Luna

by Ian McDonald

  She bought less revealing shorts, a more decorous top. She put the coloured braids of São Jorge into vacuum storage.

  Running was just running. Fitness. A regime.

  I hate Meridian. I hated it the first time, I think I hate it even more than I did when I couldn’t afford to breathe and was selling my own piss.

  If I move this way; there, can you see that? That’s the view from my apartment. West 53rd, Aquarius Hub. This is Aquarius Quadra’s Hunt’s Point. Come with me. Look. Separate dining area. See this? I don’t have to pull the bed down. The shower isn’t on a timer. Okay, it’s like a rabbit hutch compared to your place but by moon standards, it’s a palace. So, why should I hate it?

  It’s not really Meridian. It’s Ariel Corta. She is a conceited, vain, clothes horse, has too many opinions and she’s nowhere near as good as she thinks she is. And she has this, like, entourage of people around her whose only job is to tell her how clever she is, how fabulous she is, how fantastic that dress looks on her, how talented and clever and witty she is. Well, I see through you, all of you, and I’m telling you; you’re none of that, Ariel Corta. You’re Mama Corta’s one and only little girl, you’re spoiled rotten. You’re the original Moon Princess; ooh, nothing nasty can ever happen to Princess Ariel! And that vaper? I want to take that thing and shove it up your ass.

  Yes, it pays a fortune. It pays a lot more than I ever got up on the surface with Carlinhos. I wish I was back there. I wish I was back in Boa Vista. I knew where I was there. And yes, Carlinhos … But Boss Mama had a special job for me and you don’t turn Adriana Corta down. But Ariel fucking Corta.

  At least it’s mutual. She hates me. Not so much hates me as disdains me. Is that a word? Well she does. It’s like I’m not even alive. Even a bot is more useful. I’m a cheap and dirty João de Deus duster with no class and less taste, who’s been forced on her against her will and who she can’t get rid of. I’m like a genital wart.

  The money’ll be through in the next couple of days, I promise. It’s some wrangle between our banks and yours. They’ve done something that makes them freer from Earth’s economy and the Earth banks don’t like it. But, money is money. It’ll work through.

  So, what do you think of the apartment?

  ‘This simply will not do,’ Ariel says, and taps Marina’s shoulder, waist, thighs with the tip of her vaper. Tap tippy tap.

  Marina thinks she might punch her charge’s face through the back of her head. The seethe of blood in the forebrain. And release.

  ‘What’s wrong with my clothes?’

  ‘You dress like an evangelical,’ Ariel says. ‘This is the Court of Clavius. My clients are the best of society – well, the richest. They have expectations. I have expectations. My zashitnik dresses better. So no no no.’ Ariel forgoes the tap tippy tap. She sees the lava in Marina’s eyes.

  Za what? Marina wants to ask but the printer is already humming.

  ‘I’m in court at eleven, an assets hearing at twelve, lunch with my old colloquium at thirteen,’ Ariel says. ‘Client meetings fifteen through to eighteen, the Akindele pre-legal at twenty. I’ll be making an appearance at the Chawla wedding party about twenty-one, then on to the Law Society Debutante Ball at twenty-two. It’s ten now so just put this on and try not to fall off the heels.’ Ariel frowns.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Your familiar.’

  ‘You leave Hetty alone.’

  ‘Hetty. And that is?’

  ‘An orca.’

  ‘That’s an animal – a fish?’

  ‘My totemic animus.’ This is a lie but Ariel won’t know. Hetty is a sneer too far. Hetty is inviolable; the relationship between a woman and her familiar is not subject to whim or fashion.

  ‘I see. Religion. No religious objection to this, I presume?’ Ariel hands Marina a bouquet of fabric, soft and fresh-laundry aromatic from the printer.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Somewhere to change.’

  Ariel’s apartment is smaller and barer than Marina had imagined. White. Surfaces. Is it a minimalist refuge from the endless voices and colours and noise and rush of people, people, people? The only decoration is a wall-sized, bleached-out print of a face that must be iconic in a hagiography unknown to Marina Calzaghe. The closed eyes, the drooping mouth disturb Marina. Narcotic and orgasmic.

  She puts a hand on a door.

  ‘Not that one,’ Ariel says with a speed that makes Marina determined to investigate later. ‘Here.’

  Marina wriggles into the dress. The mass of frill and lace is suffocating. The bodice is ridiculous. How do people move, breathe? Where can she hide the weapons? Taser down cleavage, knife in inner thigh holster. Don’t spoil the line of the couture.

  ‘Legs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shave them. At some point we’ll get you permanently depilated.’

  ‘Fuck you will.’

  Ariel holds up a pair of sheer stockings.

  ‘Okay.’

  As Marina opens the bathroom door she notices Ariel tipping her old clothing into the deprinter.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Daily print out. At least. My brother is a savage. He’d wear the same suit-liner for half a lune.’

  Marina draws the stockings up her new smooth legs. She pulls on the shoes. Even in moon gravity she’ll never stand more than an hour in them. They’re weapons, not footwear.

  Ariel looks Marina up and down.

  ‘Turn.’

  Marina manages a pirouette. The arches of both feet are already aching.

  ‘You look as comfortable as a nun at a masturbation party but you’ll pass. Here.’ Ariel holds out a pair of soft ballet pumps. ‘Society secret. Put them in your bag and any chance you get, slip these on. Just don’t let anyone see you. Let’s go to work.’

  Marina does not imagine Ariel’s small smile.

  ‘Is that a real thing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A masturbation party.’

  ‘Coração, you’re in Aquarius Quadra now.’

  I’ve been in court three days now and I still don’t get lunar law. I get the principle – everyone gets the principle: there is no criminal or civil law, only contract law. I’ve done dozens of contracts – hundreds: Hetty deals with most of them without me even knowing. There are billions of contracts flying through air and rock and people every second of every day. It’s a Fifth Elemental: contract. The Court of Clavius seems to be about avoiding law. The thing they hate most is making a new law, because that would tie things down and take away the freedom to negotiate. Lots of lawyers, not a lot of laws. Court cases are extended negotiations. Both parties haggle over which judges will preside and how much they’re going to pay for it. They’re more like movie producers than attorneys. The first sessions are all about compensating for bias – there’s no assumption that judges are impartial, so contracts or cases take that into account. Sometimes judges have to pay to get to judge. Everything is negotiated. I have a theory that this is why the moon is so open sexually: it’s not about labels like straight or gay or bi or poly or A. It’s about you and what you want to do. Sex is a contract between fucker and fuckee.

  The Court of Clavius; sounds real grand, doesn’t it? All marble and Roman gear. I tell you, no. It’s a maze of tunnels and meeting rooms and court spaces in the oldest part of Meridian. The air is stale and smells of moon dust and mould. But what hits you first is the noise: hundreds of lawyers and judges and plaintiffs and parties, all shouting their wares, hustling for work. It’s like those old stockexchange movies; men in ties jostling and shouting out bids and offers. It’s a law market. So: you’ve hired your lawyers, your judges, your courtroom. Next you decide how you want to be tried – it’s not just lawyers and judges on sale, it’s legal systems too. So: I finally found out what a zashitnik is. A zashitnik is a big man – usually a man, usually a Jo Moonbeam, because we’re physically stronger. It’s perfectly legal to settle your case in a duel, or, if you’d rather no
t fight yourself, hire someone to do it for you. That’s a zashitnik. Apparently Ariel caused a big legal storm by calling a trial by combat and stripping down to her fighting pants in front of the whole court. I find that hard to imagine. Then again, she’s a marriage and divorce lawyer, so maybe not so weird.

  So, I’m in court with Ariel, which most of the time is her talking in a room with other lawyers and judges and me sitting outside playing games with Hetty. Or making posts for you guys. Or just trying to work out lunar law without my skull melting. You’d think the contracts would sew everything up tight, but even water-tight contracts go against the lunar principle that everything is negotiated, everything is personal. There must always be loopholes – every contract must have room to wriggle. Lunar law doesn’t believe in guilt or innocence, or absolute right or absolute wrong. I say, isn’t this blaming the victim? No, lunar law is about personal responsibility, Ariel says. I don’t know. Seems like anarchy to me, but things get done. Cases are settled. Justice is done and people abide by it. They seem much more content with it than we do with our legal systems. No one ever appeals on the moon; that would mean there was a failure in negotiation and that’s like a catastrophic culture shock here. So processes are long and there’s endless talk-talk, but they seem sure. There’s one point in common with terrestrial law: most of the work gets done over lunch.

  Sorry. Nodded off there. It’s two am, I’m at a reception – I think it’s a reception, or maybe a launch – and Ariel is still talking. I don’t know how she does it, day after day. Nothing more tiring than talking. It’s relentless. I’m exhausted. I can’t even run any more.

  I can hear you, Mom; you’re saying, is Marina maybe getting a little respect for Ariel Corta? Well, as a lawyer maybe. As a human being; well, let me say, it seems she’s never had a partner or even a quickie lover. None. Ever. I can so believe that.

  *

  ‘It will cost you twenty million,’ Ariel says.

  ‘That’s a lot for a Sun,’ Lucas says. He has irritated his sister, hauling her out to Boa Vista but he will not suffer the indignity of the scrimmage of lawyers and judges and litigants howling through the corridors of the Court of Clavius. Corta affairs are conducted away from the commentariat, in intimate lounges over cocktails.

  ‘They started at fifty.’

  Toquinho floats the contract for Lucas’s perusal. He scans a digest of main points.

  ‘She gets access to Lucasinho.’

  ‘I offered it as a sweetener. It always was and always will be Lucasinho’s choice whether to make contact.’

  ‘Twenty million.’

  ‘Twenty million.’

  With a thought Lucas signs the divorce contract. With another he instructs Toquinho to transfer twenty million bitsies from his account to Taiyang’s financial AIs at the Palace of Eternal Light. He has always admired the ponderous dignity of the name though he has only visited once, after the wedding when Amanda toured him through the convoluted layers of her family. The capital of the Suns was the oldest on the moon, carved out of the rim wall of Shackleton crater, a few kilometres from the moon’s southern pole, clinging to the almost perpetual light above the eternal darkness of the crater’s heart. Down there lay the permanently frozen gases and organics that seeded human presence on the moon. Lucas hated it. The contrasts were too stark, too unsubtle. High and low. Dark and light. Cold and heat. Amanda had taken him on the mandatory excursion to the Pavilion of Eternal Light, the tower built on the peak of Malapert Mountain. Eternal light blazed through the lantern at the top of the kilometre-high tower. Riding the elevator car with Amanda, Lucas had gritted his teeth, imagining radiation sleeting through the metal walls, sleeting through him, unsealing the chemical bonds of ceramics and plastics and human DNA. Bask in it, Amanda had invited as he stepped from the elevator car into the perpetual light that flooded the glass lantern. The only place in the two worlds where the sun never sets. Every surface, every sign or object was bleached by the light. Lucas felt shone through, rendered transparent, his skin turned pale and sick. He could smell the way it had scorched the air, lune after lune, year after year. Relentless light. Come and see, Amanda said but he would not follow her to the glass and the panorama of the whole south pole of the moon. He thought of the bleaching light, the cruel ultraviolet, picking at the molecules of the glass, one photon at a time. He imagined it bursting like a dropped cocktail. Come and look at the light. Humans are not made for endless light. Humans need their darknesses.

  ‘Done,’ Lucas says as Toquinho transfers a copy of the contract to Beijaflor. ‘Free but broke.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ariel says. ‘None of us will ever be broke.’

  Jorge ends Manhã de Carnaval with a G Major Ninth, looks over to the drummer. The lightest susurrus of brushes. Set closer.

  From his booth at the back of the club, in the blue bio light glow, Lucas applauds. G major Ninth is one of the classic chords of bossa, the very spirit of saudade, melancholy under the Rio sun. Incompletely resolved and therefore satisfying. Lucas’s applause rings out. It’s the only applause in the house. The club was never full, but Lucas’s escoltas have been quietly emptying the bar during the set, a tap on the shoulder here, a whisper and a suggestion there. Jorge peers into the lights.

  Lucas walks up to the stage.

  ‘Might we?’

  His band look at him; Jorge nods. Okay.

  There’s a mojito waiting in the booth, made to Jorge’s taste.

  ‘A good set. You’re better solo. The band constrain you. Without them you’d fly. Is that why you’re going to Queen of the South?’

  ‘I’ve been wanting to go solo for lunes now. There’s a market. Not a big one, but enough of one. Bespoke bossa.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘You kind of inspired me.’

  ‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to think that you were running away from me.’ Lucas touches Jorge’s hand on the glass; delicate, almost fearful. ‘It’s all right, I’d guessed your answer when you didn’t call.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was wrong. You caught me unawares – you scared me. I didn’t know what to do. I had to get clear space, room to think.’

  ‘I’m a single man again, Jorge. I’m free of that evil nikah. Cost me twenty million and the Suns are looking for another twenty for injury to their good name.’

  ‘Don’t say it, Lucas, please.’

  ‘That I did it for you? No. Who do you think you are? No, I did it for me. But I love you. I think about you and I burn inside. I want you in every part of my life. I want to be in every part of your life.’

  Jorge leans against Lucas. Their heads touch, their hands meet.

  ‘I can’t. Your life’s too much. Your family – you’re the Cortas. I can’t be part of you. I can’t be the one up at the top table, like your mother’s birthday, siting next to you. I can’t have them all looking and gossipping. I don’t want their attention. I don’t want to play and have people saying that’s Lucas Corta’s oko. Oh, so that’s how got the gig. Marrying you, it would be the end of me, Lucas.’

  Lucas forms a dozen replies but they’re all barbed and cruel.

  ‘I do love you. I loved you from the moment I saw you in Boa Vista.’

  ‘Please don’t. I have to go to Queen. Please let me go, let me have a life there. Don’t look for me. I know you can do whatever you want, but let me go.’

  ‘Did you ever …’

  ‘What?’

  These words too are barbed but the hooks catch in Lucas’s throat.

  ‘Love me?’

  ‘Love you? The first day when I came to your sound room, I couldn’t even tune the guitar, my hands were shaking so much. I don’t know how I got the words out. When you asked me to stay, that night on the balcony, I thought my heart would burst. I kept thinking, what if he wants to fuck me? I want to fuck him. At home when I was jerking off, I got Gilberto to rez up an image of you, synth your voice. Is that creepy? Love you? You were my oxygen. I burned on you.
’

  ‘Thank you. That’s not right. Thank you is too small and weak. Words can’t say it right.’

  ‘I can’t marry you, Lucas.’

  ‘I know.’ Lucas stands, smooths out his clothes. ‘I’m sorry about the audience. I sent them away. I’m far too used to getting my own way. If you go to Queen of the South, I promise I won’t follow you.’

  ‘Lucas.’

  Jorge pulls Lucas to him. They kiss.

  ‘I’ll listen out for you,’ Lucas says. ‘You’ve brought me such joy.’ Outside the club, he dismisses his guards and walks alone to São Sebastião Quadra. Long Runners cross Ellen Ochoa Prospekt on a tenth-level bridge. Drums and finger cymbals, chanting voices. Lucas customarily sneers at Carlinhos for his devotion to the Long Run but tonight the colour, the rhythm, the fine bodies strike a shard from his heart. To be able to lose yourself for a time and a space, to be somewhere that is not yourself, this casque of bone locked in this prison of stone. He’s heard that some of the Long Runners now believe that they power the moon on its cycle around the Earth. A cosmic treadmill. Faith must be so comforting.

  The apartment welcomes him and prepares a martini from Lucas’s personal gin. He goes to the sound room. Those notes, those words and breaths, those pauses and harmonics, trapped in the walls and the floor. No ghosts on the moon, but if there were, those are the kind they would be: trapped words, whispers, stone memories. The only kind Lucas can believe.

  Wordless with loss, Lucas hurls the glass to the wall. The room reflects the sounds of shattering glass, perfectly.

  The codes are still valid. The elevator responds to his command. It waits in a little-used lobby by the main entry port to Boa Vista. He leaves footprints in the years-deep dust on the floor; he imagines the mechanisms give a groan as they return to work after long idleness. The dome is opaqued, a hemisphere of dust-grey but he knows he is on the surface. Systems come to life, touched by his familiar. He runs fingers over the tank-leather couches leaving trails in the dust; the chairs, awakened, swing towards him. He smells the human taint of old dust, the prickle of electricity, the slight scalded smell of surfaces blasted by years of light.