by Ian McDonald
‘Police?’ Luna asks.
‘A terrestrial thing,’ Dakota says. ‘We undergo rigorous physical training. Each of us learns a weapon and an unarmed martial art. Physical and weapons training lasts as long as our academic studies. Your zashitniks and blades boast that they train at the School of Seven Bells. It’s good, but a ghazi learns more. We are taught to observe in minute detail, to exercise subtle psychological manipulation, to investigate, gather information and undertake covert operations. We learn all the major languages of the moon, by heart, not by network, and psychological and performance skills. We learn coding, hacking, systems engineering. There is not a vehicle on or above the moon that I can’t take control of, including this train. We learn to design custom narcotics, poisons, hallucinogens. We are taught to seduce, to be seduced, to use sex as a weapon with anyone of any gender or none. I can survive seven minutes without oxygen. In every way, Luna Corta, I am straight from hell.’
To the east lie the slopes of Low Mesa, throwing long evening shadows down the viaduct as the railcar climbs to the grey highlands.
‘Can I see your knife?’ Luna asks.
‘Of course.’ A casual gesture opens Dakota’s jacket. Two blades, in fast-draw sheaths.
‘Would you like to try them?’ Dakota asks. Luna shakes her head.
‘That wouldn’t be right. They’re your blades.’
Dakota closes her jacket. Light floods the slit windows as the railcar leaves the Twé tunnel on to the Equatorial One.
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’
‘Not a one. Most of us never see action. We work mostly against industrial espionage and it’s more effective to expose the network and go through the courts on the moon and on Earth. Our pockets are deep. We are authorised to use lethal force if we deem it necessary but mostly we just scare people.’
‘Does that work often?’
‘I scared your mother. And your uncle.’
Luna considers this.
‘Yes. I see that. And the terrestrials, and my uncle’s Iron Hand.’
‘But not Luna Corta.’
‘I walked the glass with Lucasinho. That was scary.’
‘Can’t say I’ve done that.’
‘And I think what scared my tio was letting Lucasinho go with a Mackenzie.’
‘All ghazis give up our old families when we take our vows to the university.’
‘Tio Lucas says family is everything. If you don’t have family then you’re nothing.’
‘I have a family,’ Dakota says. ‘A huge, wonderful family, that loves and cares for me, that I will do anything to protect. It’s just a different kind of family. We all choose our family.’
Lune recalls the hotshop with her mother and animals and a failed granita. I am the heir of Corta Hélio, she had said. The ghazi is right: she has chosen her family.
The railcar descends the embankment from the high country down on to the dark floor of the Sea of Fecundity, the heartland of the Cortas. Equatorial One runs down the centre of the solar strip, white lines on a black darker even that the dark basalt of the sea floor. Luna glimpses distant upraised gantries of Helium 3 harvesters returning for maintenance, the horns of a BALTRAN station, the tower of the Fecunditatis moonloop terminal. Here is the army of service vehicles rebuilding Boa Vista, and gone. Now the dishes and solar panels, the docks and locks and surface paraphernalia of João de Deus. And gone. And now Luna Corta is a place she has never been, the landmarks of her life behind her, eastward bound out of Fecunditatis, out around the shoulder of the moon to its other side.
FOUR
‘Stop,’ she orders the car. ‘Oh stop stop please.’
The car parks up on the side of the track close against the wooden rail.
‘What now?’ Melinda her liaison asks. Melinda has been a dour companion on the drive from the city, turning away from the racing clouds, the handfuls of flung rain and puddles of sudden sunlight, the trees and the highway to her lens and the network universe of other people. Her task is to get the moon-woman home, get her set, get back.
‘Look.’
The elk move out from the tree shadow, two females and a calf, blinking and hesitant as they step into the open light. They cross the meadow towards the track, the calf pressing close to its mother. The rest of the herd are dark hints under the eaves of the forest, suspicions of motion. The exploration party skips over a fallen rail and stops on the earth track, heads up, nostrils flaring.
She orders the window down. The direct unfiltered sunlight is hot on her arm as she rests it on the window frame. She can smell them. She can smell the old dried dung and fresh-dried earth of the track, she can smell the recent rain, the resins, the leaves, the river, the light, the valley air.
‘Careful with the sun,’ Melinda says. ‘Yes, I know, this climate, but you burn real easy.’
‘Hey,’ she whispers. Elk heads snap to her. ‘Hey you guys.’ The mother moves between the calf and the car. Behind her the calf and the other female move off the country road down the drainage ditch and up into the trees. The mother waits until she is certain that car and passengers pose no threat, then trots into the trees.
‘They come down from the mountain this time every year. They feel fall starting up there. Sometimes they come right past the house; so tame you can leave apples out on the porch rail and they’d eat them with you sitting in a chair watching.’
She puts the window up. The car moves off. The track is a series of abrupt right-angle turns mapped to old field and homestead boundaries. The homesteads are long gone, the forest reclaiming them summer by summer. The road changes from dirt to ruts to a single green track. A turn over a capsized wooden bridge – the car suspension bangs loud enough to shake Melinda from her socializing – into the run between close trees all the kids called Ghost Town. The decay of a dozen spiritualities hangs from the branches; the broken hoops of dream catchers, tatters of old mountain-Buddhist prayer flags, a ragged windsock in the shape of a fish. She hears the hollow clop of bamboo windchimes. Few needles on the branches. No break in the slow drought. The car turns the final right angle and the house is there before her, hunkered down among its outbuildings and sheds on the wide plinth looking up along the valley to the high passes.
And here come the dogs. One she does not know, racing out to greet the car, barking with blind excitement; old Canaan lurching on stiff legs, head thrown back, yapping. And the house, the house, shy behind its verandas and porches and the frowning roof. The rain gauge against the chimney gable; the highest mark at the top of her old bedroom window. Moss and split grey shingles. The weather vane in the shape of an orca.
She half-hoped for banners, for yellow ribbons all the way in from the 101, for her folk linked arm in arm. The dogs escort the car past the swing-seat, with the greatest view in two worlds, up-valley to the peaks. She swung with Kessie, with the elk picking their careful path down to the river and evening light on the snows. No snows now. No snow for many years. The car pulls up before the porch and she is startled by explosions. Puffs of smoke, plops of sound. Whee, pop. Fireworks are an heroic welcome.
She thinks she sees a figure dash around the corner of the veranda – the fireworker – then the doors fly open and there they all are; Kessie and daughters Ocean and Weavyr. Skyler is on his way in from Djakarta. No sign of Mom. They rush down the steps to surround the car; hands and waving and voices and over-excited dogs.
The car opens. Melinda slides the wheelchair from storage and unfolds it. A dozen hands compete for the handles of the chair to push her towards the ramp. She had that ramp put in for Mom.
‘It’s powered!’ she shouts but they just cheer louder and race her up the ramp and on to the veranda. She smells hot wood, old patchouli, weed and garlic. Everyone is shouting, everyone is waving, everyone is asking if they can get her anything everyone is talking or trying to show her things.
Even Melinda is smiling.
‘Hey hey!’ She holds up her hands. ‘The talking stick is not wit
h you. The talking stick is with me! I’m back from the moon!’
* * *
Marina had not thought that bliss might kill her. A stumble in the harsh gravity, the swelling of her heart, the soft rupturing of a vessel, some terrestrial disease turning her lungs to mucus might be the end; not the pure ecstasy of a cup of coffee.
‘Two years,’ she whispers. ‘Two years.’
The first sip is the sword of an archangel through her tongue, her sense of smell, her saliva glands, her sense of place and time and harmony. The second sip is Satan’s snag-edged obsidian stiletto. Sour, bitter, the heart-punch of caffeine, the jittery edge and the vague paranoia.
‘God I’ve missed you.’
‘What did you drink up there?’ Marina sits with Ocean on the north veranda, the side of the house with the long mountain outlooks. An ultrasonic ticker drives away biting insects.
‘Tea,’ Marina she says. ‘Mint tea.’
‘Jesus.’
Marina had expected to see the house expanded, improved, even repaired and renovated, to see some evidence of the money she had streamed back from the moon. The moss is thicker, the gutters clogged deeper, the windows looser, the roof sags lower than in her last memory. And the network is still lousy. She felt a sour gnaw of resentment as Ocean and Weavyr took her on the wheelchair tour. The house had entered that phase of house-life where it becomes a memorial of itself, then Ocean opened the door to Mom’s room and Marina saw where the money went.
The life-support bed, the monitoring and therapeutic machines, the skinny bot rumbling over foot-polished wooden boards, were of lunar quality.
‘Could you?’ Ocean caught the hint but ten-year-old Weavyr did not recognise adult subtleties. ‘Weavyr, could you leave us alone a moment?’
Marina manoeuvred the wheelchair into the tight space between the bed and the wall. On the other side of the bed was her mother’s wheelchair. Arms and seat were silver with dust. Pumps beat, tubes flexed.
‘Mom.’
Marina had thought her mother asleep, turned away from her on her right side, but the head of the bed elevated. Her mother rolled on to her back, rolled an eye to Marina.
‘Little Mai.’
Marina hoped she had outgrown the nickname.
‘Mom.’
‘You’re in my chair. Why are you in my chair?’
‘This is my chair. Your chair is over there.’
‘Oh. Yes. Why are you in my chair?’
‘I’m back, Mom. Back to stay.’
‘You were at university…’
‘I’ve been away since then. The moon, Mom.’
She laughs, a cracked, melted-lung laugh, lifts a hand to bat away the ridiculous notion. She is tiny in the bed, a child made from leather. The tubes are the worst things. Marina cannot look more than a glance at the places where the lines go into her body. The arms of the medical machines have been hung with bunting, embroidered Chinese charms and bunches of withered smudging sage, grey with dust. Patchouli and frankincense, the perfumes of half a dozen essential oil jars
Marina takes the hand in hers. It is as light and dry as a paper-wasps’ nest. Her mother smiles.
‘But I’m back now, Ma. I came back here to get well again. It takes it out of you, coming back from the moon. I was on the limit. I’m not to push anything, strain anything. They say I’m not allowed to stand up on my own feet for a month. But I say screw that, I’m going to give my mom a hug.’
Marina mentally rehearsed the move in the car on the drive up from the facility. She braces, shifts her weight to make the swing as easy as possible. Takes her feet from the foot-rests and plants her weight on them. Focus strength. Move from your core. And rise. And Earth reaches up and jerks her down. Her arms waver, her legs collapse. She rolls sideways on to the bed to lie on her back beside her mother.
‘That wasn’t so good.’
She gasps for air. Her own weight is crushing the breath from her lungs. Marina heaves herself on to her side. Something tears, something snaps out of alignment.
‘Hey Mom.’
‘Hey Mai.’
She smiles. Her teeth smell as if she is rotting inside.
‘Looks like I’m stuck here.’
Kessie looks in on her charge and raises the alarm. Family hands lift Marina back into her chair.
‘Coffee?’ Kessie suggests.
‘Oh God no,’ Marina says. ‘Not another one. I’ll not sleep for a week.’
‘Wine?’
‘We’re a cocktail culture,’ Marina says.
Kessie fetches a bottle and opens it. Cork: the fond-remembered squeak-plop. Glasses clink, red wine pours fast under Earth gravity.
‘Okanagan,’ Marina reads from the label. ‘I didn’t know they were growing that far north.’
She savours the first sip, draws out the pleasure like a bolt of fine silk.
‘That’s another thing we don’t have on the moon.’
‘What do you have?’ Kessie asks. Shadow fills up the valley. The last of the west-light catches the peaks.
‘Your daughter asked that. We drink cocktails. She’s not going to get better, is she?’ Marina says.
‘No. But she’s not going to get worse either, as long as we can keep the programme running. They keep putting the price of the drugs up and up. Pricing to market.’
‘I should have stayed on the moon.’
‘No, not that…’
The scuff of a foot on a gritty decking board. Ocean hangs in the doorway.
‘Marina, can I ask you about the moon?’
‘You can ask me anything. I may not answer everything you ask.’
Ocean pulls a folding chair in beside Marina.
‘Does it hurt? Being back here, I mean.’
‘Hurts like fu—’ Marina corrects herself. Ocean is fourteen and swear-ready, but her mother is present. ‘Hurts all the time. Every part. Imagine six yous balanced on your shoulders, all the time. Everywhere you go. And they never get off. It’s like that. But it will get better. My old Earth bones are still strong. The muscles will learn again. I’ve got a shi— a physiotherapy programme. I might need some help with it.’
‘I can do that. Marina, you do know you have a real weird accent?’
‘I do?’
‘It’s like what we speak, but through your nose, and then there are all these weird tones.’
Marina hesitates a moment.
‘We have a common language called Globo. It’s a simple version of English, but it has special way of speaking so machines can understand it whatever our home accent is. We have a lot of accents and languages on the moon. I speak English, Globo and some Portuguese.’
‘Say something in Portuguese.’
‘Você cresceu desde a última vez que vi você,’ Marina says.
‘What does it mean?’
‘Look it up.’
Ocean pouts but her curiosity is too strong to flounce out.
‘Do they really fly there?’
‘You can if you want. The wings take up a big whack of your carbon budget but those who do it don’t seem to want to do anything else.’
‘If I could fly I don’t think I’d do anything else. I’d be up over the mountains every weather.’
‘That’s the rub,’ Marina says. ‘You’ve got somewhere to fly to but you can’t fly. Up there, they can fly but they’ve got nowhere to fly to. One end of the city to the other, up and down. Meridian’s big but it’s still a cage. The sunline looks like the sky, but fly into it and you’ll break your wings.’
The gloaming has reached the mountain tops and Marina is suddenly cold on the porch.
‘Moon’s on the rise,’ Kessie says. ‘If I got the telescope, you could show us all the places you’ve been.’
‘Leave it. I need to go in now. I’m getting cold and it’s been a long day.’
She can’t look at the moon. She can’t see the lights up there and not think of the lives behind them, the lives she abandoned. The moon is an eye, seeking her o
ut with accusation and hurt, however deep she buries herself in the valleys of the Olympics. You ran away, Marina Calzaghe.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Ocean says. She wheels Marina across creaking wooden floorboards to her room. She is back in her old room: the glossy machinery of her medical support package sits uncomfortably with faded posters, dusty plushies, rows of books and comics. She is fifteen again. Whatever age you return to the family home you will always be fifteen. The Doug Fir quilt, the faux-wolf-pelt throw. Ocean gets water for the rattle of pills and phages.
‘It’s a one two three thing,’ Marina says and together they get her into the bed. She lies awake among the machines. She is soul-weary, tired to the marrow, too drained for sleep. She can feel the moon up there, feel its heat, feel the tug of its gravity like a tide in her blood. She’s home at last. She hates it.
FIVE
The kid is back again. Third day in a row. Robson snags him on the edge of his vision and the moment of recognition distracts him. Robson fumbles the tic-tac, lands hard.
It’s not like falling three kilometres from the roof of Queen of the South. No drop in Theophilus is more than a hundred metres but the spaces are tight with machinery and cabling. Robson catches himself hard on a rail.
Robson flicks a glance to see if the kid is still watching. Yes, in an only-watching-because-there’s-nothing-more-interesting way, sitting on the railing, legs apart, sucking on a tube of slush.
Weird kid. Today Robson wears khaki shorts with the cuffs turned up and sandshoes. No shirt because it’s hot up here among the machines, and shirts in the current fashion get in the way of free movement. This kid wears moon-basic: leggings, hoodie, both in white. Hood up, black hair flopping down over one eye. Familiar skinned in some thing that seems to be all glossy black wings.