Luna: New Moon

In her killing dress Ariel Corta steps out of the station into Boa Vista’s great garden. The layers of her 1958 Balenciaga float in lunar gravity like petals. A murmur passes through the throng of guests. Ariel Corta. Everyone has heard of Alayoum vs Filmus. Luna bounds up to her tia. Ariel snatches her niece up in mid-bound, swirls her around while Luna shrieks in delight. Now her madrinha, Mônica, arrives. Warm embraces, kisses. Amanda Sun, Lucas’s wife. Lousika Asamoah, Luna’s mother. Rafa himself, snatching his sister up into the air so that she begs him to mind the dress. His other oko, Rachel Mackenzie, is in Queen of the South with their son Robson. She never sets foot in Boa Vista. Ariel is glad Rachel is not here. There is legal between them, and Mackenzies hold grudges. Next: moon-run boy himself. He’s awkward, gawky with his tia in a way he never is with his friends. Her finger rests a moment on his Dona Luna emblem, drawing his eye to the matching token on her corsage: imagine me naked, frosted, running across the bare moon.

Next the family retainers: Helen de Braga, head of finance – she has aged since Ariel last came to Boa Vista – and old, upright Heitor Pereira, head of security. Last of all, Lucas arrives. He kisses his sister warmly. She is the only sibling Lucas considers his equal. A whisper: he wants private words. Ariel’s gloved hand effortlessly snares a Blue Moon from a passing tray.

‘And how is Meridian this season?’ Lucas says. ‘I just can’t get the time to make it up there.’

Ariel knows that her brother thinks her disloyal for choosing the law over Corta Hélio.

‘Apparently I’m famous. Briefly.’

‘I heard something like that. Gossip and rumours.’

‘More rumours than oxygen, more gossip than water.’

‘I’ve also heard that a delegation from the China Power Investment Corporation is coming in on the Saints Peter and Paul. The rumour is a five-year output deal with Mackenzie Metals.’

‘I’ve heard similar myself.’

‘I also heard that the Eagle of the Moon is throwing a welcome jamboree for them.’

‘He is. And, yes, I am invited.’ Ariel knows her brother’s information network is powerful enough to have found about her counsel chamber chat with Judge Nagai.

‘You always had a skill for social politics. I envy that.’

‘Whatever it is Lucas, no.’

Lucas throws up his hands in mea culpa.

‘I merely repeated a few rumours.’

Ariel laughs like silver but Lucas is tenacious, Lucas is steel, Lucas has her trapped. Then, in a gust of peppery moon dust, a saviour arrives.

Maybe more meat. Maybe juice to drink. Lucas has cornered Tia Ariel. Uncle Lucas is boring when he talks with his face so close to another person. Then her eyes, her mouth go wide. She gives a squeak of excitement.

A figure in a sasuit strides down the ravine. His helmet is under his right arm, his left hand carries his LS pack. His feet are booted and the skin-hugging sasuit is a bright patchwork of logos and hi-visibility strips, navigation lights and race badges. His familiar rezzes, pixel by pixel, as he enters Boa Vista’s network. He sheds dust; a slow-settling trail of silvery black.

‘Carlinhos!’

Carlinhos Corta sees his niece rush to hug him and steps back but she bangs into him, grabs his legs, sends up a huge cloud of dust that settles on her beautiful peony dress like soot.

Two steps behind Luna comes Rafa. He trades play-punches, knuckle-touches with his kid brother.

‘You came cross-surface?’

Carlinhos holds out his helmet in evidence. In his patchwork sasuit and bearing the spicy, gunpowder smell of moon dust, he’s a pirate at a cocktail party. He dumps his LS pack and snatches a Blue Moon, downs it in one.

‘Tell you something, after two hours on a bike, drinking your own piss …’

Rafa shakes his head in appreciation of lunacy.

‘It’s going to kill you, that dumb biking. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day the sun’s going to flare and you’ll be out on the surface on a dust-bike five hours from anywhere. And it will fry. Your. Carioca. Ass.’ Each emphasis driven home with a prod to the shoulder.

‘And when was the last time you were up on the surface?’ Carlinhos play-punches his brother in the stomach. ‘What’s that I feel? Belly. You’re out of condition, irmão. You need to get surface-fit. You’ve been to too many meetings. We’re helium miners, not accountants.’

Oldest and youngest Corta boys adore sport. Carlinhos’s passion is dust-biking. He’s a pioneer of the extreme sport. He developed the bikes, the customised suits. He’s cut trails all over the Imbrium Apennines and established the cross-Serenitatis endurance race. Rafa’s sport is safer and more enclosed. He owns an LHL handball team. They’re standing high in the Premier League. Rafa shares the mania with his brother-in-law Jaden Wen Sun, owner of the Tigers of the Sun. They compete with humour and ferocity.

‘You staying around after the party?’ Rafa asks,