This court unanimously finds for Luna Corta, represented by Ariel Corta,’ Judge Rieko says. ‘Madam Asamoah, in chamber?’ The bench rises. The judges file from the dais.
Abena has heard that Clavius’s behind-court rooms are notoriously poky, but she is surprised at the cubby in which Judge Rieko is deprinting her robes and changing into civilian dress.
‘Ariel instructed you well. The personal appearance, that was hers?’
‘It was, but I worked the three pillars argument myself,’ Abena says. She is electric with excitement. Nothing, not even delivering her paper at the Lunarian Society, not even sex with Lucasinho, makes her glow, makes her breathless, makes her burn like this. She understands it now. She is going to so party tonight. Some boy will get so lucky.
‘Well played, but in future, stick to politics.’
And it dies on the floor.
‘One Ariel Corta is quite enough.’
Vidhya Rao hates their jokes, their sarcasms, their cruel whimsies. E hates the word games they make er play – exchanges in strict poetic forms, only responding to sentences without the letter ‘a’ – the roles they make er assume – a 2040s Shanghai refuse collector, an 18th-century porcelain carrier – the worlds they build and force er to inhabit – a blue-and-white Western willow-pattern universe, a virtual reality based on a late 20th-century iteration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. E hates that they change personalities, memories, whole identities. They are never the same creatures twice. E hates their pettiness, their condescension, their arrogance and other personality traits which have no direct translation in the human emotional lexicon.
Vidhya Rao hates the Three August Sages.
Had e more time and more patience, e could have explored at intellectual leisure the concept of quantum intelligence, how it would differ profoundly from human intelligence, how it might not even be recognisable as intelligence, how that essential quantum nature might manifest as surreal humour. But time on the quantum computer has been policed since Vidhya Rao moved from Whitacre Goddard staff to consultancy. E is beginning to suspect that e is permitted any access at all because e is the only human with which the Three August Sages will communicate.
E is beginning to suspect that Whitacre Goddard has chosen a political faction opposite to ers. But er concern at Wang Yongqing’s plans for the Lunar Bourse compels er to quiet favours, debts softly recalled, whispered blackmails.
E enters the codes, sets up the protocols and lets the alien architecture of the quantum operating system interface with er familiar. E sighs. Today the Three August Sages will entertain her as gods in a rendering of a 1950s San Francisco tiki bar. Ukulele music plays, plastic parrots fly and thunder rumbles. The August Ones await.
A twitch, a twinge, a disharmomy, an echo.
There’s someone else in the simulation.
Robson Corta glows. Every square centimetre of his skin radiates energy. He can smell himself: sweet, salty, slightly singed. Your vitamin D levels are low, Joker said and booked him the light bath at the banya. Robson believes in vitamins the same way he believes in mathematics, something unseen, abstract but useful. What he does know is that after thirty minutes standing naked in the solar chamber, he feels electric. Glowing.
A jump to the top of the door frame, an immediate flip back and turn to grab the truss, swing and he is in the superstructure of Theophilus. He runs fast and low, rolling under construction beams, sliding beneath live power conduits, hurdling gaps and entire intersections, flying above the heads of the Theophilians. He could do this forever.
This must be how Wagner feels when he charges up on the light of the full Earth and turns into the wolf. Anything and everything is bright to his senses, everything and anything falls within his grasp. Body and mind united, beyond consciousness and will. Everything is flow. It’s thrilling and terrifying.
Am I turning into a wolf?
I have insufficient information to reach a diagnosis, Joker says. Robson didn’t know the thought had strayed into the subvocal range. However, we should have another talk about puberty.
‘Joker!’ Robson hisses. Familiars have no shame.
He wishes Wagner were back. He worries about him out there in the dust. Swift home, Lobinho. He has promised, those times when he touches the network, that he will be back before Analiese leaves on her concert tour. But the moon is the moon and she knows a thousand ways to trip you. Robson is wary still of Analiese – she sublets a room in another apartment to practise the setar, she says: to get away from him, Robson suspects. She might have agreed to the tour to get away from him. But he is uncomfortable being in the apartment all alone. He was alone before, when Wagner was working the glass. When he fled to a city higher than Bairro Alto, where only the machines and the wind went. He had been afraid every second: afraid, alone, cold, hungry but more afraid to go down to the living streets.
Wagner had come to bring him home. Wagner, afraid of heights. He came across half of Nearside, through invasion and space-strike, bot-war and siege. He’ll come.
From his high hiding placement Robson watches his colloquium mates gather on the ring and argue about which hotshop to visit today. No chance any of them will suggest El Gato but he waits until they make up their mind and leave. Robson remembers spying unseen on Wagner, at the wolf-meet in Meridian. He hadn’t understood the unspoken language between Wagner and the wolf from the Meridian pack. He does now.
Maybe Joker is right. He has been waking up early morning soaked in sweat with his dick hard. And his balls are turning dark and one of them is hanging lower.
Robson shivers, chilled with self-consciousness.
Within a minute he is at El Gato and drops out of the infrastructure to land in front of the door.
Behind the cook-counter, Jianyu bows and applauds.
‘What?’ Robson Corta says.
Applause also from the diners and drinkers arrayed along the curve of the bar.
‘I told ya, I told ya I knew the face,’ shouts a young man, a new regular, in a short-sleeved leisure shirt, homburg pushed back on his head.
‘Did it hurt?’ asks Rigger Jayne, a regular, from her fixed
place at the corner of the bar, and suddenly a dozen questions are flying at Robson.
‘What what what what what?’ Robson asks but he is beginning to form an idea.
‘You were the kid who fell from the top of Queen of the South,’ Jianyu says.
‘I knew the face!’ Homburg shouts again. ‘I remember it from the social media. You’re that Corta, aren’t you?’
Silence in El Gato Encantado. Then Robson sees Haider, in the booth, feet still not touching the ground but not kicking this time, nothing about him moving. His face is the colour of sacred ash. Robson strides over to him.
‘What have you done? What did you say?’
‘It was the story, I couldn’t help it.’
‘Not here.’ Robson storms to the washroom, rounds on Haider.
‘What did you do?’
‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. The man in the hat said he’d heard the kid who fell from the sky lived here and Jianyu said he didn’t know and I couldn’t help it. I told them the whole story. It’s a great story, Robson. You don’t know how to tell it right. I was good. You couldn’t hear a breath.’
‘I so wish you hadn’t done that.’
‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robson says. ‘Man in the hat? Who is he? Is he safe? What if he tells someone else? What if word gets back? What if we have to go?’
‘Could that happen?’ Haider asks.
‘I don’t know. Where could we go? Where’s safe?’
Robson’s anger is fading, damping down to embers. Haider is guilty, ashamed, terrified that his moment of shine, an audience enchanted by his words, has put Robson in danger and burned a friendship.
‘I’m sorry,’ Haider said.
‘It’s said now,’ Robson says. ‘I’ll have to tell Analiese. And Wagner.’ And look around him, behind him, into every corner, and never feel comfortable in Theophilus’s corridors again. It always was a lie, that comfort. An illusion, an effect. No Corta is ever safe. The only shelter on the moon is behind the bodies of people you love.