Luna--Wolf Moon--A Novel

by Ian McDonald

  * * *

  Every face in the lock looks up. Thirty, fifty faces, Wagner estimates as he descends the ramp. Wagner’s helmet is under his arm, Zehra Aslan, his junshi at his shoulder. Some faces down there are familiar, some over familiar. Most new. More new than he has ever seen before. Sombra runs through their résumés. A couple claim to have worked for Corta Hélio. Nice try.

  The crowd parts. Wagner and Zehra walk to the front of Rover Lucky Eight Ball.

  ‘I can take four,’ he announces.

  No one moves.

  Wagner turns to the tall Igbo man whose sasuit is covered in Manchester United patches.

  ‘You. Jo Moonbeam. Leave.’

  The big man’s eyes widen in rage, he draws himself up. He is a head taller than second-gen Wagner.

  ‘I’m surface certified.’

  ‘You’re a liar. The way you stand, the way you set your shoulders, the way you carry your weight, the way you smell, the way you wear that suit, the way you hook your fingers into the helmet, the way the seals sit. No. You’re a danger to yourself; worse than that, you’re a danger to my crew. Leave now, get surface hours and maybe the next time I see you, I won’t throw you out. And do not ever lie on your résumé again.’

  The Jo Moonbeam locks eyes with Wagner, tries to stare him down but Wagner has the eye of the wolf. The big man sees the fury that burns there, turns and pushes his way through the crowd.

  Nice touch of theatre, wolf, Zehra says through her familiar. But he is wolf no more, not now the dark is on the face of the Earth. It is his dark-side focus that spotted that the Jo Moonbeam was a liar.

  ‘Ola, Mairead, Neile. Jeff Lemkin.’ Wagner has glassed with the first three names before, the fourth is new to him but comes with exemplary recommendations from the VTO track teams repairing the destruction after the fall of Crucible. ‘The rest of you, thank you.’

  When only his fresh Glass Crew Lucky Eight Ball remain in the dock, Wagner runs through the mission assignment – glassing out east of Meridian on the Sea of Tranquillity.

  ‘Laoda?’ Zehra’s voice. ‘The speech?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jeff is the only one who hasn’t heard it before but even he can tell that Wagner is rolling it out by rote. The speech, the specs, the order to suit up and strap in. The names of his crew rez up on his lens, the roll bars fold down over him and lock; the numbers wind down to zero pressure. Red light and green.

  ‘Zehra.’

  ‘Wagner?’

  ‘Take her out for me.’ He flicks her the drive HUD.

  ‘Sure.’

  Zehra Aslan has been Wagner’s junshi for ten tours now and their relationship is as close, familiar and efficient as a well-contracted marriage. She runs system checks and files traffic plans while the crew of Lucky Eight Ball hook up to the inboard life support. Wagner has Sombra open a private call.

  ‘Wagner.’

  He’s in Eleventh Gate, with tea, wearing apricot sports shorts with blue trim and a baggy T, his hair piled up.

  ‘Just making sure you have everything.’

  ‘I have everything.’

  ‘And everything’s all right?’

  ‘Everything’s all right.’

  ‘Well, if you do need something…’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But if you do…’

  ‘Amal’s on it.’

  Wagner remembers how he saw Robson last, under the canopy of the packhouse, Amal at his side. Amal’s arm around him. Wagner experiences again the stab of an emotion equal parts loss, jealousy and longing.

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  The dock is evacuated, the outlock door slides up. Zehra guns the motors and sends the rover up the ramp into the expanding slot of darkness.

  ‘Wagner, why did you call?’ Robson says.

  ‘Just to make sure. Nothing really. Well, I’ll be back in ten days.’

  ‘Okay. Be careful, Lobinho.’

  Robson and his tea vanish from Wagner’s lens and as the rover rolls off the ramp on to the surface and throws up plumes of dust from its fat wheels, Wagner flays himself. Why didn’t he say it say it say it?

  Love you, littlest wolf.

  * * *

  He snuffs out the bio light and sits in the deepest shadow at the furthest table. Hunched shoulders, downcast eyes challenge anyone, even the hot-shop owner, to talk to him. The horchata went cold long ago.

  His thoughts march a tedious circuit. Nauseating shock. Scarlet humiliation. Shrieking outrage. Cold injustice. His mind rolls from one emotion to another, round and round like the stations of a pilgrimage.

  You killed my parents.

  Darius had rejected call after call. Fifteen. Twenty. That should have been the clue. Robson persisted. Naive Robson, stupid Robson, calling and calling, wondering why his old friend, his best friend, wasn’t picking up; imagining all kinds of businesses or sicknesses or family commitments that prevented him from picking up when the truth was that his friend, his best friend, had been turned.

  I’m only answering this to tell you I hate you.

  When Darius did pick up after twenty-five calls: naive Robson stupid Robson smiling, saying, Hey Darius, what’s going on?

  That stupidity he hates most. The humiliation of it feels like something kicking its way into his stomach, to claw and eat things there.

  Betrayers and murderers.

  He is still trembling from the shock. He hears two things: Darius’s words and Darius’s voice. They are not the same. The words tumble in his head, the voice goes on and on. Darius spoke for less than thirty seconds and Robson has played it endlessly in remembering.

  I will cut your eyes and lying tongue out, Robson Corta.

  Joker cut the link and Robson ran from the packhouse.

  His friend has turned against him.

  ‘I thought I’d find you here.’

  Robson’s shoulders stiffen. He glances up. Ner.

  ‘I do not want to talk to you.’

  ‘Robson…’

  ‘You’re shit with me, you know?’

  Amal pulls up a chair and positions it at an angle to Robson. No direct eye contact, nothing confrontational. Robson would stare ner to death if he could.

  ‘I will sit and I will wait.’

  ‘So sit.’

  Né doesn’t sit.

  Né snatches the glass of horchata and throws it. Né picks up the chair né is about to sit on, swings and lashes out with it at the figures that have arrived behind ner close and fast and without Robson seeing. Né tips the table over, throws Robson from his seat and pushes him down behind it.

  The glass strikes a man in a Reebok tracksuit and sends him reeling. The chair trips another two men in Adidas. Amal head-butts the fourth assailant. The woman reels, shakes it off, seizes Amal by a fistful of clothing and hoists ner one-handed. Amal’s dark-senses alerted ner to the attackers but this woman has Jo Moonbeam strength. She balls her gloved right hand into a fist: strikes. Fused glass gas-seal cracks and chips. An Iron Fist. Robson has heard of these things: supple fabric that polarises on impact into a carbon hard as steel. The woman raises the fist again, drives it into Amal’s stomach. Things burst. Robson is already on his escape route.

  The snatch squad has recovered and follows fast and close. Robson darts through the kitchen, tips over woks, pans, hot liquids. He hears the whine of a taser charging. He ducks through the vent and in a heartbeat is up the access ladder at the back of the kiosk. Taser darts clang against metal. He’s on the roof, now swinging hand-over-hand up the service pipe to Level One. Only a kid, only a traceur, can follow Robson’s escape route. He’s worked it out, he’s timed it but he’s never tested it with his body until now. He jumps, soars, grabs rail and swings himself up on to the safety rail of Aquarius West One. His escape won’t be complete until he’s three levels up, but he takes a moment, perched on the rail, to look down at his hunters, furious and impotent down on the hot-shop roof.

  The drone bobs down into his eyeline.

  ‘
That’s not fair,’ Robson says, then the taser barbs take him in the belly and send him flying into the middle of East One. He can’t breathe. Every muscle is dipped in molten lead, pulled so taut his tendons could shear from his joints. He’s pissed his shorts. The drone hovers an arm’s reach above his face. He could tear it down, if he could move even an eyelid.

  Figures arrive on powerboards and carve to a halt.

  ‘Nimble little fucker,’ says the big man Robson recognises as Bryce’s head of security. The drone drops its taser wires and flies up. Robson can’t move, can’t breathe. Dembo Amaechi walks towards him. Robson is locked rigid.

  Then bodies come down from the roof, over the railing, out of the side alleys. In a flicker of steel two of Bryce’s blades are down. The third drops his knife, shouts, ‘I’m not contracted for this.’ Turns, runs.

  ‘How are you, Dembo?’

  Robson can’t turn his head to look but he knows the voice. Denny Mackenzie.

  ‘Rowan said you weren’t dead.’

  ‘Very much undead. Or is that non-dead?’

  ‘An oversight I intend to remedy now.’

  ‘That’s a smart line, Dembo,’ says Denny Mackenzie. Still, Robson tries to move. He can push himself away, skin scraping raw on the roadbed. ‘You always had a facility for the language. Me, I’m an undereducated jackaroo. Handy with a knife though.’

  Away, away. The two blades clash. Away. Robson struggles to his feet. His legs won’t hold, he goes down hard on his hands. Up. Away. All eyes are on the fight. Mackenzie versus Mackenzie. This time Robson’s feet hold him. He limps to the next stage of his escape route. Aquarius Quadra wears its engineering on the outside; it’s one giant climbing frame. Robson hooks his fingers into pipework. They are numb but there is enough strength to hold him. He hauls himself up. And again. And again. It is the most difficult thing he has ever done. He rests a moment in the elbow of the Level Two pier and shakes the tingle out of his hands and feet.

  A great blood cry. Robson glances down. One figure on the ground, one figure walking towards his hiding place.

  Denny Mackenzie grins up at him, opens his arms.

  ‘Robson, come on down, mate. You’re safe now.’

  Robson levers himself out of the elbow and squirms through the gap where the cable cluster pierces the Level 2 roadway.

  ‘Don’t make me come up there after you.’

  You can’t, Robson thinks. It’s too tight for adults.

  The voice rings up from below. Denny looks up the cable shaft. ‘Wagner asked me, Robbo. Look after him when I can’t.’

  Robson climbs. Maybe if Denny had not used the hated nickname. Maybe if he hadn’t heard things break inside Amal that could not be put together again. Maybe if he hadn’t felt the spit and bile of Darius. Maybe then he might climb down. But he can’t be a Mackenzie and he can’t be a Sun and he can’t be a wolf. Two levels up, his escape route will take him to the East 4th Elevator. He can drop on to the car and ride that elevator up past the gardens of the rich all the way to the top of the world. There will be people up there for him.

  ‘I will find you,’ Denny Mackenzie calls. ‘You’re my debt, Robbo. And I pay my debts.’

  * * *

  He has always shaved his body hair, since puberty and his first hairs around his penis disgusted him. Total, from the crown of his head to the hair on his toes. Back crack sack. He works his body over again with the razor until he is perfectly smooth. He dries, lets his familiar show him himself. He slaps his belly. Still tight, the abs packed, the inguinal crease pronounced. Still got it. Last the oil. It is his own personal mix, from expensive organics, not synthesised. He works it slowly and painstakingly into every muscle fold and crease. The back of the neck, the head, the backs of the knees and the soft pucker of the perineum. Between the fingers. He gleams, he is golden. He is ready.

  Hoang Lam Hung takes a deep, huffing breath and jogs on the spot, loosening muscles.

  The shower cubicle door opens. Three Mackenzie Helium blades wait.

  ‘You’ve come to take me home to Queen of the South!’ Hoang says. ‘Have you any idea how bored I am of Lansberg?’ He shows his naked body. ‘I’ve shaved for Bryce.’ The blades look confused. ‘A joke.’ A bitter one, too.

  ‘Bryce isn’t happy,’ the first blade says. She is a short, well-made Jo Moonbeam, she carries a taser stick. ‘He wanted the boy.’

  ‘I’d never let Bryce have him,’ says Hoang Lam Hung.

  ‘It would be really better if you didn’t talk,’ the second blade says.

  ‘He breaks everything he touches. I couldn’t let the boy end up like me.’

  ‘Please,’ says the third blade. He carries cleaning equipment.

  ‘Sorry mate,’ the woman says and jabs the taser in Hoang’s belly. He goes down, jaws, fists, spine and sinews locked. Every muscle and nerve burns as if intaglioed with acid. He’s pissed himself. He’s shit himself. The woman grimaces in disgust as she and the second blade lift Hoang to his knees and drag him down the corridor. Cleaning blade moves in to deal with the mess. The Vorontsovs are meticulous in their cleanliness. Theirs is a world where a stray hair, a skin scale can bring down a space ship.

  Hoang is fragrant and slick with body oil. The blades lose their grip on his sleek skin as they drag him to the outlock. His feet and shins leave oily marks on the soft-impact flooring. He can’t move. He can’t speak, can’t breathe.

  Robson is in Meridian, with the pack, with Wagner. He’s protected. Hoang regrets lying but if he had told Robson the truth, that he had to stay, that he had to offer himself as a price, the boy would never have boarded the train.

  The second blade punches code. The lock opens. Bodies surge forward; kids, five boys, three girls, all naked. Lips and cheeks are ornamented with smears of white. Through the pain Hoang recognises those streaks of battle-paint. Traceurs. Free-runners. Robson’s crew. Screaming, hands reaching, pawing, grabbing. The blades push them back with tasers and knives, shove Hoang in among them. A few stabs of the shock stick, a few kicks, smashed fingers and faces, then the second blade seals the lock. Green light. Dull, distant hammer of fists on metal. Counts ten. Hits the switch. The green light turns red.

  In the antechamber the third blades sasuits up. He’ll go out there in a while and clear up the mess. The Vorontsovs and their clean environments.

  * * *

  The security woman looks into Abena’s right eye and Abena almost giggles at the cool thrill that runs down through her body as she nods her through. Elite access. This will never tarnish. The penultimate Gate of Anxiety is passed. The first Gate of Anxiety was whether Ariel’s offer on the balcony of the Lunarian Society was genuine. Her familiar, Tumi, called Marina Calzaghe. True. Abena thought Marina’s response terse. Perhaps she should have called in person, but that was so old. The second Gate of Anxiety was whether the LDC had a record of her in Ariel’s’ entourage. Tumi checked with the Lunar Development Corporation. Abena Muusa Asamoah. Assistant to Ariel Corta. Yes, you really are on the team.

  The third Gate of Anxiety was the dress. Was Christian Lacroix suitably professional for a meeting of the Lunar Development Corporation, sufficiently fashionable to impress Ariel Corta? For dress read shoes make-up hair. Her colloquium mates had spent two hours that morning working on her hair.

  The fourth gate she has just breezed through, into the lobby of the Lunar Development Corporation headquarters. It is all wood and chrome. Abena can’t begin to calculate the carbon budget. The lobby is crowded with the great of the moon, loud with their voices and customised perfumes. Big shoes and bigger hair, shoulder pads and eye shadow. The middle air flocks with familiars: the adinkra of the Asamoahs, the I-Ching trigrams of the Suns. The Vorontsovs seem to be favouring Heavy Metal imagery this season: umlauts and rust. Board members skin their familiars in the simple dot-and-orbiting-satellite of the LDC. She spots the Triple-Goddess sigil of the Lunar Independence movement before it is lost in the host of icons. Live wait-staff serve glasses of
tea and small edibles which Abena declines, fearful of grease marks on her Christian Lacroix. She has chosen well; shoulders not the widest, waist not the narrowest. Now: Ariel. Abena scans the crowd looking for a gap in the social skyline that would indicate a woman in a wheelchair. No. She works the room again, and then again, and then finds Ariel at the centre of a knot of lawyers and judges, vaper in one gloved hand. Ariel beckons her with a wave of the vaper.

  Abena recognises every member of Ariel’s entourage. Her stomach lurches in dread. These are the moon’s sharpest lawyers, the most respected judges, the most astute political theorists. Abena hesitates. Again Ariel beckons. Abena knows she won’t beckon a third time but what Ariel cannot see is that between her and Abena stands the Fifth Gate of Anxiety, the one she has never passed before. The Gate that asks, And who exactly are you? What do you think you are doing here? The Gate of the Impostor.

  Abena swallows hard and steps forward. A hand touches her sleeve. She almost drops her tea-glass, turns to see the Eagle of the Moon. Jonathon Kayode is one of the few terrestrials who can stand eye for eye with her generation-3 height.

  ‘Delighted delighted!’ He pumps Abena’s hand. He is unaware of the strength of his grip, and he does not let go as he says, ‘New talent is everything, isn’t it?’ This he directs to Adrian Mackenzie, a pale shade at his side. Adrian does not shake Abena’s hand.

  ‘A pleasure, Madame Asamoah.’

  ‘I have Senhora Corta to thank…’ Abena begins but the Eagle of the Moon has moved to other greetings and salutations.

  ‘Darling.’ Ariel kisses her three times, then, to her party, says, ‘Let me introduce Abena Maanu Asamoah, of the Cabochon Colloquium. An able young politico. I hope to knock some sense into her.’ The entourage laughs and Ariel names them one by one. Abena recognises the names but hearing each one spoken is like a physical blow. ‘You’ve all got assistants, so why should I be left out? And she dresses better than yours. And is very much smarter.’

  Social tides sweep the crowd toward the open doors of the council chamber.

  ‘Passable.’ Ariel scrutinises Abena Maanu Asamoah’s clothes and make-up. ‘Sit on my left, look interested and say nothing. You can lean towards me from time to time and pretend to whisper. And this.’ Ariel touches her left forefinger between her eyes but Abena can see the familiars wink out as the councillors enter the chamber. She can’t remember the last time she was without AI assistance. She feels as if she has no underwear.