by Ian McDonald
We got our first reading after an hour. I don’t think I breathed once those entire sixty minutes. Gas spectrometer read outs: Hydrogen. Water. Helium 4. Carbon Monoxide. Carbon dioxide. Methane. Nitrogen, argon, neon, radon. Volatiles we could sell to AKA and the Vorontsovs. Not what we wanted, not what we were looking for: that tiny spike on the graph, so much smaller than all of the others. I magnified the axes. We all crowded around the display. There. There! Helium-3. Exactly where we thought it would be, in the proportions we expected. Sweet sweet little spectrograph spike. We were in helium. I screamed and danced up and down. Helen kissed me and then she burst into tears. Then I kissed Carlos. I kissed Carlos again. I kissed Carlos again and did not stop.
We drank cheap VTO vodka all huddled together in our tiny pod and got stupidly, dangerously drunk and then I pulled Carlos into my bunk and we made silent, furious, giggling sex while everyone else slept around us.
We conceived a city in that bunk. Those two pods, that shroud of regolith, over years and decades, became João de Deus.
I didn’t marry Carlos right away. I had to get the nikah right and anyway, after Mare Fecunditatis, there was too much to do. I made the calls to our VIPS and booked the tickets. Return trips, Earth-moon, for six people. Two from EDF/Areva, two from PFC India, two from Kansai Fusion. I had been working them for months; tele-presence conferences, presentations, sales pitches. I knew they wanted to escape the US-Russian duopoly on terrestrial helium-3 that was keeping the prices of fusion power high and stifling development. It was the oil age again.
It was our biggest risk. Executives from three of Earth’s smaller fusion companies all arrive on the moon at the same time? Even the Mackenzies could work that one out. The question was when they would move, not if. Our sole advantage was that they didn’t know who we were. Yet. If we could could finish the demonstration, negotiate the deal and sign the contract before Bob Mackenzie loosed his blades, then we could defend the contract in the Court of Clavius.
We put them all up in Meridian’s best hotel. We took care of their Four Elementals. We bought the French delegates wine, the Indian delegates whiskey and the Japanese whiskey too. As I said, we were burning money like oxygen.
The night before we were due to ship the VIPs out to Mare Fecunditatis, Mackenzie Metals discovered us. I got a message from our Fecundity base. Dusters with Mackenzie Metals logos had blown up the prototype extractor. They were destroying the volatile storage tanks. They were coming for the base. They were at the base … I heard no more.
I remember I sat in my room and I had no idea what to do. I sat in my room and did not know what to feel. I was numb. I was falling. It was like free fall. I wanted to vomit. The extractor; all our work, but more, so much more, the lives. People I had laughed with, drunk with, worked with; people who were more my family than my family. People who had trusted me. They were dead because they had trusted me. I had killed them. We were children, I realised. We had been playing at businesses. The Mackenzies were adult and they did not play. We were a children’s crusade, marching into our own ignorance. I sat in my room and imagined Mackenzie blades in the elevator, at the door, outside the window.
Carlos saved me. Carlos pulled me down, Carlos was my gravity. We win by getting that output deal, he said. We win by building Corta Hélio.
That was the first time I had ever heard that name.
With his own money Carlos hired freelance security for our people and materiel. With my own money I booked the VIPS on to the moonloop and told them of our change of plan. We would be spinning them around the moon on a tether to Farside, where we stationed the second prototype of the helium-3 extractor.
Carlos had made the stipulation on the first day of his project management: never build just one prototype.
We put our VIPs into a capsule, slung them around the moon, followed in the next and showed them what our extractor could do. Then we took the extracted helium and fired it up in the University of Farside’s LDX reactor.
With the last of our money, we contracted legal AIs to draft the output deal and signed it that night.
Not quite the end of our money. With the very end of it, Carlos and I had the AIs draw up a marriage contract. With the very very end of it, we threw a wedding.
Oh but it was cheap and blissful. Helen was my bridesmaid, the only other attendee was the witness from the LDC. Then we went and had eggs and sperm frozen. There was no time for romanticism, or a family. We had an empire to build. But we wanted children, we wanted a dynasty, we wanted to safeguard the future, once we had built a future safe for them. And that could be years, decades.
Creating Corta Hélio was nothing compared to building Corta Hélio. I went for lunes without seeing Carlos. I slept, ate, exercised, made love when I could, which was little, rarely. We need allies, Carlos said. I tried to build relationships. The Four Dragons had heard the name of Corta Hélio. The Suns were aloof, engaged on their own projects and politics. The Vorontsovs had their eyes turned up to space, though I secured favourable moonloop launch rates from them. The Mackenzies were my enemies. The Asamoahs – maybe because our business did not threaten theirs, maybe because we both came to the moon with nothing and made something, maybe because they identified with the underdog – they became my friends. They are still my friends.
With a secure and steady supply of cheap fuel, my terrestrial customers soon achieved a market position that forced their competitors to negotiate with us or go bankrupt. Shortly after that the US and Russian helium-3 markets collapsed. I beat America and Russia! At the same time! Within two years Corta Hélio had moved into a monopoly position.
See? There’s no talk more boring than money and business talk. We built Corta Hélio. We turned the little hut where we made love into a city. High times. The highest times. We were breathless with excitement. A point came where our success bred its own success. We were making money just by existing. The extractors scooped up the dust, the moonloop sends the cannisters flying Earthwards. We stood on the surface with our helmets touching and looked at the lights of planet Earth. It was ridiculously easy. Anyone could have thought of it. But I did.
See how it hardens you? In all the rush and excitement and work work work, I forgot about the people who died out on the Sea of Fecundity; my team, the ones who gave to me and never got to see the success or share in it. People say the moon is hard; no, people are hard. Always people.
I was still sending money to my family. I made them rich, I made them celebrities. They were in Veja magazine: the sister, the brother of Our Lady of Helium. The Iron Hand, the woman who lit the world! They had a wonderful apartment and big cars and pools and private tutors and security guards and one day I said, Stop. You’ve taken taken taken, you’ve dined out and partied and grown fat on my money and name and not one word of thanks, not one acknowledgement of what I have done up here, not one glint of gratitude or appreciation. Your children, my nephews and nieces don’t even recognise my face. You call me the Iron Hand, well, here’s an iron judgement. The final gift from the moon. I have placed in a secure account fares for a one-way trip to the moon. If you want Corta Hélio money, work for Corta Hélio money. With Corta Hélio. Commit, or I will never send you so much as a single decima again.
Come to the moon. Come and join me. Come and build a world and a Corta dynasty.
Not one member of my family took up the offer.
I cut them off.
I haven’t spoken to any of them in forty years.
My family is here. This is the Corta dynasty.
Do you think that was harsh? The money; that’s nothing, none of them would ever be poor again. Do you think I was wrong to cut them off without a word, or even a thought? I could give you all the old excuses: everything is negotiable; if you don’t work you don’t breathe, the moon makes you hard. It’s true, the moon changes you. It changed me so that if I ever went back to Earth, my lungs would collapse, my legs would fold under me, my bones would flake and splinter. And those three hundre
d and eighty thousand kilometres count. When you talk to home and you hear that two and a half second delay before the reply comes, that pushes you away. You can never bridge that gap. It’s built into the structure of the universe. It’s physics that’s hard.
I haven’t thought about them in forty years. But I think about them now. I look back a lot; things come up from my past without my calling them. I tell myself I have no regrets, but do I?
I can’t help thinking that it was all those years putting the company together; more in a sasuit that out of one, in and out of rovers, up and down extractors, snuggling up with Carlos in that pod, the radiation shining through me …
It’s more advanced than I’ve told you, Sister. The only one who knows is Dr Macaraeg. I know Lucas went to the Motherhouse: he knows my condition but he doesn’t know its full extent. Listen to me: the euphemisms. Advanced, full extent. I can feel death, Sister, I can see its little black eyes. Sister, whatever Lucas says, whatever he threatens, don’t tell him this. He would only try and do something and there is nothing he can do. He always has to prove himself. And I’ve hurt him, oh I’ve hurt him so terribly. So much to put right. The light is running out.
But I haven’t even told you the story of the knife fight with Robert Mackenzie!
It’s legend. I’m legend. Maybe you haven’t heard it? I sometimes forget there are generations after me. Not forget – how could I forget my grandchildren? More that I can’t believe the time that has passed since those days; that people could forget them. Such days!
The Mackenzies stopped physical attacks on our materiel as soon as we had enough money to hire our own security. There was this Brazilian ex-naval officer; laid off whenever Brazil decided it couldn’t afford a navy any more. He had been in the submarines and his theory was that warfare on the moon was all submarine warfare. All vehicles under pressure, in a lethal environment. I hired him. He’s still my head of security. We decided one bold strike would end the war. We attacked Crucible. The Mackenzies and VTO had just completed Equatorial One; now Crucible could refine rare earths continuously. It was – it still is – a magnificent achievement. I forget I played a part in it, when I quit Mackenzie Metals and became a Vorontsov track queen on my way to founding Corta Hélio. Carlos conceived the plan: We shall breach Equatorial One and paralyse Crucible. I remember the faces around the table: there was shock, amazement, fear. Heitor said it can’t be done. Carlos said, It will be done. Your job is to tell me how we do it.
We did it with six rovers: two teams of three. We timed the attack just as Mackenzie Metals was to deliver on an important new rare-earths contract with Xiaomi. Carlos went with the first team. I rode with the second. It was so exciting! Two rovers full of big brawny escoltas, one with the demolition team. It was really quite simple. We hit Crucible on the eastern Procellarum. The escoltas formed a periphery; the demolition teams struck simultaneously three kilometres up line and down line from Crucible. I watched the charges blow. The rails flew up so high I thought they would go into orbit. I watched them tumble away, catching the sunlight, and it was the closest we can get to fireworks on the moon. Everyone cheered and whooped but I couldn’t because I hated to see fine, brilliant engineering destroyed in a flash. Track I might have laid myself. I hated it because no sooner had we built a thing to be proud of, we destroyed it.
The clever part was, even as we ran with Mackenzie Metals rovers on our tails, our secondary attacks went in twenty kilometres up and down the line. The VTO repair teams would have to bridge those breaches before they could rebuild the ones closer to Crucible. Even if VTO got teams out within the hour, Crucible would be in darkness for a week. They would miss the delivery deadline.
We lost their blades in the chaotic terrain of Eddington.
After the battle of East Procellarum, Mackenzie Metals moved their attacks to the Court of Clavius.
I think I would have preferred the war of blades and bombs.
Their tactics varied but their strategy was clear and simple: bleed Corta Hélio to death through legal fees. They hit us with suits for breach of contract, breach of copyright, personal injury, corporate damages, plagiarism, damages suits for every single crew person on Crucible on the day of the attack. Suit after suit after suit. Most of them were swept away by our AIs as soon as they were served but for every one we dismissed their AIs created ten more. AIs are prolific, and AIs are cheap but they’re not free. The judges we had agreed upon finally ruled against any further frivolous suits and that Mackenzie Metals lay a solid suit with a reasonable chance of success.
They did. It named Adriana Maria do Céu Mão de Ferro Arena de Corta in forty separate instances of breach of Mackenzie Metals patent in my designs for the extractor.
AIs, lawyers, judges settled in for a long trial.
I didn’t.
I knew this could drag and drag and Mackenzie Metals would file injunctions against our exports and for each one we dismissed, they would file another. They wanted us soiled goods. They wanted my name and reputation dust. They wanted our terrestrial clients leery of us, leery enough to consider investing a little seed money in a helium-3 extraction venture with an established company, of good standing, who could deliver the goods: Mackenzie Fusion.
I had to end this hard and fast.
I challenged Robert Mackenzie, in name and person, to trial by combat.
I didn’t tell any of my legals. I didn’t tell Helen, I didn’t tell Heitor, though he may have guessed because I asked him to teach me something of the way of the knife. I didn’t tell Carlos.
There is angry, and there is furious, and there is a deeper rage beyond those for which we don’t have a name. It’s pale and very pure and very cold. I imagine it’s what the Christian god feels at sin. I saw it in Carlos when he found out what I was going to do.
It ends it, I said. Once and for all.
And if you get hurt? Carlos said. And if you die?
If Corta Hélio dies, then I’m dead too, I said. Do you think they’ll just let us walk away? The Mackenzies repay three times.
Half the moon was in the court arena that day, or so it seemed to me. I came up on to the fighting floor and I just saw faces faces faces, all around me, going up up up. All those faces, and me in a pair of running shorts and a crop top, with a borrowed escolta knife in my hand.
I wasn’t afraid, no not a bit.
The judges called for Robert Mackenzie. The judges called again for Robert Mackenzie. They instructed his lawyers to approach them. I stood in the centre of the court-arena with another woman’s knife in my hand and looked up at all the faces. I wanted to ask them: Why have you come here? What have you come to see? Is it victory, or is it blood?
‘I call on you, Robert Mackenzie!’ I shouted. ‘Defend yourself!’
In a heartbeat, there was absolute silence in the arena.
Again I called on Robert Mackenzie.
And a third time, ‘I call on you, Robert Mackenzie, defend your self, your name and your company!’
I called him three times and at the end I stood alone on the fighting floor. And the the court erupted. The judges were shouting something but no one could hear over the uproar. I was lifted shoulder high and carried out of the Court of Clavius and I was laughing and laughing and laughing with my knife still gripped in my hand. I didn’t let go of it until I got to the hotel where Team Corta had set up headquarters.
Carlos didn’t know whether to laugh or rage. He cried.
You knew, he said.
All along, I said. Bob Mackenzie could never fight a woman.
Ten days later the Court of Clavius established a process to allow proxy fighters in the case of trial by combat. Mackenzie Metals tried to launch a new suit. No judge on the moon would touch it. Corta Hélio won. I won. I challenged Robert Mackenzie to a knife fight, and won.
And now no one remembers it. But I was legend.
Death and sex, isn’t that it? People make love after funerals. Sometimes during funerals. It’s the loud cry
of life. Make more babies, make more life! Life is the only answer to death.
I defeated Bob Mackenzie in the court-arena. It wasn’t death – not that day – but it did focus my mind most wonderfully. Corta Hélio was secure. Time to build the dynasty now. I tell you this; there is no greater aphrodisiac than being carried out of the court-arena with your knife in your hand. Carlos couldn’t keep his hands off me. He was possessed. He was a big dick-machine. I know, it’s not seemly for an old woman to say such things. But he was: a fuck-bandit. He was deadly. And relentless. And it was the best time in my life, the only time I could lie back and say, I’m safe. So of course I said, Let’s make a baby.
We started interviewing madrinhas immediately.
I was forty years old. I had drunk a lot of vacuum, swallowed a lot of radiation, snorted a sea-full of dust. Gods know if things were still working in there, let alone if I was capable of carrying a normal healthy pregnancy to term. Too many uncertainties. I needed engineered solutions. Carlos had agreed with me: host mothers. Paid surrogates, who would be so much more than just rented wombs. We wanted them to be part of the family, to take on those elements of infant care that we simply didn’t have the time or, to be honest, the taste for. Babies are tedious. Kids only start to become human on their fifth birthday.
We must have interviewed thirty young, fit, healthy, fecund Brazilian women before we found Ivete. This is how I came into contact with your Sisterhood. The Brazilian community said, talk to Mãe Odunlade. She has family trees and genealogies and medical histories on every Brasileiro and Brasileira who comes to the moon, and a fair few Argentinians and Peruvians and Uruguayans and Ghanaians and Ivorians and Nigerians too. She will set you right. She did, and I rewarded her for her services, and, well, you know the rest of the story.