Luna: New Moon

They mumble the name of a restaurant, a song bar.

‘Here’s three thousand bitsies. Have the best night of your lives.’

Socrates transfers the money. They bow themselves out of the bar. The bartender rearranges the bottles while Rafa withdraws to speak with his head of security and then, in less reasoned tones, with his brother. Sohni rests her chin on the bar to stare at the fly.

‘It’s a machine,’ she says.

‘Half machine,’ Rafa says. ‘One of those things almost killed me. I’m sorry I scared you. You shouldn’t have seen that. I’m not sure I can make it up to you.’ He summons a clean glass and pours ice-chilled gin. Splash of lemon. Tendrils of dissolving Curacao. ‘Not a tremor.’ He slides the Blue Moon across the bar to Sohni. ‘One wife has left me, my other wife is dead, my daughter is afraid of me and I hurt my son because I was angry at someone else. My brother spies on me because he thinks I’m a fool and my mother is halfway to believing him. I just lost a deal, my enemies have fucked me over, my security guards couldn’t find their own asses in the dark, someone tried to assassinate me with a fly and my men’s handball team is bottom of the league.’ He raises his own glass. ‘But I still invented the Blue Moon.’

‘I could be an assassin,’ Sohni says. ‘I could pull out a knife and open you from here to here.’ She runs a finger from chin to crotch.

Rafa arrests her hand.

‘No you couldn’t.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

Rafa tilts his head at his former guards.

‘I may have fired them but they still scanned everyone in the place.’

‘You infringed my privacy.’

‘I can compensate you.’

‘Everything really is a contract with you people.’

‘You people?’

‘Moon people.’

Rafa still hasn’t let go of her hand. Sohni still hasn’t slipped it from his grasp.

‘I know I should feel privileged to be working here, but I can’t wait to get back home,’ she says. ‘I don’t like your world, Rafael Corta. I don’t like its meanness and tightness and ugliness and that everything has a price.’ She lifts a finger to her eye. ‘I can’t get used to these. I don’t think I could ever get used to these. You’re rats in a cage, one look, one wrong word away from eating each other.’

‘The moon is all I know,’ Rafa says. ‘I can’t go to Earth. It would kill me. Not quickly, but it would kill me. None of us can go there. This is home. I was born here and I will die here. In between, it’s people, all the way up, all the way down. At their best and at their worst. In the end, all we have is each other. You see contracts for everything; I see agreements. Ways we work out between us to live.’

‘Okay then. Compensate me.’ Sohni frees her hand to tap the gin bottle. Rafa seizes her hand, so firmly her lips part in small shock.

‘Don’t you ever pity me,’ he says and in the same instant releases her. A click of mechanisms releasing: an awning unfolds from above the bar and extends over bar and drinkers.

‘It’s going to rain,’ Rafa says, looking up. ‘Have you seen it rain on the moon?’

‘You haven’t been to Farside Array, have you?’

‘I’m a businessman, not a scientist.’ Slug of gin, plash of peel, the trick with the spoon and the slow Curacao.

‘It’s tunnels and corridors and cubbyholes. I feel like I’ve been stooping for six months. I’m amazed I can straighten my spine.’ She turns on her barstool to look out at the stupendous vistas of Aquarius Quadra. ‘This is the furthest I’ve looked in six lunes.’

Sudden drumbeat on the canopy. Beyond its shelter, rain drops like glass ornaments, detonating softly on the terrace.

‘Oh!’ Sohni raises hands to face in delight.

‘Come on.’ Rafa extends a hand. Sohni takes it. He leads her out into the rain. Fat drops splash Blue Moon from their glasses, detonate around their feet. Sohni turns her face up to the rain. Within seconds they are soaked through, expensive clothes clinging, wringing. Rafa brings Sohni to the rail.

‘Watch,’ he orders. The vault of Aquarius hub is a mosaic of slow-falling, quivering drops, each a twinkling jewel in the night lights of Aquarius. ‘See.’ The skyline comes on, momentarily blinding. Sohni shields her eyes. When she can see again a rainbow spans the vast space of the quadra’s hub. ‘Look!’ Down on Tereshkova Prospekt traffic has come to a standstill. Passengers, pedestrians stand motionless, arms outspread. From stores and clubs, bars and restaurants, others stream to join them. On the terraces and balconies children run out to cavort and yell in the rain. The rain hammers Aquarius Quadra, drumming, booming from every roof and awning, gantry and walkway.

‘I can’t hear myself think!’ Sohni shouts and then the skyline fades to dark. The rain ends. The last drops fall and burst on her skin. The world drips and glistens. Sohni looks around her, dazed with wonder.

‘It smells different,’ she says.

‘It smells clean,’ Rafa says. ‘This is the first time you’ve breathed air without dust in it. The rain scrubs out the dust. That’s why we do it.’

‘How can you afford to waste the water?’

‘It’s not wasted. Every drop is collected.’