Luna: New Moon

I called him three times and at the end I stood alone on the fighting floor. And the the court erupted. The judges were shouting something but no one could hear over the uproar. I was lifted shoulder high and carried out of the Court of Clavius and I was laughing and laughing and laughing with my knife still gripped in my hand. I didn’t let go of it until I got to the hotel where Team Corta had set up headquarters.

Carlos didn’t know whether to laugh or rage. He cried.

You knew, he said.

All along, I said. Bob Mackenzie could never fight a woman.

Ten days later the Court of Clavius established a process to allow proxy fighters in the case of trial by combat. Mackenzie Metals tried to launch a new suit. No judge on the moon would touch it. Corta Hélio won. I won. I challenged Robert Mackenzie to a knife fight, and won.

And now no one remembers it. But I was legend.

Death and sex, isn’t that it? People make love after funerals. Sometimes during funerals. It’s the loud cry of life. Make more babies, make more life! Life is the only answer to death.

I defeated Bob Mackenzie in the court-arena. It wasn’t death – not that day – but it did focus my mind most wonderfully. Corta Hélio was secure. Time to build the dynasty now. I tell you this; there is no greater aphrodisiac than being carried out of the court-arena with your knife in your hand. Carlos couldn’t keep his hands off me. He was possessed. He was a big dick-machine. I know, it’s not seemly for an old woman to say such things. But he was: a fuck-bandit. He was deadly. And relentless. And it was the best time in my life, the only time I could lie back and say, I’m safe. So of course I said, Let’s make a baby.

We started interviewing madrinhas immediately.

I was forty years old. I had drunk a lot of vacuum, swallowed a lot of radiation, snorted a sea-full of dust. Gods know if things were still working in there, let alone if I was capable of carrying a normal healthy pregnancy to term. Too many uncertainties. I needed engineered solutions. Carlos had agreed with me: host mothers. Paid surrogates, who would be so much more than just rented wombs. We wanted them to be part of the family, to take on those elements of infant care that we simply didn’t have the time or, to be honest, the taste for. Babies are tedious. Kids only start to become human on their fifth birthday.

We must have interviewed thirty young, fit, healthy, fecund Brazilian women before we found Ivete. This is how I came into contact with your Sisterhood. The Brazilian community said, talk to Mãe Odunlade. She has family trees and genealogies and medical histories on every Brasileiro and Brasileira who comes to the moon, and a fair few Argentinians and Peruvians and Uruguayans and Ghanaians and Ivorians and Nigerians too. She will set you right. She did, and I rewarded her for her services, and, well, you know the rest of the story.

We drew up the contract and her legal systems looked over it and Mãe Odunlade advised her and we agreed. We had already started a number of embryos; we picked one and then asked Ivete how she wanted to do this. Did she just want to go to the med centre for implantation or did she want to have sex with me, or Carlos, or both of us? To make it personal, with affection, and connection.

We spent two nights in a hotel in Queen of the South and then we had the embryo implanted. It took right away. Mãe Odunlade had selected her madrinhas well. Ivete came to João de Deus with us and we gave her her own apartment and full-time medical support. Nine months later, Rafa was born. The gossip networks were full of pictures and excitement – picture rights were part of Ivete’s remuneration package – but the cheers were not warm. I could smell the disapproval. Surrogate mothers; rent-a-womb. They all had a weekend of wild sex together in a hotel in Queen. A threesome, you know.

Rafa was hardly off the teat before I was already planning the next in the succession. Carlos and I started looking for a new madrinha. At the same time I had my first visions of this place. João de Deus was no place to bring up a family. There are children there now, but back then it was a frontier town, it was a mining town, it was raw and rough and red-blooded. I remembered Achi’s parting gift to me. I found the bamboo document tube easily – ten years since she had left. So fast! Waterfalls and stone faces; a garden carved into the heart of the moon. It was as if she had seen the future, or the insides of my heart. I commissioned selenologists; found this place, hidden away in the rock like a geode for billions of years. A palace, a child, another one coming together in the Meridian Medical Facility. A business and a name. Finally I was the Iron Hand.

Then Carlos was killed.