Luna: New Moon

Then the wonder. I remember it so clearly: a flash of gold in the corner of my vision. Something marvellous. A woman flying. A flying woman. Her arms were outspread, she hung in the sky like a crucifix. Our Lady of Flight. Then I saw wings shimmer and run with rainbow colours; wings transparent and strong as a dragonfly’s. The woman hung a moment, then folded her gossamer wings around her, and fell. She tumbled, now diving heard-first, flicked her wrists, flexed her shoulders. A glimmer of wing slowed her; then she spread her full wing span and pulled up out of her dive into a soaring spiral, high above Chandra Quadra.

‘Oh,’ I said. I had been holding my breath. I was shaking with wonder. If you could fly why would you ever do anything else? It’s commonplace now; anyone can do it. But back then, there, I saw what we could do in this place.

I went to the Mackenzie Metals medical centre and the medic put me in the scanner. He passed magnetic fields through my body and the machine gave me my bone density analysis. I was eight days behind Achi. Five weeks, and then my residency on the moon would become citizenship.

Or I could fly back to Earth, to Brazil.

That night the golden woman swooped through my dreams. Achi slept beside me. I had booked a hostel room. The bed was wide, the air was as fresh as Queen of the South could make and the taste of the water did not set your teeth on edge.

Oh, that golden woman, flying loops through my certainties.

Queen of the South hadn’t gone to a three-shift society, so it never went completely dark. I pulled Achi’s sheet around me and went out on to the balcony. I leaned on the rail and looked out at the walls of lights. Lives and decisions behind every light. This was an ugly world. It put a price on everything. It demanded a negotiation from everyone. Out at the railhead I had seen a new thing among some of the surface workers: a medallion, or a little votive tucked into a patch pocket. A woman in Virgin Mary robes, one half of her face a black angel, the other half a naked skull. It was the first time I met Dona Luna. One half of her face dead, but the other was alive. The moon was not a dead satellite, she was a living world. Hands and hearts and hopes like mine shaped her. Here there was no Mother Nature, no Gaia to set against human will. Everything that lived, we made. Dona Luna was hard and unforgiving, but she was beautiful. She could be a woman, with dragonfly wings, flying.

I stayed on the hotel balcony until the roof reddened with sun-up. Then I went back to Achi. I wanted to make love with her again. My motives were all selfish. Things that are difficult with friends are easier with lovers.

It was Achi’s idea to make a game out of it. We must clench our fists behind our backs, like Scissors, Paper, Stone, and count to three. Then we open our fists and in them there will be something, some small object, that will say beyond any doubt what we have decided. We must not speak, because if we say even a word, we will influence each other. It was the only way she could bear it, if it was quick and clean and we didn’t speak a word. And a game.

We went back to the balcony table of the café to play the game. Two glasses of mint tea. I remember the air smelled of rock dust over the usual electricity and sewage. Every fifth sky panel was blinking. A less than perfect world.

‘I think we should do this kind of quickly,’ Achi said and her right hand was behind her back so fast I caught my breath. Now, the time was now. I slipped my small object out of my bag and clenched it in my hidden fist.

‘One two three,’ Achi said. We opened our fists.

She held a nazar: an Arabic charm: concentric teardrops of blue, white and black lunar glass, like an eye.

In my hand was a tiny icon of Dona Luna: black and white, living and dead.

The last things were simple and swift. All farewells should be sudden, I think. I booked Achi on the cycler out. There was always space on the return orbit. She booked me into the LDC medical centre. A flash of light and the chib was bonded permanently to my eye. No hand shake, no congratulations, no welcome. All I had done was decide to continue doing what I was doing.

The cycler would come round the Farside and rendezvous with the moonloop in three days. Three days: it focused our feelings, it kept us from crying too much.

I went with Achi on the train to Meridian. We had a whole side row of seats to ourselves and we curled up like small burrowing animals.