by Ian McDonald
‘Come on,’ she says and takes a half-step forward. The raccoon shies, then sniffs her fingers. ‘I’m sorry I scared you.’ Mask regards mask.
* * *
Pink light floods the room; glancing up he sees machines sweeping swatches of moondust from the endcap.
Lousika Asamoah brings two martinis from the discreet bar. The suite is mere steps from the trauma centre, but a world away from the quiet, hissing machines and their watchful loving grace. Lousika Asamoah has shed the glamour of the Golden Stool but she wears its power like a scent. Lucas takes the offered glass softly.
‘Apologise,’ Lousika says.
‘I should not have spoken to Luna like that,’ Lucas says.
‘She carried him three kilometres to Boa Vista.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘To her.’
‘I will.’ Lucas tastes the martini. A good martini should be like the surface of the moon. Cold, dry, uncompromising, dangerous. Austere and beautiful.
‘Make him well,’ Lucas Corta says.
‘We can’t.’
‘Help him.’
‘Lucas, the damage is catastrophic. We’ve repaired his autonomic nervous system and gross motor skills, but he’ll have to learn to walk, to talk, to feed himself. Everything he was is gone. He’s a child again – an infant. To be Lucasinho Corta, he’ll have to relearn everything. And we don’t know how to do that.’
Lucas’s hand shakes. He sets the barely tasted glass down.
‘You’re AKA. You break DNA and make it obey you. You draw life from the heart of the moon.’
‘What he needs is beyond us, beyond anyone. On this side of the moon.’
‘The university has something?’
Power stands strongest on three legs, Adriana Corta taught her children. The Lunar Development Corporation and the Five Dragons were two pillars of the lunar order; but there was a third, the oldest and subtlest, almost forgotten. The University of Farside. As Robert Mackenzie’s robots sifted and smelted the regolith of the Ocean of Storms for rare earths, on the other side of the moon machines of a consortium of universities from Caltech to Shanghai were weaving ribbons of dipole-embedded plastic across Daedalus crater. As the directors of Taiyang fled China to join their robots excavating ice and fossil cometary carbon from the South Polar Basin, on the other side of the moon Caltech and MIT were digging the tunnels and habitats for a permanent research settlement, free from the interference of terrestrial states and ideologues. As VTO maglev lines embraced the poles and reached around Farside, the new university agreed a construction and launch deal with the Vorontsovs for deep space missions even as it constructed and launched a lawsuit against the violence VTO’s rail operations did to the delicate listenings of the Daedalus observatory. The Court of Clavius was founded, and with it the university’s law faculty.
Two workers from Accra founded AKA and built an empire of light, life and water; on the other side of the moon secure pathogen laboratories were dug deep under Poincaré, lock upon lock, seal upon seal. Adriana Corta watched Brasil dwindle behind her on the OTV screens; on the other side of the moon moonloop tethers sent capsules down to the repositories under Mare Orientale where Earth’s genetic wealth was stored, safe and far from the planet’s ravaged biosphere.
It never had an official name. The University of Farside is a nickname, though, like the best apelidos, an accurate one. Its tunnels and tramways, hyperloops and cablecars cover fifty per cent of the far side of the moon. By one measure it is the largest city in the two worlds, by another, the mother of all suburbs. It reaches around the moon in its colloquiums and study groups and micro-colleges but its heart, its home, is Earth-blind, looking out at the universe. Fiercely protective of its wealth and independence, it is the worlds’ foremost science and technology research facility. It is the third power, the hidden blade. Eagle and Dragons learned long ago not to test the university.
‘There is a new development in 3D printing protein chips,’ Lousika says. ‘Artificial neurons, programmable nanomaterials.’
‘They could repair the damage?’
‘They could, but they would need access to his memories.’
‘But if the damage is as you say…’
‘They would recreate them from his external memory. His familiar, his network presence; and people. His friends, family.’
Lucas Corta looks out through the open slot of the window into the lush pink of the Yeboah tube-farm. He can feel the humid heat thick on his skin. Earth was like this, dense and damp, every breath stolen from heat and gravity. He tastes the fecundity, the thrust of leaf and life. João de Deus and Boa Vista lie under the Mare Fecunditatis, the Sea of Fecundity. How much more appropriate a site that would be for Twé. Seas of Fecundity, Tranquillity, Serenity. Nectar, Vapour, Rains. Seas of lies; selenological and emotional. Sea of Cold, Sea of Crises, Ocean of Storms: seas of truth.
Lucas Corta sees very clearly the danger. Will he recognise the son who comes back from Farside? What will Lucasinho know of him?
‘I wanted to take him with me to Meridian,’ Lucas says.
‘That can’t be.’
‘It’s for them. Can you understand that? Everything I’ve done is for them. I want us all back.’
‘I understand that, Lucas.’
‘Do you? Take me to him, I need to see him again.’
‘Of course.’
* * *
On the third slushy spoonful, Luna Corta decides that matcha, cardamom and strawberry granita isn’t as nice as her idea of it.
‘Matcha, cardamom and strawberry,’ the proprietor of the Kafe Kwae says, trying not to stare at Luna’s Lady Luna face.
‘Matcha, cardamom and strawberry.’
Matcha, cardamom and strawberry doesn’t work at all but she’s not going to let the owner see that so she diligently spoons down towards the bottom. At the two-centimetre mark she notices that there is no one left in Kafe Kwae except the owner and Madrinha Elis.
Two spoons on and now even the owner is gone.
Insects swarm into Kafe Kwae, circulate around the low ceiling like smoke then coalesce into a buzzing ball over the water dispenser. Then the parrot flies in and perches on the edge of the counter, and after it the clever-pawed raccoon and after them, her mother with her anansi-spider riding on her shoulder.
‘Was that good?’ Lousika Asamoah looks at the granita glass and the melted dreg in the apex that the spoon can never reach.
‘Do you want to try it?’ Luna dips the end of the spoon into the cone of pink liquid. Lousika tastes the ice-melt.
‘I’m getting strawberry, and cardamom … is that matcha?’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Honest?’
‘Honest.’
‘Individually it should work…’
‘But all together it doesn’t.’
A look from Lousika Asamoah and Madrinha Elis gets up and leaves.
‘Can I touch your spider?’ Luna asks. ‘Is it a trickster like Anansi?’
‘She’s not a trickster but she has special powers. Luna, Lucasinho is hurt much worse than we thought.’
‘He’ll live, won’t he?’
‘He’ll live. But he’s lost everything. He can’t walk, he can’t feed himself or speak. Anjinho, if he saw you, he wouldn’t know who you were. We can’t help him here. He has to leave Twé.’
‘Where’s he going?’
‘Farside.’
Luna has heard of the other side of the moon, where the Earth never rises and the sky is full of nothing but stars, but it is as far from the stone seas and mountain ranges and crater fields of her side as the bottom of a mooncake is from its top. She knows the world is round, and that VTO’s rail lines go around it two ways, but it doesn’t feel like that; it feels flat, a disc, and for someone to go to the other side is a magical journey through the moon, millions of metres or maybe millimetres. Opposite sides of the same thing but more distant than blue Earth.
‘Will they make him be
tter on Farside?’
‘They’ll try. They can’t promise anything.’
Luna pushes her granita glass away from her and lays her hands flat on the table.
‘I’m going with him.’
‘Luna.’
‘He took me from Lubbock BALTRAN station to Boa Vista. There were bots after us, and Mackenzies, and we got lost on the glass and I got the leak and he gave me his air and he stayed with me all the way. I’m not going to leave him.’
‘Anjinho.’
‘That’s my pãe’s word,’ Luna says. ‘That’s a Corta word. I didn’t want to go to Twé.’
‘I don’t understand, my love.’
Luna leans forward.
‘That time after the party in Boa Vista. The Moonrun party, when they tried to attack pãe. You took me to Twé. I didn’t want to go. Boa Vista is my home.’
‘Baa, it wasn’t safe at Boa Vista.’
‘It’s home.’
‘Baa, there is no Boa Vista. You know that. You saw that.’
‘Boa Vista is my home and Rafa Corta is my pãe. I have Tio Carlinho’s blades. You are an Asamoah but I am a Corta.’
All the animals are watching her. Even the swarm, which Luna catches in the corner of her vision, and which seems to have taken the form of an eye.
‘Luna…’
Luna fixes her mother with a stare of ice and steel.
‘Am I a Corta?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘I am the true heir of Corta Hélio,’ Luna declares.
‘Luna, don’t say that.’
‘But I am. That’s why I’m wearing this face. This is my Corta face. That’s why I have to go with Lucasinho. I have to take care of him. I have to take care of the Cortas. I have to go to Farside.’
Lousika Asamoah sighs and looks away and as her eyes slip, so her animal guardians break their stare.
‘Go with him, then. There’s a but.’
‘What is it?’
‘Elis goes with you,’ Lousika says.
‘Deal,’ Luna says. She expected that. The Omahene does not surrender. The Omahene negotiates.
The swarm flows towards the door. The bird leaps into the air and the raccoon scratches and ambles away. The trickster spider stays clinging to Lousika Asamoah’s shoulder. She smiles.
‘You are a Corta, but you will always be an Asamoah,’ Lousika says. ‘The Golden Stool will watch over you.’
* * *
The casket will be transported by rail. The party forms up on the executive platform of Twé station. Alexia counts twenty: the Eagle and his escoltas; the Omahene and her entourage, blackstar and animal; Luna Corta, carefully carrying a wooden box, with her madrinha; and the boy in the life-support pod. The university railcar arrives out of the tunnel, crosses the points and pulls beyond armoured glass partitions and airlocks. Locks mesh and open.
A tall woman steps on to the platform, of early middle age, skin light caramel, crinkly hair tied back and tamed beneath a jaunty fedora. Alexia’s familiar gives her every detail: her sharp suit is Zuckerman and Kraus; pockets edged with striped trim, oversize buttons, broad-shouldered, pinch-waisted. Her bag is a 1949 cylindrical Josef and her shoes are three-centimetre-heel Oxfords, ribbon ties. Her lip-gloss is killer red, the seams on her stockings genuine. Her familiar is skinned in the white and blue intersecting circles: the Earth rising behind the moon, a vista only seen from the far side. Every detail, except what she is.
‘I am Dakota Kaur Mackenzie, ghazi of the University of Farside, Faculty of Biocybernetics, School of Neurotechnology.’
An intake of breath, a shifting of position among Lucas Corta’s escoltas and the AKA blackstars. One of Alexia’s questions is answered. A Mackenzie.
‘Dr Mackenzie,’ Lucas Corta says. Alexia Corta glances at him. She heard the sharp edge of enmity in his words. So did the ghazi.
‘Is there a problem, Senhor Corta?’
‘I would have preferred…’
‘Someone else?’ the woman says. Whatever a ghazi is, it holds enough charisma and authority to make every other person on the platform look gauche. Iron Hand, Eagle of the Moon, even Golden Stool: titles children give themselves playing superheroes.
‘Yes,’ Lucas says
‘You are aware that every ghazi of the university is bound by solemn vows,’ the woman says. ‘Independence, impartiality, dedication, discipline.’
‘I am aware of that, Dr Mackenzie.’
‘Questioning my loyalty, Senhor Corta?’
Every escolta and blackstar stiffens. Hands move to concealed holsters. Lousika Asamoah’s animals stir.
Maninho, give me everything on ghazis, Alexia mutters silently to her familiar.
A ghazi is a scholar-knight of the University of Farside, Maninho whispers in Alexia’s ear. Each is attached to a faculty as its agent and is authorised to take any action they deem necessary to protect the independence and integrity of their faculty. Dr Mackenzie is quite capable of killing every human and animal present.
In that suit? Alexia subvocalises.
That suit comes right off, Maninho says. And she can read what you are saying to me from the micro-movements of your jaw muscles.
‘You must realise he is my son,’ Lucas Corta says.
‘He will receive the very best of our research and skill,’ Dakota Kaur Mackenzie says. ‘Don’t doubt it, Lucas.’
Maninho has filled Alexia’s lens with articles on the ghazis of Farside: ninja-academics licensed to kill, intellectual superheroes, but what interests her more is what she reads in Lucas Corta’s buttressed emotions. He buries them as deep and protected as lunar cities but from a dozen tells Alexia reads mistrust, helplessness, hope, ancient anger. He is in the hands of this Mackenzie.
‘Make him whole again. Send him back to me.’
‘I will, Lucas.’
Tensions break, held breaths exhale, hands drop from knife-readiness. The raccoon sits and licks, the bird fluffs and preens.
‘Thank you.’
Lousika Asamoah’s blackstars manoeuvre the capsule into the railcar.
‘I’m coming too,’ Luna Corta says and pushes past the ghazi. Lousika Asamoah’s composure breaks and she rushes forward to scoop up her daughter.
‘Oh you you you,’ she says, burying her face in Luna’s hair. ‘You be good, you be safe, you hear. You talk to me every day, right?’ To Madrinha Elis, she says, ‘I want daily reports.’
The madrinha dips her head and escorts Luna to the railcar.
‘Anybody else?’ the ghazi says.
Locks seal, the railcar undocks and in a heartbeat is gone into the tunnel.
Alexia finds she is breathing again.
* * *
‘That thing you’ve done with your face,’ the ghazi says. The railcar accelerates to a cruise. A blur of light, a scheduled service arriving from João de Deus. No pressure shock, no boom of noise, no wobble; the railcar rides the maglev line in perfect vacuum. Madrinha Elis is already asleep in the forward compartment, alongside Lucasinho Corta. ‘I like it.’
Luna sniffs. Madrinha Elis gives a rattling snore, jerks awake and drops into sleep again.
‘What’s in the box?’ Dakota asks. The case containing the Corta knives rests on the soft, upholstered bench between Dakota and Luna.
‘You don’t have to try to talk to me,’ Luna says. ‘I entertain myself.’
‘I’m interested, is all,’ Dakota says. ‘You see, in a society which places no value on things, you’ve chosen to bring this thing with you.’
‘Do you really want to know what’s in the box?’
‘I do.’
Luna opens the case and watches for a reaction. Not a flicker.
‘That’s twice you’ve impressed me now, Luna Corta.’
‘These are the battle-knives of the Cortas,’ Luna says.
‘They are exceptional pieces,’ Dakota Mackenzie says. ‘Meteoric iron.’
‘Yes,’ Luna says, irked at having her story pre-empted. ‘From
deep under Langrenus crater. The Sisterhood of the Lords of Now kept them until a Corta came who was bold, great-hearted, without avarice or cowardice, who would fight for the family and defend it bravely. That was me.’
‘Indeed,’ Dakota Mackenzie says. ‘May I try one?’
‘No,’ Luna says with heat and force. Now Dakota recoils. ‘No Mackenzie can ever touch one again.’
‘You used that little word “again”, so I have to ask.’
‘The last Mackenzie to touch them killed my tio. That means uncle.’
‘I speak Portuguese.’
Luna switches to broad Santinho.
‘Your cousin Denny Mackenzie stole them and killed my uncle Carlinhos. Then you stole João de Deus.’
Dakota Mackenzie replies in perfectly accented João de Deus Portuguese.
‘I am not related to Denny Mackenzie.’
Luna hisses.
‘I am a ghazi of the University of Farside.’
Luna sits back on her couch. Another train flickers past.
‘And what is a ghazi?’
‘Long ago the University of Farside realised that it would always be torn between political factions.’
‘I’m too old for bedtime stories.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes. And I know everything about political factions.’
‘The Dragons, the old Lunar Development Corporation and the new Lunar Mandate Authority, the terrestrial nations, want control of us, but more importantly, our work. We’ve developed techniques and technologies worth billions. The university has three main sources of funding: student fees, licences on our technologies, and support from private donors and consortia.’
‘And I know about consortia,’ Luna says. ‘You haven’t answered my question yet.’
Dakota grins in delight.
‘A ghazi defends the University of Farside against those who would destroy it, control it, corrupt it or steal its secrets. In the early days we hired mercenaries or brought in security from Earth, but we found out that their quality was poor and their loyalty was suspect.’
‘You are always better with the faithful,’ Luna says.
‘That’s what we believe. There are ninety-nine ghazis, because we like the number. We represent every one of our faculties and campuses. We’re all moon-born. We serve for ten years, during which time we may neither contract partnerships nor have children. We renounce our families, our histories and make solemn vows to the university. Many apply, few are chosen. The selection process is severe. Every one of us has studied to at least doctoral level, many beyond that. How can we defend the university if we are not part of its intellectual life? We would be mercenaries. Police.’