Luna

by Ian McDonald

  ‘So you work for the hospital.’

  ‘I work for Corta Hélio. And my mom.’

  There are only two of them now. Carlinhos leads her down off the rocks and the Sea of Serpents is wide and open before them.

  ‘I was born and grew up in Port Angeles, Washington State,’ Marina says, because there are only two of them, alone on the plain that curves away from them in every direction, she talks about growing up in the house up by the edge of the forest that was full of bird calls and windchimes and the fluttering of flying banners and windsocks. Mother: reiki practitioner and angelic healer and reader of the cards and feng shui arranger, cat sitter and dog walker and horse trainer: all the many jobs of late twenty-first service employment. Father: faithful in gifts at birthdays and holidays and graduations. Sister Kessie, brother Skyler. The dogs, the fogs, the log trucks; the engine-throb of the big ships out in the channel, the parade of RV and motorbikes and trailers passing through to mountains and water; the money that always appeared just as desperation turned its wheels into the front yard. The knowledge that the whole dance was one pay-cheque away from collapse.

  ‘I had this thing about the ships,’ Marina says, realising as she does that Carlinhos may have no referent for the gigantic carriers that sailed the strait of San Juan de Fuca. ‘When I was real small I imagined that they had giant legs, like spiders, dozens of legs and that they were really walking across the bottom of the sea.’

  Thus engineers are built: from walking ships and a loved toy, an improving game for girls where the mission was to rescue imperiled animals using ribbons and pulleys and elevators and gears.

  ‘I liked to make them really complicated and spectacular,’ Marina says. ‘I videoed them and stuck them up online.’

  Her mother was nonplussed and delighted that her eldest daughter showed a flair for problem-solving and engineering. It was an alien philosophy in the ramshackle, last-minute lives of family and friends and associated animals but Ellen-May Calzaghe was fierce in her support even if she did not completely understand what Marina was studying at university. Computational evolutionary biology in process control architecture was a jabber of tech-talk that sounded most like regular pay-cheques.

  Then the tuberculosis came. It blew in from the east, from the sick city. People had been moving out from the city for years now, but the house had thought itself immune, protected. The disease blew past charms and chimes and astral warders and into Ellen-May’s lung and from there into the lining of her brain. One by one the antibiotics failed. Phages saved her, but the infection took her legs and twenty per cent of her mind. It left a bill for insane money. More money than any lifetime could earn. More money than any career; except black finance. Or one on the moon.

  Marina never intended to go to the moon. She grew up knowing there were people up there, and that they kept the lights burning on the world below. Like every child of her generation she had borrowed a telescope to giggle at King Dong of Imbrium but the moon was as distant as a parallel universe. Not a place you could get to. Not from Port Angeles. Until Marina found that she not only could, but she must, that that world was crying out for her skills and discipline, that it would welcome her and pay her lunatic money.

  ‘And that skill is serving Blue Moons at Lucasinho’s moon-run party?’ Carlinhos says.

  ‘They found someone cheaper.’

  ‘You should have read the contract closer.’

  ‘It was the only contract on offer.’

  ‘This is the moon …’

  ‘Everything is negotiable. I know that. Now.’ Then she had known nothing, only the surge of impressions and experiences, that every sense was yelling strange, new, frightening. Her training failed. Nothing could prepare her for the reality of walking out of the tether port into the crush and colour and noise and reek of Meridian. Sensibility rebelled. Put this lens in your right eye quick. Move like this, walk this way, don’t trip folk up. Set up this account, and this and this and this. This is your familiar: have you got a name, a skin for it? Read that? So: sign here here and here. Is that woman flying?

  ‘Word from the south-east squad,’ Carlinhos interrupts. ‘The Mackenzies have arrived.’

  ‘How far are we?’

  ‘Open her up.’

  Marina has been hoping he would say that. She feels the engine leap between her thighs. The dustbike answers with a surge of speed. Marina bends low. She doesn’t need to; there is no wind resistance to cut on the moon. It’s what you do on a fast bike. She and Carlinhos race side by side across the Mare Anguis.

  ‘And what about you?’ Marina asks.

  ‘Rafa’s the charmer, Lucas the schemer, Ariel’s the talker; I’m the fighter.’

  ‘What about Wagner?’

  ‘The wolf.’

  ‘I mean, Lucas can’t tolerate him. What’s that about?’

  ‘Our lives aren’t simple. We do things differently here.’ In those few words, Carlinhos says, we are still contractor and contractee.

  ‘I’m at about twelve per cent O2,’ Marina announces.

  ‘We’re here,’ Carlinhos says, brakes and swings the tail of the bike round in a doughnut of flying dust. Marina loops wide and slows to park up beside him. The dust settles gently around her.

  ‘Here.’ Dark, flat sea-bottom, as featureless as a wok.

  ‘North-east vertex of the Mare Anguis quadrangle,’ Carlinhos says. He unstraps the beacon from the back of the dustbike.

  ‘Carlinhos,’ Marina says. ‘Boss …’

  The horizon is so close, the Vorontsov ship so fast it is as if it has materialised in the sky above her, like an angel. It’s big, it’s half the sky; it’s low and descending on flickers of rocket thrust from its engine pods.

  Carlinhos swears in Portuguese. He is still snapping out the legs of the Corta beacon.

  ‘Those things have built-in positioning. If it touches the ground …’

  ‘I’ve an idea.’ A bad mad idea, a clause not even a lunar contract would cover. Marina guns the dustbike. The Vorontsov ship pivots on its central axis. Its thrusters throw up pillars of dust. Marina accelerates through the dust and brakes directly under the belly of the ship. She looks up. Warning lights splash across her helmet visor. They wouldn’t land on an employee of Corta Hélio. They wouldn’t mash her and burn her, not in front of a Corta. They wouldn’t. The ship hovers, then the thrusters glow and the transporter veers away from its landing zone.

  ‘No you fucking don’t!’ Marina kicks the dustbike again and dashes in underneath the descending ship. Rocket thrust buffets her, threatens to tumble her. Lower this time. Belly cameras swivel to lock on to her. What arguments are going on in the cockpit of that ship? This is the moon. They do things differently here. Everything is negotiable. Everything has a price: dust, lives. Corporate war with the Cortas. The transporter hangs in the air.

  ‘Carlinhos …’

  The transporter darts sideways. It can’t drift too far from the co-ordinates of the vertex which neutralises its advantage in speed. Marina can always catch up. But it’s low; dear gods it’s low. Too low. With a cry Marina throws the bike into a skid. The rear wheel goes out, bike and rider hit the dust and slide slide slide. Marina grabs dust to try and brake her speed. Winded, she comes to a halt under the landing pad. Engine-blast wraps her in blinding dust. The landing pad is crushing death bearing down inexorably on her. They’ve made the calculation.

  ‘Marina! Out of there!’

  With the last of her strength Marina rolls out from under the landing gear. The Vorontsov ship touches down. Pad and strut and shock absorbers are two metees from her face.

  ‘I’ve got it, Marina.’

  She rolls on to her other side and there is Carlinhos crouched, hand extended to help her up. Behind him the transponder beacon blinks. Those blinks are life. Those blinks are victory.

  ‘We’ve got it.’

  Marina struggles to her feet. Her ribs ache, her heart flutters, every muscle groans with exertion, she might throw
up in her helmet, a dozen hud alerts are flashing from yellow to red and she can’t feel her fingers or toes from the cold. But those lights, those little blinking lights. She puts an arm around Carlinhos and lets him help her hobble away from the ship. The transporter is beautiful and alien, a thing out of place, a child’s toy, abandoned in the Sea of Serpents. Figures in the brightly lit cockpit; one of them raises a hand in salute. Carlinhos returns the gesture. Then the thrusters fire, blinding Marina and Carlinhos in dust and the transporter is gone. They are alone. Marina sags against Carlinhos.

  ‘How long until that rover gets here?’

  Jorge settles the guitar into its customary, comfortable position against his body. Left foot a step forward, weight balanced.

  ‘What would you like me to play, Senhor Corta?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve brought you here falsely, Jorge.’

  Sleep had come hard after practice with the band, sequences and chord progressions running silver through his musical imagination; ways of working a difficult syncopation with the drummer. Gilberto his familiar whispered in his ear: Lucas Corta. Three thirty-four. Jesus and his Mother. I need you.

  ‘I don’t want you to sing.’

  Jorge’s breath catches.

  ‘I want you to have a drink with me.’

  ‘I’m very tired, Senhor Corta.’

  ‘There’s isn’t anyone else, Jorge.’

  ‘Your oko; Lucasinho …’

  ‘There isn’t anyone else.’

  On the balcony, a mojito mixed to Jorge’s taste. Lucas’s personal rum. Heading four o’clock now but São Sebastião Quadra bustles, robots and shift workers, maintenance and materiel technicians. The air is still, electric with suspended dust. Jorge tastes it on his tongue, in his throat. He would slip on his kuozhao to protect his singing voice but the dust-mask might affront Lucas.

  ‘I’m going to divorce my wife,’ Lucas says.

  Jorge struggles for an appropriate reponse.

  ‘I don’t know much about nikahs in the Five Dragons but I imagine it would be expensive to buy out of the contract.’

  ‘Very expensive,’ Lucas says. ‘Ridiculously expensive. The Suns are used to fighting in court. They’ve been fighting the CPC for fifty years. But I am ridiculously rich. And I have my sister Ariel.’ Lucas leans on the rail.

  ‘If you don’t love her …’

  ‘If you think love ever had anything to do with it, you really know nothing about the way we marry among the Dragons. No, it was pragmatic, political, dynastic. They all are. First the marriage, then the love. If you’re lucky. Rafa was and it’s killing him. This is a celebration, Jorge.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Senhor – Lucas.’

  ‘I have pulled off a singular victory. I had a brilliant idea, executed brilliantly. I have defeated my enemies and I have brought power and wealth to my family. I am the toast of Four Dragons. Tonight this is my city. And all I see is a man huddling in a cave in an empire of dust. I was born in this cave and I’ll die in this cave and all my borrowed water and air and carbon will be taken back and paid out. I’ll become part of a million lives. It’s a mean sort of resurrection. And we never had a choice. My mother did. She traded the Earth for wealth. I didn’t have that choice. None of us do. We can’t go back – there is no back for us. This is all we have: dust, sunlight; people. The moon is people. That’s what they say. Your worst enemy and your best hope. Rafa likes people. Rafa hopes for heaven. I know we live in hell. Rats in a tunnel, banished from beauty.’

  ‘Should I sing for you, Lucas?’

  ‘Maybe you should. Everything is clear, Jorge. I know exactly what I have to do. That’s why I will be rid of Amanda. That’s why I can’t rejoice. That’s why I can’t hear you tonight. Jorge.’ Lucas brushes a finger along the back of Jorge’s hand. ‘Stay.’

  ‘Wake up.’

  Hands grasp her under the shoulders and lift her. She was within a nod of sliding asleep into the water. Carlinhos crouches by the side of the water tank. He taps Marina’s cocktail glass, sticky with the sapphire residue of a Blue Moon. ‘Not a good mix. Drowning on the moon: it’s not good on the autopsy report.’

  ‘I felt owed a celebration.’

  Marina had been on her last sips of oxygen when the relief rover dashed up over the horizon; shuddering with cold; anoxia blue as Carlinhos hooked her into the life support. The rover spun its wheel-housings and laid in a course at full speed for Beikou, a Taiyang server-farm on the rim of Macrobius. By the time Carlinhos bundled Marina through the outlock and the airblade had blasted her clean of dust she was slipping in and out of hypothermic unconsciousness. Fingers unsealing her sasuit. Hands peeling it from her. Intimate fingers unhooking her function tubes, the tug of caked lubricant and crusted body fluids. Hands lowering her into water, warm warm water what? Water surrounding penetrating caressing her. Water calling her back to life.

  What is this?

  ‘Just a tank.’ Carlinhos’s voice. Those hands: his hands? ‘You nearly died out there.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have landed a ship on me.’ She could barely force the words through chattering teeth. She was coming back to life and it was agony.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Needed doing.’

  ‘I love the way you say that.’ Carlinhos said. ‘So norte. So righteous. Needs doing.’ He trailed a finger across the surface of the pool. ‘We’ll cover the water charge.’

  Beikou is as close and introverted as a convent: Suns, Asamoahs and minor clans twine together in chains of linked polyamorys. The narrow, stooping tunnels ring with the voices of children in five languages; the triple-breathed air smells of bodies and sweat, the peculiar dust of computer systems, sour urine. For Marina to inhale it, to wallow in this egg of water, clenched inside the moon, Corta Hélio struck contracts with Taiyang and AKA. Marina leans back, lets her hair swirl out in the warm water. She can reach up and touch the sintered glass roof. Ao Kuang, Dragon-king of the East Sea, painted manhua-style, glares down from the close ceiling. Water laps against her breasts. Something has disturbed the pool.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She had blinked out again, blinks open to see Carlinhos shrug out of his sasuit.

  ‘I’m coming in.’

  He lowers himself into the water. You look tired, she thinks. You’re magnificent but bone tired. You move like an old crab. Hetty’s activity log reported twenty-eight hours on the surface. The sasuits were rated for twenty-four. We should all be dead. She flicks water in Carlinhos’s face. He’s so tired he hardly flinches.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Did we get it?’

  ‘The Court of Clavius recognised our claim and issued a licence. We’ve already put out construction tenders.’

  She lifts a little, painful fist; gives a little painful yay.

  ‘You know, maybe we are owed a celebration,’ Carlinhos says. ‘They make a really good potato vodka here.’

  ‘What was that about drowning looking shit on your death cert?’

  ‘Worse than a VTO moonship landing on you?’

  ‘You.’ She flicks water at him again. He can’t or won’t dodge. Oh you man, you are so cute when you’re tired and stinky and stubbly and hurting and I could so do you now and you’re right in front of me, touching my knees, my shins, my feet and if I moved my hand just a few centimetres there and you moved your hand a few centimetres here we would, but I won’t because I’m a wreck and you’re a wreck and you’re still my boss and a Dragon and Dragons have always scared me, but most of all because we are like twins in a womb, curled up next to each other in this warm water and that would be prenatal incest.

  She shuffles next to him and they lean comfortably, painfully against each other, like old people, skin to skin, enjoying each other’s weight and presence. A long-limbed teen Sun – Marina can’t make out their gender beyond skinny-gangly – ducks through the low door
to serve Blue Moons. Laughter, pop music, children yelling, the burr of machinery, resound through the tunnels as it they were the pipes of a great musical instrument.

  ‘Corta Hélio.’ A toast.

  ‘Sea of Snakes. If I do nod off…’

  ‘I’ll watch out for you,’ Carlinhos says.

  ‘And I’ll watch out for you.’

  The sex always begins the same way. One glass, cold-dewed. One measure chilled gin. Three drops of blue Curacao from a glass pipette. No music. Music distracts Ariel Corta from sex. Tonight she wears an exquisite Rappi ballerina-length dress with petticoats, a New Look Dior straw platter hat and gloves. Her lips are Revlon Fire and Ice red, and pursed in small concentration as she releases the drops of Curacao one at a time from the pipe. Tonight she uses the ten-botanical Dilma Filmus gave her. When the last drop has sent its ripples across the surface of the martini glass Ariel Corta steps out of her dress. Brassieres are unknown in lunar gravity and she eschews other underwear. Gloves, hat, lace-top hold-up stockings, Roger Vivier five-inch heels. Ariel Corta lifts the martini in her gloved hand and takes a sip.

  The boys brought it home. Vidhya Rao’s tip was sound. Ariel’s short, secure conversation through private encryption with Lucas has proved three things. To Rafa, that she too has power. To her mother, that the Cortas truly are the Fifth Dragon. To Lucas, that she is always a Corta. We want to buy you, Vidhya Rao had said. Not bought; fee-ed. Hired, not owned. That is the difference between the trader and the consultant. You’ve triumphed. Ariel Corta raises a toast to herself and to all her clients and contractees and coterie. She takes another sip from her Blue Moon. Beijaflor shows Ariel herself through discreet cameras. Ariel poses to better admire her body. She is magnificent. Magnificent.

  Before undressing she vapes a capsule of Solo. The Chemical Sisters, narco-designers to society, print it for bespoke, for these sessions. Hat on padded stand, gloves and stockings patiently and carefully rolled off. Ariel enters the sex room. Her skin, her nipples, her lips and vulva and anus crackle with sexual desire. Walls and floor are softly padded white faux-leather. The apparel awaits her, laid out in careful order, made to measure in white faux-leather. The boots first; high and tight and laced tighter still; tightest yet as she tugs in the lacing. She paces around the small room letting her thighs brush against each other, the tickle of the laces against her ass and vulva. She kneels, thrilling in the dig of the eyes and heels against her buttocks. Then the gloves, shoulder length and laced; pulled tight. She spreads her fingers, encased in tight white leather. The stiff, high collar. Ariel gasps as the laces tighten and she surrenders mobility and freedom. Last of all, the corset. A ritual, this; the exhalations, the carefully timed drawings-in of the laces until she can barely breathe. Her small breasts are proud and pert.