by Ian McDonald
Shudder. Crack. Creak.
‘Open the doors, Madam Sun.’
Another impact. The plastic bubble is crazed like cracking ice.
I cannot advise …
‘Just a hair.’
The petals unseal. Vidhya Rao’s security swarm deliquesces through the lines into swirling smoke. Drones wreathe the furious little dray, attack its seams and panels. Cables snap, joints spray hydraulic fluid. The dray sags, tries to drive forward and goes in a circle. Stops dead. The security drones drain from its cavities and cracks like black sand and sift down through the mesh of the elevator platform.
The security cloud is out of power, Madam Sun says. I’ve contracted mercenaries to meet us on Fifteen and escort us to Orion Hub.
‘The station is covered?’
And the BALTRAN. We are not taking either of those options.
Glancing down, Vidhya Rao sees figures in combat armour waiting on the ramp. Mercenaries. As e descends through level fifteen the fighters effortlessly swing on to the elevator platform.
‘You good?’ one shouts in Australian-accented Globo through the part-opened bubble.
‘I am well,’ Vidhya Rao says. E can make nothing out beyond the mask: face, voice.
‘We got you now,’ the mercenary says. ‘Hope you got a strong stomach. It’s going to be quite a ride.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘You’re taking a trip on the moonloop.’
If he moves one centimetre to his left the bell will ring. The maze is dark and he is blind but he knows it with every cell in his body.
Reach out your self, they told him. Where does your body end? The top layer of your skin? The tips of your hairs? The air currents that stir those hairs? Make your body more than your body, make your senses more than senses and you will hear the bell before it ever makes a sound, feel it before you ever touch it.
He feels the third bell.
He has never made it this far into the maze. It grows narrower and more convoluted with each stage and Mariano Gabriel Demaria resets the bells after every failure.
Darius slides around and past the bell. Something touches his skin. The lightest, most delicate ting.
‘Shit shit shit shit.’
And the lights come on. Darius is in a tight U-turn of industrial panelling, one bell a breath from his right shoulder, one touching his left shoulder.
Navigate the maze not just with your senses but your reason. With your emotions. With your insight. If your most recalcitrant pupil had failed five times to get past the third bell, where would you set the fourth bell? Right next to the third.
‘Okay, come out of there. Lady Sun wants to see you.’
Darius strikes every bell on his way back to the start of the maze.
‘That’s not fair.’
Mariano Gabriel Demaria throws him a bag of clothes.
‘Fair, unfair. Weaknesses. The moon is not fair.’
‘You set those bells so there was no way to avoid them.’
‘Did I say you had to avoid them? The only instruction is that the bell must not ring. You could go underneath the bell. You could tie the string up. You could cut the string. You could steal the clapper. You would be Ladron Supremo if you did that, but there is always a way past the bells. Now put some clothes on.’
Darius peers into the bag.
‘Handball gear?’
‘You’re going to a ball game.’
Transport waits on the ledge; not the usual moto that brings Darius to his lessons at the School of Seven Bells, but a Taiyang aircar. A handball game at the Coronado is so important that it requires executive transport? Darius scrambles up the steps into the cab. The ducted fans spin up, the machine lifts and dips down from a platform high on Jain Mao Tower. Darius gives a whoop as the aircar swoops down between Taiyang Automation and First Towers, then pulls into level flight, banks around Kingscourt and follows Queen’s Boulevard straight towards the pastel egg of Queen’s Crown nested in a cluster of six towers.
‘Can we go round again?’
I’m instructed to bring you to the Dowager without delay, the aircar says. But it draws the stares of the spectators settling on to the neat grass outside the ticket hall. Two of Lady Sun’s groomed entourage whisk Darius past every line, through every turnstile, up every staircase, through every crowd, to the doors that open only to their faces, to the family boxes: mid-court, high enough to see all the action, not so high that a Sun cannot throw the ball out to start the game.
Sun Zhiyuan, Tamsin Sun, Jaden Wen Sun, Sun Liqiu and Sun Gian-yin. Lady Sun, and she despises handball.
‘What is he doing here?’ Sun Liqiu asks
‘It’s important he sees how we do business,’ Lady Sun says.
‘He’s not …’ Sun Gian-yin says.
‘Genetics would disagree,’ Lady Sun says.
‘Good shirt,’ Jaden Wen Sun says. Darius tugs, embarrassed, at the hem of his new season Sun Tigers shirt. ‘Can we get on with this? I’ve got a game.’
‘The company is under threat,’ Lady Sun says. ‘I have been consulting recently with the Three August Ones.’
‘Voodoo,’ Sun Liqiu says.
‘Who should I meet there but Vidhya Rao?’
‘Economist, consultant to Whitacre Goddard bank and member of the Lunarian Society and the Pavilion of the White Hare,’ Sun Zhiyuan explains to Darius.
‘And proponent of the Lunar Bourse concept,’ Lady Sun says. ‘Which the terrestrials are funding aggressively. What interests Vidhya Rao interests me.’
‘Vidhya Rao escaped from Meridian on the moonloop,’ Jaden Sun says. ‘It was quite a show. Drones, moto chases and everything. A flying assassin.’
‘I know,’ Lady Sun says. ‘I helped er.’
Bafflement in the owners’ box of the Coronado.
‘What did e discover?’ Tamsin Sun says.
‘I don’t know. I do know that e had been spending a lot of time with the Three August Ones,’ Lady Sun says.
‘What did they tell er that the terrestrials tried to assassinate er on the streets of Meridian?’ Sun Gian-yin asks.
‘Impossible to discover without exposing our own interrogations of the Three August Ones to Whitacre Goddard and therefore the terrestrials. I did ask the Three August Ones about potential threats to Taiyang from the Lunar Bourse. They want the Sun-ring. The Three August Ones predict an eighty-seven per cent probability of Earth taking control of the Sun-ring within eighteen lunes to power their financial market.’
Consternation in the owners’ box at the Coronado.
‘If we start power transmission before the terrestrials have their bourse running …’ Sun Zhiyuan says.
‘We could capture the market,’ Tamsin Sun says. ‘A dependent market.’
‘We could effectively give it away free for a year,’ Zhiyuan says.
‘The heroin dealer’s strategy,’ Tamsin Sun says.
‘Problem,’ Jaden Sun says. He points up, through Coronado’s dome, through the roof of Queen of the South. ‘We need the relay satellite.’
‘I shall talk with Yevgeny Vorontsov,’ Zhiyuan says. ‘I also move an immediate power-up on the Sun-ring. Show Earth that we are open for business.’
‘This is a board decision,’ Lady Sun says.
‘We don’t have enough for quorum in this room,’ Tamsin Sun says.
‘Seniority has its benefits,’ Lady Sun says. ‘In cases of financial, political or social crisis, when the survival of Taiyang is threatened, the senior board member has the authority to draft board members. I nominate Darius Sun-Mackenzie to the board of Taiyang.’
Glances, slow nods. Outside the box, the arena MCs are whipping up the audience with quick-fire call-and-response. Music blares. A cheer goes up.
‘I witness,’ Jaden Wen Sun says.
The crow
d outside sends a rolling cheer around and around the seating tiers.
‘I second,’ Zhiyuan says.
‘I witness,’ Tamsin says.
‘Then we have a quorum in this box,’ Lady Sun says. ‘I propose we immediately power up the Sun-ring and open negotiations with VTO and the terrestrial energy suppliers. Hands?’
Hands. Murmured ayes.
‘So passed,’ Zhiyuan says. ‘It is resolved that Taiyang powers up the Sun-ring and negotiates supply contracts with Earth.’
‘Well, if that’s all settled,’ Jaden Sun says, ‘now we can play handball. Darius, as newest board member, you can take the throw-in.’
The match MCs have spiralled the crowd, home and away, into a crescendo of excitement. Spectators are ready, commentators are ready, scoreboards and screens and close-in drones are ready. Players are ready. Jaden hands Darius the ball. It is smaller than he thought, heavier; fit to his hand and heft.
‘Throw it in like a Sun,’ Lady Sun says.
‘Watch me.’ Darius steps down into the pulpit. The Coronado’s tiers drown him in voices as he raises his hand. Reach out with sense and sinew. Where does the body end? The hand that holds the ball, the tips of the fingers, the skin of the ball itself, the skin of every one of the three thousand handball fans jammed around the tight oval of the stadium. Darius throws, the ball flies straight, high, true. The players leap, sculptures in slow gravity: the crowd rises in a thunder of voices.
The two boys stand so sober and serious on Theophilus’s small platform that it is all Analiese Mackenzie can do to keep herself from erupting with laughter.
‘Got everything?’ Robson asks.
She holds up the long case that holds the setar.
‘Let us know when you get there,’ Robson says.
‘Better,’ interrupts Haider. ‘Let us know when you get the connection at Hypatia. Hypatia is tricky.’
‘I change trains at Hypatia every time the band meets,’ Analiese says. The station at Theophilus is little more than a large airlock serving the rail shuttle to the mainline.
‘This is different,’ Robson says gravely. ‘This is tour.’
He’s right. This is tour and it is different. Ten nights, eight dates from Meridian to Hadley, Rozhdestvenskiy to Queen of the South. It’s not Robson she fears leaving home alone. He’ll move Haider in and they’ll be proper little home-makers together. She fears for Wagner. He came back in from his latest inspection tour, picked at some food and rolled up to bed. Exhaustion. Tough out there in southern Tranquillity. Analiese was not fooled. He had been out there under the burning sky on his meds and now the old familiar dark was coming.
She rose early, cleaned and packed her setar as carefully as a religious relic. He was still asleep, muttering in a language neither she nor her familiar could identify. The tongue of wolves. He was so pretty, so worn out, so vulnerable. He rolled over at her touch.
‘I’m going now, coraçao.’ He liked it when she used Portuguese. ‘You sleep on. You need it. I’ll call you when I get to Meridian.’
He muttered, opened his eyes, saw her, smiled. She kissed him.
He had a particular scent when the change was on him. Sweet and musky.
The boys will take care of him for the ten days of tour.
A thrum through the smooth stone, the click of mechanisms meshing, the whir of pressure equalising. The shuttle has arrived. The lock opens.
‘You can listen if you want,’ Analiese says. ‘We’re streaming the Meridian concert.’
Robson and Haider look aghast. For a moment she might hug Robson but that would compound a venal sin with a mortal one.
The outlock opens. Wagner. Shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, sandshoes. His hair is a mess, his eyes are bleary, he looks like a coma, walking. He is dark and he is light and he is all beauty.
‘You’re going,’ he stammers. ‘I forgot. Sorry.’
She sets down the setar and throws herself on him.
‘You smell good.’
She bites his ear. He growls. This is the Wagner Corta she remembers. Half a man is better than the wan ghost of Wagner Corta trying to live without the meds.
Analiese Mackenzie picks up her instrument.
‘Look after him.’
‘I will,’ Wagner says.
‘I wasn’t talking to you.’
He has never been so afraid.
In moments he will be at the door. Beyond it will be his son. His hand quivers on the head of his cane.
‘He’s awake and excited to see you, Senhor Corta,’ Dr Gebreselassie says.
Who is awake, who is excited? Is it Lucas Corta Junior, Lucasinho? Lucas’s memory has a long track to run to recall where he saw his son last. Twenty lunes, the lobby of the Home Inn hotel the night before the wedding of the century. Parting words: don’t get drunk, don’t get high, don’t fuck it up. A straighten of the lapels of Lucasinho’s jacket to cover the catch in his throat. He never wanted Lucasinho to marry Denny Mackenzie. Jonathon Kayode had been so proud of his dynastic marriage that would put an end to half a century of vendetta: the Shining Boys! Jonathon was always the toy of Mackenzie Metals. The Eagle of the Moon died screaming and shitting into two kilometres of airspace, but Adrian was found with a bloody knife in each hand. No one ever called a Mackenzie coward.
So here they were, the Shining Boys; one a daredevil rebel swinging through the roof of the world; the other a vacuum-dried husk being rebuilt memory by injected memory.
All these thoughts in the time it takes his hand to hesitate over a door handle. What is the speed of memory?
‘What are you staring at?’ he says to Luna, frowning balefully at his side. Her white fright-mask is not half so intimidating as her own face. Lucasinho did this for you. You are not forgiven. Forgiveness is for Christians and I am no Christian. ‘You stay here.’
‘Don’t tire him out,’ Luna orders.
Lucas steps into the room.
He had a smart line about this being the second time he’s found him in hospital after drinking vacuum. It’s gone. Lucas Corta is in rapture, Lucas Corta is appalled. The boy is so small on that bed: so thin. But the bones are good. The bones always were good. Has he seen him? Can he see at all? Lucas with half a mouth, half an eye, half a face.
‘Sorry,’ Lucasinho says.
Lucas Corta barely makes it to the chair. He takes his son’s hand and collapses. His chest heaves, his breath beats and quails, he dare not speak because the weight of one word will crack everything and the years of biting back, of deep discipline, of containing and controlling will shatter him.
Rafa the golden one, Lucas the shadow. The lover, the schemer, the talker, the fighter. And the wolf.
‘Please …’
Lucas’s grip has tightened on his son’s hand to the point of pain.
‘I’m sorry.’
We are rebuilding him from the memories of others, Dr Gebreselassie said. Network, family, friends, lovers.
‘You know who I am?’ Lucas says.
‘You are Lucas Corta. You are my father. My mother is Amanda Sun, my madrinha is Flavia,’ Lucasinho says. The words are slow, the effort total. ‘Amanda came to see me. Is that why you’re here?’
Lucas moves the subject away from his ex-wife and the deal she made with him. The software has been coded, all that is left is the infection, and the contagion, bot to bot to bot. It should take no more than thirty seconds to spread between all fifteen thousand bots.
Be here. You never were here for him. Five hours by rail around the waist of the moon and you are reviewing your deal and schemes, who you can trust, who you cannot.
‘Do you remember where you used to live?’ Lucas says.
‘The place with the big faces, wet with water. Green and warm. Boa Vista.’
‘Do you remember, I wasn’t at Boa Vista very much. I lived
at João de Deus. That was another place we had.’
‘João de Deus.’ Lucas can see his son fighting to attach name to detail. Lucasinho’s face brightens. ‘Smelly!’ Lucas laughs aloud.
‘Yes. Smelly! But I’m going to go back to Boa Vista. I’m doing work there. I’m going to fill it with living things. You can live there too, when you’re ready.’
Lucas knows the eyes watching, the ears listening. Lucasinho’s medical team, the faculty, the university with its secretive agenda, a vigilance of ghazis. His sister, at some remove. Help him remember, Lucas was told. Take him back. Don’t take him forwards, don’t promise him.
Now Lucas can see the process he understands what is being done, and with that understanding come doubts. Who controls the memories, who decides what is brought forward and what is pushed back, what is injected into Lucasinho’s brain at all? Lucasinho does not remember João de Deus beyond bad atmosphere. Lucas was an absent, distant father. The memories that built his childhood are those of his madrinha. The Corta way. Lucas thinks of Alexia growing up in her tangle and tatter of lives, wrapped up in others. Now he thinks of his own son, solitary among the stone faces. No wonder he wanted to taste everything the world and people had to offer. No wonder he ran off to the bright lights the first chance he got.
The boy tires quickly. His attention dips, his motor control slackens. Words slur into each other, his eyes cannot focus. Time to go.
‘Son.’
He embraces a kite of skin and rib. As Lucas opens the door the healing hands of the machines reach from floor walls and ceiling to embrace Lucasinho, touching, ministering. Rewriting his life.
Planet Earth is blue and it throws its gentle light across the Ocean of Storms. Lunar night: the cities glitter with ten thousand lights, sparks wheel through the high black – moonloop capsules, BALTRAN pods, rare and precious ships. A swift spear of light is a passenger express travelling to the far side of the world. On either side of the wide rail tracks is a wider belt of pure glossy black: lunar regolith sintered and salted and seeded by Taiyang engineers. The Sun-ring girds eighty per cent of the moon’s equator. Machines and glasser teams work lunar day and night to drive the band of black across Farside’s unrelenting mountains and craters. Taiyang legal teams negotiate access agreements with the university which does not want its pristine research moonscape despoiled by industry and profit.