Luna: New Moon

‘Oh I’m sure of that.’ Wagner reaches out, pulls a knot of protein circuit out of the exploded fly and dismisses everything else. ‘See?’ He twists his hand, enlarges it until it fills the small room; a brain of folded proteins.

‘You know I’ve got no eye for this kind of thing.’ Analiese works in custom meta logics and plays sitar in a classical Persian ensemble.

‘Heitor Pereira wouldn’t have known what to look for. Not even the R&D guys. It took me a while to find it but the moment I saw it, I thought, that has to be it, and I blew it up and it was, I mean, it’s written all over the molecules, it’s like she scrawled her tag all over it but you have to know what you’re looking for, you have to know how to see.’

‘Wagner.’

‘Am I talking really fast?’

‘Yes you are. I think it’s starting.’

‘It can’t. It’s too early.’

‘It’s been getting earlier and earlier.’

‘It can’t!’ Wagner snaps. ‘It’s a clock. Sun rises, sun sets. You can’t change that. That’s astronomy.’

‘Wagner …’

‘Sorry. Sorry.’ He kisses the hollow of her belly and he feels the muscles tighten beneath the honey skin, a thing he loves so hard, because it’s not tech or code or math; it’s physical and chemical. But he can feel the change, like the sun beneath the horizon. He had thought it was the fascination, the dedication that drove his mood, but he realises it’s the change driving his fascination. When the Earth is full, he can work for days on end, burning. ‘I have to go to Meridian.’

He feels Analiese pull away from him.

‘You know I hate it when you go there.’

‘It’s where the woman who made this processor is.’

‘You never had to make excuses before.’

He kisses her strong belly again and she slips a hand behind his head, lacing her fingers through his hair. Analiese smells of vanilla and fabric-conditioned sheets. Wagner breathes deep and pulls away.

‘I got some more work to do.’

‘Go to bed, Analiese,’ Analiese says.

‘I’ll be up later.’

‘You won’t. Promise me, you will be here in the morning.’

‘I will.’

‘You didn’t promise.’

When Analiese has gone Wagner opens his arms and pulls his hands together in a slow clap, summoning the exploded elements of assassin-fly. He set them in slow orbit around him, looking for other clues to its builders but his concentration is broken. On the edge of his hearing, on the edge of every sense, he can hear his pack calling across the Sea of Tranquillity.

For the Pavilion of the White Hare, Ariel Corta wears a reprint 1955 Dior in chocolate with a Chantilly cap-sleeve blouse, deep plunging, ruched. A pillbox hat with a brown silk rose, gloves to mid forearm, complementing bag and shoes. Co-ordinating, not odiously matchy-matchy. Professional but not starchy.

A receptionist takes Ariel up to the conference suite. The hotel is tasteful, the service discreet, but it is far from the most expensive or opulent Meridian offers. In the elevator Ariel switches off Beijaflor as instructed. There is a level of political and social life where constant connectivity is a liability. Nagai Rieko greets Ariel in the lobby where the counsellors socialise in the lobby drinking tea, taking sweet-bean baozi from trays. Fourteen, including the outgoing members. So many exquisite dresses, so many bare shoulders. Ariel feels as if she has been admitted to a secret louche sex party: improper, a little scandalous.

Rieko makes the introductions. Jaiyue Sun, head of development at Taiyang; Stephany Mayor Robles the educationalist from Queen of the South. Professor Monique Dujardin from the Faculty of Astrophysics at the University of Farside. Daw Suu Hla, her family allies of the Asamoahs by blood and business, Ataa Afua Asamoah of the Kotoko trying to keep an over-lively pet meerkat under control. Fashionable chef Marin Olmstead: Ariel blinks at his presence: Everyone does that, he says. He’s been in the White Hare for four years. Pyotr Vorontsov from VTO. Marlena Lesnik from Sanafil Health, the major medical insurers. Sheikh Mohammed el-Tayyeb, Grand Mufti of the Queen of the South Central Mosque, scholar and legalist, famous for his fatwa excusing the necessity of the Haj on the lunar acclimated. Outgoing Niles Hanrahan, and V. P. Singh the poet, his replacement. Six women, five men, one neutro: all successful, professional, moneyed.

‘Vidhya Rao.’ A small, elderly neutro shakes Ariel’s hand vigorously. ‘A pleasure, Senhora Corta. Your family’s presence in the White Hare is long overdue.’

‘Pleasure is mine,’ Ariel says but she is already scanning the room, smart as the meerkat, seeking social advantage.

‘Long overdue,’ Vidhya Rao says again. ‘I was a doctor of mathematics at Farside but for the past ten years I’ve been on the board at Whitacre Goddard.’

Ariel’s attention snaps back to the neutro.

‘The Rao forward.’

Vidhya Rao claps er hands in pleasure.

‘Thank you. I’m honoured.’

‘I’m aware of the Rao forward, but I don’t really understand it. My brother speculates regularly in them.’