Luna: New Moon

Payment declined.

Lucasinho falls off his high. It’s a long fall, and the hit at the bottom is hard.

Your account has been frozen, Jinji says. A sick pit opens in Lucasinho’s stomach, full of wheels of rotating teeth. He looks around to see if anyone has noticed him jolt, gasp. The motos whir by, the crowds push along Gagarin Prospekt beneath the trees. No one one knows that in an instant he has gone from Dragon to beggar. No money, he has no money. He has never had no money. He doesn’t know what to do with no money.

Lucasinho’s fingers find the plug Abena Asamoah put through his ear. When you need the help of House Asamoah; when you have no other hope, when you’re alone and naked and exposed, like Kojo … He turns it, enjoying the small pain of its tug on the scab. No. He is not that desperate yet. He’s Lucasinho Corta; he has charm, looks and hotness. These he can parlay.

The four digits in his chib are huge and brilliant. They are the whole world: air, water, carbon, data. They can’t cut off the Four Elementals. Paying for air and data is a thing people who have to work do. Cortas have these things arranged. He can breathe, he can drink, he is connected, he has his carbon allowance. From that plan your next move. He can’t go to the apartment. His father’s escoltas are probably there already. He has friends, he has amors, he has places he can go. He needs clothes, somewhere to stay.

He needs to go dark. Yes. This. His father can trace him through the network. So Jinji must go. That does make Lucasinho’s belly and balls tighten with fear. Off-network, disconnected. He hesitates to whisper the words that will shut Jinji down. This is social death. No, it’s survival. His father may already have identified his location from the failed payment. Contract security may already be on their way.

He needs to pay for a vape and a tea.

No he doesn’t need to pay for them. Like he did at Boa Vista and João de Deus, he can just walk away. What is the waiter going to do? Stab him? Raise a mob? He’s still a Corta. Lay skin on one Corta and all Cortas will cut you. There are no crimes on the moon, no theft, no murder. There are only contracts and negotiations.

Lucasinho eases out of the chair and strolls across Gagarin Prospekt. Even in his fluorescent pink suit-liner, he disappears into the push of people and vehicles and bots. A few steps more and he is under trees. Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back. As he walks he strips out commands and routines from Jinji, severs connections and clicks off utilities until he is left with an empty skin hovering over his left shoulder. People get suspicious if they can’t see a familiar in their augmented vision.

The walls of Orion Quadra rise on either side of him; tier upon tier, level upon level, lights and neons; Roman and Cyrillic and Chinese neons. Disconnecting Jinji has removed a layer of augmented advertising from the world but there are still physical screens and cute kawaii animations, looking down on him. Alone in Meridian without a bitsie to his thumbprint. Like poor people. Except he has friends up there, among the lights in the walls of the world. So, not like the poor people really. Fuck poor. He needs to get moving.

All the moon is in love with Ariel by the time she arrives at the reception for the Chinese trade delegation. The LDC has hired an open belvedere on the eightieth level of the rotunda, the central axis where the five Prospekts of Aquarius Quadra meet. Vistas stretch for kilometres. Vertical gardens drop curtains of climbing plants over the open arches. Beyond them, lights drift across the voids.

Ariel wears a Ceil Chapman cocktail dress. Every eye turns to her. Every human wants to orbit her. She can hear the whispers, see the heads nodding together. Attention is oxygen. She takes a draw on her long titanium vaper and advances into the party.

The guests from the Five Dragons: Yao Asamoah from the Golden Stool; a reluctant, shy Alexei Vorontsov; Verity Mackenzie cradling a beautiful pet angora ferret, a biological one. It draws admiring attention. Wei-Lun Sun, orbiting at aphelion from the Chinese.

The Chinese mission, all men, still ungainly and exaggerated in their movements. They make no effort to tune their bodies to the demands of lunar gravity. They don’t intend to be here that long. They bow and smile and shake Ariel’s hand and have no idea who she is except that she seems to be greatly celebrated. Ariel enjoys a small, sexual lower-belly prickle of excitement. She is the spy in the Ceil Chapman dress.

The LDC grandees. Company managers and finance directors. Lawyers and judges.