Luna: New Moon

Duncan Mackenzie turns and stalks away, a walk of shame and humiliation through the shafts of light from the smelting mirrors, but there is time for last thrown-back word, à l’esprit de l’escalier. ‘I am CEO of this company. Not my father. Not you fucking people!’

‘My fucking people stand shoulder to shoulder with your fucking people,’ Jade Sun shouts. ‘Vorontsovs are barbarians, the Asamoahs are peasants and the Cortas are gangsters straight from the favela. Suns and Mackenzies built this world. Suns and Mackenzies own it.’

‘She’s never out of that dress.’ Helen de Braga and Adriana Corta stand by the rail of the eighth-level balcony, between the stone cheekbones of Ogun and Oxossi. The cheeks are dry, the waterfalls have been shut down. Gardeners, robotic and human, dredge leaves from the ponds and stream.

‘Every time it gets dirty, Elis just prints her a new one,’ Adriana Corta says. In her beloved red dress, Luna runs barefoot through the puddles at the bottom of the pools, splashing the garden bots, skipping from stepping stone to stepping stone in a complex game: this one must be landed on left-footed, that right-footed, the other two-footed or skipped over entirely. ‘You must have had a favourite dress when you were that age.’

‘Leggings,’ Helen de Braga says. ‘They had skulls and crossbones on them. I was eleven and a proper little pirate. My mother couldn’t get them off me so she bought me another pair. I refused to wear them because they weren’t the same, but the truth was, I didn’t know which were which.’

‘She has little hiding holes and dens all over Boa Vista,’ Adriana Corta says. Luna disappears into the stand of bamboo. ‘I know most of them – more than Rafa does. Not all of them. I don’t want to know all of them. A girl has to keep some secrets.’

‘When will you tell them?’

‘I thought about my birthday but it seems too morbid. I’ll know the time. I need to finish with Irmã Loa first. Make a full confession.’

Helen de Braga’s lips tighten. She is a good Catholic still. Mass in João de Deus weekly; saints and novenas. Adriana Corta knows that she disapproves of Umbanda, under the eyes of pagan gods every day. What must she think of Adriana making holy confession to a priestess, not a priest?

‘Look out for Rafa,’ Adriana says.

‘Enough with that kind of talk.’

‘I will become less able and competent. I feel it already. And Lucas has his eyes on the throne.’

‘He has always had his eyes on the throne.’

‘He’s having Rafa watched. He’s using the assassination attempt to destabilise Rafa. And after what happened to Rachel …’

Helen de Braga crosses herself.

‘Deus entre nós e do mal.’

‘Rafa wants an independent investigation.’

‘That will never happen.’ Helen de Braga and Adriana Corta are of a generation, the pioneers. Helen was moneyed, an accountant, a Tripeiro from Porto. Adriana was self-made, an engineer, a Carioca of Rio. Adriana reneged on her vow never to trust a non-Brazilian. More than nationality, more than language; they were both women. Helen de Braga has quietly directed Corta Hélio’s finances for over forty years. She is as much family as any of Adriana’s blood.

‘Robson is safe,’ Helen de Braga says. Adriana’s children have always been her second family. Her own children and grandchildren are scattered across the moon in a dozen Corta Hélio facilities.

‘That filthy nikah,’ Adriana says. ‘I’ve already had demands for compensation from Crucible.’

‘Ariel will shred that in court.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ Adriana says. ‘I fear for her. She is so terribly vulnerable. Is it silly to want her here, at home, with us and Heitor and fifty escoltas between her and the world? But you never stop worrying, do you? The Court of Clavius, even the Pavilion of the White Hare, they won’t protect her.’

‘How did we get to be two old women standing on a balcony worrying about vendettas?’ Helen de Braga says. Adriana Corta rests her hand on her friend’s.

At the heart of the bamboo grove is a hidden place, a whispering special place. Natural dieback has exposed the soil and inquisitive hands and feet have picked and trodden it into an enchanted circle. This is Luna’s secret room. The cameras can’t see it, the bots are too big to follow her path through the stems, her father knows nothing and she’s pretty sure that Grandmother Adriana, who knows everything, doesn’t know this one. Luna has staked her claim with scraps of ribbon tied to the the canes, print-ceramic Disney figures, buttons and bows from loved clothes, pieces of bot, cat’s cradles of wiring. She crouches in the magic circle. The bamboo stirs and whispers above her head. Felipe the head gardener once explained to her that Boa Vista is big enough to have its own small winds but Luna doesn’t want there to be a scientific reason.

‘Luna,’ she whispers and her familiar unfolds its wings. The wings open to fill her vision, then close to form her mother.

‘Luna.’

‘Mãe. Hi. When can I see you?’

Lousika Asamoah glances away from her daughter.