by Ian McDonald
‘A counsel of despair,’ Ariel says.
‘I have other counsellors. My enemies expect no less. I don’t trust them.’
‘They are your contracted counsels.’
‘Lady Luna never made a contract she didn’t break.’
‘I won’t be hidden away, Jonathon. I won’t whisper in small rooms. The whole moon has to know that Ariel Corta is advising you.’
‘Done.’
Ariel takes the last of her cocktail. Love me, says the spiral of lemon peel in the empty glass. Love me again. Have me. Her fingers touch the stem, ready to twist the glass a quarter-turn, the acknowledged sign for another. The table would sense it, a server would bring it to her, pure and dewed and cleansing. Almost. And release.
‘What is Vidhya Rao’s role?’
‘With someone who claims to be able to predict the future, it’s better to have er with you than against you.’
‘With someone who can predict the future surely it doesn’t matter which side e’s on.’
‘Our relationship has shifted. We were adviser and advised. Now we find ourselves allies.’
‘Vidhya once told me er machines pegged me as a great mover and shaker in the affairs of the moon. What did they say about you, Jonathon?’
‘The Eagle will fly.’
‘Don’t you just love prophecy? I’ll do it. One condition. I go to every meeting. Beijaflor gets every report. I need to see their faces.’
‘Thank you, Ariel.’
‘That was my condition. These are my riders. Marina is my security. I want a clothing budget. I want a lovely apartment, one hundred square metres minimum, on a hub. No higher than 15th street. I want my legs back. Soon. But first…’
She flicks out her vaper to its full length and locks it. Then twists the stem of her Martini glass.
* * *
The wolves are dancing but Robson Corta doesn’t dance. The moves are simple for him – most of the wolves are bad movers and poor dancers, he could out-funk any of them, and the music – musics; they can follow two different beats at the same time – not too painful, but Robson won’t join the boogie. Wagner nods to him; Amal holds ner hands out in invitation, Robson shakes his head and drifts away from the beats and the bodies out on to the balcony. Amal the top wolf tried to bite Robson that morning. He shied away and avoided ner for the rest of the day but now he thinks it might have been a compliment. Wolves: there is so much to work out.
The club is on the 87th level on east Krikalev, the end of the prospekt; unfashionably far from the hub, disreputably high up. Robson hadn’t wanted to go but a pack is hard to refuse. The wolves like to congregate at full-Earth. The Meridian pack is congregating with the Twé pack: pack members swap in, swap out. There will be a lot of sex.
Robson leans over the rail. Krikalev Prospekt is a canyon of lights, Antares Hub a distant glowing galaxy. Cable cars form chains of swaying lanterns; bikers down-hilling on 75th are streaks of light hurtling down the levels and staircases so fast so thrilling. Robson holds his breath. He did things like that once, when he was the boy who fell to Earth.
Robson holds his cocktail over the drop. There’s more in it than alcohol. Hoang had been strict about psychotropics. Wagner doesn’t have a clue about what’s appropriate for kids. Hoang was strong on boundaries; always enforced but always negotiated. Wagner has no boundaries. Not in Wolf form. Robson misses Hoang. Robson thinks often about Hoang’s last lie, outside at the lock at Lansberg Station. Wagner still won’t let him contact Hoang, or Darius, or the traceurs.
Robson sets down his cocktail glass untouched. Another night, another party he might have wolfed it down and loved the buzz but for what he needs to do now he must be bright in head and bones. He reaches into a leg-warmer for the paint-stick. Robson suspects his 1980s workout gear was not originally designed for guys. Guys would have put in more pockets and pouches. But it looks good on him and feels better. He draws a thick band of white down his lips. Slash left slash right and there is a line of white along each cheekbone.
No one sees Robson Corta leap on to the railing, two kilometres of glowing space on his left, and run light and sure to the end of the balcony. The company of wolves wheels on. The two beats drift in and out of phase.
This place is easy. This place is like a climbing frame. It’s a simple tic-tac to the balcony above. Robson takes a short stride, plants a foot on the wall, pushes himself up and back. Soars. Turns. Seizes the rail of the higher balcony and uses his momentum to clear the rail in a saut-de-bras, legs between arms. Run, bounce, a somersault that no one but him can see – that no one but Robson needs to see – and he is among the trusses that support the level above; running from girder to girder until he finds a place, a crotch where beam and strut meet, from which he can survey the whole club. Robson crouches, wraps his arms around his knees.
He had a pack once. Baptiste, teaching him the shapes and names of the moves. Netsanet who drilled him, again and again and again, until those moves became as close to him as breath and heartbeat. Rashmi who showed him the possibilities within his body. Lifen who opened his senses to see with more than eyes, feel with more than skin. Zaky who made him a traceur. His pack. His Ekata.
Amal comes out on to the balcony below. Né goes to the rail and the vista beyond. As if né can scent him – and Robson knows he has only seen the least part of what the wolves can do when they enter the group consciousness – Amal looks up. Eyes lock. Né nods to Robson, clinging to the ribs of the world. He returns the slightest acknowledgement.
Now Wagner joins Amal on the balcony. Robson watches unseen from his high perch. Cocktails fall in slow blue arcs from their hands, their fingers tear at each other’s clothing. Amal has ripped Wagner’s Guarabera shirt open to the navel. Né tugs at a nipple with ner teeth. Robson sees blood. Robson sees the alien joy on Wagner’s face. Né leaves bloody bite marks all the way down his tight belly. Wagner’s teeth are hard on ner ear lobe and né murmurs with hurt and pleasure.
Robson watches. The blood, the passion, the secrecy of his hidden perch, all excite him but Robson watches to understand. Blood runs from a dozen bites, flows down Wagner’s dark skin, and Robson understands that being a wolf is not an understood thing. You can’t learn to be a wolf. You are born a wolf. Robson can be in the pack, sheltered, protected, loved, but he can never be of the pack. He can never be a wolf. He is, he always will be, utterly alone.
* * *
Robson’s table is at the back of the Eleventh Gate, hard against the glassy wall of the gas-seal. He twists an untouched glass of mint tea, a quarter-turn right, back, a quarter-turn left, back.
‘You shouldn’t be here alone,’ Wagner says, dropping on to the chair.
‘You said it was an important stage in socialisation, choosing your hot-shop,’ Robson says. ‘I like it here. And I’m not alone; now.’
‘You have to think about security.’
‘I know where the exits are. I’m facing out. You’re the one with your back to the street.’
‘I’m not happy you being away from the pack.’
‘It’s not my pack.’ The boy reaches across the small table to jab the edge of a thumb nail into a bite mark on the side of Wagner’s neck. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘Yes, a little.’ Wagner does not flinch, does not move Robson’s hand away.
‘Does it hurt when né bites you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you let ner do that?’
‘Because I like it.’ Wagner reads a dozen minute distastes flicker on Robson’s face that would be invisible to any non-wolf. The boy conceals his emotions well. Growing up on Crucible, living in Queen of the South fearful of the call home, control would be a necessary skill.
‘Do you love ner?’
‘No.’
Again, the tightening of the jaw line, the tension of the corner of the mouth, the flick of the eyes away.
‘Robson, I have to go away.’
‘I know. It’s the time of the lune. Yo
u’re going dark.’
‘Yes, but that’s not why I’m going. I have work. I would love to stay more than anything, but I need to work. I’m taking a crew out on to the glass. I’ll be gone seven, maybe ten days.’
Robson leans back against the cool glass wall. Wagner can’t look at him.
‘Amal will look after you,’ Wagner says. ‘Someone has to stay to mind the packhouse. But né’ll change. Like I’m changing.’ Wagner reads distrust, apprehension, fear in the tiny play of muscles beneath Robson’s brown skin. ‘I know you don’t like Amal, but you can trust ner.’
‘But it won’t be the same Amal. Né will go away. You all go away. You all become someone else. Everyone goes away.’
‘It’s only seven days, Robson. Maybe ten. I will come back. I’ll always come back. I promise.’
* * *
The delegation will arrive by train, the word went. 14:25 at João de Deus station, direct from Queen of the South. Private railcar.
The notice was short, the expectations high. None other than Bryce Mackenzie is to inspect the new headquarters of Mackenzie Helium so João de Deus must honour him. Squadrons of bots clean the streets and prospekts and scrub anti-Mackenzie graffiti from the walls and apartment-fronts. Crews print banners and pennants and hang them from roof trusses and crosswalks. The conjoined letters of Mackenzie Helium’s sigil stir in the constant light breezes of the air plants. Hoardings and posters cover up those scars and empty, smoke-stained shells that still stand derelict eighteen months after the battle of João de Deus. Squads of blades and cheap enforcers patrol the prospekts; immaculately dressed, more immaculately armed.
The train is prompt to the second. Bryce Mackenzie, his entourage and bodyguard, step from the emptied station on to Kondakova Prospekt. Jaime Hernandez-Mackenzie and his blades meet the honoured CEO. Bryce dismisses the fleet of motos that are to convey him to his João de Deus headquarters.
‘I’ll walk.’
‘Of course, Mr Mackenzie.’ Jaime Hernandez-Mackenzie dips his head, orders his private guard to fall in with Bryce’s escort.
‘Figures, Jaime. Reassure me that you have this place running smart and Mackenzie-style.’
Jaime Hernandez-Mackenzie reels off extractor deployments, estimated reserves, processing and output figures, reserves and delivery schedules, shipments to orbit and de-orbits to Earth. Information that could be faster and better transmitted familiar to familiar. Information Bryce could read in his office high on Kingscourt without coming within a thousand kilometres of João de Deus. This is the conqueror showing the vanquished his right and power. I walk among you and you cannot touch me.
‘Your initial personnel problems have been resolved?’ Bryce asks. His narrow, fat-girdled eyes flash left, right. No detail is lost to Bryce Mackenzie.
‘They have, Mr Mackenzie,’ Jaime says. ‘And without blood.’
‘Glad to hear it. Waste of good human resources. You’ve got the place looking smart. Cleaner than it ever was under those Cortas.’
Jaime knows that Bryce has never before been to João de Deus.
‘On the surface, Mr Mackenzie. A lot of the infrastructure needs replacing to bring this place up to modern standards.’ He ventures: ‘As Head of Production, I would be reassured to know that it’s safe to move extractors back into Mare Crisium. Without threat to my jackaroos.’
‘Your jackaroos can work safely,’ Dembo Amaechi, Head of Corporate security, says. ‘I’ve cleared out Anguis, Crisium and East Tranquilitatis. And without blood too.’ He smiles. ‘Much blood.’
‘And the head of Denny Mackenzie,’ Alfonso Pereztrejo says. ‘That’s a coup.’
‘Not quite,’ Rowan Solveig-Mackenzie says, with evident pleasure. ‘Some Taiyang glass-crew hauled him out of Schmidt Crater with ten minutes of O2 in his pack.’
‘He always was a tough little dunny rat, my nephew,’ Bryce says. ‘But, as long as my brother is back pouring hot metal, I’m content. For now.’
Bryce stops dead, his entourage a heartbeat behind him.
‘Jaime, this city is under your control?’
A rope hangs from the centre of West 7 crosswalk. The loose end is dyed red.
‘I’ll have it removed.’ Blades are already in motion.
‘Do that.’
Bryce Mackenzie sweeps on. His guard check the arcades and side alleys. The small, bloody reminder of what the Mackenzies did to João de Deus was a quick, furtive act. The culprit cannot have got far. Someone’s familiar will have captured the deed. Bryce may even want to interrogate the culprit personally.
Mackenzie Helium’s João de Deus office smells of new-printed furniture and flooring. The small human staff has the look of people who need to seem competent but don’t yet fully know the terrain. There are fresh flowers, a touch Bryce admires with a sniff. No perfume. The Asamoahs breed for visual beauty, not olfactory.
Bryce settles his vast bulk behind the desk. It’s been built to his body shape. He does not doubt that it will be deprinted the moment his railcar pulls out of João de Deus station. He studies the desk, the walls, the comfortable and stylish chairs arranged in front of his desk. It takes a moment for his staff to realise their error. A junior junior scurries to the kitchen area. A printer whines, water thunders to a boil for mandatory tea.
‘I’m irked,’ Bryce Mackenzie declares, pouting in displeasure. His chair creaks under his shifting weight. His feet kick in unconscious irritation. Everyone notices his small feet. A Mackenzie legend, Bryce Mackenzie’s dainty feet. ‘The boy. It is an affront to me, that I can’t keep my own safe and secure.’
‘He’s under the protection of the Meridian pack,’ Dembo Amaechi says.
‘The Meridian pack!’ Bryce roars. Backs stiffen, from the kitchen comes the sound of dropped glass. ‘Fucking kids playing fucking games. You bring me my property, Dembo.’
‘I’ll arrange that, Mr Mackenzie,’ Dembo Amaechi says.
‘Be quick about it. Ariel Corta is back. Give her enough time and she’ll drive a helium extractor clean through my adoption contract.’
Rowan Solveig-Mackenzie and Alfonso Pereztrejo exchange glances. This is news – unwelcome news – to them. This is a failure in corporate intelligence.
‘Mr Mackenzie, I could hire assassins…’ Dembo Amaechi ventures.
‘You will not touch a hair on her cunt. Half of Meridian saw her doing cocktails with the Eagle of the Moon. He’s contracted her.’
‘The Eagle needs a D-list marriage lawyer?’ Rowan says.
‘Big men are not necessarily fools,’ Bryce says and everyone in the room hears the steel in his voice.
‘Mr Mackenzie?’ The intern stands in the door, tray of tea-glasses in hand, plotting a course of grace and caution between the men packing the room. Bryce waves him in.
‘Bring me Robson Mackenzie,’ Bryce commands. ‘If you’re afraid of the big bad moon-wolf, wait until the pack dissolves.’
Dembo Amaechi conceals the flare of anger in his eyes inside a short, obedient bow.
‘I’ll make it my personal responsibility.’
‘Good. No need for any particular gentleness.’ Bryce lifts the freshly-printed tea-glass to his full, pursed lips. He sips, grimaces. ‘Tasteless. Bloody tasteless. And far too hot.’ He sets the glass on the white desk. The rest of his entourage set their untasted glasses on the tray. The intern is grey with fear. ‘I think everyone in this shit hole who needs to see me has seen me? Then take me back to Queen.’
5: LIBRA – SCORPIO 2105
Wagner Corta has always thought gold cheap. Its colour is tawdry, its shine mendacious, its heft a fiction that equates weight with worth. Up in the sky hangs an entire planet hypnotised by the lie of gold. The acme of wealth, the spirit of greed, the final measure of value.
The moon is profligate with gold. Corta Hélio helium extractors threw away tons of gold every year in their exhaust plumes. Gold was not even worth the cost of its own sifting. Adriana Corta owned no gold, wore no jewels. Her wed
ding band was steel, forged from lunar iron. The steel ring on the Iron Hand.
The Church of Theotokos of Konstantin is a womb of gold. Gold the low door through which all must stoop to enter the presence of the holy icon, gold the walls and dome of this tiny chapel, gold the rails and lamps and censers, gold the frame of the tiny icon. The background of the icon is beaten lunar gold. Gold the cover over the lady and the child, only their faces and hands exposed. Gold the holy crown. The mother’s skin is dark, her eyes downcast, looking away from the needy, pressing infant in her arms. Wagner has never seen such sad eyes. The child is a monster, too old, a tiny old man; greedily reaching a hand across the mother’s throat, face pressed hard against the mother’s cheek. Browns and golds. The legend is that Konstantin Vorontsov painted his icon in orbit, his wood and paints brought up over many launches from Kazakhstan with the materials to build the first cycler. He finished it on the moon with a backdrop of gold dust from the Sea of Tranquillity.
The Church of the Theotokos is the perfect place to meet Denny Mackenzie.
And here is the golden boy, ducking under the low lintel, squinting as he adjusts to the bioluminescence. Wagner is disappointed that he is wearing a black Helmut Lang suit. Denny Mackenzie grins at the decor. Gold teeth gleam.
‘Tasteful.’
There is room enough in the Church of Theotokos of Konstantin for two men, no entourages.
‘So where have you hidden your wolves, Wagner Corta?’
‘Same place as you’re hiding your blades.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Denny Mackenzie opens his jacket to show the knife hilts, one in either holster. The hand grips are gold.
‘I don’t think so either,’ Wagner says.
‘Of course not. Do you think I’d come here without a bodyguard? You won’t see them, Wagner.’
Meridian is free and disputed territory in the Mackenzie civil war. Factions skirmish, blades are drawn, fights sprawl across the prospekts, Zabbaleen wash blood from the streets. Denny Mackenzie buttons up his jacket. He bends to peer at the icon.