Luna: New Moon

‘You talked to her pussy to pussy. You’ll rein our people in? Our people? What kind of pussy deal is that? You’d tie our hands and let those thieves turn us out bare-ass naked on to the surface. In my day we knew how to deal with enemies.’

‘Forty years ago, Dad. Forty years ago. This is a new moon.’

‘The moon doesn’t change.’

‘Adriana Corta is retiring.’

‘Rafael is hwaejang. Fucking clown. Lucas will run the show. That cunt has the right stuff. He’d never sign up to some kind of gentleman’s agreement.’

‘Ariel is a member of the White Hare,’ Duncan says. The old man sheds spittle as he rages. In lunar gravity it flies in long, elegant, poisonous arcs.

‘I fucking know that. I’ve known that for weeks. Adrian told me.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘And a good thing too. It would just have sent you running and hiding. She’s much more than a White Hare, Ariel Corta.’

‘Ariel Corta has been inducted into the Lunarian Society,’ Jade Sun says.

‘The what?’ Duncan Mackenzie shakes his head with confused frustration. There is nothing he can hold in this fight, no grips on his father.

‘A grouping of influential industrial, academic and legal talents,’ Jade Sun says. ‘They advocate lunar independence. Vidhya Rao has recruited her. Darren Mackenzie is a member.’

‘You kept this from me?’

‘Your father’s political beliefs differ from ours. The Suns have always been staunch for independence, since we threw off the People’s Republic. We believe it was the the Lunarian Society leaked the information about the claim release to Ariel Corta.’

‘We?’

‘The Three August Sages,’ Jade Sun says.

‘They’re not real.’ It is one of the legends of the moon; birthed as soon as Taiyang began to thread its AI systems through every part of lunar society and infrastructure: the computers so powerful, the algorithm so subtle, that it could predict the future.

‘I assure you they are. Whitacre Goddard has been running a quantum stochastic algorithmic system we built for them for over a year now. Do you really think we’d let Whitacre Goddard run our hardware without installing a back door?’

‘Yeah yeah,’ Robert Mackenzie. ‘Quantum voodoo. White Hare and Lunarians: what matters is; we need to be able to wheel and deal. To do business our way. You’ve threatened our business model, boy. Worse, you’ve brought shame on the family. You’re fired.’

The words are tiny, shrill as the bird whistles in this terrarium; heard but pushed to a distance.

‘This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.’

‘I’m CEO now.’

‘You can’t do that. The board—’

‘Not this again. The board—’

‘I know about the fucking board. You can’t because I resign.’

‘You know, you always were a petulant little shit. That’s why I did it five minutes ago. Your executive authorisations are revoked. I’m in sole possession of the codes.’

The shuttle has arrived, Esperance says.

‘I’m back, son,’ Robert Mackenzie says and now Duncan sees emotion where before there had only been rage and impotence. The body still pops and hisses, the stench is still sickly but that light that is Robert Mackenzie’s life burns bright and hot. There is tension in his jaw, resolve in the set of his mouth. Duncan Mackenzie is defeated. He is sick with shame. The humiliation is absolute but not yet complete. The final humiliation comes when he turns the heel, walks away through the moist, rattling ferns to the shuttle lock.

‘Do I have to call Hadley?’ Jade Sun asks.

Duncan Mackenzie swallows bile-sick anger. He will never stop hearing the sound of his defeated heels on the deck.

‘You’ve done this!’ he shouts from the lock at Jade Sun. ‘You and all your fucking family. I will punish you for this. We’re the Mackenzies, not your fucking monkeys.’

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.