by Ian McDonald
The helmet bears a crest on its brow, just above the plate: a face half-living, half-bone. Not a woman’s face, not the face of Lady Luna; an animal face; the mask of a wolf. Half wolf. Half wolf skull. The helmet is strapped to the back of a suitpack, the suitpack is slung over the shoulder of Wagner Corta. Through Mooncakes and music, saints and sex, he’s coming home. Bone tired but elated, pulled in every direction by the sights, the sounds, the smells, the spirits, as if by fine hooks in his skin.
He moves through the festival like the wolf in his heart, working his way upward by ramp and staircase and escalator. He feels light, lighted, enlightened. His heightened senses pick up a dozen conversations, touch a hundred moments. I love this tune. Try this, go on just a bite. A startled kiss. A bulge-eyed sudden vomit: too much Mooncake. Touch me while I’m dancing. Can I have a balloon? Where are you? His peripheral vision catches on a familiar, one familiar among the host of digital assistants, then five, ten, a dozen others moving through the crowd toward him. Wagner breaks into a run. His pack has come to meet him.
Amal, leader of the Meridian pack, launches nerself into Wagner, wrestles him, tousles his hair, bites his lower lip in the ritual assertion of pack authority.
‘You you you.’
Né lifts him, sasuit and helmet and all and swings him round and by then the rest of the pack has gathered in kisses and embraces and small, affectionate bites. Hands ruffle his hair, play-punch his belly.
The cold death of West Tranquillity, the plain strewn with sasuits, the horror that left him numb; all are burned away in the intensity of the pack kiss.
Amal looks Wagner up and down.
‘You look like death, Lobinho.’
‘Buy me a drink for gods’ sake,’ Wagner says.
‘Not yet. You’re needed at Sömmering.’
‘What’s at Sömmering?’
‘A special delivery for you, Little Wolf, from Hoang Lam Hung-Mackenzie. And because it’s the Mackenzies, we’re going with you.’
* * *
Early, before the other wolves wake, Wagner disentangles himself from the sleeping pack. He shakes the dream out of his head. Shared dreams are heavy, adhesive, haunting. It was an effort to unplug himself from pack sleep. Clothes. Remember clothes.
The pile of blankets on the lounger where he put the boy to sleep is empty. The space where Robson slept has a distinct, alien smell. Honey and ozone; sweat and sleep-drool. Greasy hair and skin spots. Over-worn clothes, under-washed skin. Foot fungus and arm-pit. Back-of-ear bacteria. Teenage boys are rank.
‘Robson?’
You all sleep together? Zhongqiu was ebbing in crushed lanterns and spilt vodka and trampled Mooncake when the pack returned to Meridian. Wolves, people whispered, moving out of the path of the tight, purposeful guard of dark-faced people, a boy in a pale suit, sleeves rolled up, at the centre. Robson was dead on his feet but he doggedly, thoroughly, explored the packhouse. Wagner understood what the boy was doing: embodying the territory. Learning the wolf-world.
I’ll make you something up, Wagner had said. On the lounger. We don’t really have separate beds.
What’s it like, all sleeping together?
We share dreams, Wagner said.
He finds Robson in the food area, hunched on a high stool at a serving bar, sheets draped around him. He cuts a deck of cards – a half deck, Wagner notes, sharp-eyed – one handed, dexterously, lifting the top of the pack, swivelling out the lower cards, swapping them over, closing the pack; again and again.
‘Robson, you okay?’
‘I didn’t sleep that good.’ He doesn’t look up from his compulsive card-cutting.
‘I’m sorry, we’ll try and print you up a bed.’ Wagner speaks Portuguese. He hopes the old tongue will be sweet and comforting to Robson.
‘The lounger was fine.’ Robson answers in Globo.
‘Can I get you something? Juice?’
Robson taps a glass of tea on his small table.
‘Let me know if you need anything.’
‘I will, sure.’ Still Globo.
‘There’ll be people moving around here soon.’
‘I won’t get in their way.’
‘You might want to think about putting something on.’
‘Will they?’ The cards divide and flip.
‘Well, if you do need anything…’
Robson looks up as Wagner turns away. Peripheral vision catches the flicker of eyes.
‘Can I print some clothes out?’
‘Sure.’
‘Wagner.’
‘What is it?’
‘Do you guys do everything together?’
‘We like to be with each other. Why?’
‘Could you take me out for breakfast? Just us?’
* * *
Twenty days on the glass never left Wagner Corta as exhausted as three days of Robson Mackenzie. How can thirteen-year-old boys demand so much time and energy? Nutrition: the kid never stops eating. He is a perfect mass-energy conversion machine. The things he will and won’t eat; and where he will or will not eat them. Wagner hasn’t been to the same hot-shop twice.
Respiration. The adoption contract with the Mackenzies guarantees the boy’s Four Elementals. Bryce Mackenzie is not beyond spiteful breach of contract. It’s an hour’s work for the pack, in full gestalt mode, to discreetly link Robson’s chib to a secondary account through a network of nested false companies. Breathe easy, Robson.
Education: the contracts are far from simple. Is it to be individual tuition or a colloquium group? Specialism or generalism?
Masturbation: finding a private place in the house of wolves to do it. That’s if he’s doing it at all. Wagner’s sure he wasn’t doing it at that age. Then there’s the whole question of where the kid stands on the spectrum: what he likes, who he likes, who he likes more than others he likes, if he likes anyone at all.
Financialisation: gods but the boy is expensive. Everything about thirteen-year-olds costs.
Isolation: the boy is sweet and serious and funny and cracks Wagner’s heart a dozen times a day but every moment spent with him is one spent away from the pack. It’s different for wolves; the need to be together is physical, burned into the bones by blue Earthlight. Wagner feels the ache of separation every moment he’s with Robson and he knows his pack mates feel the disruption. He’s seen the looks, felt the shift in the emotional climate. Robson’s sensed it too.
‘I don’t think Amal likes me.’
They’re lunching at Eleventh Gate. Robson wears short white shorts, neat creases; a sleeveless cropped white T-shirt with the word WHAM! printed large. White-framed Wayfarers. Wagner is in double denim. Some packs only wear their own style; invariably Gothic. Meridian is always on-trend.
Eleventh Gate is a noisy wun sen noodle bar. It’s quiet in the lull after Zhongqiu but Wagner is wary. Wolf-senses on the diners and tea-drinkers. Of all the issues Robson brought with him from Sömmering, security is the greatest.
‘You make ner feel uncomfortable.’ You make a lot of us feel uncomfortable.
‘What do I do?’
‘It’s not what you do, it’s what you can’t do. Ekata.’
‘I’ve heard that word.’ They speak in Portuguese now. Ekata is a wolf word, taken from Punjabi and made their own.
‘I can’t really translate it. It means the togetherness. Christians would say the fellowship, Muslims the ummah I think, but it’s much more intense than that. Oneness, unity. More than that. You open your eyes and I see through them. We understand without understanding … I’m a wolf; I’m not sure I can explain it to anyone who isn’t.’
‘I love the way you say that. “I’m a wolf”’.
‘I am. It took me a long time to own it. I was your age when I realised what all those mood swings and personality shifts and the rages meant. I couldn’t sleep, I was violent, I was hyperactive and then at other times – the dark times – I wouldn’t speak to anyone for days. I thought I was sick. I thought I was dying. The doct
or gave me meds. My madrinha knew what it was.’
‘Bipolar disorder.’
‘It’s not a disorder,’ Wagner says, then realises he has spoken too quickly, too sharply. ‘It doesn’t have to be a disorder. You can push it down with meds or you can push it in another direction altogether. You can make it into something more. What the wolves have done is given a social frame to it, a culture that accepts and supports it. Nourishes it.’
‘Wolves.’
‘We’re not really wolves. We don’t physically change at the turn of the Earth. Well, the brain chemistry does. We take meds that change our brain chemistry. Werewolves is a rich and emotionally fulfilling framing narrative for the fact that we cycle from one psychological state to another. Reverse werewolves. Werewolves inverted. Howling by the light of the Earth. Though photosensitivity isn’t unknown in bipolar people. So the light might have something to do with it. Listen to me, I’m probably talking really fast and staccato?’
‘You are.’
‘That’s the light aspect. I take a lot of meds, Robson. We all do. Madrinha Flavia knew what I was and she put me in touch with the packs, back when she was still at Boa Vista. They helped me, they showed me what I could do. They never put any pressure on me. It had to be my decision. It is a rich life. It’s a tough life, becoming someone else every fifteen days.’
Robson sits upright, startled. Noodles and prawns fall from his chopsticks. ‘Every fifteen days. I never knew…’
‘It takes a toll. At Boa Vista, you only ever saw one me; dark-me, and you all thought that was Wagner Corta. There is no Wagner Corta; there’s the wolf and his shadow.’
‘I never saw you much at Boa Vista,’ Robson says.
‘There were other reasons,’ Wagner says and Robson understands that those questions are for another time.
The boy asks, ‘Wagner, when you stop being the wolf. When you turn in to the shadow. What happens to me?’
‘The pack breaks up. We go to our shadow lives and shadow loves. But the pack never ends. We look out for each other. I’m a wolf, but I’m still a Corta. You’re a Corta. I’ll be there.’
Robson pokes with his chopsticks in his bowl.
‘Wagner, do you think I could see my friends from Queen?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Okay.’ Another Wayfarer glance. ‘Wagner, I should tell you, I tried to find my traceur équipe.’
‘I know. Robson…’
‘Be careful on the network. I couldn’t find them. I’m scared for them. Bob Mackenzie said he wouldn’t hurt them…’
‘But Bob Mackenzie’s dead.’
‘Yes. Bob Mackenzie’s dead.’ Robson looks around him. ‘I like this place. I’d like to come here regularly.’ It’s a rite of adulthood, finding a customary hot-shop. ‘Would that be okay?’
‘It would.’
‘Wagner, I take up a lot of your time. I take you away from them. Is that a problem?’
‘It’s a tension.’
‘Wagner, do you think I can learn Ekata?’
* * *
The moto leaves the two women in the door of the Crystaline. Marina slaps a button and the wheelchair unfolds. Ariel swings herself into it. Staff turn and stare, unsure what to do, how they should serve. They are young, they have never seen a wheelchair.
‘I can push you,’ Marina says.
‘I push myself,’ Ariel says.
Ariel rolls across the polished sinter floor of the bar and in booths and at tables heads turn. She’s back; look at her, I thought she was dead. Marina maintains a steady, dignified pace two steps ahead, clearing people from her path but Ariel sees the limps and winces of concealed hurt. Dr Macaraeg had strapped, patched, bound, anaesthetised the grosser wounds; Ariel covered the rest with fabric and make-up.
‘Thank gods they left your face,’ Ariel said. Marina grimaced as Ariel pulled the lace glove over the swollen fingers. ‘You’re going to lose a couple of nails. I’ll print you some new ones.’
‘I’ll grow some new ones.’
‘How long have we been together and you’re still so terrestrial?’ Ariel had felt a reaction in the hand she held, one not caused by any physical damage. ‘There.’ Now a final blend of the eye-liners, a last back-comb to big up the hair. Cocktail ready.
The Eagle of the Moon waits in the private room beyond the private room. The table is set among dripping stalagmites and stalactites, the whole a trickling, gurgling water park. Ariel finds it rather crass. The water smells fresh and pure. She inhales deep.
‘Darling, if discretion is paramount, don’t parade me the whole length of the Crystaline.’
The Eagle of the Moon booms with laughter. Drinks await: water for him, a dewed Martini for her.
‘Ariel.’ He stoops and takes both her hands in his. ‘You look wonderful.’
‘I look like shit, Jonathon. But my upper body strength is truly formidable.’ Ariel places her elbow on the table, forearm upright, the classic arm-wrestler’s challenge. ‘I could take you, and probably everyone else in this bar except her.’ She nods her big hair to Marina. ‘Adrian not with you today?’
‘I didn’t tell him where I was going.’
‘Conspiracies, Jonathon? How delicious. It won’t do any good. Word will have made it round to Farside by now. And Adrian always was such a diligent Mackenzie.’
‘He has more pressing concerns right now,’ the Eagle says.
‘And whose side is he on, his father’s or his uncle’s?’
‘His own. As ever.’
‘Eminently reasonable. And where does the Eagle of the Moon stand on the Mackenzie civil war?’
‘The Eagle of the Moon stands for free contracts, economic growth, responsible citizenship and uninterrupted rental revenue flows,’ Jonathon Kayode says, at the same time touching a finger to his right eye; the signal that this conversation will now be conducted without familiars. Pixels swirl and fizz in lenses. Bare. The Eagle of the Moon inclines his head the barest nod to Marina.
When Marina has closed the door to the softly lit, trickling stalactite room Ariel says, ‘Do you know what I enjoy most about my work? The gossip. I hear the board of the LDC isn’t happy with you, Jonathon.’
‘The Board of the LDC want me gone,’ the Eagle of the Moon says. ‘I’ve been lucky that they’re too mistrustful of each other’s candidates to table a no-confidence motion. Earth is flexing its muscles. It has been since the collapse of Corta Hélio.’
‘Collapse,’ Ariel says. ‘That’s my family, Jonathon.’
‘You once told me the Cortas kept the lights burning up there. Earth fears power shortages, dark cities. The price of domestic electricity has trebled. I was at Crucible, Ariel. I watched it burn. Duncan and Bryce are at each other’s throats. They are hiring mercenaries from as far away as Earth. Blades battle on the Prospekts of Meridian. Commodity prices are soaring. Industries are closing. The old Earth looks up at the moon and it sees a world falling apart. It sees an Eagle who cannot fulfil his contract.’
Ariel takes a sip from her Martini. The Eagle knows her too well. It is perfect: cold, astringent, fabulous.
‘Jonathon, if the LDC really wanted rid of you, they’d have bought up your bodyguards and gutted you in your sleep.’
‘As you enjoy my protection, so I enjoy the protection of the Dragons. None of them wants to see an LDC stooge take over from me. The Suns fear another attempt by the People’s Republic to seize control. Moscow will never admit anything, but the Vorontsovs have been regularly uncovering its agents and sending them out of the lock. The Asamoahs have no love for me but less much less love for Moscow and Beijing. The Mackenzies are wrapped up in their little war but the winner will side with whoever offers Mackenzie Metals the most freedom to wheel and deal.’
‘And the Cortas?’
‘Have no power, no wealth. No status to defend, no family to protect. Nothing to hold, nothing to fear. Which is why I want to hire you as my legal counsel.’
Can the Eagle detect the min
ute tremor of shock that runs across the meniscus of her thirteen-botanical gin?
‘I do marriage contracts. I take human passion and human lust and human stupidity and give them as many escape routes as possible.’
‘You can have it all back, Ariel. Everything you lost, everything you had taken from you.’ He inclines his head to the wheelchair.
‘Not everything, Jonathon. Some things are not in your gift.’ But Ariel sets the glass down before the shivering gin betrays her. She never believed in her mother’s personal style of umbanda – never believed in belief. She was thirteen when Adriana brought her to the new palace at Boa Vista. She had stepped from the tram station and been almost overwhelmed by the size, the light, the perspectives. She smelled rock, new humus, green growth, fresh water. She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the sky-glare, squinted, tried to focus on objects more than a few dozen metres distant. João de Deus had been close and cramped. This was endless. Then the faces of the orixas came into view, each a hundred metres tall, shaped from the stuff of Boa Vista and she knew she could never believe. One should never meet gods eye to eye. They looked stupid and stony. Dead and unworthy of faith. Embarrassments: these things wanted her trust?
But Madrinha Amalia had always told her the saints are subtle and Ariel has taken truths from the orixas that have kept her all her life. No heaven, no hell; no sin, no guilt; no judgement or punishment. One opportunity, once given, is all they offer. This is the grace of the saints. She deserves the Marc Jacobs dresses and the Maud Frizon shoes, the low-level Aquarius hub apartment, the place on the party circuit, the entourage of the adoring. She deserves to be famous, she deserves to be feted. She deserves to walk again. ‘What do you want me to do, Jonathon?’
‘I want you to be my lawyer of last resort. I want you to be my counsel when everyone else has abandoned me. For that I need someone with no vested interests, no family loyalties, no political ambition.’
She can feel the orixas around her like a cape; insubstantial yet crowding, eager to see if she takes the gift they offer. Not yet, you saints. The seal of a good lawyer – of this lawyer – is to put everything on trial. Even the saints. The fly move, the cheap trick, is a pillar of lunar law. Malandragem.