Luna: New Moon

Blades of light stab down through the roof slots, so bright they seem solid. The approach to the heart of the Crucible is guarded by a palisade of light; shards from the mirrors that focus the sun on the smelters. A thousand times Rachel has made the progress down the hall and every time she feels the weight and heat of thousands of tons of molten metal above her head. It is danger, it is wealth, and it is security. The molten metal is Crucible’s only shield from the punishing radiation. It’s a constant awareness for the people of Crucible: the molten metals above their heads, like a steel plate in a fractured skull. Balanced, precarious. One day a system may fail, the metal will fall, but not this day, in her days, in her life.

Robson runs ahead of her. He’s seen Hadley Mackenzie at the lock to the next compartment, his favourite uncle, though only eight years separate them. Hadley is the son of patriarch Robert from his winter marriage to Jade Sun. An uncle then, but more like an older brother. Only sons are born to Robert Mackenzie. It’s the Man in the Moon, the old monster still jokes. Through selective abortion, embryo mapping, chromosome engineering the joke has become a truth. Hadley scoops Robson up into the air. The boy flies high, laughing and Hadley Mackenzie’s strong arms catch him.

‘Result with the Brazilian then,’ Hadley says. He kisses his step-niece on each cheek.

‘I really think he’s the child,’ Rachel Mackenzie says.

‘I hate the thought of Robbo growing up there,’ Hadley says. He’s short, wire and steel, knots of wrought muscle and sinew. Blade of the Mackenzies; deeply freckled from sessions in sun-rooms. Spots upon spots; a leopard of a man. He picks and scratches constantly at his pelt. Too long under the sun-lamps, working on his vitamin D. ‘That’s no place for a kid to learn how to live right.’

Message from Robert Mackenzie, announces Cameny, Rachel’s familiar. Hadley and Robson’s expressions tell Rachel that they are receiving the same communication. ‘Rachel, my love. I’m glad you’ve brought Robson home safe. Delighted. Come and see me.’ The voice is soft, still accented with Western Australian, and unreal. Robert Mackenzie hasn’t sounded like that longer than any of the three people in the lobby have been alive. The image in the lenses isn’t Robert Mackenzie, but his familiar: Red Dog, the symbol of the town that birthed his ambition.

‘I’ll take you up to him,’ Hadley says.

A capsule takes Rachel, Robson and Hadley to the head of Crucible; ten kilometres upline. The maglev drive of the capsule seems to Rachel to amplify the gentle but ever-present tremor of movement. The slow rock of the Crucible on its tracks is the heartbeat of home. Rachel Mackenzie was a reading child, and on those screens, among those worlds built of words, she sailed oceans of water with dire pirates and swashbucklers. In her world of stone seas, this is the closest she can imagine to being on a sailing ship.

The capsule decelerates abruptly and docks. The lock opens. Rachel breathes green and rot, humidity and chlorophyll. This carriage is a great glass conservatory. Under constant sunlight and low lunar gravity, ferns grow to stupendous heights; a green vault of fronds against the curved ribs of the greenhouse. Dappled light, tiger-stripe light: the sun stands unmoving, a hair off the zenith. The ferns all lean towards it. Among the ferns, bird-calls and bright flickers of plumage. Something is whooping somewhere. This is a paradise garden but Robson takes his mother’s hand. Bob Mackenzie dwells here.

A path winds between pools and softly gurgling streams.

‘Rachel. Darling!’

Jade Sun-Mackenzie greets her step-granddaughter with two kisses. The same for Robson. She is tall, long-fingered, elegant and delicate as the fronds around her. She looks not a day older than the one on which she married Robert Mackenzie, nineteen years ago. None of Robert Mackenzie’s offspring are deceived by her appearance. She’s wire and thorn and tight, sinewy will. ‘He can’t wait to see you.’

Robson’s hand tightens on his mother’s.

‘He’s been in a foul mood since the Cortas stole that Chinese output deal,’ Jade throws over her shoulder. She sees Robson glance up at at his mother. ‘But you’ll sweeten it.’

Robert Mackenzie waits in a belvedere shaped from woven ferns. Budgerigars and parakeets keep up an insane gossip of chirps and whistles. Robot butterflies flap lazily on wide iridescent polymer wings.