Moon Rising

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Hey. Want to give me the wolf’s tour of this place?’

  He almost smiled. He took her up through the ornamental grasses and saplings, the bamboo groves and waterfalls, past the rebuilt pavilions and the miradors to an incongruous elevator door in the wall of the world.

  ‘I kind of thought, the highlights?’

  ‘You wanted the wolf tour.’ He summoned the elevator.

  At the top of that elevator is this dark, dusty dome, and Wagner saying, ‘Fireworks are not a thing we have.’

  ‘I would think so,’ Alexia says.

  ‘Dona Luna has a thousand deaths, but fire: that’s the worst,’ Wagner says. ‘Fire burns the breath in your lungs. There was a fire at an old Corta Hélio maintenance base. When the rescue team got there, they found everything covered in black soot. The fire had burned out, but not before it consumed every molecule of oxygen in the base. Asphyxiation, or burning. You choose.’

  This is a man whose partner was murdered by Bryce Mackenzie’s blades, Alexia reminds herself. And the memory of Akosi the Poisoner, and what she brought back from Twé in a sealed titanium case, and what the deaths inside can do, will not slip her mind. And she knows no better remedy than humans being with humans for such hurts.

  ‘Dragons,’ Wagner says. ‘We have flying dragons. Tens – hundreds – of metres long. At New Year and Yam Festival we fly them up and down the quadras, in and out of the bridges. They’re filled with lights and music.’

  ‘Where is this place?’ Alexia asks.

  ‘Where the wolf was born,’ Wagner says. A noise. Light. Shutters retract with a clatter of folding vanes and Alexia stands on the surface, under a million stars.

  ‘This was Adriana’s retreat,’ Wagner says. ‘She liked looking back at Earth, looking at the lights. We light the lights. That was our talisman. Or did she just want to make sure old Brasil was still there? Can you see her?’ Wagner points, draws Alexia in with the gentlest of touches. She sights up his arm. Blue Earth stands in the western sky. It will pass through its phases from full to new but it will never move from that fixed point above the drab plain of Mare Fecunditatis. And there, low on the belly of the full Earth, scarred with dust storms and new deserts but still green, still blue: old Brasil. ‘Old Doctor Macaraeg said I was bi-polar. Fed me pills, patches, behaviour modification drugs. The whole time I tried to tell her it’s not a disease, it’s more than that, but even I didn’t know what it was until I learned about the wolves.’

  ‘They’re – bi-polar?’

  Alexia sees Wagner wince in the Earth-light.

  ‘More than that. We’re a new neuro-ethnic identity.’ Now Alexia sees him smile apologetically. ‘Wolves. That’s what we are. But I knew then what I was – what I’d always been. I came up here. I stood where I’m standing now. I stood naked in the Earth-light and everything was illuminated. Everything made sense. I could feel it splitting me in two, tearing me apart into two people; the wolf and the shadow. Wagner Corta died that day. I was not one person, I was two.’

  He stands, eyes closed, bathing in the light. He is trembling. Every muscle, every nerve is burning.

  ‘Is the light hurting you?’ Alexia says.

  ‘Hurting me? No, never. But yes – it hurts.’

  ‘Wagner. Listen to me. Analiese betrayed you.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Alexia has a guess but she will not say it here.

  ‘They stabbed a knife through her neck. Through her neck. Why did they do that?’

  Wagner looks on the edge of collapse.

  ‘All I know is that she let Bryce’s blades walk in and take Robson. She betrayed you, Wagner.’

  ‘Bryce Mackenzie dies for this,’ Wagner hisses.

  ‘He will,’ Alexia says. ‘Oh he will. Lucas may be slow, he may be subtle, he may take the long way around, but he never misses.’

  ‘It should be mine,’ Wagner says.

  ‘Let Lucas take it,’ Alexia says. ‘You’re too close.’

  Wagner turns on her. Alexia steps back: here is the wolf, jaws wide, fangs bared, alien light burning in its eyes. Wagner Corta is dead, he said. There is only the wolf and the shadow.

  ‘You don’t say that to me. This is for the Cortas.’

  After the shock of the abrupt lycanthropy, Alexia meets Wagner’s darkness.

  ‘I am a Corta.’

  The Earth-madness shatters.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ Wagner’s hand moves, the shutters snap back into place. The blackness is blinding. The soft white lights emerge like stars over Barra. ‘We should go now.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No. But I never am.’ Wagner summons the elevator. The door opens and floods the dark, dusty observatory with a cool blue glow. ‘I’m sorry, Alexia.’

  ‘The wolf.’

  ‘Yes. Too much light.’ Wagner closes the elevator door. ‘I love him, you know. Robson. Like he was my own. I would do anything for that kid.’

  Alexia touches his hand. His skin is hot, she can feel the tremor of muscles fading.

  ‘You already have.’

  ‘Last of all, the death of the senses.’

  Alexia places the final set of five plastic needles on Lucas’s desk behind the eye of Oxala. Red, green, blue, yellow, white. Black. The final darkness.

  First death: the death of the bowels. The victim shall piss and shite themself as the linings of stomach, intestines, bladder slough off and liquefy.

  The second death: the death of the blood. Blood shall spurt from eyes, ears, nose, every orifice of the human body.

  The third death: the death of the soul. The mind shall be cast into a hell of hallucinations; endlessly replicating demons, fiery pits, falling through larger and larger universes.

  The fourth death: the death of the self. The body shall reject its own organs, vessels and architecture through a massive immune system failure. Even the skin shall blister and slough off in bloody sheets.

  The fifth death, the final death: the shutting off of the senses from the sights, sounds, smells of the other four deaths at their work. It is no mercy: the mind is trapped, sightless and soundless and helpless. The only sense that survives to the end is pain.

  ‘Good work,’ Lucas Corta says. He does not flinch, he makes no comment as Alexia lays out the toxins. He is still and cold and merciless as his poisons. That same deadly chill Alexia remembers when she felt his assassin fly stroke her neck in the suite in the Copa Palace Hotel. If he had had any doubt he would have killed her: cold, merciless, without lifting a hand. ‘Fine work.’

  ‘The Mother of Poisons waived her fee,’ Alexia says. ‘Because of …’

  ‘Bryce,’ Lucas says. ‘Why are you afraid to say it?’

  The poison must hear the name of its victim. Else how will it know?

  ‘I have a problem,’ Lucas says. ‘All this beautiful justice is so much junk unless I can deliver it to its target.’

  Lucas Corta stymied. For a moment Alexia is nonplussed, then a name comes to her. She sees it, whole and entire and beautiful. And cold and ruthless and exploitative, and the only thing that will work.

  ‘I’ve a suggestion,’ Alexia says.

  The care givers are good simple academic folk – he a selenologist, he a professor of poetry, and despite Lucas’s best intentions they are terrified. They sit side by side on the lounger, upright in readiness for flight, nostrils wide, eyes wider, touching often and gentle.

  Lucas sits almost knee to knee, leaning forward, keeping his head lower than theirs to signal intimacy. Many hand gestures, some touches. They flinch from each touch.

  Alexia can’t blame them. Even operating minimal security there are still escoltas at every door for a hundred metres up and down the ring. Theophilus has been invaded. The kid, though; the kid is something different.

&nbs
p; Haider sits opposite Alexia, hunched over in the chair, feet splayed, hands between his knees. Lanky and awkward. White hoodie and leggings. The whitest skin she has seen on the moon; black hair falling over one eye. Makes you look cute but you know that, Alexia observes. Boys can be cute and sweet and vulnerable. Then puberty makes them horrid.

  She tries not to think of Caio, up there in high Brasil.

  She flicks up her briefing. Lucas’s intelligence is thorough. Maninho knows things about Haider that his CGs don’t. That he is a kid of words, of stories. The stories he has written and given reluctantly to people. The stories he has written and does not give anyone. The stories he will never let anyone read: the ones about his BBFF Robson and Haider’s little boycrush.

  ‘What is it you want him to take, Senhor Corta?’ the selenologist, Arjun, asks.

  ‘I won’t lie to you,’ Lucas says. ‘Poison to kill Bryce Mackenzie.’

  Arjun and Max, the poetry professor, make small cries of consternation.

  ‘Political assassination?’ Max asks. He is the taller of Haider’s two care givers, with a poetry professor’s salt-and-pepper beard.

  ‘Robson will not be safe until Bryce Mackenzie is dead,’ Lucas says. ‘And because I am here – because Wagner came to you – you will not be safe until Bryce Mackenzie is dead. You are part of it now, I am afraid.’

  ‘I never asked …’ Max begins, then stops speaking as he realises the futility of his argument.

  ‘I will protect you,’ Lucas says. ‘For as long as is necessary.’

  ‘And Haider? What about him? You are asking our son to carry deadly poisons into the very heart of Mackenzie Metals,’ Max says.

  ‘I’m asking him to visit his best friend,’ Lucas says. ‘There will be no issue, he will visit at the behest of the Lunar Mandate Authority. There will be no danger.’

  Max snorts with pained contempt.

  ‘So you say, but what about your nephew? You were supposed to keep him safe. This places Robson in deadly danger,’ Arjun says.

  ‘Robson already is in deadly danger. You are aware of Bryce Mackenzie’s reputation. There are some things worse than death.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Haider’s voice fills the tiny room. He looks out fierce and resolved from behind his fringe. ‘I’ll go. For Robson.’

  ‘We forbid it!’ Max says.

  ‘Let him speak,’ Lucas says.

  ‘Nothing to say,’ Haider says. ‘Except I’ll do it. It has to be done. No one else can do it.’

  ‘We are your care givers,’ Max says. ‘Your parents.’

  Arjun rests a hand on his oko’s.

  ‘We have no power here. He can do whatever he wants.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it my way,’ Lucas says. ‘Be assured that he won’t be alone. Haider will be accompanied – as far as possible – by an office bearer of the Lunar Mandate Authority. My own Mão de Ferro.’

  ‘Ancillary staff here, on hand.’ Lucas leads the LMA executives across the bridge of the nose to the north eyeball. His cane clicks loudly on the polished stone floor. ‘Your committee room. For those times when network conferencing will not suffice. Discreet. Secure.’ He points out through the pupil-window with the tip of his cane to the stone face across the chasm. ‘My own office. Eye to eye, so to speak.’

  ‘Oxala, Lord of Light and Beginning,’ Anselmo Reyes says. ‘And we are to be stationed in Omolu; orixa of Death and Disease.’

  ‘Also orixa of healing,’ Lucas says. ‘And keeper of the graveyards.’

  Wang Yongqing purses her lips in displeasure.

  ‘It is inefficient to split and duplicate our efforts between Meridian and Boa Vista.’

  ‘I anticipate moving the entire LMA to Boa Vista. There is much to be said for separating the capital from the largest city. Much practised on Earth, though not in any of your nations. Boa Vista would be your own private city.’

  ‘Your own private city,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘With the LMA as your hostages.’

  ‘That’s an unfriendly expression, Madam Wang.’

  ‘But one with much currency on the moon. Senhor Corta, the LMA is concerned.’

  Birds call among the saplings. A blue morpho butterfly sweeps heavily past Omolu’s north eye. A thought to Toquinho and escoltas bring seats. Everything is prepared, everything is choreographed and Lucas will allow no deviations from his script.

  ‘We’ve approved and accredited your assistant,’ says Monique Bertin.

  ‘My Mão de Ferro,’ Lucas says. The terrestrials loathe the title. It sounds medieval, atavistic to their ears. Therefore Lucas delights in using it.

  ‘And the boy,’ Anselmo Reyes adds. ‘And provided a small escort.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lucas says.

  ‘We have not asked your interest in this,’ Wang Yongqing says. Her hands are folded in her lap. Lucas’s staff erect a table, serve tea. ‘This is not a favour. Ours is a business enterprise with commercial goals.’

  ‘I am a man of business,’ Lucas says.

  Wang Yongqing regards him for a cold moment.

  ‘I’m not sure you are, Senhor Corta. Not as we understand it. Of late you have been sending missions, holding meetings – doing deals – without our endorsement.’

  ‘I have to wheel and deal, Madam Wang.’

  ‘We are concerned,’ Anselmo Reyes says.

  ‘Earth is concerned,’ Monique Bertin says. ‘You recently sent your personal assistant to St Olga to set up a supply and confidence deal with the Vorontsovs.’

  ‘The Moonport space elevator system,’ Anselmo Reyes says. ‘I know that we have relied on VTO’s mass-driver as the bargaining position of last resort, but coupled with a monopoly over access to trans-lunar space – Earth cannot agree to that.’

  ‘The price of our favour is this,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘VTO has asked for a vote in council. You will veto it. This is not a democracy. Are we clear on that?’

  ‘My position could not be clearer,’ Lucas Corta says.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The car has been behind her for some time now, matching her pace as she swings along the track on her crutches. Crisp crackle of gravel, the pop of stones under the tyres. Marina feels it like a gun barrel pressed against the back of her neck.

  ‘I know it’s you, Kess,’ Marina shouts. ‘Just go past me!’

  She hears the car pull up alongside. Kessie rolls down the window to shout.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Marina sets her jaw and her determination. Rhythm and swing. Timing is everything. Break the rhythm and you go down. You are a quadruped, remember. Quadrupedal.

  ‘I’m all right. Go away.’

  The pick-up rolls along beside her. Kessie still leans on the window. Marina still swings along the dirt road to the cattle-grid that marks the edge of the world.

  ‘What do you want, Kess?’ Marina shouts.

  ‘Thought you might like to see the eagle nest down on the river trail.’

  Crutch step, crutch step.

  ‘The North Campsite nest?’ That eyrie has lodged in the dying pine as long as Marina can remember, a rickety slum of river-washed branches stacked year upon year, clutch upon clutch.

  ‘There’s a second hatching.’

  ‘Goodie for them.’

  ‘They’re still feeding the hatchlings.’

  Marina stops, leans into her crutches.

  ‘What is you want, Kess?’

  Her sister opens the pick-up door. Marina slings her crutches into the back of the pick-up and slides into the seat. Kessie turns neatly in the track and drives back past the house, past the white-painted cabin, past the barely stirring dogs on to the river track.

  ‘Dr Nakamura told you to rest up. Your bones are weak.’

  ‘My bones are my bones.’

  The river track
is a series of zig-zags down the steep western bank. The tyres kick up heavy, fragrant dust. It settles quickly. Moondust falls slow and brilliant: glitter and moonbows. Marina remembers the trails of dust thrown up from the wheels of the moonbikes by her and Carlinhos on their mad, wonderful ride to claim Mare Anguis for Corta Hélio. Their tracks would have been visible from space. That telescope on the back porch would have picked them up, two tiny scars across the upper shoulder of a full moon.

  Kessie bowls the pick-up along a suggestion of track; tyre-tread in a dried-out puddle, snapped twigs, flattened grass. Marina feels every rock and rut. Kessie parks the pick-up a respectful distance from the nest-tree. The eyrie is enormous, a second crown to the dying pine tree. Some of the really old eyries weigh up to a ton. The desiccated grass beneath is spattered with droppings. The river finds new words among the stones and gravel.

  ‘Really; what do you want?’ Marina asks.

  ‘Are you going back?’ Kessie says. ‘And before you deny it, Mom told me.’

  Marina tries to find comfort in the battered seat. She is never comfortable now. She has no comfort on this world. This chuckle of water, this seasoning of road dust, this high clear sky and somewhere, turning in it, the eagle, seem thin and translucent. Overlit, colours too bright. Lies. The tree is flat, insubstantial, paint on film. Set hand to that mountain and her fingers would go through it. The moon is ugly and the moon is cruel and the moon is unforgiving but she is only alive there.

  ‘It’s changed me, Kess. Not just physically. The moon knows a thousand ways to kill you. I’ve seen terrible things. I’ve seen people die. Horrific, stupid, pointless deaths. The moon doesn’t forgive, but Kess: life there, it’s so intense, so precious. They know how to live. Kids here, you turn seventeen, eighteen, you get the car, get drunk, throw a party. Kids there, you run bare-ass naked across ten metres of hard vacuum. They live every second of those ten metres.’

  ‘If you go back—’

  ‘I can’t ever leave.’

  A space for river-talk and the click and creak of the wind in the fabric of the eagles’ nest.