Luna: New Moon

The Serpent Sea floats in Lucas Corta’s augmented vision. Socrates and Yemanja display identical maps to Rafa and Adriana Corta.

‘A prospecting site at Mare Anguis.’ Toquinho zooms in, rings the named areas. ‘Twenty thousand square kilometres of mare-regolith.’

Lucas lifts a finger and taps the illusory map. Data from selenological surveys overlay the grey and dust. Rafa flicks over the information but Lucas sees his mother’s eyes narrow with concentration.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of running a cost-benefit analysis. Corta Hélio starts turning a profit in the third quarter after the claim is licensed. We can reposition extraction plant from Condorcet. Condorcet is eighty per cent mined out; we have materiel mothballed. Within two years we will be extracting half a billion dollars of helium-3 annually. We estimate the life of Mare Anguis at ten years.’

‘This is thorough,’ Rafa says. Sourness on his tongue and lips. Through his little fly Lucas knows of the private, furniture-smashing tantrums. The constant bodyguard, even among the waters of Boa Vista. The hesitation in Luna before her father scoops her up and throws her up into the air. Golden, affable Rafa is turning dark, ugly with sudden anger at parties and receptions. Berating his useless handball manager, his useless coaching team, his useless players. Lucas appreciates irony: the man who had no good word for his wife in life rages at her death. The news channels reported Rachel Mackenzie’s death as a catastrophic depressurisation event. A delicate lie. The press won’t press. Journalists who vex the Five Dragons suffer their own catastrophic depressurisation events. Report the smiles and the frocks, the affairs and the beautiful children, the marriages and the adulteries. Don’t tug the Dragon’s tail.

‘How soon?’ Adriana asks.

‘Twelve ZMT on Muku.’

‘Not long,’ Rafa says.

‘Long enough,’ Lucas says.

‘This is sound information?’ Adriana asks. Lucas sees her eyes darting over her own virtual lunar terrain. She has the highest surface hours of any living Corta, even Carlinhos. She may not have locked a helmet for ten years but once a duster, always a duster. She will be analysing the terrain, the dust cover, the logistics, the electrical effect of the moon’s transit of Earth’s magnetotail, the likelihood of a solar storm.

‘It comes from Ariel. A tip-off from someone in the Pavilion of the White Hare.’

‘Hell of a tip-off,’ Rafa says. Lucas hears an energy in his voice, an interest in his eyes. His muscles tighten, he draws himself up from his uncharacteristic stoop. The old gold light glows under his skin. It’s game night. The teams are in the tunnel and the crowd is in full cry. But he is still suspicious. ‘We have to act now.’

‘Delicacy,’ Adriana says. She presses the tips of her fingers together, vaults of a bone cathedral. Lucas knows this gesture well. She is calculating. ‘Too fast, we expose Ariel and I spend the rest of my years fighting my way through the Court of Clavius for alleged claim-jumping. Too slow …’

The law on extraction rights is primitive: the steel law of placer stakes and gold rushes that shaped the North American West. Whoever stakes out the four corners of the newly released territory has forty-eight hours to lodge a legal claim and the licence fee with the LDC. It’s a straight race. Lucas has seen Rafa screaming, incoherent, transcendent at Moço games. This is the same thrill. This is what he loves: movement. Energy. Action.

‘What assets have we?’

Lucas commands Toquinho to highlight extraction units around the target quadrangle. Orange icons lie at varying distance from north-west, north-east and south-east corners. The south-west vertex is dark.

‘I have the north-east Crisium units in motion. It will be hard to disguise it as a routine redeployment or a scheduled maintenance.’

Lucas is jonmu: movement orders are not his to issue. Anger flickers; Rafa contains it. He passed the test.

‘My concern are the vertices.’ Toquinho zooms in the scale.

‘We have nothing we can get there in less than thirty hours,’ Rafa says, reading the deployment tags.

‘Nothing on the surface,’ Lucas hints. Rafa picks the ball up.

‘I’ll go talk to Nik Vorontsov,’ Rafa says. He dips his head to his mother and is in motion: decisions to be made, actions to be taken.

‘A simple call will save hours,’ Lucas says.

‘This is why I’m hwaejang, brother. Business is all about relationships.’

Lucas dips his head. Now is the time for a small acquiescence. Let his mother see that her boys are united.

‘Bring this home, Rafa,’ Adriana says. Her face is bright, her eyes clear. Years have rolled from her. Lucas sees the Adriana Corta of his childhood, the empire builder, the dynasty-maker; the figure in the doorway of the berçário. Madrinha Amalia’s whisper: Say goodnight to your mother, Lucas. The smell of her perfume as she leaned over the bed. She wears it still. People are loyal to perfume in a way they are not to any other personal adornment.