Luna: New Moon

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.