Moon Rising

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Okay, Haider.’

  No answer.

  ‘Haider?’

  When Alexia looks back Haider’s hand is empty.

  Alexia hates João de Deus. She hates the thick, rebreathed air, she hates the stench of cooking oil rubbed deep into the porous stone, the reek of piss and poorly managed sewage. She hates the taste of dust and the soft scrape of it under the soles of her Bonwit Teller shoes. She hates the meanness of the streets, the judging loom of the overhanging levels, the claustrophobia of the too-close sunline – she can read the individual cells of the false sky. She hates the eyes that glance as they pass, or from the alleys and ladeiras, or look down from crosswalks. The eyes that glance and turn away when she looks back. She knows what they say. Mão de Ferro? There has only ever been one Mão de Ferro: the woman who built this place, who built a helium empire on regolith exhausted of all other value. Adriana Corta.

  Her wards and charms are immaculate: she and Haider were greeted at the station by Hossam El Ibrashy, Mackenzie Helium’s new First Blade. Finn Warne, his predecessor, was now First Blade at Hadley.

  Fifty Mackenzie blades landed on these two platforms, overwhelmed Corta Hélio defenders and attacked up Kondakova Prospekt, Maninho informed her as the LMA railcar drew into João de Deus Station. On your right, first level, highlighted is Lucas Corta’s erstwhile apartment. His sound-room was the finest in the two worlds. She can’t refuse to look: she sees smoke-stained windows, charred interiors, imagines she still smells burned woods, melted organics. Hossam El Ibrashy makes charming small talk, the two Mackenzie Helium blades are tight and discreet and Maninho whispers the other story. Every centimetre of the city is embossed with a history of Mackenzie perfidies: every door, every alley overlain with the memory of wrongs. Estádio da Luz: home of João de Deus Jaguars, formerly Gatinhas and Mocos.

  ‘Hold on a minute.’

  Maninho highlights the Boa Vista tram stop, shuttered and sealed, but here is something not written in its histories. A semicircle of biolights flickers at the foot of the wall – red, green gold. Among them, cheap printed figurines loll and slump or wobble on unsteady bases.

  ‘A moment please.’ Alexia breaks away from her escort to crouch before the biolights. Haider joins her. Icons have been hung on the pressure seal: elderly women in white and beads like old Baianas. Mães de Santo, holy women, the Sisters of the Lords of Now, arranged around a broken triangle of portraits. Two men, a woman at the centre; a gap where one has been removed; the adhesive pads still tacky to the touch. That picture lies face down among the votives. Alexia touches each picture in turn. So this is Rafa. Golden son. Smiling, popular, but Alexia reads demons behind his eyes. And this is Carlinhos, the fighter. He is beautiful. Alexia regrets she will never meet him. And this: a strong-featured, dark-skinned woman, dark hair flecked with radiation-grey, looking out with eyes of empire: this can only be Adriana Corta. The Iron Hand that dug a dynasty out of the regolith. The Iron Hand would not hire criminals to bring justice to the men who damaged her beloved brother. The Iron Hand forges and delivers her own justice.

  Alexia doesn’t need to turn the fallen portrait face up. She knows who it is. Iron Hand, charmer, fighter. Traitor. You’ll see, João de Deus.

  ‘Senhora Corta, we need to move on.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She squeezes Haider’s hand. He glances at her, startled and she regrets the gesture: too big a startle and he might choke on the deaths hidden in his mouth.

  Almost there, she says on their private channel.

  Mackenzie Helium has appropriated a half-kilometre of prospekt-front offices. The logo is worked out in neon, three levels high. Heavy security. Alexia can tell the Santinho recruits by their furtive glances of guilt and hope.

  ‘If you please, Senhora Corta, this is as far as you go.’

  She nods to Haider. This was expected but he is afraid now.

  ‘You go on, Haider. It’ll be all right.’

  Seats are provided, tea is brought by bright staff in neat Mackenzie Helium uniforms. Hossam El Ibrashy touches Haider lightly on the arm and escorts him through the sliding doors.

  The room is white, bright, upholstered ivory faux-leather. No windows. Haider blinks against the hard brilliance. Robson is a spirit in white shorts and sleeveless T. His skin and hair stand stark against the white white white.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ Hossam El Ibrashy says. ‘Five minutes.’

  The door closes. Now is the part you cannot practise, that has to be right. Now is where the friendship is tested on the edge of the knife, where Robson has to accept and understand without a whisper or a flinch. Now is the trick.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Ola.’

  Haider hugs Robson to him. He still feels like a sack of bones and cables. Pulls him close.

  Now.

  Kisses him. On the mouth. Pushes the first death with his tongue against Robson’s lips. Quick quick please be quick. Cameras are watching. AIs are scanning up and down the private frequencies. Quantum processors stand by, ready to crack encryptions like an infant’s skull. Robson hesitates, then Haider feels his body relax. Robson opens his mouth. Haider locks his fingers behind Robson, turns his head to make the kiss deeper, longer, more passionate. Death by death, he slides the poisons into Robson’s mouth.

  ‘You’re okay, you’re okay, I’m so happy,’ Haider babbles, still clinched boy to boy. It’s cover, and it’s pure nervous relief. ‘Are you all right? Are they treating you good? Is the food okay? Do they let you move around? Wagner says to give you his love – they wouldn’t let him come. Do you know about … about, what happened?’

  Robson nods solemnly, eyes wide.

  ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

  Will an AI hear the change in his voice? Will machines read what lies behind the awkwardness? Are these all imaginings?

  ‘Do you want some horchata?’ Robson says. ‘I got a kitchen. Sort of.’

  It’s hard to talk. Conversation is as heavy as lead. Words are rough and uncomfortable. Haider drinks the horchata. It is how he likes it. His eyes widen as he sees Robson take a sip. Nothing. Cool and controlled as if he were taking a saut de bras off the Level 5 water tank. That’s clever, so clever. He’s drinking horchata so there can’t be anything in his mouth. They forget that Robson knows both the trick and the misdirection.

  ‘Got a gym, want to see it?’ Robson says. Robson has more rooms in his João de Deus prison than entire sectors in Theophilus. ‘I’m supposed to work out.’ Robson shows Haider the free weights, the running track, the step and swivel trainer. ‘There’s a lot of stuff for working on my ass here.’ He pauses. Frowns. ‘’Scuse me. Bathroom. Be right back.’

  And this is where the switch is done. From mouth to another hiding place. Not in the bathroom; they’ll surely search that. The ass, probably. Robson can work it so even if there are cameras in there – and Haider wouldn’t put it past Bryce Mackenzie – they will never see it.

  ‘Sorry about that. This has been happening. The water here is weird.’

  The door opens.

  ‘Sorry, but it’s time,’ Hossam El Ibrashy says.

  ‘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.’ Robson 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 dr
ink 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.