by Ian McDonald
Norton and Alexia manoeuvred Lucas into the MPV. The car closed and Alexia saw relief on Lucas’s face. Norton ordered the car into the traffic. A couple of motorbikes had passed twice and made him nervous. Alexia glanced over her shoulder to make sure they hadn’t woven in between the MPV and Dr Volikova in her medical pick-up.
‘Senhora Corta,’ Lucas said. ‘I’d like to make you an offer.’ Lucas touched the glass partition and muted the car microphones. Norton was deaf in the front. ‘You are a talented, ambitious, ruthless young woman with the intelligence to see an opportunity and take it. You’ve built an empire but you can do so much more. This world has nothing for you. The offer my mother made to your predecessors, I make to you. Come to the moon with me. Help me take back what the Mackenzies and Suns stole from me and I will reward you so that your family will never be poor again.’
This was the moment. For this she had bribed, blackmailed, lied her way into Lucas Corta’s bedroom. She had prised open the door to the wealth and power of Corta Hélio. Beyond it was the moon.
‘I will need time to think about it.’
‘Of course. Only a fool would heedlessly step off for the moon. You have your water empire; that’s why I didn’t ask you to work for me. I asked you to come to the moon with me. I want it to cost you. You have two days to decide. My time on Earth is short, I have maybe three, four weeks left before surface-to-orbit will kill me. As it is, the odds are that I will suffer permanent damage to my health. Come to the hotel when you are certain. No more lies and disguises.’
7: LIBRA – SCORPIO 2105
The Eagle of the Moon serves exceeding good Martinis but Ariel leaves hers untouched on the polished stone table on the edge of the drop.
‘I thought it was always Martini hour in some quadra,’ the Eagle says.
‘I don’t have the taste for it this morning.’
They sit facing each other across the small stone table beneath the sculptured canopy of the Orange Pavilion, on the very edge of the stupendous vault of Antares Hub. Late traffic hums across the bridges and crosswalks, up and down the cable ways, bobbing through the air. The sunline deepens to evening, the street lights blink on as the daylight recedes along the sun lines to the furthest ends of the quadra’s prospekts. It was morning the last time Ariel sat here, in this belvedere, by this stupendous vista. The last time she sat in this Eyrie, the Eagle of the Moon had commanded a dynastic marriage. Corta and Mackenzie. Lucasinho and Denny. The bergamots on the ornamental trees still bear traces of silver paint from the wedding decorations.
‘I’m owed an explanation, Jonathon.’
‘The board was about to table a motion of no confidence. I forestalled that.’
‘You took them hostage.’
‘I arrested them.’
‘Our legal system has no process of arrest. You kidnapped them and you’re holding them hostage. Where are they?’
‘They’re under guard in their apartments. I’ve taken the precaution of dialling down their breathing. It works wonders with compliance.’
‘There is nothing in the LDC articles of incorporation that permits you to abduct and hold the board of the Lunar Development Corporation.’
‘This is the moon, Ariel. We do what we like.’
‘Do you want me to quit, Jonathon? I will if you shit me. There are eight thousand writs out there and I’m the only thing between them and you.’
‘I was tipped off that the board would try and remove me from office at that meeting.’
‘Vidhya Rao.’
‘E predicted the attempted No Confidence motion. The board’s move to unseat me was orchestrated from Earth. The terrestrial nation states are moving against me.’
‘Why did you contract me, Jonathon?’
‘Vidhya Rao’s machines make guesses through finding patterns, often indiscernible to humans. E tracked the financial flows back through a bewildering array of shell companies to sovereign wealth funds. At the centre is someone you know well. Your brother.’
Ariel tucks her Oscar de la Renta clutch bag under her arm and turns her chair away.
‘Fantasy, Jonathon. Paranoia. I’m out. This contract is terminated. I no longer represent you.’
Jonathon Kayode reaches across the table to seize Ariel’s wrist; a swift move for a big man.
‘Lucas survived the Suns’ assassination attempt, escaped the moon and found refuge with VTO.’
‘Let me go, Jonathon.’ She meets Jonathon Kayode’s eyes. The grip on her wrist releases. The Eagle is also a strong man; his fingers have left pale imprints on her brown skin. ‘You hired me as a shield.’
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck you, Jonathon.’
‘Yes. So will you walk?’
Ariel eyes the Martini. Cold and potent and holy. She lifts the glass from the table and takes a sip. Sanity, certainty. Glorious.
‘Am I safe, Jonathon?’
‘I forestalled his attempt to oust me.’
‘Jonathon, you’re a fool if you think my brother has only one plan.’
* * *
The other worshipper dropped out at the 8th Street West ladeira. Marina has run lone for an hour ten now. She will keep running until someone joins her. That’s the faith of the new Long Run. Someone will always join you. The Long Run never stops.
Marina rattles, a caged thing, in the new apartment. Her life is more now than hand to mouth and her new comforts and securities are not enough. The physicality of her return-to-Earth program gives her a hunger for other vocabularies for her body. She remembers the Long Run: the bodies, the painted skin, the coloured threads and tassels of the orixas, the absorption into a unity, an unconscious consciousness where time and distance evaporated and physical limits dissolved, the many-legged beast that runs in the outer darkness, singing.
She remembers Carlinhos. The sweat streaking the fluorescent paint on his pecs and thighs. The coy self-consciousness when they came out of the run-rapture. The dark velvet softness of his skin against her in her bed the night before he fought. How she saw him last raging and exultant in the blood of Hadley Mackenzie on the floor of the Court of Clavius.
She heard whispers through the sports and fitness channels, through her Gracie Jiu Jitsu instructor, through the santinhos who had left João de Deus after Bryce Mackenzie made it his capital. The Long Run had come to Meridian. It required a critical mass. From the start it had to be eternal. There would always have to be a body in motion. Meridian was different from João de Deus; it did not have the orbital service tunnel far from the main prospekts, where bodies could flow and chant ceaselessly. A route was devised, a complex loop of service roads through seven levels of Volk Prospekt: seventy kilometres. Then the five prospekts of Aquarius Quadra: three hundred and fifty kilometres. In the end it would cover all three quarters: one thousand and fifty kilometres.
The New Long Run would take sixty hours to complete: the longest continuous run in the two worlds. The danger was that such an endurance run would become fashionable and the Long Run was not a competition or a challenge. It was a discipline and a transcendence. A system of alerts made sure there was always a body in motion. Marina is not a founder; she is a maintainer: she crews the long empty stretches, the hour that becomes two. She finds private transcendence up in the long empty stretches. She thinks about Earth, she thinks about her bones withering, her muscle mass growing. She thinks about No Running. She will be wheelchair bound for weeks, she will need crutches and sticks for months. It will be a year before she dare pull on something small and stretchy and run. Even then, it will only be running. There will be no saints, no voices, no communion.
She thinks this not to think about Ariel.
Meet point in sixty seconds, Hetty says. Marina can see the runner coming up the West 26th ladeira. They’ll meet at the entrance to the 18th Street bridge.
Que sues pes correm certeza, the woman says. She is dressed and painted in red. Her shorts and top carry the lightning bolt of Xango. Marina admires the look.
It wouldn’t work with her colouring.
Corremos com os santos, says Marina and the woman switches to Globo. The old tongue has never sat comfortably between Marina’s lips. The two women fall into a pace and cross the street bridge. It is night and they run between two endless walls of lights.
‘You work with Ariel Corta?’ the woman says.
‘Sort of.’
‘I thought so. I’ve seen you around. Ariel sorted out an amory for me that veered bad. Revenge and stalking and everything. I was the only one didn’t end up with a restraining contract. Everyone says amories are the easiest to get out of. Don’t you believe them. When you see her, thank her from me. Amara Padilla Quibuyen. She won’t remember me.’
‘You’d be surprised what she remembers,’ Marina says. And here she is, thinking about Ariel again.
* * *
In the green of Ogun and the red of Xango, Marina Calzaghe and Amara Padilla Quibuyen drink cocktails. The Long Run has passed to other feet and, like a pair of dusters in after a six-week contract, the two women have gone straight to a bar. It is Amara’s secret, a couple of scoops out of the wall of East 35th, seats and tables sculpted from sheer rock; a place where the barkeep knows everyone’s name because it only holds eight people.
‘I have a confession,’ Marina says. ‘I never liked Blue Moons.’
‘Me neither. I like fruit and sweet stuff.’
Marina clinks her caipiroshka against Amara’s guava batide.
‘Eternamente.’ The Long Runner’s farewell.
‘Eternamente,’ Marina says in her execrable Portuguese. Drinks after run. That breaks every one of Marina’s professional and running protocols. Ariel needs her more than ever since the Eagle of the Moon’s coup. But she can’t face the claustrophobia of the big, airy apartment; Ariel swept up in her host of legal AIs swatting down squadron after squadron of writs, Abena assisting in silent intensity, hunting down cases and precedents and rulings, aware that this is work at the very edge of her ability and stamina and that it will make her career at Cabochon. The kid has slung a hammock in the kitchen, but her eyes are on the Golden Stool.
‘Were you at João de Deus or out in the field?’
‘Payroll.’ Amara raises her glass. ‘Don’t fuck with the accountants.’
‘You look like a duster.’
Amara dips her head coyly.
‘I kind of like duster style.’
‘Works for you.’
‘So, you and Ariel?’
‘I kind of backed into working for her. My doctorate was in computational evolutionary biology in process control architecture. I had a wait-staff job at Lucasinho Corta’s Moonrun party when someone tried to kill Rafa Corta. More qualifications than all the Cortas put together and I end up as Ariel’s bodyguard, personal assistant and bartender.’
How did that caipi disappear so quickly? Dmitry at the bar is already preparing a second.
‘You do want another?’ Amara says.
Why not replace all her lost body fluid with alcohol?
‘I majored in custom logics for artificial intelligences,’ Amara continues. ‘Ended up as payroll clerk. At least there’s work. People will always need to be paid.’
The second caipiroshka is as sharp, delicious and generous as the first.
‘Here’s to payroll.’
‘How long have you been on the moon?’ Marina asks.
‘Does it show? I was hoping you’d think I was gen 2. I’m considered unfashionably tall in my family. I’m Filipina originally. Luzon. Mother is an orthodontist, father is in banking. I know. Good upper-middle-class nuclear family upbringing. All expected to excel, all went to good US universities, all got good degrees, then the bad tall one catches a rocket, waves goodbye and heads off to the moon. They still can’t understand it. Three years eight months…’
‘One year eleven months. Four days.’
‘That’s why that second caipi went down so fast.’
The second empty glass startles Marina. Dmitry swipes it away. The makings of the third are already laid out on his bar.
‘Tell me: what made you stay?’
‘What’s there to go back to? Bad government, cheap terrorism, rising sea levels and the next person you kiss could breathe a killer disease into your lungs.’
‘Family?’
‘Family is what works. Where are your people?’
‘North-west. Olympic Peninsula. Just inland from Port Angeles. You’re going to say, that’s beautiful, mountains and forests and the sea. It is. I saw snow, once. There was some freak of the weather and suddenly up there, on the very high peaks: white. Snow! We took the car and drove up the old park road just to walk in it. It was pretty much all gone by next day. Rain on snow is an ugly thing.’
‘You’re going back, aren’t you?’
‘I can’t live here. My ticket’s booked. Got my seat on the Moonloop, got my berth on the cycler.’
Amara finishes her first cocktail. Dmitry brings fresh: second for Amara, third for Marina. She must be cuing him through their familiars.
‘Have you told Ariel?’
Marina shakes her head.
‘If you can’t even say that to me, what chance do you have of saying it to her?’
Marina looks up from her glass.
‘You have an awful lot to say about me and Ariel.’
‘I’ve been buying you cocktails all night.’
‘And two hours ago we were running-mates.’
‘I think you’ve been wanting to tell someone about this for a long time, and I am prepared to buy you another caipiroshka.’
‘What is this, caipi therapy?’
‘It’s runners, coming off the high.’
‘Buy me another caipiroshka.’
Caipiroshka four arrives as gorgeous as all its predecessors. Marina shivers as she sips, feels the warmth and closeness of this tiny troglodyte bar around her, comforting and clothing like a stone suit.
‘I can go suddenly but I can’t go cleanly. Understand?’
Amara frowns as she sips batide through her straw.
‘There will always be a connection.’
‘There will always be something she needs me for. The moment of supreme need will come, and I will have abandoned her.’
‘If you tell her, she’ll ask you to stay.’
‘She wouldn’t ask. She would never do that. But I would know. And I might stay, and then I would hate her.’ Marina stands up. ‘I have to go. I have to get back. I’m sorry. Thanks for all the cocktails.’
‘At least finish that one.’
‘I shouldn’t. I’m trying to keep her off the gin and if I roll in half in the bag…’
‘You’ve earned it.’
‘No, I can’t. Hetty, get me a moto.’ Marina bends to kiss Amara goodnight. Amara pulls Marina close and whispers.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. You see, I had a plan for this evening. I’ve noticed you. Been noticing you. I moved schedules to get to run with you. My evil plan was to lure you here and fill you with cocktails and try and seduce you or at least get a date and I have no chance of that. I never will. Because all the talents I possess are powerless against love.’ She kisses Marina tenderly. ‘Eternamente.’
* * *
The higher profile the AKA executive, the more discreet the security, until it merges with the world and passes from human perception. Ariel does not doubt that that insect thrum, that flicker of bird wings, that skulk of fur and glint of eye in the low foliage can kill her without her ever knowing. Never trust living creatures. She is her mother’s daughter. But the shade beneath the branches is cool and scented with the spice notes of decomposing leaf-litter and the paths of the park empty as only the power of the Golden Stool can command.
‘Is she any use at all?’ Lousika Asamoah asks. The two women amble and roll along crunching pink gravel paths. This is the first time they have met since the fall of Corta Hélio, the destruction of Boa Vista and the death of Rafa Corta.
‘I may h
ave ruined the girl as a career politician,’ Ariel says. ‘She’s going to think every issue can be solved with the liberal application of mercenaries.’
Lousika Asamoah’s laughter is generous, full and light as a bell. Ariel negotiated the nikah with Rafa and from the start it was evident that love lived in this relationship as it never had in Rafa’s other marriage to Rachel Mackenzie.
‘I should send her straight home to Twé,’ Lousika Asamoah says. ‘Gods know what she’ll land in next.’ The words are glib but Ariel hears the undertone of concern. Political violence has impacted Meridian’s staid, dull administration and no one knows how deep the trauma will be or how far the debris will fall.
‘She’s not a player,’ Ariel says.
‘I think everyone is a player now,’ Lousika Asamoah says. She stops on the gravel path. The small movements through the branches, the leaves, the ground ivy, stop with her. Ariel feels a dozen venomed eyes on her. ‘Our families have always been close, but I’m here today as the Omahene of the Kotoko. The Eagle’s action is unprecedented. We can’t forecast the consequences. This alarms us.’
‘All the Eagle asks is for a commitment.’
‘A commitment I can’t give. AKA is not like the other dragons. Our governance is complex and many-layered. So many opinions to seek, so many votes to secure. Some see it as slow and unwieldy and inefficient but we’ve always believed that power is best placed in as many hands as possible. AKA moves slowly but it moves surely. We simply have not had time to reach a consensus.’
‘The Eagle would appreciate even a private indication…’
‘I don’t have the authority to offer that. The Golden Stool has no voice.’ Lousika walks on. Ariel’s chair matches speed. The watchers in the wood follow. ‘Our families have always been close. Like you, we aren’t the richest or most powerful of the Dragons. We’ve bought our position by keeping out of the rivalries between the other families and where we can’t, by judicious alliances. The Kotoko will watch but we won’t be rushed into a commitment.’