Luna: New Moon

‘I don’t know much about nikahs in the Five Dragons but I imagine it would be expensive to buy out of the contract.’

‘Very expensive,’ Lucas says. ‘Ridiculously expensive. The Suns are used to fighting in court. They’ve been fighting the CPC for fifty years. But I am ridiculously rich. And I have my sister Ariel.’ Lucas leans on the rail.

‘If you don’t love her …’

‘If you think love ever had anything to do with it, you really know nothing about the way we marry among the Dragons. No, it was pragmatic, political, dynastic. They all are. First the marriage, then the love. If you’re lucky. Rafa was and it’s killing him. This is a celebration, Jorge.’

‘I don’t understand, Senhor – Lucas.’

‘I have pulled off a singular victory. I had a brilliant idea, executed brilliantly. I have defeated my enemies and I have brought power and wealth to my family. I am the toast of Four Dragons. Tonight this is my city. And all I see is a man huddling in a cave in an empire of dust. I was born in this cave and I’ll die in this cave and all my borrowed water and air and carbon will be taken back and paid out. I’ll become part of a million lives. It’s a mean sort of resurrection. And we never had a choice. My mother did. She traded the Earth for wealth. I didn’t have that choice. None of us do. We can’t go back – there is no back for us. This is all we have: dust, sunlight; people. The moon is people. That’s what they say. Your worst enemy and your best hope. Rafa likes people. Rafa hopes for heaven. I know we live in hell. Rats in a tunnel, banished from beauty.’

‘Should I sing for you, Lucas?’

‘Maybe you should. Everything is clear, Jorge. I know exactly what I have to do. That’s why I will be rid of Amanda. That’s why I can’t rejoice. That’s why I can’t hear you tonight. Jorge.’ Lucas brushes a finger along the back of Jorge’s hand. ‘Stay.’

‘Wake up.’

Hands grasp her under the shoulders and lift her. She was within a nod of sliding asleep into the water. Carlinhos crouches by the side of the water tank. He taps Marina’s cocktail glass, sticky with the sapphire residue of a Blue Moon. ‘Not a good mix. Drowning on the moon: it’s not good on the autopsy report.’

‘I felt owed a celebration.’

Marina had been on her last sips of oxygen when the relief rover dashed up over the horizon; shuddering with cold; anoxia blue as Carlinhos hooked her into the life support. The rover spun its wheel-housings and laid in a course at full speed for Beikou, a Taiyang server-farm on the rim of Macrobius. By the time Carlinhos bundled Marina through the outlock and the airblade had blasted her clean of dust she was slipping in and out of hypothermic unconsciousness. Fingers unsealing her sasuit. Hands peeling it from her. Intimate fingers unhooking her function tubes, the tug of caked lubricant and crusted body fluids. Hands lowering her into water, warm warm water what? Water surrounding penetrating caressing her. Water calling her back to life.

What is this?

‘Just a tank.’ Carlinhos’s voice. Those hands: his hands? ‘You nearly died out there.’

‘They wouldn’t have landed a ship on me.’ She could barely force the words through chattering teeth. She was coming back to life and it was agony.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Needed doing.’

‘I love the way you say that.’ Carlinhos said. ‘So norte. So righteous. Needs doing.’ He trailed a finger across the surface of the pool. ‘We’ll cover the water charge.’

Beikou is as close and introverted as a convent: Suns, Asamoahs and minor clans twine together in chains of linked polyamorys. The narrow, stooping tunnels ring with the voices of children in five languages; the triple-breathed air smells of bodies and sweat, the peculiar dust of computer systems, sour urine. For Marina to inhale it, to wallow in this egg of water, clenched inside the moon, Corta Hélio struck contracts with Taiyang and AKA. Marina leans back, lets her hair swirl out in the warm water. She can reach up and touch the sintered glass roof. Ao Kuang, Dragon-king of the East Sea, painted manhua-style, glares down from the close ceiling. Water laps against her breasts. Something has disturbed the pool.

‘What are you doing?’

She had blinked out again, blinks open to see Carlinhos shrug out of his sasuit.

‘I’m coming in.’

He lowers himself into the water. You look tired, she thinks. You’re magnificent but bone tired. You move like an old crab. Hetty’s activity log reported twenty-eight hours on the surface. The sasuits were rated for twenty-four. We should all be dead. She flicks water in Carlinhos’s face. He’s so tired he hardly flinches.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Did we get it?’

‘The Court of Clavius recognised our claim and issued a licence. We’ve already put out construction tenders.’

She lifts a little, painful fist; gives a little painful yay.

‘You know, maybe we are owed a celebration,’ Carlinhos says. ‘They make a really good potato vodka here.’