Luna--Wolf Moon--A Novel

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Open your eyes, boy.’

  His first thought is to refuse; irked by the tone of command in the old woman’s voice, the touch of the old woman’s controlling hand on his shoulder, though he is a head taller than her. He had prickled with small rebellion when she ordered him to close his eyes and keep them closed the whole ride up in the elevator, as he had bristled when she snatched the vaper out of his hand. A ridiculous affectation. But rebellion costs, and more, he knows she will wait until he obeys her.

  Darius Mackenzie opens his eyes. Light. Searing light. He closes his eyes. He beheld the light of Ironfall, the light of destruction. This light is so bright he can see the capillaries in his eyelids.

  The pavilion is a glass lantern atop the slender elevator tower atop Malapert Mountain. Darius stands at the centre of the hexagonal floor. Tiles, struts, vaults and ribs, the glass itself looks blasted and weary, their structural integrity pecked away photon by photon. The ideograms on the elevator call panel are bleached almost to illegibility. The air tastes scorched, strained, ionised.

  ‘Every Sun is brought here at the age of ten,’ Lady Sun says. ‘You’re late being a Sun, but you’re no exception.’ Darius lifts his hand to shade his eyes, lets it fall. No child of the Palace of Eternal Light would ever do such a thing.

  Not a lantern, Darius realises. The light of a lantern comes from within. This light comes from without; from a blinding sun perched on the very rim of Shackleton crater. Low midnight sun casts huge shadows up behind Darius like wings. Every dust mote dances. The Pavilion of Eternal Light is not a place where you observe the sun; it’s a place where the sun observes you.

  ‘Yeah, we had this in Crucible,’ Darius says.

  ‘Don’t be clever with me,’ Lady Sun says. ‘The difference is profound. Crucible had to forever follow the sun. The sun comes to us. Go, go on. Look at it. Go as close as you dare.’

  Darius is not to be dared by old women. He walks without hesitation to the glass, presses his palms to it. The toughened glass pane feels frail. It smells of dust and time. He looks full on the sun, rolling along the edge of the world. The Pavilion is a Peak of Eternal Light, one of those legendary places across the worlds, all at the poles, where the sun never sets.

  ‘Fifty years ago a message came in the night. It was on another world, in another city in another country. I had awaited that message for years. I was ready for it. I got up and left everything and went down to the car that I knew would be there. The car took me to a private plane. Aboard it were my aunts and uncles, my sisters and cousins. The plane took us to VTO Kazakhstan, and then to the moon. Do you know what that message said, boy?’

  Darius wants very much to lick the window, taste the glass.

  ‘It said that a faction in the government was moving to arrest my family,’ Lady Sun says. ‘They wanted hostages they could use to leverage my husband. Even a Mackenzie must have heard of the name of Sun Aiguo. Sun Aiguo, Sun Xiaoqing, Sun Honghui. They built Taiyang. They built the moon. Learn history, boy: the Outer Space Treaty bars Earth’s national governments from claiming and controlling the moon – this is why we are administered by a corporation, not a political party. The terrestrial states have always envied our freedom, our wealth, our achievements. What they fear is someone else taking the moon, so they watch each other. Jealousy is an honest emotion, easy to manipulate. Jealousy has kept us safe for fifty years.

  ‘Every family has a fear; every one of the Five Dragons. The Cortas feared that their children would destroy their inheritance. The Mackenzies…’

  ‘Ironfall,’ Darius Mackenzie says, without thought.

  ‘Do you know what the Suns fear?’ Lady Sun says. ‘That the sun will go out. That one day it will dip below that horizon and never rise again and we will go down in the cold and dark. The air will freeze. The glass will shatter.’

  ‘That can’t happen,’ Darius says. ‘It’s astronomy, physics: science.’

  ‘So ready with glib answers. The day the sun goes out is the day the rules break. The rule that has protected us for fifty years; the day the terrestrial states realise they have more to gain by acting together than stalking each other with knives. This is my family’s fear, Darius; the call in the night. When it comes, everything we have built, everything we have achieved, will be taken from us because we have nowhere to run.’

  ‘Is this what you tell all the others you bring up here?’

  ‘Yes. I tell them that; the ones I think need to hear it from me.’

  ‘And you think I need to hear that from you?’

  ‘No. What you need to hear from me, Darius, is that Ironfall was no accident.’

  He turns from the glass. Lady Sun’s face is impassive – Lady Sun’s face is always perfect, discreet – but Darius knows his obvious shock has pleased her.

  ‘Crucible was sabotaged. There was code embedded in the operating system for the smelter mirrors. A simple but effective routine. But you saw what it did.’

  ‘You are the coders,’ Darius says. Dust dances in the hot light around Lady Sun.

  ‘We are. Pre-eminently. Information is our business. But this was not our code.’

  ‘Whose was it?’

  ‘You’re not the Prince, Darius. You’re not the last heir of Robert and Jade. Duncan and Bryce are at each other’s throats, do you really think there’s a seat at their tables for you? Do you think you’re safe?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘You’re safe here, Darius. This is the only place you can be safe. With your family.’ Lady Sun has been moving step by unnoticed step, subtly steering Darius so that now she stands between him and the slow-rising sun. Darius squints into the painful light. Lady Sun is a heavy silhouette.

  ‘Do you think we’d let those Australian barbarians decide the succession? You’re not a Mackenzie, Darius. You never were. They know it. You wouldn’t have lasted six lunes. The Ironfall code, Darius; it was old code. Older than you. Much older.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. It was the Cortas who killed your mother.’

  * * *

  Abena Maanu Asamoah accepts the applause with a coy smile. The Lunarian Society’s Erasmus Darwin Salon is full; the faces close. The audience was easy to read: the sitter-back-with-arms-folded in the front row, the sitter-forward-with-the-constant-frown in the second row; the head-shaker second row far right, the mutterers in the second row centre, the stifled yawner in the third row. The Lunarian Society printed out extra chairs but there are still listeners perched on the arms of the big old-fashioned seats, leaning against the back wall. She can barely see through the host of hovering familiars.

  Abena is the last to present and the room has broken into private discussion as she comes down from the dais. Her colloquium mates press in to congratulate and adulate. Wait-staff offer drinks: small vodka, genever, cocktail tea. Abena takes a glass of chilled tea. As she receives compliments, accepts offers to speak, fields the questions of one persistent young man, she notices a disturbance in the room, as if people are making space for an object moving through them. A woman in a wheelchair: the wheelchair incredible, the woman unbelievable. Ariel Corta. Abena’s colloquium mates part to admit her to the circle.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Ariel says. She looks to Abena’s classmates. ‘Would you mind?’

  Abena nods: Catch you later when we go on to the club.

  ‘Let’s go on the balcony. The decor in here nauseates me.’ Ariel rolls towards the pavilion above West 65th. ‘A few notes. Always have something to do with your hands. Lawyers and actors know this. You’re not about truth, you’re about persuasion. People believe body language when they won’t believe spoken language.’ She scoops a genever from a tray and thanks the waiter. ‘Second note. Work your audience. Before you open your mouth, pick your targets. Who looks frightened, who looks over-confident, who catches your eye when you check out the room, who would you most like to seduce. Target them with what you have to say that they want to hear. Make them
feel like you are speaking to them personally. If they nod, if they adjust their body posture to mirror yours, you have them.’

  Ariel pats a low padded bench by the balustrade. Abena accepts the invitation to sit. Voices burble from the rooms beyond, laughs and interjections spike drama into the susurrus of networking. The sunline dims to indigo. Orion Quadra is a canyonland of lights, the glowing nave of a stupendous, godless cathedral.

  ‘You take me away from my friends and then tell me everything I’m doing wrong,’ Abena says.

  ‘I know, I’m an arrogant monster.’ Ariel takes a sip of her genever and grimaces. ‘This is hideous stuff.’

  ‘How did you find my paper?’

  ‘You’re taking a terrible risk, asking me that. I could say I found it banal, naive and jejune.’

  ‘I’d still stand by it.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear that.’

  ‘So what did you think of it?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer. I see society as sets of individual but interacting contracts. Webs of engagement and obligation. Society is this’ – she lifts her thimble of genever up to the cross-town lights – ‘in a Nicole Farhi dress. My problem with democracy is that I think we already have a more effective system. Your argument from terrestrial small states was fascinating, but the moon is different. We’re not a state; we’re an economic colony. If I were to make a terrestrial analogy, it would be with something enclosed and constrained by its environment. A deep sea fishing boat, or perhaps an Antarctic research base. We’re clients, not citizens. We are a rentier culture. We don’t own anything, we have no property rights, we are a low-stakes society. What’s my motivation to participate?

  ‘The problem with a democracy – even as elegantly constructed a direct democracy as yours – is free-riding. There will always be those who don’t want to participate, yet they share the benefits of those who do engage. If I could get away with free-riding, I certainly would. I only agreed to join the Pavilion of the White Hare because I thought it would give me a hand up to the Court of Clavius. Justice Ariel Corta has a nice ring to it. You can’t compel people to engage politically – that’s tyranny. In a society with low benefits to participation you end up with a majority of free-riders and a small engaged political caste. Leave democracy to those who wish to practise it and you always end up with a political class. Or worse, a representative democracy. Right now, we have a system of accountability that engages every single person on the moon. Our legal system makes every human responsible for their life, security and wealth. It’s individualistic and it’s atomising and it’s harsh but it is understood. And the limits are clear. No one makes decisions or assumes responsibilities for anyone else. It doesn’t recognise groups or religions or factions or political parties. There are individuals, there are families, there are corporations. Academics come up from Earth to Farside and tut and roll their eyes about us being cut-throat individualists with no concept of solidarity. But we do have what they would call a civil society. We just believe it’s best left to negotiation, not legislation. We are unsophisticated grudge-bearing barbarians. I rather like it.’

  ‘So: banal, naive and jejune,’ Abena says. ‘You didn’t come here to listen to political science students deliver naive banalities.’

  ‘Of course not. Is he well?’

  ‘We will keep him safe.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  ‘He’s with Madrinha Elis. Luna’s with her too. Sometimes Lousika, when she’s not up in Meridian.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked either.’

  ‘Okay.’ Abena sucks in her lip; a tell of emotional discomfort. ‘I think I broke his heart.’ Ariel raises an eyebrow. ‘I had to come here. A chance to study in Cabochon?’ Ariel’s eyebrow arches higher. ‘You don’t rate it, but it’s the best political science colloquium on the moon. And he got so clingy. And needy. And unfair. It was fine for him to have sex with someone if it made him feel better but if he needed me, he thought taking off his clothes and baking cake would solve everything.’

  ‘He is a spoilt little prince,’ Ariel says, ‘but he is very easy on the eye.’

  The tenor of the voices in the room beyond shifts; the traffic tones from below change: people making farewells and taking leaves, arranging meetings and rendezvous, extracting favours and promises: motos arriving and opening to receive fares, groups setting out on foot to the nearest elevator, heading on.

  ‘I’ve kept you long enough,’ Ariel says. ‘Your friends look impatient.’ She pushes the wheelchair away from the balustrade back toward the mill of guests. The glass of genever stands half-drunk on the rail, perilous above the luminous drop to the trees of Gargarin Prospekt.

  ‘I can push you,’ Abena offers.

  ‘I push myself.’ Ariel pauses, half turns. ‘I could use a legal intern. Interested?’

  ‘Is it paid?’ Abena asks.

  ‘Of course not. Expenses. Tips. Access. Politics. Interesting times. Visibility.’ Ariel pushes on, throws back over her shoulder without waiting for Abena’s response, ‘I’ll get Marina to arrange it.’

  * * *

  ‘It will hurt,’ Preeda the facilitator says. ‘It will hurt more than anything in your life.’

  At the sight of the sixteen people in a circle of seats, Marina almost turns her heel in the door and walks away. It looks like a rehab group. It is.

  Marina has come late – dawdling late – but the facilitator has done this many times and has sharp corners to her eyes.

  ‘Marina?’

  Caught.

  ‘Yes. Hi.’

  ‘Join us.’

  Sixteen people watch her take the seventeenth seat.

  The facilitator rests her hands on her thighs and looks around the circle of faces. Marina dodges eye contact.

  ‘So, welcome. First of all I have to thank you all for making the decision. It’s not an easy one. There’s only one harder decision and that’s the one to come here in the first place. And this will be difficult. There’s the physical element, and everyone knows about that. That will hurt. It will hurt more than you think. But there are mental and emotional elements. Those are the ones that really hurt. You will question everything you think about yourself. You will walk that long dark valley of doubt. I offer only this: we’re there. We’ll pledge that: when any one of us needs that, we’ll be there for each other. Yes?’

  Marina mumbles her response with the others. Her gaze is fixed on her knees.

  ‘So, shan’t waste time. Last in first up. Tell us something about yourself.’

  Marina swallows her nerves and looks up. Everyone in the circle is watching her.

  ‘I’m Marina Calzaghe and I am going back to Earth.’

  * * *

  Marina’s first thought is that burglars have ransacked the apartment. The furniture is upended. Every glass and fast food container, every utensil is smashed or on the floor. The bedding is strewn far and wide, toiletries scattered. The place has been trashed. Marina’s second thought is that there are no burglars on the moon. No one owns anything to steal.

  Then she sees the wheelchair on its side just inside Ariel’s bedroom door.

  ‘Ariel!’

  Ariel is on her back amongst a pile of bedding.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Marina asks.

  ‘What the fuck have you done to my gin?’ Ariel shouts.

  ‘I poured it down the shower.’

  ‘And the printer?’

  ‘I hacked it.’

  Ariel props herself up on her elbows.

  ‘There is no gin in the house.’ It’s an accusation.

  ‘No gin, no vodka, no alcohol of any kind.’

  ‘I’ll go get some.’

  ‘I’ll hack your chair.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I’ll unhack it.’

  ‘You know jack shit about coding.’

  Ariel collapses back into the pile of bedding.

  ‘Get me
a drink. One drink. That’s all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know, I know. But it’s always Martini hour somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t beg. It’s not classy. Here are the rules. There’s no alcohol in the house. I can’t stop you when you’re out, and I wouldn’t because that’s a lack of respect.’

  ‘Well thank you for that. Where were you anyway? Another one of your bands?’

  ‘Training.’ It’s not a complete lie. ‘Gracie Jiu jitsu. You never know when I’ll need to save you again.’

  ‘This, always this.’

  ‘Give me a fucking break, Ariel.’

  ‘Give me my fucking gin! Give me my fucking legs! Give me my fucking family!’ After a silence in which neither of the two women can look at each other, Ariel says, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You scare me. I saw the state of the place, I saw the wheelchair on its side, what am I supposed to think? I thought, what if I find her lying dead?’

  Now Ariel can’t look at Marina.

  ‘Marina, can you do something for me?’

  ‘I won’t get you a drink, Ariel.’

  ‘I don’t want you to get me a drink.’

  ‘Call yourself a lawyer? That was a damn lie even to me.’

  ‘I want you to get in touch with Abena Asamoah.’

  ‘She delivered the paper at the Lunarian Society?’

  ‘The paper was simplistic democratist nonsense. But she’s smart and she’s ambitious.’

  ‘And she’s fucking your nephew.’

  ‘And her aunt, my erstwhile sister-in-marriage, is Omahene of the Golden Stool. And, while the patronage of Eagle gets me into LDC meetings, the patronage of Dragons comes with an altogether sharper set of claws.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I mentioned to her that I was looking for an intern. She’ll be an idiot to accept it, but I intend to seduce her. There’s a LDC meeting scheduled for Ku Kola. Invite her to it as my guest. Tell her it’s an opportunity to see how politics really works. Arrange the clearances, would you?’

  ‘Why do I do this?’

  ‘Because I have people now,’ Ariel says. ‘Tell her to dress better. And give me a hand up and help me clear up this mess.’