Luna: New Moon

There is no law on the moon, only consensus, and the consensus outlaws projectile weapons. Bullets are incompatible with pressurised environments and complex machinery. Knives, bludgeons, garrottes, subtle machines and slow poisons, the Asamoah’s fancy of small, biological assassins: these are the tools of violence. Wars are small and eyeball close. Rachel hates to see Robson in the Hall of Knives. She hates more his love for and skill in the techniques Hadley teaches him. She hates most that it’s necessary. The Five Dragons rest uneasy on their treasures. Hadley is the family’s duellist. Rumours pass up and down Crucible that Robert Mackenzie has ordained it to keep Jade Sun’s ambitions in check, and to preserve the inheritance line with pure Mackenzies. There is no one better to teach Robson the way of the knife, but Rachel wishes there were another, better bond between him and Hadley. Sport – like his father’s handball obsession – would be healthy and wholesome and command Robson’s energies.

Look at him, slight but sharp as the blade in his right hand. The fighting pants hang off his slender hips. His shallow chest heaves but his eyes take in everything in the long room. A cry. Robson kicks forward to break a kneecap, follows with a slashing cut, high left to low right. Aiming at the eyes, the throat. Hadley dodges the kick, steps inside the blade and twists the arm. Robson cries out. The knife falls. Hadley catches it before it reaches the floor. Another twist and a trip land Robson flat on his back. A knife in each hand, Hadley brings the blades hammering down towards Robson’s throat.

‘No!’

The blades stop a millimetre from Robson’s brown skin. A drop of sweat falls from Hadley’s brow into Robson’s eyes. Hadley is grinning. He hadn’t even heard Rachel’s cry. She didn’t stay his hand. It’s just the two of them. Nothing else exists. The intimacy of violence.

‘What’s the rule, Robbo? If you take a knife …’

‘You must kill with it.’

‘This time – this time only – I’m letting you live. So what’s the lesson?’

‘Never lose the knife.’

‘Never let go. Use their weapons against them,’ says a voice from the door.

Rachel hadn’t heard Duncan enter. Her father is in his early sixties but has the energy and bearing of a man twenty years younger. His suit is simple grey, conservative, single-breasted, immaculately cut but unflashy. His familiar Esperance is a plain silver sphere, its only ornament, liquid ripples that flow across its surface. Nothing in Duncan Mackenzie’s practised minimalism and modesty advertises that he is CEO of Mackenzie Metals. Everything about Duncan Mackenzie declares it.

‘Is he good?’ Duncan Mackenzie asks.

‘He could cut you up,’ Hadley says.

Duncan Mackenzie gives a sour, twisted smile.

‘Bring him along, Rachel,’ he says. ‘There’s someone I want him to meet.’

‘He’ll be five minutes in the shower,’ Rachel says.

‘Bring him along, Rachel,’ Duncan Mackenzie repeats. Robson looks to his mother. She nods. Hadley raises his knife: a fighter’s salute.

Rachel Mackenzie has always been repelled by her Uncle Bryce. Robert is a horror, but Bryce Mackenzie, Director of Finance, is a monster. He is huge. Tall even for a second-gen, lunar gravity has allowed him to pile weight upon weight. He is a gross man-mountain balanced on strangely tiny feet. Not fat, vast. He moves with the lightness and delicacy that big men often possess.

Bryce Mackenzie looks Robson up and down, like a sculpture, like an account. ‘Such a pretty boy.’

A young adoptee brings mint tea. The formality is that Bryce Mackenzie finds his boys at puberty and adopts them, afterwards finding them employment in the company. Many have married in or out, some have become fathers. Bryce is close to his former lovers, and supports them generously. There is never any scandal. Bryce is too dutiful for that. The teaboy is one of three amors currently serving Bryce. Fingers meet over the tea-glass. A look, a smile. Rachel imagines him on top of Bryce, man-mountain Bryce. Riding, riding. Ass pounding.

‘Robson, meet your new husband,’ Duncan says. Rachel’s eyes open. ‘This is Hoang Lam Hung.’ A grown man, well built: twenty-nine, thirty years old.

‘One of your boys,’ Rachel says. Bryce’s soft, full lips purse in offence.

‘Rachel,’ Duncan says. Hung shrugs away the insult, but there is a crack of hurt in the crease of his mouth.

‘This is the nikah.’ Bryce slides the print contract across the desk at the same instant it arrives on Cameny. A legal sub-AI kicks in and summarises the contract to bullet points.

‘You’re joking,’ Rachel Mackenzie says.

‘It’s standard form. No alarms, no surprises,’ Bryce says.

‘Have you asked Robson about his preferences?’ Rachel professes.

‘Dad wants this,’ Duncan Mackenzie says.

‘What do you say?’ Rachel asks her father. She wishes she hadn’t formed that image of the teaboy riding Bryce’s naked bulk. It leads her to imaginings so hideous she covers her mouth with her hands.

‘Like Bryce says, it’s standard.’

‘I need a day or two.’