by Ian McDonald
‘You think like a Corta.’ And now there is a break in her voice and her eyes are full and her words are tangled and knotted.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Kessie says. ‘Canada. VTO has a launch site in Ontario. I know it’s not like making an airline booking, but you launch from there, soon as you can.’
Kessie speaks fast, words running into each other. Marina understands: if she slows down, she too will trip and break into tears.
‘They’ll be watching the border,’ Marina says.
‘That’s why you have to move fast. Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘You take the fast ferry to Victoria. Once you’re in Canada, you’re safe. You can take your own sweet time to wander over to Ontario. But you need to be in Canada before you buy your ticket, because that’s the trigger.’
‘Tomorrow?’
Rain has started, a soft hissing on the shingles. Marina hears every drop with the numb shock of knowing that this is the last time she will ever hear it. No time for the rituals of leave-taking. This is the last rain, the last sussurus of the wind through the trees, the last notes from the wind-chimes. This the last time at this table, in her bed, under this roof. She can’t go. It’s too soon. She needs time to fold all her memories and put them away.
‘What’s tomorrow?’ Ocean stands in the doorway in an oversized T-shirt, dogs at her heel. ‘I heard voices. I thought it might be, you know, bad people.’
‘I’m going back to the moon.’ The spell is broken. The rain was just a shower passing down the valley.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘It’s complicated,’ Marina says.
‘But if you go back, you’ll have to stay there,’ Ocean says.
‘Yes.’ Marina says. ‘I will miss you. So so badly. But there’s someone I love up there. I heard a story once about the Irish, that when someone left Ireland to come to the States, everyone knew they would never see them again, so they held a wake for them, just as if they were dead. New York wakes, they used to call them. You won’t see me again, so let’s have a new moon wake. Let’s have a proper Calzaghe party. Ocean: lights. Kess, get some music in here, and I’ll do the catering.’ Marina pushes herself up from the table and rolls to the refrigerator. She loads the contents on to the table: pickles, cheese, bread, yoghurts, ham, everything in a glorious buffet of randomness. Marina uncaps wine, pours generous glasses. The dogs circle, tails wagging, ears pricked.
‘What’s going on?’ Now Weavyr takes the between-place in the doorway.
‘I’m having a going-away party!’ Marina says. ‘Weavyr, Kess, go and get Mom up and put her in her chair and get her in here.’
Marina has filled the kitchen with candles by the time her mother is wheeled over the lintel. Flames glint from wine glasses, there is old dancing music and a table heaped with good things. The women eat and drink and the dogs weave happy through the table legs and glasses are raised to the moon! Donna Luna! until grey light fills up the windows.
* * *
The Victoria ferry is a trim, fleet twin-hull, shimmying high-pluming white wakes from a cheeky, Union-Jack-painted stern. The strait is choppy today; a westerly, funnelled between the peninsula and Vancouver Island, drives the wave-train in towards the sound and the boat skips and bounces against the run of the white caps. Most of the passengers are outside, clinging to the rail and trying not to remind each other of their nausea. Marina is the sole passenger in the forward lounge. She sits hands in pockets head sunk to chest. She wants bulkheads between her and what is behind her in the curdling wake.
Everyone came down to the ferry, dogs and mothers included. Kessie brought Mom in the pick-up, Ocean brought Weavyr in the runaround. Kessie was too hung-over and Ocean too young so the cars decided among themselves to do the driving. The kitchen was still strewn with empty glasses, empty bottles, empty fried-food packaging. It was a glorious day which is the worst kind of day for leave-taking. The plan called for Marina to arrive late, buy her ticket last minute with cash and board directly. She was happy to keep the goodbyes brief and sharp. All farewells should be sudden.
Weavyr was stoical but Ocean collapsed into tears and broke Weavyr’s resolve. Mom was semi-coherent and mumbling but Marina saw a dark glow in the back of her eyes, shifting and lustrous like mercury, that told her that her mother understood and approved.
Then there was Kessie.
‘I’m scared,’ Marina said. They held each other in the long embrace, holding each other’s forearms.
‘What’s to be scared about? We’ve got it all rehearsed. You clear immigration in Canada and the transfer goes through to VTO Earth.’
‘That I’ll fly away and they’ll come for you.’
‘They won’t,’ Kessie said.
‘But if they do?’
‘Moon-money buys good lawyers.’
‘They could tie you up for years. They’re vindictive.’
‘Then we follow you.’ Kessie nodded towards the pier where the ferry was warping in.
‘The moon?’ Marina says. Her mind is curdled from the night wine and the suddenness of her departure. Kessie laughs.
‘Well, Canada first.’ She steps back from her sister. ‘Go. The boat’s here. Go now.’
Now the speakers are delivering customs and immigration instructions and the passengers are filing in from the deck, dumping their coffee cups, hunting for their documentation.
Now.
Marina slips out on to the deck and moves against the current of people to the rear of the boat. Across the dark water rise the mountains of her home. She can’t bear it. She knew she could not bear it so she left this until the moment before her exile is made permanent. Marina slips the hiking poles from her wrists and spears them one, two, out into the white water. Wake-riding gulls dive, then see that this is nothing they can use and pull up with resentful cries. The boat rolls as it crosses the bar into the dock. Marina wavers, might pitch against the bulkhead or the rail, then finds her balance. She walks upright and confident towards the companionway. Easy.
* * *
Now Marina is in a car being driven through a forest. She has been driven through forest for hours now on a long straight road that has sent her nodding and drooling into sleep half a dozen times. The boreal forest of north-west Ontario is one of the planet’s few remaining continuous tree-belts and out in it somewhere is a launch facility.
Dirt crunches under tyres. She hasn’t seen a vehicle since the VTO bus twenty minutes back.
The car pulls over and stops.
‘What’s this?’
An event is about to occur that you might want to witness.
‘An event?’ Marina has never heard of a car going insane but there is a first for everything under the sun and moon. From Victoria she took another ferry to Vancouver where she spent three days booking with VTO Canada, then three weeks in Toronto in pre-flight training. It can’t end here, marooned in the great Canadian wilderness by a mad AI, found years later – if ever – her bones gnawed by wolverines. The door opens.
You will have the best view if you disembark, the car says. Marina steps out but keeps one hand on the handle. She can swing herself in at the first treacherous movement. Face directly down the road.
‘What—’ Marina begins. Then she hears it, a far thunder, a rumble under a roar diffracted by a million trees and as she begins to realise what she is hearing, she sees a tower of flame and smoke climb above the tree-line. A ship has launched: a pillar of cloud and fire, climbing high over her and higher still, up beyond the edge of the world. Now the vapour trail begins to disperse on the westerly wind but she can still see the ship, a cold brilliant diamond, reaching away, reaching up to the moon.
TWENTY-SIX
The machines have worked all night, painstakingly polishing the ten-metre disc of green olivine into the perfect killing floor. Dustbots swarm the squat Doric pillars, the contours and crevices of the raw-rock roof, the arcs of benches, the staircases; their electrostatic wands glitter
ing with treacherous moondust. Over forty hours, heating elements have brought the chamber up to skin-warmth. Recessed lights switch on, throwing pools of illumination and shadow across the seating tiers. Banks of powerful floods stab brilliance on to the fighting floor. Vents open, the polishing bots scamper for the darkness. An imperceptible hiss becomes a whistle, becomes a shriek: the room repressurising.
Clavius Courtroom Five is an amphitheatre hacked from the dermis of Lady Luna; a rough-hewn cavern disciplined by Classical Greek architectural features. It was designed to represent the contradictions of the law: the raw and the constrained, the deliberate and the deadly. It has never been used. It has been kept dark, vacuumsealed. Until this day.
The last of the dust-bots vanishes into its service conduit as the stone doors unseal and open.
Ariel Corta walks slowly down the steps. Her fingers brush the stone seats, trace the flutings of the pillars. She walks to the centre of the killing floor, shades her eyes to study the seating banks, the lighting. She climbs the three steps to the bench and runs the palm of her hand along the curve of the judges’ desk. She sits in the middle of the three judges’ seats, surveys the court. Next she crosses and recrosses the seats, pausing to take in the angle, the ambiance.
A floor section retracts; Dakota Kaur Mackenzie comes up concealed steps from the darkness into the light. She ventures on to the fighting floor.
‘Good thing I wore sensible shoes,’ she says.
‘What’s it like down there?’ Ariel asks from the topmost ring of seats.
‘Too small,’ Dakota says. ‘Do you do this every trial?’
‘I need to walk the stage,’ Ariel says. ‘I need to know the sightlines, the acoustics, how far my voice will reach, how many strides wide this is, how many deep that is, how many steps up or down. I need to see what the judges see.’
‘This is not a stage,’ Dakota says.
‘It isn’t?’ Ariel works her way down through the seats again and sets her bag on the second space from the right of the left floor-level tier. ‘Front and centre is a rookie error. You want to be the speck in their peripheral vision. You want them distracted, looking over all the time to see what you’ve just done that they’ve missed.’
‘And what will that be?’ Dakota perches on the edge of the judges’ table, swinging her booted feet.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That smart thing that makes the judges look around. What will that be? I’m no expert on the law, but even a ghazi knows that a legal team needs a strategy. Even a decent argument. All I’m getting is, “I’ve challenged my brother to trial by combat, he’s hired the self-proclaimed greatest blade on the moon but hey! I’ve got good sight-lines”.’
Ariel takes out her compact and checks her lips, her eyes. She snaps the little case shut and slips it into her bag.
‘You’re right.’
‘So?’
‘You’re not a lawyer. What you are is a woman in the most need of a siririca I have ever seen. Take yourself off. Flick the bean. Enjoy. Make noise. I did. Best preparation for a trial there is. Are all you ghazis this uptight?’
Dakota’s mouth is still open when the doors open and Abena peeps through.
‘Am I late?’
‘We’re immorally early,’ Ariel says.
Rosario Salgado de Tsiolkovski follows Abena down the stairs, frowning at the court architecture.
‘It had to be a man designed this. A man not getting any sex.’
She slides a foot on to the mirror-bright fighting floor.
‘What the fuck?’
‘It’s not a floor problem, it’s a footwear problem,’ Dakota says.
‘My footwear is always non-problematic,’ Rosario says.
Ariel indicates for Abena to sit on her left.
Tell me what we’re doing here, she says on the private channel to Ariel. Rosario is so jacked up on enhancers she could fight all of Meridian but she doesn’t seem to realise she could get killed here.
Rosario will not get killed, Ariel answers through Beija Flor. Nor the ghazi, who’s itching for a fight. Aloud, she says, ‘And Luna and Lucasinho?’
‘On their way. The judges approved Madrinha Elis as an appropriate adult.’
‘I want them in last,’ Ariel says. ‘And Luna with us.’
‘You’re bringing the kid here?’ Dakota says.
‘She has the knife,’ Abena says.
Dakota Kaur Mackenzie shakes her head.
‘You people,’ she says. ‘You fucking people.’
‘Heads up,’ Ariel says. ‘Court-faces.’
* * *
Tamsin Sun and her legal team are waiting outside the court. Amanda Sun has had her turn in the spotlight and she was bested by an Asamoah brat. The professionals will take this. A junior advocate extends a hand to help Lady Sun from the moto. The Court of Clavius has restricted personal security to prevent the violence in the arena spilling into the city but there is no limit on legal aides so Tamsin Sun has rebadged Taiyang’s wushis as junior advocates. The court of argument has failed; this is the court of knives. The forecourt is solid with spectators and socialites. The quasi-legals move to clear a path to the lobby. Cries and yells: Tamsin Sun’s aides are unyielding and quick with hands and shock-staves.
The final moto arrives and Lady Sun waits for the last member of the Taiyang team to step from the plastic petals.
‘Lady Sun…’ Jiang Ying Yue begins. Lady Sun lifts a hand.
‘Not now.’
Lady Sun pauses to admire Court Five. The lowering bare-rock roof, seeming on the point of collapse; the short, ugly columns and seating tiers; the dazzling circle of the fighting floor: there is nowhere to hide here. This is intimidation architecture. It succeeds with Jiang Ying Yue, who leans in to Lady Sun.
‘I understood we would not enter actual combat,’ she whispers. ‘Why am I here?’
‘We cannot be seen without a zashitnik,’ Lady Sun hisses. ‘This family has endured humiliation enough. We will not look like we have already surrendered.’
She takes a seat in the second tier beside Amanda Sun. Tamsin Sun indicates to Jiang Ying Yue that she should join her on the courtside benches. Legals to the fore. Lady Sun nods across the arena to Ariel Corta. A sharp move, arriving first: she has her pick of the pitches. There must be a compelling reason for placing herself on the margin of the court. The Asamoah girl is with her – Lady Sun will not greet her. A ghazi of the University of Farside. Impressive, but she cannot be Ariel Corta’s zashitnik. The university does not involve itself in Nearside politics. That Bairro Alto tramp, then. They are putting their trust in that?
Tamsin Sun turns in her seat to Amanda and Lady Sun.
‘Lucas has arrived.’
* * *
Alexia sees him baulk at the size and noise of the crowd. His eyes widen with fear, his stomach muscles tighten, his brow breaks pearls of stress perspiration.
She twines her fingers with Wagner’s. A moment of reassurance that he is not alone against the mob. He squeezes her hand and they part before the gossip spotters and their cameras catch them. They have a more flamboyant spectacle to occupy them: word ripples in an instant from the front to the back of the crowd. Mariano Gabriel Demaria. Lucas Corta has contracted Mariano Gabriel Demaria.
The legend of the greatest blade parts the crowd. Lucas follows, elegant but sober in the grey micro-brocade suit he wore to the eclipse party; then Alexia and Wagner. No lawyers, human or AI. Robson is at the Eyrie, with Haider and Haider’s care givers, whom Lucas has brought from Theophilus.
Robson and Alexia’s arguments had raged through the Eyrie’s terraces and mezzanines.
‘You’re not coming.’
‘He’s my primo!’ Robson yelled back.
‘Lucas doesn’t want you there.’
‘I want to be there.’
In the end she talked Haider, Max and Arjun into pleading for her and to be extra sure, had the Eyrie’s security team hack Joker, Robson’s familiar. H
is money wouldn’t work, his network was closed down and if he tried to free-run his way up the walls of the Eyrie and along the sunline Nelson Medeiros would have him cuffed and kicking within thirty seconds.
It was a weak case to argue. Robson had seen and done worse than anything he would see on the floor of Court Five. Alexia would gladly have changed places. But the Eagle of the Moon must have his Iron Hand two steps behind him. And his shadow.
Wagner takes a seat at the top of steps. Without looking, Lucas tips his cane: With me. Alexia links fingers again with Wagner. She saw. Fuck it. Ariel Corta saw her.
Lucas indicates that Alexia should take the row behind him. He nods to his one-time wife, to his sister. A nod. The Suns occupy an entire section of the court, Ariel and her entourage a couple of tiers but none are as small and compact as Eagle Team. Lucas turns to Alexia.
‘Show me.’
Alexia lifts the small valise. She has carried it from the Eyrie to the court. It is anonymous, innocuous, impact-proof carbon fibre and titanium, the kind routinely carried in legal cases even in this age of AI documentation. It has been designed to pass unregarded. It carries the meteoric-iron battle blade of the Cortas.
‘Keep it close.’
Alexia sets the case on the bench beside her.
Every head goes up. Every back straightens. The news on the court network is that Lucasinho Corta has arrived.
* * *
First Luna, the two halves of her face set fierce, the fighting knife slung across her shoulder. Next Lucasinho, the object, the prize. Groomed, hair quiffed to an insouciance only possible in lunar gravity, shaved and shod, Moonrun badge. Yet Abena sees him hesitate and look down before he commits to the steep steps. Behind him, Madrinha Elis also notices the uncertainty. Hands folded demurely in the sleeves of her robe slip free to support, to catch. Abena’s heart is in her mouth. Lucasinho takes a breath and descends the staircase.
Luna takes her seat at Abena’s side. Lucasinho continues to the furthest right section where court zashitniks emerge from a slot in the floor to form an escort around him. Abena catches his eye; makes him smile.