Luna: New Moon

EIGHT

Marina, running. Meridian is fine running terrain, under trees, up ramps steep enough to test her thighs, with staircases when she needs a tougher workout, over slender bridges with colossal panoramas on either side; over soft grass. She’s never run anywhere better than Aquarius Quadra and she never wants to run there again. Her first run she went out in body paint, the tassels of Ogun around her arms and thighs. She ran for hours, listening for the chants of a Long Run, seeking the beautiful undulating wave of the bodies. The other runners she met smiled at her; some whispered to each other or giggled. She was gauche, she was clearly provincial. There was no Long Run here, no merging into a unity of breath and muscle and motion, into the body of a running god.

She bought less revealing shorts, a more decorous top. She put the coloured braids of São Jorge into vacuum storage.

Running was just running. Fitness. A regime.

I hate Meridian. I hated it the first time, I think I hate it even more than I did when I couldn’t afford to breathe and was selling my own piss.

If I move this way; there, can you see that? That’s the view from my apartment. West 53rd, Aquarius Hub. This is Aquarius Quadra’s Hunt’s Point. Come with me. Look. Separate dining area. See this? I don’t have to pull the bed down. The shower isn’t on a timer. Okay, it’s like a rabbit hutch compared to your place but by moon standards, it’s a palace. So, why should I hate it?

It’s not really Meridian. It’s Ariel Corta. She is a conceited, vain, clothes horse, has too many opinions and she’s nowhere near as good as she thinks she is. And she has this, like, entourage of people around her whose only job is to tell her how clever she is, how fabulous she is, how fantastic that dress looks on her, how talented and clever and witty she is. Well, I see through you, all of you, and I’m telling you; you’re none of that, Ariel Corta. You’re Mama Corta’s one and only little girl, you’re spoiled rotten. You’re the original Moon Princess; ooh, nothing nasty can ever happen to Princess Ariel! And that vaper? I want to take that thing and shove it up your ass.

Yes, it pays a fortune. It pays a lot more than I ever got up on the surface with Carlinhos. I wish I was back there. I wish I was back in Boa Vista. I knew where I was there. And yes, Carlinhos … But Boss Mama had a special job for me and you don’t turn Adriana Corta down. But Ariel fucking Corta.

At least it’s mutual. She hates me. Not so much hates me as disdains me. Is that a word? Well she does. It’s like I’m not even alive. Even a bot is more useful. I’m a cheap and dirty João de Deus duster with no class and less taste, who’s been forced on her against her will and who she can’t get rid of. I’m like a genital wart.

The money’ll be through in the next couple of days, I promise. It’s some wrangle between our banks and yours. They’ve done something that makes them freer from Earth’s economy and the Earth banks don’t like it. But, money is money. It’ll work through.

So, what do you think of the apartment?

‘This simply will not do,’ Ariel says, and taps Marina’s shoulder, waist, thighs with the tip of her vaper. Tap tippy tap.

Marina thinks she might punch her charge’s face through the back of her head. The seethe of blood in the forebrain. And release.

‘What’s wrong with my clothes?’

‘You dress like an evangelical,’ Ariel says. ‘This is the Court of Clavius. My clients are the best of society – well, the richest. They have expectations. I have expectations. My zashitnik dresses better. So no no no.’ Ariel forgoes the tap tippy tap. She sees the lava in Marina’s eyes.

Za what? Marina wants to ask but the printer is already humming.

‘I’m in court at eleven, an assets hearing at twelve, lunch with my old colloquium at thirteen,’ Ariel says. ‘Client meetings fifteen through to eighteen, the Akindele pre-legal at twenty. I’ll be making an appearance at the Chawla wedding party about twenty-one, then on to the Law Society Debutante Ball at twenty-two. It’s ten now so just put this on and try not to fall off the heels.’ Ariel frowns.

‘What now?’

‘Your familiar.’

‘You leave Hetty alone.’

‘Hetty. And that is?’

‘An orca.’

‘That’s an animal – a fish?’

‘My totemic animus.’ This is a lie but Ariel won’t know. Hetty is a sneer too far. Hetty is inviolable; the relationship between a woman and her familiar is not subject to whim or fashion.

‘I see. Religion. No religious objection to this, I presume?’ Ariel hands Marina a bouquet of fabric, soft and fresh-laundry aromatic from the printer.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Somewhere to change.’

Ariel’s apartment is smaller and barer than Marina had imagined. White. Surfaces. Is it a minimalist refuge from the endless voices and colours and noise and rush of people, people, people? The only decoration is a wall-sized, bleached-out print of a face that must be iconic in a hagiography unknown to Marina Calzaghe. The closed eyes, the drooping mouth disturb Marina. Narcotic and orgasmic.

She puts a hand on a door.

‘Not that one,’ Ariel says with a speed that makes Marina determined to investigate later. ‘Here.’

Marina wriggles into the dress. The mass of frill and lace is suffocating. The bodice is ridiculous. How do people move, breathe? Where can she hide the weapons? Taser down cleavage, knife in inner thigh holster. Don’t spoil the line of the couture.

‘Legs.’

‘What?’

‘Shave them. At some point we’ll get you permanently depilated.’

‘Fuck you will.’

Ariel holds up a pair of sheer stockings.

‘Okay.’

As Marina opens the bathroom door she notices Ariel tipping her old clothing into the deprinter.

‘Hey!’

‘Daily print out. At least. My brother is a savage. He’d wear the same suit-liner for half a lune.’

Marina draws the stockings up her new smooth legs. She pulls on the shoes. Even in moon gravity she’ll never stand more than an hour in them. They’re weapons, not footwear.

Ariel looks Marina up and down.

‘Turn.’

Marina manages a pirouette. The arches of both feet are already aching.

‘You look as comfortable as a nun at a masturbation party but you’ll pass. Here.’ Ariel holds out a pair of soft ballet pumps. ‘Society secret. Put them in your bag and any chance you get, slip these on. Just don’t let anyone see you. Let’s go to work.’

Marina does not imagine Ariel’s small smile.

‘Is that a real thing?’

‘What?’

‘A masturbation party.’

‘Coração, you’re in Aquarius Quadra now.’

I’ve been in court three days now and I still don’t get lunar law. I get the principle – everyone gets the principle: there is no criminal or civil law, only contract law. I’ve done dozens of contracts – hundreds: Hetty deals with most of them without me even knowing. There are billions of contracts flying through air and rock and people every second of every day. It’s a Fifth Elemental: contract. The Court of Clavius seems to be about avoiding law. The thing they hate most is making a new law, because that would tie things down and take away the freedom to negotiate. Lots of lawyers, not a lot of laws. Court cases are extended negotiations. Both parties haggle over which judges will preside and how much they’re going to pay for it. They’re more like movie producers than attorneys. The first sessions are all about compensating for bias – there’s no assumption that judges are impartial, so contracts or cases take that into account. Sometimes judges have to pay to get to judge. Everything is negotiated. I have a theory that this is why the moon is so open sexually: it’s not about labels like straight or gay or bi or poly or A. It’s about you and what you want to do. Sex is a contract between fucker and fuckee.

The Court of Clavius; sounds real grand, doesn’t it? All marble and Roman gear. I tell you, no. It’s a maze of tunnels and meeting rooms and court spaces in the oldest part of Meridian. The air is stale and smells of moon dust and mould. But what hits you first is the noise: hundreds of lawyers and judges and plaintiffs and parties, all shouting their wares, hustling for work. It’s like those old stock-exchange movies; men in ties jostling and shouting out bids and offers. It’s a law market. So: you’ve hired your lawyers, your judges, your courtroom. Next you decide how you want to be tried – it’s not just lawyers and judges on sale, it’s legal systems too. So: I finally found out what a zashitnik is. A zashitnik is a big man – usually a man, usually a Jo Moonbeam, because we’re physically stronger. It’s perfectly legal to settle your case in a duel, or, if you’d rather not fight yourself, hire someone to do it for you. That’s a zashitnik. Apparently Ariel caused a big legal storm by calling a trial by combat and stripping down to her fighting pants in front of the whole court. I find that hard to imagine. Then again, she’s a marriage and divorce lawyer, so maybe not so weird.

So, I’m in court with Ariel, which most of the time is her talking in a room with other lawyers and judges and me sitting outside playing games with Hetty. Or making posts for you guys. Or just trying to work out lunar law without my skull melting. You’d think the contracts would sew everything up tight, but even water-tight contracts go against the lunar principle that everything is negotiated, everything is personal. There must always be loopholes – every contract must have room to wriggle. Lunar law doesn’t believe in guilt or innocence, or absolute right or absolute wrong. I say, isn’t this blaming the victim? No, lunar law is about personal responsibility, Ariel says. I don’t know. Seems like anarchy to me, but things get done. Cases are settled. Justice is done and people abide by it. They seem much more content with it than we do with our legal systems. No one ever appeals on the moon; that would mean there was a failure in negotiation and that’s like a catastrophic culture shock here. So processes are long and there’s endless talk-talk, but they seem sure. There’s one point in common with terrestrial law: most of the work gets done over lunch.

Sorry. Nodded off there. It’s two am, I’m at a reception – I think it’s a reception, or maybe a launch – and Ariel is still talking. I don’t know how she does it, day after day. Nothing more tiring than talking. It’s relentless. I’m exhausted. I can’t even run any more.

I can hear you, Mom; you’re saying, is Marina maybe getting a little respect for Ariel Corta? Well, as a lawyer maybe. As a human being; well, let me say, it seems she’s never had a partner or even a quickie lover. None. Ever. I can so believe that.

‘It will cost you twenty million,’ Ariel says.

‘That’s a lot for a Sun,’ Lucas says. He has irritated his sister, hauling her out to Boa Vista but he will not suffer the indignity of the scrimmage of lawyers and judges and litigants howling through the corridors of the Court of Clavius. Corta affairs are conducted away from the commentariat, in intimate lounges over cocktails.

‘They started at fifty.’

Toquinho floats the contract for Lucas’s perusal. He scans a digest of main points.

‘She gets access to Lucasinho.’

‘I offered it as a sweetener. It always was and always will be Lucasinho’s choice whether to make contact.’

‘Twenty million.’

‘Twenty million.’

With a thought Lucas signs the divorce contract. With another he instructs Toquinho to transfer twenty million bitsies from his account to Taiyang’s financial AIs at the Palace of Eternal Light. He has always admired the ponderous dignity of the name though he has only visited once, after the wedding when Amanda toured him through the convoluted layers of her family. The capital of the Suns was the oldest on the moon, carved out of the rim wall of Shackleton crater, a few kilometres from the moon’s southern pole, clinging to the almost perpetual light above the eternal darkness of the crater’s heart. Down there lay the permanently frozen gases and organics that seeded human presence on the moon. Lucas hated it. The contrasts were too stark, too unsubtle. High and low. Dark and light. Cold and heat. Amanda had taken him on the mandatory excursion to the Pavilion of Eternal Light, the tower built on the peak of Malapert Mountain. Eternal light blazed through the lantern at the top of the kilometre-high tower. Riding the elevator car with Amanda, Lucas had gritted his teeth, imagining radiation sleeting through the metal walls, sleeting through him, unsealing the chemical bonds of ceramics and plastics and human DNA. Bask in it, Amanda had invited as he stepped from the elevator car into the perpetual light that flooded the glass lantern. The only place in the two worlds where the sun never sets. Every surface, every sign or object was bleached by the light. Lucas felt shone through, rendered transparent, his skin turned pale and sick. He could smell the way it had scorched the air, lune after lune, year after year. Relentless light. Come and see, Amanda said but he would not follow her to the glass and the panorama of the whole south pole of the moon. He thought of the bleaching light, the cruel ultraviolet, picking at the molecules of the glass, one photon at a time. He imagined it bursting like a dropped cocktail. Come and look at the light. Humans are not made for endless light. Humans need their darknesses.

‘Done,’ Lucas says as Toquinho transfers a copy of the contract to Beijaflor. ‘Free but broke.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ariel says. ‘None of us will ever be broke.’

Jorge ends Manhã de Carnaval with a G Major Ninth, looks over to the drummer. The lightest susurrus of brushes. Set closer.

From his booth at the back of the club, in the blue bio light glow, Lucas applauds. G major Ninth is one of the classic chords of bossa, the very spirit of saudade, melancholy under the Rio sun. Incompletely resolved and therefore satisfying. Lucas’s applause rings out. It’s the only applause in the house. The club was never full, but Lucas’s escoltas have been quietly emptying the bar during the set, a tap on the shoulder here, a whisper and a suggestion there. Jorge peers into the lights.

Lucas walks up to the stage.

‘Might we?’

His band look at him; Jorge nods. Okay.

There’s a mojito waiting in the booth, made to Jorge’s taste.

‘A good set. You’re better solo. The band constrain you. Without them you’d fly. Is that why you’re going to Queen of the South?’

‘I’ve been wanting to go solo for lunes now. There’s a market. Not a big one, but enough of one. Bespoke bossa.’

‘You should.’

‘You kind of inspired me.’

‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to think that you were running away from me.’ Lucas touches Jorge’s hand on the glass; delicate, almost fearful. ‘It’s all right, I’d guessed your answer when you didn’t call.’

‘I’m sorry. That was wrong. You caught me unawares – you scared me. I didn’t know what to do. I had to get clear space, room to think.’

‘I’m a single man again, Jorge. I’m free of that evil nikah. Cost me twenty million and the Suns are looking for another twenty for injury to their good name.’

‘Don’t say it, Lucas, please.’

‘That I did it for you? No. Who do you think you are? No, I did it for me. But I love you. I think about you and I burn inside. I want you in every part of my life. I want to be in every part of your life.’

Jorge leans against Lucas. Their heads touch, their hands meet.

‘I can’t. Your life’s too much. Your family – you’re the Cortas. I can’t be part of you. I can’t be the one up at the top table, like your mother’s birthday, siting next to you. I can’t have them all looking and gossipping. I don’t want their attention. I don’t want to play and have people saying that’s Lucas Corta’s oko. Oh, so that’s how got the gig. Marrying you, it would be the end of me, Lucas.’

Lucas forms a dozen replies but they’re all barbed and cruel.

‘I do love you. I loved you from the moment I saw you in Boa Vista.’

‘Please don’t. I have to go to Queen. Please let me go, let me have a life there. Don’t look for me. I know you can do whatever you want, but let me go.’

‘Did you ever …’

‘What?’

These words too are barbed but the hooks catch in Lucas’s throat.

‘Love me?’

‘Love you? The first day when I came to your sound room, I couldn’t even tune the guitar, my hands were shaking so much. I don’t know how I got the words out. When you asked me to stay, that night on the balcony, I thought my heart would burst. I kept thinking, what if he wants to fuck me? I want to fuck him. At home when I was jerking off, I got Gilberto to rez up an image of you, synth your voice. Is that creepy? Love you? You were my oxygen. I burned on you.’

‘Thank you. That’s not right. Thank you is too small and weak. Words can’t say it right.’

‘I can’t marry you, Lucas.’

‘I know.’ Lucas stands, smooths out his clothes. ‘I’m sorry about the audience. I sent them away. I’m far too used to getting my own way. If you go to Queen of the South, I promise I won’t follow you.’

‘Lucas.’

Jorge pulls Lucas to him. They kiss.

‘I’ll listen out for you,’ Lucas says. ‘You’ve brought me such joy.’ Outside the club, he dismisses his guards and walks alone to São Sebastião Quadra. Long Runners cross Ellen Ochoa Prospekt on a tenth-level bridge. Drums and finger cymbals, chanting voices. Lucas customarily sneers at Carlinhos for his devotion to the Long Run but tonight the colour, the rhythm, the fine bodies strike a shard from his heart. To be able to lose yourself for a time and a space, to be somewhere that is not yourself, this casque of bone locked in this prison of stone. He’s heard that some of the Long Runners now believe that they power the moon on its cycle around the Earth. A cosmic treadmill. Faith must be so comforting.

The apartment welcomes him and prepares a martini from Lucas’s personal gin. He goes to the sound room. Those notes, those words and breaths, those pauses and harmonics, trapped in the walls and the floor. No ghosts on the moon, but if there were, those are the kind they would be: trapped words, whispers, stone memories. The only kind Lucas can believe.

Wordless with loss, Lucas hurls the glass to the wall. The room reflects the sounds of shattering glass, perfectly.

The codes are still valid. The elevator responds to his command. It waits in a little-used lobby by the main entry port to Boa Vista. He leaves footprints in the years-deep dust on the floor; he imagines the mechanisms give a groan as they return to work after long idleness. The dome is opaqued, a hemisphere of dust-grey but he knows he is on the surface. Systems come to life, touched by his familiar. He runs fingers over the tank-leather couches leaving trails in the dust; the chairs, awakened, swing towards him. He smells the human taint of old dust, the prickle of electricity, the slight scalded smell of surfaces blasted by years of light.

Slowly and with great formality, Wagner removes all his clothes. He stands naked under the apex of the dome, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, a fighter’s stance. His body is a mess, purple, scabbed, bruised. Wolf love is fierce love. He breathes deeply and steadily.

‘Clear the glass.’

The dome turns transparent. Wagner stands naked on the surface of the Sea of Fecundity; the dust at his feet extends into the dusty regolith, marked with eternal footprints and tyre-tracks. Boulders that have stood in place from before life began. The distant rim of Messier A.

None of this is why Wagner has come. He throws his arms and wide and looks up. The full Earth shines down on him.

He has always known when the Earth was round. As a seven-, eight-, nine-year-old nestled deep in the walls of Boa Vista, he had lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep because the Earth light was shining inside his head. Ten, eleven, twelve, hyperactive and fractious and prone to dazzling flights of fantasy at full Earth. Doctors had prescribed ADHD medication. Madrinha Flavia had thrown it back into the de-printer. That child is Earth-touched, that’s all. No medicine’s going to put out the big light in the sky. Thirteen. The full Earth had called him from his bed, through sleeping Boa Vista to this elevator, to this observation dome. He had closed the door, taken off his clothes. Thirteen was the age when everything changed, his body deepening and lengthening and filling. He was becoming a stranger in his skin. He stood naked in the Earthshine, felt it tugging him, tearing him, ripping him into two Wagner Cortas. He threw back his head and howled. The lock opened. Wagner had triggered a dozen security systems. Heitor Pereira found him, naked, curled on the floor, shaking and yelping.

Heitor never said a word about what he found in the observation dome.

Wagner basks in the light of the blue planet. He feels it cauterising his wounds, easing his bruises, healing him.

Fractal curls of white cloud stream across the Pacific. The blue of Earth’s oceans never fails to tear Wagner’s heart. Nothing is more blue. He can never go there. His is a distant, untouchable god. The wolves are the outcasts of heaven.

Night has already touched Earth’s lowest limb, a hairline of darkness. Over the coming days it will climb the face of the world. The dark half of Wagner’s life is drawing close. He’ll leave this place, the pack will disperse, the nés become shes and hes. He’ll find new powers of concentration and focus, analysis and deduction; he’ll go back to Analiese and she’ll see the healing marks all over his skin and she won’t ask but the questions will always be there.

Wagner closes his eyes and drinks in the light of distant Earth.

Carlinhos has been hunting the raiders for thirty-six hours now across the Mare Crisium. They struck first at Swift: three extractors destroyed, five immobilised. The blast pattern of shaped charges was unmistakable. Even as Carlinhos led his pursuit bikes along their tyre-tracks, they struck again at Cleomedes F, three hundred kilometres north. A mobile resupply and maintenance base destroyed. Two deaths. Carlinhos and his hunters, his caçadores – crack dusters and bikers – arrived to find tractor and habitat punched through and through again with five-millimetre diameter holes. Entries and exits matched. Projectiles.

Two strikes, three hundred kilometres apart, in under an hour. No ghosts on the moon, but other entities can haunt a plugged and re-pressurised mobile base: rumours, superstitions, monsters. The Mackenzies are teleporting; they work deep Australian magic, they have their own private moonship.

‘Not a private moonship,’ Carlinhos says, flicking through satellite data. ‘VTO lifter Sokol.’ From orbit, the scatter patterns in the dust are clear. Carlinhos books time on the moonloop’s cameras and, on the second pass of Ascender Two, São Jorge spot an irregularity in the shadows of Cleomedes H crater. Magnification resolves the speck into the unmistakable shape of a moonship. ‘Mackenzie is flying them in.’

Carlinhos’s hunters saddle up and ride out. São Jorge has predicted that the most likely target is the Eckert samba-line; a flotilla of six primary extractors moving to the south-western end of the Mare Anguis. The caçadores hammer the dustbikes for every drop of speed until they see the running lights of Corta Hélio gantries lift over the horizon. Carlinhos insinuates his team into the shadows of the slow-moving extractors. São Jorge’s orbiting eyes report a moonship grounded just below the south-eastern horizon. Carlinhos grins inside his helmet and snaps off the safety locks on the knife scabbards he wore on each thigh.

Three rovers. Eighteen raiders.

‘Wait until they’re out of the rovers,’ he orders. ‘Nene, your team take out the rovers.’

‘That’ll leave them marooned,’ Gilmar protests. He’s a veteran biker, built the first trails along Dorsa Mawson. Abandonment is the violation of all morals and custom. Dona Luna is everyone’s enemy. As you save, so you may be saved.

‘They’ve got a ship, haven’t they?’

The rover tags break into subtags. Raiders on the move.

‘Steady,’ Carlinhos says, crawling in the cover of Number Three extractor. ‘Steady.’ The tags are fanning out. Plenty of targets. Plenty of space. ‘Take them!’

Six bikes power up; wheels kick up dust. Carlinhos banks around the excavator and hurtles down on the nearest tag. The figure in the sasuit freezes in shock. Carlinhos draws a knife.

‘Gamma hutch,’ says Lousika Asamoah.

‘Hoosh,’ says Rafa Corta. ‘Gammahoosh. It’s French.’

‘French,’ Lousika says.

‘For that,’ Rafa says. ‘Gamahuche.’

‘I’m not sure I got that right. I learn better through practical experience. Hutch?’ She rolls up over Rafa, tucks legs under his shoulders with a small oof of exertion, squeezes his head between her thighs.

‘Huche,’ Rafa says and she comes down on his tongue.

Rafa has always loved Twé. It’s noisy and anarchic and its design makes no sense – a chaotic maze of habitats and agraria, where cramped tunnels open on to sheer drops of tube-farms and low-ceilinged apartments back on to glades of fruit bushes shivered with shafts of lights from sun-tracking mirrors. Water gurgles, the walls are moist with condensation, the air is rich with rot and nutrients and fermentation and the tang of shit. It is easy to get lost here; good to get lost. Ten-year-old Rafa, on his first trip to Twé, got gloriously lost. A quick turn took him away from crowds of tall people into places where only leaves and light lived. Corta and Asamoah security ran the tunnels, calling his name, bots scuttled along ceilings and through ducts too narrow for humans but all too enticing to kids. Software found him, lying on his belly trying to count the tilapia fish circling in an agrarium pond. He’d never seen living creatures before. Years later Rafa understood that the visit had been dynastic, Adriana feeling out a potential marriage between Corta Hélio and the Golden Stool. To Rafa it had been fish, all the way up, all the way down.

‘Here,’ Lousika had said.

‘Here?’ But she had already locked the door with her new Golden Stool protocols and wriggled off her dress.

The excuse had been João de Deus Moças against Black Stars Women’s. Robson was a life-long João de Deus fan and it was time to get Luna into the game. And because it’s Twé: we can see Tia Lousika, Rob; your mamãe, anzinho. Wouldn’t that be great? Lousika met them at the station. Luna ran the length of the platform. Robson showed her a good card trick. Rafa snatched her up in his arms and held her so hard she gasped and he squeezed tears from his eyes. At half-time at the AKA Arena the children went with security to get doces and Rafa slipped his warm hand between his wife’s thighs and he said, I am going to fuck you until you want to die.

Go on, she said.

So on the warm damp moss Lousika Asamoah straddles Rafa Corta’s face and he eats her out. Gamahuche. With his tongue he circles the head of her clitoris, coaxes it out to play with long strokes. Caresses it. Torments it. She grinds her vulva into his face. Rafa splutters and laughs. He nuzzles, he explores, he penetrates and withdraws. He is fast, he is slow. Lousika dances with his tongue, matching his rhythms, finding off-beats and discords of shuddering pleasure. It lasts – seems to last – for hours. She comes four times. He doesn’t even pressure her for a mouth-job in return. This time is a gift.

‘I missed that so much.’ Lousika rolls from Rafa and lies on her back in the leaf-light. Fat drops of warm condensation roll down the soft grooves of leaves, hang like a pearl, swell and fall slowly on to her body. ‘Have you been practising?’ Lousika catches drops in her hand and flings them into Rafa’s face.

Rafa laughs. He was good. Fidelity was never in the nikah but there are rules. Never talk about lovers. Save the best for each other. After such a feast he’s exhausted. His jaws ache. He needs to rinse and spit but that would be unforgivable. He needs a break between courses. An entr’acte. High above, mirrors slowly track the long sun, throwing shadow across Rafa’s face.

‘There’s an hour until Madrinha Elis comes back with Luna and Robson, and even then, I could just call her and tell her to keep them out for another hour or two. If I had a reason to? You know?’

Rafa rolls on to his back and blinks up into the mirror-dazzle. Lousika slides on top of him.

‘So what else have you been practising?’

Carlinhos holds the blade flat at arm’s length. The Mackenzie saboteur throws hands up in defence. Carlinhos Corta knows how to take care of blades and such a blade, so honed and loved, with such momentum has taken the right arm clean through just beneath the elbow. It’s not survivable.

Carlinhos puts a boot down and doughnuts the dustbike, lining up on his next target. São Jorge sprays vital signs all over his hud; breathing, blood pressure, adrenaline, heart rate, neural activity, visual acuity, salts and sugars and blood oh-two. Carlinhos doesn’t need São Jorge’s visuals. He’s blazing.

His dustbike cavalry has completed its first charge. Five Mackenzies down, the rest fleeing. The rovers are coming up at speed to evacuate. The raiding party has been routed. Carlinhos circles his knife hand in the air: round and at them again.

‘Leave them!’ Gilmar shouts on the common channel. ‘They’re running.’

The rovers unfold, Mackenzie raiders dump sabotage equipment as they pile into the seats and harness on. The dustbikes can easily match them. São Jorge superimposes an icon of the Vorontsov ship lifting off from over the horizon, swooping in for rescue. Let it come. A moonship is a battle worth fighting.

Two rovers accelerate away in arcs of dust; one of the raiders kneels by the side of the third rover, aiming a long metal device. The kneeler jerks: recoil. And Fabiola Mangabeira’s head explodes. Her body flies from the dustbike; the machine careers on, the dead woman spins in a spray of glass and fibre, bone and flash-frozen blood. Her name turns white on Carlinhos’s hud.

‘They’ve got a fucking gun!’ Gilmar cries. The shooter tracks another target. Silent recoil. Carlinhos’s hud tracks an ejected red-hot thermal clip. The shot takes Thiago Endres through the shoulder. Not a clean shot, not a head-shot; but a killing shot all the same. Sasuits can heal, but not this much damage, not this fast. Thiago spasms on the regolith, thrashing as blood sprays into vacuum and freezes in a thick glossy ice. Another name goes white.

The gun swings on to Carlinhos. He throws the bike over into a skid, slides across the dust. Then he sees Gilmar pile full speed into the shooter. Gilmar strikes true and hard. The shooter goes down under the wheels, arms and legs flailing; the bike bucks high, Gilmar holds it down. The massive tread of the drive wheel rips open sasuit, skin, flesh, ribs. The gun spins away.

Carlinhos sprints to his still-running bike.

‘After them, get after them!’

The third rover clamshells up and accelerates away. Carlinhos stands in the soft-settling dust, a knife in each hand, bellowing.

‘Let them fucking go!’ Gilmar yells.

Carlinhos walks to the corpse of the shooter. Fabric, bone, bowel. Carlinhos contemplates it for long heartbeats; the fragility of this goop and gore, the totality of the destruction. The moon makes any injury fatal. A woman, he guesses. They are often the best shooters. Then he raises his boot to stamp down through the helmet and crush the skull. Gilmar seizes his arm and whirls him away. Carlinhos leaps back, blades ready.

‘Carlo, Carlo, it’s over. Put the knives away.’

He can’t see. Who is this? His signs are off the scale. Red all over his visor. What are they saying? Something about knives.

‘I’m okay,’ Carlinhos says. The dust has settled. The rest of his team wait on him, standing at a distance between respectful and fearful. Someone has recovered his dustbike. The ground shakes; from over the horizon a moonship rises on diamonds of rocket-fire, lights flashing, three rovers clutched to its belly. Carlinhos stabs his knives at it; roars in two-bladed futility at the lights in the sky. It turns, it’s gone. ‘I’m okay.’ Carlinhos puts the knives away, one at a time.

Carlinhos learned to love the knife young. His guards were playing a game; stabbing the point of the blade between outspread fingers. Carlinhos aged eight could see the stakes and the appeal at once. He understood the small lethality, the simple precision, how there was nothing complicated or unnecessary about knives.

Like his brothers and sister, Carlinhos Corta had been taught Brazilian jiu jitsu. He won’t apply himself, Heitor Pereira reported to Adriana. He jokes and play-acts and won’t take it seriously. Carlinhos didn’t take it seriously because it could not be serious to him. It was too close up and undignified and he loathed the master-pupil discipline. He wanted a weapon fast and dangerous. He wanted elegance and violence; an adjunct to his body, an extension of his personality.

After Madrinha Flavia found him printing out fighting daggers, Heitor Pereira sent Carlinhos to Mariano Gabriel Demaria’s School of Seven Bells in Queen of the South. All dark skills were taught here; thieving, stealth and assassination, confidence tricks and poisons, torture and excruciation, the way of the two knives. Carlinhos fell in among the freelance security and bodyguards like true family. He learned the way of one hand and two, of attack and defence and how to trick and blind; how to win and kill. He grew fast and lean, muscular and poised as a dancer. Corta means cut in Spanish, Mariano Gabriel Demaria said. Now it’s time to try the Bell Walk.

The heart of the School of Seven Bells was a labyrinth of old service tunnels, kept in darkness and hung with the seven bells that gave Mariano Gabriel Demaria’s academy its name. Walk the maze without sounding a single bell and you graduated. Carlinhos failed on the third bell. He raged for three days, then Mariano Gabriel Demaria took him and sat him and told him, You will never be great. You’re the kid brother. You’ll never command companies or budgets. You’re full of anger, boy, swollen like a boil with it. An idiot would tell you to use that anger but idiots die in the School of Seven Bells. You’re not the strongest, you’re not the smartest but you are the one who will kill for his family. Accept it. No one else can do it.

Four times more Carlinhos Corta took the Bell Walk. The fifth time he walked clear in silence. Mariano Gabriel Demaria gave him a pair of matched handcrafted lunar steel blades; balanced and beautiful and honed to an edge that would part a dream.

It has taken Carlinhos five years to understand Mariano Gabriel Demaria’s truth. The anger will never go away. He will never find a way through it. That’s therapy-talk. Accept it. Just accept it.

In the repaired base, Carlinhos plays with his knives, over and over, rolling them around his fingers, spinning them, tossing and catching them while outside vacuum-sealed corpses hang in racks, their carbon and water the property of the Lunar Development Company now. And he is angry, still so angry.

The Sisters have disappointed Lucas Corta. Toquinho has led him to an industrial unit on East 83rd of Hadley’s Armstrong Quadra. Glass and sinter, full-height windows, standard-fit partitions, functional utilities, quick-print catalogue furnishings, generic reception AI. Soft white, discreet full-spectrum lighting. The air is scented with cypress and grapefruit. It could be a budget beautician or a hire-by-the-hour developer farm. Hadley always was a cheap place, a budget boon dock. But Toquinho insists that this is the Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Lords of Now; their terreiro.

And they keep him waiting.

‘I am Mãe-de-Santo Odunlade Abosede Adekola.’ The woman is a short, rotund Yoruba, all in Sisterhood whites, her neck hung with dozens of bead necklaces and silver charms. Her fingers are busy with rings; she extends a hand to Lucas. He does not kiss it. ‘Sisters Maria Padilha and Maria Navalha.’ The two woman flanking the Mãe-de-Santo curtsy. They are younger and taller than the Reverend Mother; one Brazilian, the other West African. Their head scarves are red. Filhos-de-Santo of the Street Exus and Pomba Gira, Lucas recalls from Madrinha Amalia’s teachings.

‘We are a familiar-free community,’ Sister Maria Navalha says.

‘Of course.’ Lucas banishes Toquinho.

‘We are honoured, Senhor Corta,’ Mother Odunlade says. ‘Your mother is a great supporter of our work. I presume that’s why you’ve come to us.’

‘You’re direct,’ Lucas says.

‘Modesty is for the children of Abraham. I deplore your callous treatment of our Sister Flavia. To leave that dear woman in fear of her breath …’

‘The matter is out of my hands now.’

‘So I understand. Please.’

Sisters Maria Padilha and Maria Navalha invite Lucas to an adjoining room. Sofas, more budget-print furniture, soft-focus white. Lucas is defiantly bi-chromatic in his dark grey suit. He doesn’t doubt that there is a sanctum hidden deep behind these bland walls, and that no non-believer, and precious few believers, will ever see it.

A metal cup of herbal brew.

‘Maté?’

Lucas sniffs, sets it aside. Mother Odunlade sips decorously through a silver straw.

‘It’s a mild stimulant and concentration aid,’ she says. ‘We develop and export spiritual tisanes and matés to Earth – printer files. Everything from mild euphoric to full-on hallucinogens that make ayahuasca look like lemonade. They’re pirated the very moment they hit the network, but we feel it’s our duty to give the world new religious experiences.’

‘My mother has donated eighteen million bitsies to your organisation in the past five years,’ Lucas says.

‘For which we are very grateful, Senhor Corta. Religious orders face unique opportunities and challenges on the moon. Faith must breathe. Our funders include Ya Dede Asamoah, the Eagle of the Moon and, on Earth, União do Vegetal, the Ifa Pentecostal Church of Lagos and the Long Now Foundation.’

‘I know.’

‘She says you’re diligent.’

‘Do not patronise me.’

The attendant Sisters sit up, affronted.

‘Forgive me, Senhor Corta.’

‘Would there be any point in asking that this conversation continue in private?’

‘None, Senhor.’

‘But I am diligent. I’m the son who won’t let his mother waste her money on hustlers and conmen.’

‘It’s her own money.’

‘What do you do, Mother Odunlade?’

‘The Sisterhood of the Lords of Now is a syncretistic Lunar-Afro-Brazilian religious order dedicated to the veneration of the orixas, the relief of poverty, the practice of spiritual disciplines, alms-giving and meditation. We also engage in genealogical research and social experiment. It’s the latter that interests your mother.’

‘Tell me.’

‘The Sisterhood is engaged in an experiment to produce a social structure that will last for ten thousand years. It involves genealogies, social engineering and the manipulation of bloodlines. Europeans see a man in the moon; the Aztecs a rabbit. The Chinese see a hare. You see business and profit, the academics of Farside see a window on the universe, we see a social container. The moon is a perfect social laboratory; small, self-contained, constrained. For us it’s the perfect place to experiment with types of society.’

‘Ten thousand years?’

‘How long it will take humanity to become independent from this solar system and evolve into a truly interstellar species.’

‘That’s a long-term project.’

‘Religions deal in eternities. We’re working with other groups – some religious, some philosophical, some political – but we all have the same aim; a human society so robust and yet so flexible it will take us to the stars. We’re evolving five major social experiments.’

‘Five.’

‘That’s correct, Senhor Corta.’

‘My family are not your lab rats.’

‘With respect, you are, Senhor Corta—’

‘My mother would never degrade her children—’

‘Your mother was fundamental to the experiment.’

‘We are not an experiment.’

‘We all are, Lucas. Every human is an experiment. Your mother is not just a great engineer and industrialist, she is a social visionary as well. She saw the damage nation states, imperial ambition and the tribalism of identity groups has done to Earth. The moon was a chance to try something new. Humans have never lived in a more demanding or dangerous environment. Yet here we are, a million and a half of us in our cities and habitats. We’ve survived; we’ve thrived. The very constraints of our environment forced adaptation and change on us. The Earth is specially privileged. The rest of the universe will be like us. You are an experiment, the Asamoahs are an experiment, the Suns are an experiment, the Mackenzies are an experiment. The Vorontsovs are an extreme experiment: what happens to human bodies and societies after decades in zero-gee? You experiment, you compete with each other. It’s a kind of Darwinism, I suppose.’

Lucas bridles at the presumption. He is the manipulator, not the manipulated. But he can’t deny that the Five Dragons have reached very different solutions to surviving and thriving on the moon. His colleagues among the Vorontsovs have never confirmed nor denied the legend that Valery Mikhailovitch Vorontsov, the old rocketeer of Baikonur, has, over decades of free-fall aboard his cycler Saints Peter and Paul, become something strange and inhuman.

‘Why is one of your Sisters visiting my mother?’

‘At your mother’s request.’

‘Why?’

‘You spy on your brother but not your mother?’

‘I respect my mamãe.’

The Sisters look at each other.

‘Your mother is making her confession,’ Mother Odunlade says.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your mother is dying.’

The moto closes around Ariel Corta. She lifts a hand: the cab opens a crack for Ariel to be heard.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I almost lost a finger there!’ The moto had closed fast and hard in Marina’s face.

‘We’d compensate you. Darling, we’ve been through this. You can’t come with me.’

‘I have to come with you,’ Marina says. This morning the printer delivered a male flamenco-style suit into the hopper. Marina very much likes the pants though she can’t stop tugging the jacket down to cover hips and ass. She’s been hacking the shoes for some time now. Not the silly heels. They are unhackworthy. The real shoes; adding a line of code here for comfort, there for custom fit, rewriting the soles for grip and acceleration. Action pumps.

‘I’m ordering you.’

‘I don’t report to you, lady. I report to your mother.’

‘Then report to her.’ Ariel seals the moto. Before she is a block away, Hetty has summoned a second cab and set it to follow Ariel.

Ariel smokes theatrically as Marina’s moto unfolds. An old-dig unit up on Orion West 65th, smartly close to the hub but faded and easily overlooked. Deliberately so, Marina thinks. The Lunarian Society, Hetty informs Marina.

‘This a private member’s club,’ Ariel says.

‘Clubs let in security.’

‘This club doesn’t.’

‘I will follow you.’

Ariel turns, hissing with fury.

‘Will you for gods’ sake just do what I ask? Just once?’

Marina swallows her satisfaction. A hit.

‘Okay. Okay. But you need to know one thing.’

‘What now?’ Ariel splutters.

‘You’ve got a ladder on the calf of your left stocking.’

For an instant Ariel might explode, eyes bulging as if in a sudden pressure-out. Then she collapses into helpless laughter.

‘Be a dear and run off to the public printer and get me a pair,’ Ariel commands. ‘Beijaflor has transfered the print file.’

‘What wrong with …’ Marina begins. Don’t finish. Hetty guides her to the nearest printer, a level down. Ariel assiduously examines the stockings, then peels on and replaces them.

‘Shouldn’t you find somewhere a little less public?’ Marina offers. She has views no employee ever should.

‘Oh for gods’ sake don’t be so Earthy.’ Ariel straightens her dress, peering with the long look of a woman being shown herself through public cameras. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

Vidhya Rao waits for Ariel in the lobby. Ariel looks over the Lunarian Society with distaste. There is carpet. She despises carpet. This one is sickness-green, stained and mottled with decades of tread and insufficient care. Patched too the tank-skin leather sofas, of a design so outmoded it has served its time as knowing and retro and drooped into terminal obsolescence. Low lights. Collegiate, conformist, like an old colloquium house in a musty subject. There were pockets of air here Ariel suspected had circled like djinn for years.

‘Please.’ Vidhya Rao indicates a cluster of sofas around a low table. ‘Something to drink?’

‘Bloody Mary,’ Ariel says and snaps out her vaper. A bot brings her drink, water for the banker. ‘Will there be others?’

‘Just me, I’m afraid,’ Vidhya Rao says. E rests er hands on er knees, fingers arched, a lively pose. Ariel sips her Bloody Mary.

‘A successful parley, then.’ Vidhya Rao lifts er glass. Ariel returns the toast. ‘Quite a feat. Your mother is well?’

‘It’s hard to tell anything about my mother. There’s a new corporate structure.’

‘I know.’

‘Your Three August Ones predicted that?’

‘I am an avid fan of the gossip channels.’

‘Why am I here, Ser Rao?’

‘You remember when we last met I said we wanted to buy you?’

‘Name your price.’

‘The Lunarian Society is producing a paper. We do this on a regular basis; outlining various cases for lunar independence; economic, political, social, cultural, ecological. We like endorsements.’

‘What would I be signing up to?’

‘It’s a politics paper, drafted by me, Maya Yeap, Roberto Gutierrez and Yuri Antonenko. We posit three alternative structures for the abolition of the LDC and the establishment of lunar home rule. They run from full participatory democracy to micro-capitalist anarchism.’

Ariel finishes her Bloody Mary. No breakfast like it.

‘Last time we met I believe I said I’m a Corta, we don’t do democracy.’

‘Those very words. It is only a paper. We’re not asking you to sign a declaration of independence in your own blood.’

‘Well as long as I don’t have to read anything,’ Ariel says and hands her empty glass to the waiting server bot.

Lucas’s tram has arrived, Yemanja announces.

‘Leave me,’ Adriana says to Heitor Pereira and Helen de Braga. Helen rests a parting hand on Adriana’s.

‘It’s all right,’ Adriana says. Lucas won’t rage like Rafa; there will be no shouting, no tantrums, no sulks. But he will be furious. Adriana waits in the Nossa Senhora da Rocha Pavilion, under the face of Oxum.

The two kisses, dutiful as ever.

‘Why didn’t you trust me?’ Direct, of course. Open with the personal betrayal. A strong card. The dutiful son, lied to.

‘I would have had to tell the others. I couldn’t have borne it from Rafa.’

‘I have always been discreet.’

‘Yes, you have, Lucas. No one’s been more discreet, or trustworthy.’

‘Or done more for the company.’ Adriana knows the high card he holds, but this is too early to play the Jack of Guilt. ‘When were you going to tell us? Another family celebration? Luna’s birthday?’

‘Lucas, enough of this.’

‘So when, Mamãe?’

‘Get it over with Lucas. I can’t bear this from you.’

Lucas bites back his anger, dips his head.

‘How long, until?’

‘Weeks.’

‘Weeks!’

‘I would have told you, before …’

‘Just enough time for goodbyes. Thank you. What did you think we would do when we found out?’

‘It would have changed everything. I see how you look at me now and you’ve known for what? Five hours? I’m not your mother, I’m not Adriana Corta. I’m death walking.’

Worse then the look of death was the look of pity. Adriana could not abide pity, its whinnying solicitudes, its patient smile over seething resentment. You will not pity me. This death was hers alone. She would have no cares or hurts encroaching on it. Her children would take her death away from her, shape it and manage it and control it until she was pruned back, an old woman dying in a chair.

‘I haven’t told the others.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I had to hear it from the Sisters of the Lords of Now.’

‘You shouldn’t have endangered their funding.’ As Lucas’s train left Hadley Central, Mãe Odunlade had contacted Adriana. Lucas knew the reason for Irmã Loa’s visits. Lucas had extorted the information by threatening to cancel funding after Adriana’s death. Adriana is furious at what Lucas did. He was always the silken bully. Whatever else she has done, she has the right to be furious about that.

‘You shouldn’t have played dynasties with our family.’

‘Lucas, it’s all dynasties, always dynasties. I wanted the best for you, for all of you. For the family.’

He’ll concede that. It’s always been the family for Lucas. He’ll play his card now. Adriana has forced his hand.

‘Is it for the family that you named Ariel as the heir to Corta Hélio?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not Rafa. Not—’

‘You?’

‘Rafa would choke this company to death. You know that. Ariel has her own life and career. Do you think she’ll want to be be hwaejang of Corta Hélio?’

‘Perhaps not, but that is what I have decided. After my death, Ariel will become head of the company. She won’t be hwaejang. I’ve invented a new title and executive authority for her. You and Rafa will retain your positions and responsibilities. You’ll all work together.’

‘Is this some notion the Sisterhood whispered to you?’

‘That’s beneath you, Lucas.’

‘What about us?’

‘Us? You and Rafa?’

‘Us; you and me, mamãe.’

‘Lucas Lucas, this is why I wanted this all to wait until I’m safely dead.’

‘I think I’m owed an explanation.’

‘This is the moon. You’re owed nothing. Ariel will be Choego of Corta Hélio.’

‘As I said, I’ve told no one else. So far.’

Adriana knew he would do this in the end, but the manipulation, the oiled threat still makes her catch her breath.

‘And that is why I’ve put as much distance as I could between you and the throne, Lucas.’

This is the knife. This is the wound beyond healing. The corners of Lucas’s mouth twitch.

‘I will fight you.’

‘I’m not your enemy Lucas.’

‘If you act against the best interests of Corta Hélio, then yes you are. Even you, mamãe. You’ve hurt me, mamãe. I can’t think of a deeper cut. I can’t forgive you for this.’

He stands, purses his fingers and bows to his mother. No parting kisses. The air shivers with rainbow, struck from spray of Boa Vista’s tumbling waters.

‘Lucas.’

He is halfway to the shuttle station.

‘Lucas!’

Can I come in?

Lucas, please no. You’re not going to persuade me.

I don’t want to persuade you.

He stands before Jorge’s door-camera as if every bone is shattered like sub-regolith and only his will holds them together.

Come in. Oh come in.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t let leak any word of the devastation inside but Jorge pulls him to him, enfolds him, kisses him. Holds him. Holds him long, in the tiny smelly room, in the tiny bed.

Afterwards Lucas rests his head on Jorge’s belly. He’s fit for a musician, tuned and toned.

The apartment is miserable, high in the rafters of Santa Barbra Quadra, the rooms tiny and cramped, the air over-breathed. The bed takes up an entire room. The guitar hangs on the wall, watching like an icon or a different lover. It makes Lucas uneasy; the sound-hole a cyclops eye or a horrified mouth.

‘Is your mother still alive?’

‘No, she died in the Aristarchus quake.’ Lucas feels the gentle rhythm of Jorge’s words and breath and heart. ‘She worked for you. Selenology. Moon rocks and dust.’

Mild quakes shake the moon regularly; tidal stresses, the aftershocks of impacts, thermal expansion as the cold crust warms in the new sun: gentle trembles, a long slow temblor to remind the humans who crawl through the wormholes in its skin that the moon is not a dead stone skull in the sky. Rattlers, dust-stirrers. Once every few lunes the moon is struck with more powerful quakes: seisms twenty, thirty kilometres deep, that stop people in their business in their underground cities, that crack walls and gas seals, bring down power lines and sever rails. That collapsed the Corta Hélio maintenance and research base at Aristarchus and buried two hundred people. The base had been cheap and rapidly constructed. Some compensation cases were still working through the Court of Clavius.

Lucas turns his head to look at Jorge.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re lucky,’ Jorge says. ‘You’re lucky you have her.’

‘I know that. And I’ll look after her and I’ll defend her and I’ll be the one who sits with her and holds her hand.’

‘Do you love her?’

Lucas sits up. There is anger in his eyes and for a moment Jorge is afraid.

‘I have always loved her.’

‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘You should. No one ever asked. Every week I go and see my mamãe and no one thinks to ask me, do I do this because I have a duty or because I love her? Rafa is the lover. Lucas Corta? The dark one. The schemer. My boy Lucasinho is everything to me. That boy is a wonder, a treasure. But when I talk to him, I can’t say that. It twists up. It goes wrong. It comes out hard. Why is it so easy for the Rafas of this world?’

Lucas sits up on the edge of the bed. The room is so small his bare feet are in the living space.

‘At least let me get you a decent apartment in Queen.’

‘Okay.’

‘You agreed to that too quickly.’

‘I’m a musician. We never turn down free accommodation.’

‘I’d like to come and listen to you. Sometime.’

‘Sometime. Not yet. If that’s all right.’

‘I’ll do that.’

Jorge pulls Lucas down beside him and Lucas curls up around him, belly to back, balls to ass, innocent and for a few moments empty of past and future, history and responsibility.

‘Sing me something,’ Lucas whispers. ‘Aquas de Marco.’

Chef Marin Olmstead is ill. Chef Marin Olmstead is not ill. Chefs are the unhealthiest trade. Their hours are sick, their workplaces cramped, uncongenial, filled with vapours and fumes. They are serial abusers of their bodies. But they never take a day off from their kitchen. Chefs never get ill. When Marin Olmstead asks Ariel take his place reporting the deliberations of the Pavilion of the White Hare to the Eyrie of the Eagle of the Moon because he is ill, Ariel Corta knows a fatted lie. Jonathon Kayode wants words with her.

Security is discreet and begins the moment Beijaflor summons the moto to the Eyrie. Ariel and Marina have been throughly scanned and checked by the time the cab attaches to the ascender and climbs the south-west wall of Antares Hub. An elegant butler in a bolero suit and hat asks Ariel to follow her please, up through the terraced gardens.

The Eagle of the Moon takes tea in the Orange Pavilion. His Eyrie is a series of sinter-glass kiosks and belvederes set among tiered gardens, each themed around a colour. The Orange Pavilion is set at the edge of formal citrus trees; orange, kumquats, bergamot, all dwarfed to human scale by AKA geneticists. The view is stupendous; the Eyrie sits half up the central rotunda where Antares Quadra’s habitats meet, high enough for panorama, low enough to be aristocratic. The breath catches in Ariel’s chest. This is stepping out on to the edge of forever. Antares Quadra is eight hours behind Aquarius Quadra and the sunline wakes, casting golden light the length of the five Prospekts. Lights shine in the gloaming, dusty as stars. This is the Eagle’s preview and the Eagle’s alone.

‘Counsel Corta.’ Jonathon Kayode plucks a bergamot. He digs his fingernails into the green rind, releases a spray of aromatic oil. ‘Smell.’ Ariel bends to the fruit.

‘I can’t describe it.’

‘No, it’s impossible, isn’t it? Sensations and emotions, there is no way to express them except in terms of themselves.’ He throws the fruit away. Ariel doesn’t see where it falls. It could have gone over the edge. ‘Will you?’

The Eagle indicates a small domed pavilion at the very edge of the central rotunda, big enough for just a low table and two benches. Ariel settles her layered petticoats. A Dior circle-dress today, floating and cinch-waisted; its flagrant femininity intentional deception. The butler brings mint tea for the Eagle, a spanking dry martini for Ariel. It’s always cocktail hour in some Quadra. Ariel flicks out her vaper.

‘Do you mind?’

‘You’re my guest.’

The sky is already busy; cable cars swing across the canyon; bicycles and scooters skim across the flyovers; high above, in the poor town, Ariel can make out figures running the rope-bridges. Drones and fliers flash through the golden space.

‘My sincere apologies for not making it to your mother’s birthday. The world will miss her at the head of Corta Hélio.’

‘My mother kept her distance from the world, so I very much doubt there will be weeping on the Gupshup network.’

‘Unlike you,’ Jonathon Kayode says. For the first time Ariel feels his physical mass: Earth-born weight and muscle. He intimidates her a little.

‘So tell me what you want,’ Ariel says. ‘What you really want.’

Jonathon Kayode’s smile could dazzle worlds. He sets down his tea glass and claps his hands in delight.

‘So forward! I want a wedding.’

‘It’s a day out for everyone.’

‘I want a Corta-Mackenzie wedding.’

‘I annulled the nikah between Hoang Lam Hung Mackenzie and Robson Corta on grounds on parental neglect of his sexual rights and Luna is only five.’

‘I mean Lucasinho, with Denny Mackenzie.’

‘Another one of Bryce’s little orphans.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to tell you what Lucas will say?’

‘Lucas will say yes, after you’ve explained to him that if he declines, I will instruct the LDC to review the Mare Anguis licence for procedural irregularities.’

‘Corta Hélio has deep pockets.’

‘But not bottomless ones. How rich is your war chest when we impose an interim embargo on your helium-3 exports, until the investigation is concluded?’

‘How long will you stay in this lovely palace when Earth goes dark?’

Jonathon Kayode leans forward and takes Ariel’s hands in his. His skin is soft and very warm.

‘But none of this has to be, Ariel. Lucasinho marries Denny Mackenzie. You even get to draw up the nikah. And we have peace between Cortas and Mackenzies. A dynastic marriage. I want peace, Ariel. I want a quiet moon. I know what you and Mackenzie Metals have been doing out in Mare Anguis. I will not have corporate war on my world. A simple union of houses. Two beautiful princes. I’d even provide them with an apartment right here at Antares Rotunda, so that neither side would have a claim on them.’

‘Two beautiful hostages.’

‘Ariel, this is disingenuous of you. How many nikahs have you drawn up?’

Ariel takes a long draw on her vaper. Her martini is untouched on the low table.

‘Are you threatening Mackenzie Metals with similar sanctions?’

Full morning now, another glorious day in Antares Quadra.

‘I sometimes forget how new your family is to real politics.’

Ariel slowly exhales a spiral of blue vapour. It curls out over the stupendous drop down through tiers and platforms, buttresses and pillars to glittering Han Ying Plaza.

‘Fuck you, Jonathon.’

‘I want you to take this message to your mother.’

‘I’m not my mother’s tell-tale.’

‘Really? I think you’re quite the cunning little spider.’

‘If I can find for my people I will.’

‘Of course. You acted ethically. But I do know that the Mare Anguis tip-off didn’t come through the Pavilion of the White Hare.’

Ariel coolly takes her first sip of her martini. She wants it to restart her stone heart. He knows. Plead guilty. Bargain. Her gloved fingers set the glass down without a ripple.

‘There’s no law against the Lunarian Society. Gods save that there ever should be. Too many laws make bad justice. It’s not even a conflict of interests.’

‘But it does conflict with my interests, the interests of the LDC. You are not citizens, you’re clients. Never forget that. That tract you put your name to: fascinating. Quite fascinating. Quite irrelevant: political theory? We’re pragmatic people up here. It’ll be read by the usual chatterati. But if you started attaching your name to subjects that really affect people, like the Four Elementals. Well, that might cause unrest, even panic. The LDC couldn’t overlook that. You aspire to the judiciary. Don’t deny it, Ariel. Your ambition is admirable but, never forget, appointments to the Court of Clavius are made by the Lunar Development Corporation.’

‘Jonathon, once again …’

‘Fuck me. Yes. Talk to your mother. Persuade your brother. Invite me to the wedding. Make it big. I do so love a big wedding.’

The butler arrives. The audience is ended. Jonathon Kayode plucks a second bergamot from his tree and presents it to Ariel with the delicacy of a baby or a heart.

‘Do take this. Place it at the heart of your home and its fragrance will fill every room.’

The event may be the Modi reception or the Colloquium ’79 reunion but it’s the tenth in five days and it’s one thirty and Marina wants her home, her bed, so much she could weep. She sits in a Jacques Fath dress at the bar with her glass of tea, tracking Ariel as she moves from group to group, conversation to conversation. The same faces, the same talk. The banality is crushing. It’s a skill, Marina supposes. It can’t be what’s said; it’s who it is said by, and to whom. Marina tries to find a millimetre of forgiveness inside her red stiletto-heeled opera shoes. Marina squeezes off the heels. The pleasure is so great and immediate it’s pain. Her feet are swollen, agonised, her muscles relax from their taut ballet and she almost cries out. She winces as she pulls on each soft heel-less ballet slipper.

Ariel wafts through her entourage.

Marina looks up from pulling in the glorious kind shoes and sees the knife. The suggestion of knife; the movement of the hand, the tucking back of the clothing, the flash of metal from within the entourage. Knife. The draw.

The lunge.

Jo Moonbeam muscles. Marina launches from the chair. The dive carries her a quarter the length of the room. She piles into the attacker as he drives the knife at Ariel Corta’s heart, knocks him so the strike goes awry. The knife goes through layers of Givenchy lace and bodice into Ariel’s back. Blood. Blood sprays high and slow on the moon. Ariel is down. The attacker reels and comes up for another strike. He’s moon-born, tall, light, fast; faster than Marina. He shifts his grip on the knife. Marina’s weapons are locked inside her stupid clothing. She looks for a killing thing to hand, finds it. The attacker comes up, knife-ready. With all her strength, Marina drives the vaper up under his chin. The full length. Her fists jerk against his chin-stubble. Crunch of bone. The tip punches through the top of his skull. The assailant spasms. Marina holds the vaper, holds it firm, holds him impaled on it, holds his gaze until she knows there is no life in it. She lets go of her spear. The body slumps on to its side. Blood has run down the titanium spike of the vaper over her hands. Blood from Ariel’s wound has sprayed across her face and dress. Ariel lies in dark blood, panting, twitching. The entourage stands in its eternal circle, looking down. We are aghast. We are concerned. We don’t know what to do.

‘Medics!’ Marina screams. She kneels beside Ariel. Where to press, where to hold, how to staunch the flow? So much blood. Flaps of skin and flesh. ‘Medics!’