by Ian McDonald
Third day in a row, looking/not-looking. So this move has to be right. And look effortless. Robson breathes away the throb in his ribs, draws energy, gathers it, throws it into the move. This time the tic-tac goes right and he bounces up between the walls of an air-shaft on to a maintenance platform guardrail, backflip across the shaft to swing around the duct, hit the wall right on the finger- and toe-holds, then pushes himself up into the tangle of pipework. Over under round between.
Perfect.
He perches on a water conduit twenty metres up. Parkour King of Theophilus. He looks down through the tangle of ducts and pipes and catches the eye that isn’t covered by hair looking up at him. Robson nods. The kid looks away.
Robson makes a camp, stagey superhero landing from twelve metres up.
‘Hey.’ Boy’s voice.
Robson stops, combs his fingers through his hair.
‘What.’
‘Just wondering. What you’re doing.’
‘I’m going to the banya. I kind of need a clean.’
‘Oh,’ the kid says. ‘Just, well, I wanted to get some tea and I wondered maybe you knew someplace good.’
‘You haven’t been long in Theophilus?’
‘Couple of days.’
‘There’s a tea shop in the banya,’ Robson says. ‘If you want to come. I will need to get clean.’
The kid slides from the railing. Robson gets a clearer look at him. His skin is so pale Robson can almost see through it. Big black eyes. Good hair, the kind you can do stuff with.
‘Haider,’ the kid says. He inclines his head towards his familiar. ‘This is Solveig.’
‘Robson,’ Robson says. He blinks up his familiar. ‘This is Joker. You coming then?’
* * *
Alexia hears the voices beyond the stone doors. The Lunar Mandate Authority is in full session. Lucas’s grip tightens on the handle of his cane. Alexia takes his arm.
‘I walk in alone,’ he says.
Alexia drops her light hold on his elbow.
‘But I will need an entrance.’ A smile flickers on his face. Lucas Corta trades smiles like a precious commodity but when he does, it transforms him. He radiates joy like the light of the sun.
‘Of course, Senhor Corta.’
Alexia throws open the double doors of the Pavilion of the New Moon and strides into the amphitheatre. The walk is assured, eye-catching and well rehearsed. One unconsidered step can send the Jo Moonbeam into the air to come down, humiliated, a metre and half away. You can see the terrestrials flying up from the streets of Meridian, faces stiff with humiliation. Not this terrestrial: moving right, moving the moon way, is a point of pride with Alexia. She takes in the faces in the tiered seats. Alexia enjoys the discipline of committing them to memory.
‘Sers,’ she announces. ‘The Eagle has landed.’
He walks from the double doors strong, head high, back straight, a rock of a man in the muscle-mass he put on to survive his Earth, but Alexia knows the pain deep in every joint and sinew. Earth damaged him too deeply. His heart stopped on the launch to orbit. He was dead for eight minutes. Earth is hard. The moon is harder, Alexia Corta thinks.
‘Thank you, Mão de Ferro.’
The old family nickname; now her job title. Mão de Ferro. Iron Hand. Personal assistant to the Eagle of the Moon.
Why me? Alexia had asked.
Because you are the outsider, Lucas had said in the Eagle’s office with its staggering vistas of Meridian Hub. The carpet still carried ghosts of the bloodstains of his predecessors. You alone are incorruptible.
Alexia takes a seat in the topmost tier, the better to study the honoured delegates. Seating is by faction. The delegates from the terrestrial nation states occupy the left side of the lowest tier. The Europeans, the Saudis, the small US delegation, the oversized Chinese delegation. There is one missing from the US seats. Alexia searches her memory. James F Cockburn from the Central Committee. On the right side of the lowest tier are the corporates; the venture capital funds, the investment banks, the asset strippers. The people who invested in invading the moon.
On the second tier sit the lawyers; sharp in printed-this-hour fashion. Opposite the smart legals sits the Pavilion of the White Hare, diverse, chaotic, badly dressed. They are the private counsel of the Eagle of the Moon; a coterie of the lunar elite from the Court of Clavius to University of Farside. That one is a celebrity chef. The White Hare holds no power except to advise, to encourage and to warn. What does a celebrity chef know about that?
Her attention moves to the highest of the three tiers. The Vorontsovs sit here, the most secretive of the Dragons, stepping out of shadow to bask in the light of the new order. Big guns are power, in Barra de Tijuca, on the Sea of Tranquillity. Impeccable, aggressive young men and women, tattooed, muscular, a knife inside each suit.
Where is Yevgeny? There, in the lowest tier, facing the Eagle of the Moon’s seat. The CEO of VTO Moon could not be more different from the sharp suits and sharp cheekbones: a big, bearded hulk of a man dressed in beautiful, old-fashioned brocade. To Alexia he always looks as if he is being held hostage. Beside him are the delegates from the other Dragons; AKA, Taiyang, Mackenzie Metals, Mackenzie Helium. One representative each. Such is the new order.
Lucas Corta takes in the tiered faces.
‘Mackenzie Helium has committed an atrocity at João de Deus. I call for immediate punitive action.’
‘What do you propose, Mr Corta?’ Anselmo Reyes, from the Davenant venture capital fund. A major player.
‘Contracts guaranteeing the security of all residents of João de Deus,’ Lucas says.
‘Including your son,’ Anselmo Reyes says.
‘Of course. Backed by the threat of strikes on Mackenzie Helium plant and materiel. Nothing less will deter Bryce Mackenzie.’
‘I object,’ says Raul-Jesus Mackenzie. Mackenzie Helium’s delegate to the LMA. One of Bryce Mackenzie’s adopted sons. Alexia has been long enough on the moon to understand what that means. ‘The LMA is not in the business of sanctioning personal vendettas. And I would ask this Pavilion to note that Senhor Corta’s thirst for vengeance is so strong and righteous that he postponed this meeting until after he took his entire entourage to Twé and packed his son off to Farside.’
‘At least this father cares about his son,’ Lucas says. Raul-Jesus Mackenzie shrugs off the barb.
‘Well I hope the adjournment has given him time to reconsider his original proposal to this Pavilion. Which was an immediate mass-driver strike on Mackenzie Helium’s Mare Cognitum storage facility. Safely remote from his precious João de Deus.’
Murmurs run along the seating banks; heads dip together.
‘How much longer will the delegate for Mackenzie Helium insult this Pavilion with Bryce Mackenzie’s paranoid fantasies?’ says Lucas but Alexia is already scanning the tiers for treachery. Pale with rage in the railcar to Twé, Lucas had wanted a mass-driver strike on every working samba-line in the western hemisphere. Alexia had talked him down to a token display, tit for tat. An automated facility. No lives lost. The moral high ground. She had him model a firing solution, to keep him distracted until he reached Twé and Lucasinho. Alexia sees Yevgeny Vorontsov glance up to the highest tier. Those are the hands that hold the space-gun.
‘One hundred and twelve deaths at João de Deus,’ Lucas continues. ‘Lives. People. Human beings. I will not abandon them to the whim of Bryce Mackenzie. His continued rule at João de Deus is an affront to every moral principle of our civilisation.’
‘Come now, Senhor Corta,’ Raul-Jesus says with oil and venom. ‘You are hardly in a position to claim the moral high ground here.’
Alexia holds her breath. No ghosts on the moon, they say, but one stalks this forum.
‘If you wish to accuse me, have the courage to say it to my face,’ Lucas says.
‘Ironfall, Senhor Corta.’
Alexia closes her eyes.
She sees again Valery Vorontsov in the observation blister of t
he Saints Peter and Paul; fingers like beaks reaching for her. She will never forget his words to her. Don’t you think the two worlds need a little lightning?
‘The Court of Clavius has exonerated me of any involvement in the destruction of Crucible.’
‘Not proven, Mr Corta,’ Monique Bertin says. The second of the LMA’s triumvirate. Alexia’s attention turns to Wang Yongqing.
‘That has no meaning in lunar law,’ Lucas says. ‘Does the board refuse my request?’
Now Madam Wang speaks.
‘The Lunar Mandate Authority is tasked with maintaining the production of unique non-terrestrial resources. We cannot permit any action that might jeopardise the supply of assets.’
‘If that is your preferred language for honest, hard-working dusters, Madam Wang, then it is assets that are under threat.’
But Lucas Corta has been defeated and some junior member has already moved to end the session. Delegates rise from their seats, lawyers stoop to consult with them, Dragons chat or scowl, depending on their animosities; all migrate to the staircases, the doors and the lobbies.
‘Yevgeny Grigorivitch.’ The old Vorontsov patriarch stops. Up on the high seats his entourage watches him. Alexia sees the briefest flicker of communication between Vorontsov and Corta, then he lumbers up the stairs, where his people wait for him.
Alexia waits until the last delegate has left the council chamber before joining Lucas. He holds himself too still and upright, unwavering, no betrayal of the fury Alexia knows must rage in him, for it rages in her.
‘So soon,’ he says to his Iron Hand. ‘They turn on me first, then they will turn on each other. There will be knives, Alexia.’
* * *
Ariel Corta grits her teeth and tries to straighten the suspender trapped under her thigh.
Fucking nineteen fucking forties.
The suits are glamorous, the dresses gorgeous, the hats glorious. The hosiery is ludicrous. Never designed for a paraplegic woman trying to dress in a hurry for a meeting.
Stockings are rolled, hauled, fastened and clipped. Stockings are sartorial hell.
Fuck it.
‘Beija Flor, get me Abena Asamoah.’
She’s there in three minutes.
‘I was going for tea with the colloquium.’
‘You’ll learn nothing from them,’ Ariel says. ‘I need help.’
She hitches up her skirt. Abena rolls her eyes.
‘This is not in my terms and conditions.’
‘Yes yes. I need you to fasten these suspenders.’
‘What was wrong with just regular hose?’
‘Everything is wrong with regular hose. Do it right or don’t do it at all.’
Abena sits on the bed. Ariel can see her fight down a smile.
‘You could have LMA assistants any time you wanted. Lift your ass.’
Ariel lies back on the bed and pushes herself up on her elbows.
‘I can’t be seen to enjoy Lucas’s largesse.’
Abena fastens the stud.
‘People actually wore these things. So are you getting any cases?’
‘Not yet. Shut up. You getting any work out of political science?’
‘All of a sudden Cabochon is the hottest colloquium either side of the moon. That’s not a good thing. Ariel…’
‘No I am not going to get you an internship with my brother. He has a PA anyway. That girl from Brasil. Mão de Ferro, she’s taken to calling herself. My mother was the last Iron Hand. Last and only.’
‘Lift again,’ Abena says. ‘Done now.’
‘Thank you.’ Ariel swings herself around to the side of the bed. A thought summons the wheelchair. ‘You are far too good to me.’
‘What are you getting all dressed up for anyway?’ Abena knows better than to offer to help Ariel into her wheelchair, or, once she has straightened her suit and fixed her face, to push her.
‘Potential client meeting,’ Ariel says, peering at the image of herself in her lens as she applies lipstick in the historically appropriate colours.
‘Can I come?’ Abena asks.
‘Certainly not,’ Ariel says. ‘How do I look?’
‘I’d hire you.’ Abena kisses Ariel lightly on the cheek. Ariel rolls from the bedroom across her living space to the door where a moto is waiting.
* * *
‘You will walk again.’
The bar has been discreetly cleared; a tap on the shoulder by a sharp-dressed young woman or man, the arrival of a payment from Taiyang into the bar tab. And a little extra.
Amanda Sun and Ariel Corta share a table on the gold circle balcony of the White Chrysanthemum Club. Meridian at this hour is a flutter and rattle of kites, long-tailed dragons, salamanders, garudas and moon cats and ten-tailed foxes rising and falling through cubic kilometres of airspace as they waft through Antares Quadra. Some manner of slow, subtle race, Ariel decides, drifting from thermal to exhaust duct to air-con exchanger. Such a race might take hours, even days to win. The colours, the undulating tails, hundreds of metres long, the flop and snap of molecule-film fabric on breezes she can’t feel; these things she recognises as pleasure.
One other person is permitted in the White Chrysanthemum Club: its celebrated bartender. She brings two martinis, immaculate, dewed, ascetic. Ariel Corta shakes her head.
‘You sure?’ Amanda Sun says.
‘I don’t need the distraction.’ But Ariel is distracted, dazed, unable to concentrate; almost dry drunk. The moon has no history, in the popular belief, but history didn’t hear that. History has come to Meridian’s prospekts. The streets, the apartments, the elevators and ladeiras, the endless perspectives of the towering quadras are unchanged, but Meridian is changed utterly. Earth commands the LMA, her brother occupies the Eyrie, the Vorontsovs hold a gun to the head of every human nearside or farside. And Marina is gone.
Marina is gone and all Ariel wants is to call out to the bar-keep to turn around and bring that martini right back right now. Only dignity holds her together.
The bartender leaves one martini on the table. Amanda Sun lifts the glass in her gloved hand and takes a sip.
‘The remuneration package would be generous. You could breathe easy for the rest of your life.’
‘And walk again.’
‘Dance, even.’
‘You were married to my brother and you don’t know that I loathe dancing,’ Ariel says.
‘You drew up that nikah,’ Amanda Sun says.
‘And the divorce. One of my better pieces. And now Lady Sun sends you to contract me to win custody of Lucasinho.’
Amanda Sun takes a sip of her stinging dry martini but Ariel sees the narrowing of the lips, the tightening of the jawline. The courtroom eye never dies. A hit. A spot of blood. The old excitement prickles across Ariel’s shoulders.
‘Contracting you is entirely my own idea,’ Amanda says.
‘I remain stubbornly uncontracted,’ Ariel says.
‘Not even to walk free from that chair?’
‘Not even that.’
‘We know you refused to work with him.’
‘That’s very far from actively working to give his son to his enemies.’
‘Taiyang is not the Eagle of the Moon’s enemy.’
‘So who left him to asphyxiate in a dead rover out on Fecunditatis?’
‘He was just Lucas Corta then.’ Amanda Sun takes another sip from her martini. ‘The old order is dead, Ariel. Your brother killed it.’
‘I liked the old order. It knew its obligations.’
‘The terrestrials don’t see the obligations. To them, we are a rabble of violent libertarians held together by mutual interest, one breath away from slitting each other’s throats. They don’t understand the unseen social contracts that lie beneath. We are an industrial outpost, a profit-nexus, nothing more.’
‘Is this a manifesto, Amanda?’
‘We do have a manifesto.’
‘Seduce me,’ Ariel says.
Amanda Sun takes a de
eper sip of her martini.
‘The days of the Dragons are over; we need new ideas, new politics, new economies. We have a political agenda. We have been running simulations through the Three August Sages. The results might surprise you.’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Communism.’
Ariel lifts an eyebrow.
‘Wage labour is effectively a dead issue on the moon,’ Amanda Sun says. ‘We could easily move to a completely automated economy. Work could be a matter of choice and personal passion, not the need to breathe.’
‘They tried that on Earth.’
‘Earth is energy poor and irredeemably hierarchical. Corta Hélio itself contributed to the inequality. Who controls fusion power controls the planet. The moon is energy rich.’
‘Taiyang controls the solar economy.’
‘And automation and robotics. Yes. Guilty. But what the Three August Sages envision is a truly politically flat society, of energy and technological abundance where human needs are met and human society blossoms like a thousand flowers. The moon as a container for social experimentation. But you don’t do politics. Isn’t that the Corta line?’
‘The actual line is, we don’t do democracy. If your vision is some kind of communist utopia of plenty and free expression, why are you still trying to keep Beijing off your necks?’
‘Their vision of communism is control. Ours is freedom. These visions are incompatible.’
‘It’s still a no,’ Ariel says. ‘And you are still asking me to deliver my own nephew as hostage to the Palace of Eternal Light.’
‘Effectively, yes. I will tell Lucas about this conversation.’
‘Of course. It was a stroke of genius, assigning you to conduct the case personally. What have you done to Lady Sun?’
Amanda Sun finishes her martini. A slow triangle of gin, vermouth-thickened, gathers beneath the lip and closes into a tear that runs down the slope of the glass. She bends close to Ariel’s ear.
‘Coraçao, it’s what I haven’t done.’ Amanda Sun straightens her Zuckerman and Kraus jacket, tucks her clutch bag under her arm. A flick of the eye pays the bartender. ‘I find it interesting to tell the truth to Cortas, because you don’t believe in anything. Everything is contingent, everything is expedient. You don’t believe in our vision, but what is yours?’ She bends again; a peck on the cheek. ‘Ex-sister-in-law.’