Luna: Moon Rising

by Ian McDonald

  There is no good in anything she does.

  Wagner scoops her up and she responds as she must, but her embrace is weak, her warmth cool, her kiss thin and treacherous. He will read it. When he is this far into the wolf, he sees things humans cannot.

  ‘Sorry, love, I’m beyond tired.’

  Wagner carries her setar.

  ‘So,’ Robson says. ‘We listened to you. Me and Haider.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘It was good. I think. I don’t really know if I can say anything about it because I didn’t really understand it. There were a lot of notes.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Wagner opens the door of the tiny apartment to a small table spread for a feast: the most intimate of celebrations: the meal in the home. There is hotshop food, and given food from friends and well-wishers, and food they have obviously made themselves. Analiese eats without thought or pleasure.

  ‘I’m not feeling great,’ she says, turning down iced ramen and white bean hummus. ‘Must be true what they say about the water in Queen. Old and dirty. Would you mind if I just went to bed? Sorry.’

  She lies awake in the tiny cubby, listening to her men clear up, clean up, tidy away. She listens to their voices. They speak in Portuguese, which she still barely understands, and so she can strip their words of meaning and listen to them as pure sounds, as if they were instruments. Wagner is a clarinet, fluid and sonorous, sweet and musical. Robson’s voice is higher: piccolo, but she hears a crack in it, sudden drops into low notes.

  She is sobbing. The bed shakes, she hopes Wagner and Robson can’t feel it in the fabric of the home. She feigns sleep when Wagner comes up to join her. He slips in beside her, slides into his accustomed curl, dick pressed to her ass. She can’t bear it, she can’t bear the touch of his skin, his warmth, his body hair against her; the sweet wolf-reek of him.

  When he is asleep she goes down to the living space. She tries entertainment but it won’t out-shout the guilt. She tries alcohol but it’s nauseating against the dread. She tries her music but her demon is powerless against this greater horror.

  ‘Hey.’

  She hadn’t heard him get up. Wolves move softly.

  ‘Just getting some water.’

  He knows it’s a lie. She knows she will never have another opportunity like this. That old Sun proverb: even the gods cannot help a woman who will not take an opportunity.

  ‘I’m still rattling around,’ Analiese says. ‘I can’t settle on anything, my body is wrecked but my mind is still running around shouting. I think I understand a little how you feel, when it changes.’

  Wagner grimaces.

  ‘I know I don’t, fully – I can’t. And this will settle down in a day or two. With you…’

  ‘Don’t,’ Wagner says and Analiese hears him tear inside.

  ‘It’s turning light again, isn’t it?’ Analiese asks. She has been away for the whole time he has been in shadow. She knows his twitches, his discomforts, his small manias that build day on day as the Earth grows brighter. Shadow is turning once again to wolf.

  ‘Go, Wagner. It will kill you. It’s worse every time. I can see it. Robson can see it.’

  ‘Don’t bring Robson into this.’

  ‘You need the pack. It’s neurochemistry. You can go off the meds but it never goes away. It’s who you are, Wagner, it’s what you are. Go to them.’

  ‘It’s not safe!’

  The sinews in his neck, the veins in his forehead betray the clenched emotion. It’s not anger, not rage – nothing so simple. It’s an entire other self, chained and caged and howling.

  ‘Just for one night, two nights. Meet them halfway, even. Look at yourself, Wagner. Can you manage five years of this? Every two weeks, when the Earth is round…’

  ‘I have to take care of Robson.’

  ‘It will kill you, Wagner. But before it kills you, it will tear your body apart, it will burn every organ and fill every artery with molten steel. It will smash your mind to a smear. How will you take care of Robson?’

  ‘I can’t go to Meridian. They’re looking for me.’

  ‘Wagner, if they wanted Robson, they’d already have him. Go. I will look after him. He’ll be fine. You are not. You look like death, my love.’

  He shudders: the wolf within testing its chains.

  ‘How long would you need? Would one day be enough?’

  Sweat runs thickly down his neck, his arms, his inner thighs.

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Two days?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘One day. Go. I will take care of Robson. Do you want to tell him or shall I?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Take the meds. I can’t bear to see you like this.’

  ‘I’m scared I might not come back.’

  ‘You’ll come back.’

  His arms wrap around Analiese. She can’t bear it.

  ‘Do you think you can sleep?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  She settles on to the lounger. He settles his head in her lap. They both stare at the wall. She strokes his thick, black hair.

  * * *

  ‘You won’t hurt him, will you?’

  She asked that when she called the address Bryce gave her backstage at the Xian Xinghai centre. She asked it again when she was told where and when the operatives would arrive. She asks it a third time, at the door of her apartment, to the two men come to take Robson away.

  ‘He won’t be hurt, ma’am. He’s a valuable asset.’

  A moon man and a Jo Moonbeam. Skill and muscle. They are dressed in candy-striped suits, big lapels, wide ties, pleated pants, broad-banded fedoras, pointed shoes. They could not look more like contract thugs.

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  The plan is to take him in his sleep. The Jo Moonbeam – a broad, gentle-faced Fijian – calls a box-bot into the room.

  ‘Oh,’ Analiese says. ‘You’re taking him out in that? I hadn’t thought about how you were going to get him out.’

  ‘We can’t really carry him, can we?’ the second man says. He has a Queen of the South accent.

  The Jo Moonbeam opens the lid. The cargo space is generous and well padded.

  ‘Just until we get to the railcar,’ the moon man says.

  They sent him off together, hugging in the airlock, waving as the locks closed, still waving as the railcar moved off though they knew that Wagner in the shuttle could not see.

  Let us know when you get to Meridian.

  Against right and reason, Analiese had eventually slept, the night of the betrayal. That same night Wagner must have taken the meds, for when she woke she found him prowling the kitchen area in nothing but skin, trying to find mint and glasses for tea, feral and alert, sensitive and aware in ways beyond human.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Howling.’ He grinned. And he locked eyes with her and her heart rose and she smiled and nodded her head which was all the invitation he needed and they fucked fast and fierce on the lounger.

  ‘Robson!’ she hissed.

  ‘He’s thirteen, he’ll sleep until noon,’ Wagner said.

  The arrangements were swiftly made. Some risks were not worth taking. He would not notify the Meridian pack until he arrived at their door. He would close down Dr Light and run a dummy familiar. He would stay one night and return on the 17:00 Equatorial Express. Communications would be kept to a minimum, except for a call to say he had arrived.

  Each carefully planned stage was a nail through Analiese’s elbow, wrist, knee, hip. Neck.

  Robson wouldn’t go to sleep, the little fuck. He generally keeled over around midnight but tonight he would not roll into bed. One o’clock. One thirty.

  ‘I’m getting really tired, Robson.’

  ‘You go to bed. I’m not ready yet.’

  Two o’clock. Two thirty.

  She had already sent two del
aying messages to the agents. She found excuses to keep herself awake: a new piece on the historical musicological relationship of the setar and the Uighur satar, a recently released terrestrial recording of the Ensemble Chemiraani, a heated exchange on a Persian music group. She dreaded a cold war of nerves with Robson, each determined to see the other off to sleep.

  Three twenty he rolled on to his back.

  ‘I’m off.’

  Analiese waited for the first growling snore before she called the agents of Mackenzie Helium.

  ‘Don’t hurt him.’

  ‘I promise. Iloilo.’

  The big Pacifican moves to the mezzanine stairs.

  ‘Analiese?’

  He’s there in the bedroom door, sheet pulled around him. Skinny and groggy.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Fuck,’ says the moon man. He touches his cufflink. Dark motes fly up in Robson’s face. He drops the sheet, reels back and goes down in a flail of limbs.

  ‘Robson!’ Analiese shouts but the second kidnapper has him and carries him as light as an insect down the stairs.

  ‘You have the craziest dreams,’ the moon man says. ‘So I hear.’ The Fijian lays Robson gently in the cargo box, curled up in foetal position.

  ‘No,’ Analiese says. ‘Wait…’ The box, it’s a coffin. It’s death.

  ‘We have a contract,’ the moon man says.

  The Fijian smiles and closes the lid. The bot trundles out into the corridor.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the moon man says. ‘One last thing.’ The blade is fast, sure and strong, punched through Analiese’s neck from one side to the other. She sprays blood, hisses, her hands flap. The knife holds her upright. ‘That’s for fucking a Corta.’ He rips the knife free. Analiese Mackenzie falls in gouts of red heart-blood.

  The moon man cleans his blade and reverently reholsters it inside his jacket. He steps back from the flood of red.

  ‘Remember Ironfall.’

  * * *

  Haider takes two teas at El Gato Encantado but still no Robson. A ping to Joker comes back empty: off-net. He could be free-running: some new move or stunt. Parkour requires fierce, pure concentration: there is no place for pings and notifications a hundred metres up the heat-exchange shaft. More tea, though his mouth is as dry as if he had vaped five grams of skunk.

  ‘Where’s your little friend?’ Jo-Jee asks.

  Haider scowls. He has never liked Jo-Jee and his patronising comments. His money is as good as anyone else’s in this hotshop. He flicks Jianyu behind the counter some bitsies and goes in search of Robson. Theophilus is not a large city and the sites where a traceur can sharpen their skills smaller still. The air-shaft, the pressurised-storage laager, the power and water ring, the purification system where they met: nothing. Last Haider visits the central core: Robson’s favourite. Haider still can’t watch him on the zig-zag fifty metres down to the sump: side to side to side to side, turning, flipping, spinning in the air to land and immediately kick off again. Speed is important to Robson. Surviving is to Haider.

  Solveig calls Joker again. No answer.

  House then.

  This isn’t right. Liquid from under the door. He steps back. The liquid is tacky and sticky and red on his pure white sneakers. Blood.

  ‘Solveig! Call help!’

  ‘Good morning, Haider,’ says the door. ‘You’re on the welcome list. Please come in.’

  The door opens.

  TWENTY

  The impacts rock the apartment, conversation-pit to bed-pods. Haider is out of his bed, dropping into shoes, pulling on a hoodie, transferring all his local data to network: the standard impact/ moonquake/depressurisation drill. He slides down the ladder into the living space.

  Max and Arjun are flapping around, scooping their precious collectables into bags.

  The apartment shakes again to hammer blows. The door. Not impacters, not the Vorontsov space-gun, not a quake: there is someone outside.

  ‘Haider! I need to talk to you.’

  Max and Arjun turn to the door.

  ‘I think it’s Wagner Corta,’ Haider says.

  ‘Haider!’ Fists hammer on the door again. Plastics creak and snap.

  ‘He’ll have that down,’ Max says.

  ‘Haider, go back to your room,’ Arjun orders.

  ‘I know you’re in there,’ Wagner calls from the other side of the door.

  ‘Go away. Leave us in peace,’ Max shouts.

  ‘I only want to talk to Haider.’

  Haider’s care givers look at each other.

  ‘He won’t go away,’ Haider says.

  ‘We’ll contract in security,’ Max says.

  ‘In Theophilus?’ Arjun answers. The two men place themselves between Haider at the door. Arjun is short, muscular, bald-headed and bearded and works out but he is no match for a wolf when the Earth-light in hot in him.

  ‘I can wait forever,’ Wagner shouts.

  ‘I have to talk to him,’ Haider says.

  ‘He doesn’t come in,’ Max says.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ Wagner says. ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘I’ll open it a crack,’ Max says. ‘Wagner, I’m going to open it a crack.’

  ‘No, don’t do that…’ Arjun says and the door flies open, sending Max reeling into the conversation-pit. Arjun recovers like a cage-fighter, brow to brow with the wolf.

  ‘I. Just. Need. To. Talk,’ Wagner says. Haider has never seen him like this. Every muscle is taut as a cable. His face is pale, his eye huge and dark. He blazes with energy. He could have smashed the apartment door down one-handed.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he says again.

  Arjun pushes Haider down on to the sofa and takes up guard on his right side. Max, bruised and shaken from the fall, sits on Haider’s left. Haider loves his sweet, brave dads.

  ‘You found her,’ Wagner says. His voice is a low growl.

  ‘I found her.’ The anti-anxiety diffusers have finally halted the flood of nightmares welling up from Theophilus’s deep levels. ‘The door opened for me.’ Blood, seeping under the door into the street. ‘It opened and I went in.’ On her side, limbs folded at crazy angles. Eyes wide. Hair glued into the mass of congealing blood. The knife. God, the knife, the knife through her neck. ‘I called the med centre, then the zabbaleen.’

  ‘Was there any … any. Sign. Of Robson?’

  ‘I saw stuff. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Broken furniture, like there’d been a fight. A sheet. The place was a mess.’

  ‘I need you to think hard, Haider,’ Wagner says. He crouches in front of Haider, presses his hands together. ‘Did you see or hear anyone or anything out of the ordinary?’

  Haider shakes his head.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was the next morning when I went to the apartment. To go to El Gato Encantado. You know.’

  ‘You’re scaring him, Wagner,’ Max says.

  ‘I need to know. I need to understand what happened. I need to be able to put it together in my head. I get the call in the pack house. Analiese is dead. I think, what? And Robson is missing. I get the first train back but its still eight hours before I get there. The zabbaleen have cleaned everything. Nothing left. I need to be able to see what you saw, Haider, in my head, to get to understand it.’

  ‘He’s told you everything he knows,’ Arjun says.

  ‘I get camera footage from the network. I see the two men arrive with a box. I see the two men leave with the box. What happened in the apartment, I don’t know.’

  Max gets up from the lounger and crosses to the cook-space. Water boils; a few moments later he hands Wagner a glass of tea.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Wagner says. ‘I can’t make any sense out of this.’

  ‘I’ll try to help but I really don’t know much,’ Haider says. ‘You don’t … you don’t think he’s been kidnapped?’

  * * *

  Alexia pulls the quilted coat tighter around her and suppresses a shiver. Both are theatrical, psycho
logical: Boa Vista has been at habitable temperature for ten days now but she feels the deep, endless cold of the rock around her, the memory of the vacuum ice that filled this lava tube. Plants grow, whole trees flower, small AKA-designed birds hop from rock to engineered branch to rock, but Boa Vista will always chill Alexia. It is a haunted place.

  The moon has no ghosts, the saying goes.

  The moon is ghosts all the way down.

  Nelson Medeiros greets her in Portuguese and escorts her into the Eagle’s new Eyrie. Escolta by escolta, Lucas has been replacing and reinforcing his official bodyguard with ex-Corta Hélio dusters and refugee Santinhos fled from João de Deus. She sheds the coat. Maninho shows her the way up through the machinery-cluttered corridors of Lucas’s new Eyrie.

  A face. She is inside the face of an orixa. Lucas’s new office is inside the eyeball of Oxala. Boa Vista creeps her out. She hates the thought of Lucas permanently moving his government here.

  Alexia hears a thing here she has never heard before: Lucas Corta laughing. She finds him leaning back in his chair shaking with barely suppressed giggles. He holds his hands to beg her not to speak to him while he shakes with mirth.

  Lucas Corta is one of those people, naturally serious in demeanour, who are so utterly transformed by joy that they almost become another person.

  ‘It’s still the Suns, isn’t it?’

  Lucas nods and quivers with laughter again.

  ‘And it will be for quite some time,’ he says when he breathes.

  ‘How much did they go for?’

  ‘Twenty billion.’

  Alexia still converts lunar bitsies into Brasilian reais. Her eyes widen.

  ‘That’s…’

  ‘A fortune by your standards. Small change for the Suns. And they know it. A final, well-judged insult from Mackenzie Metals. This is all you’re worth.’

  Lucas indicates for Alexia to sit. He enjoys another seism of sniggering. His laughter is beginning to irritate Alexia now. It is not clean.

  ‘So Darius has withdrawn his claim to Mackenzie Metals?’

  ‘Denny Mackenzie is crowned king and struts around Hadley like some St Olga cage-fighter.’

  Alexia goes to the window to look out over the shoots and seedlings of Boa Vista reborn.