Читаем Luna: New Moon полностью

‘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.’

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