Luna: New Moon

I took it all back to my hotel. I ground to the specified grain. I boiled the water. I let it cool to the correct temperature. I poured it from a height, for maximum aeration. I stirred it. I made it like I made this coffee, for you, Sister. You never forget these things.

While it drew I opened Achi’s gift. I unrolled drawings, concept art for a habitat the realities of the moon would never let her build. A lava tube, enlarged and sculpted with faces. The faces of the orixas, each a hundred metres high, round and smooth and serene, overlooked terraces of gardens and pools. Waters cascaded from their eyes and open lips. Pavilions and belvederes were scattered across the floor of the vast cavern; vertical gardens ran from floor to artificial sky, like the hair of the gods. Balconies – she loved balconies – galleries and arcades, windows. Pools. You could swim from one end of this Orixa-world to the other. She had inscribed it: a habitation for a dynasty.

This is Achi’s gift, all around you.

When the importer had rubbed a pinch of ground coffee under my nose, memories of childhood, the sea, college, friends, family, celebrations flooded me. They say smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. When I smelled the coffee I had prepared, I experienced something new. Not memories, but a vision. I saw the sea, and I saw Achi, Achi-gone-back, on a board, in the sea. It was night and she was paddling the board out, through the waves and beyond the waves, sculling herself forward, along the silver track of the moon on the sea.

I plunged, poured and savoured the aroma of the coffee.

I drank my coffee.

It still doesn’t taste the way it smells.

SEVEN

‘Threw us around like fucking girls.’ Twenty monitors on Robert Mackenzie’s life-support chair peak into the orange. ‘One of them was a fucking girl.’

The news had flashed down Crucible’s spinal chord, familiar to familiar: Duncan Mackenzie is leaving Fern Gully. Unprecedented. Unthinkable. Unholy. Jade Sun oversaw the delicate loading of her husband’s life-support unit into transit capsule. Her words were soft and kind and encouraging and left the ancillary staff pale with fear. The capsule sped along beneath the incinerating glare of smelting mirrors to Car 27. Duncan Mackenzie’s private apartments.

‘She was a Jo Moonbeam,’ Duncan Mackenzie says.

‘You offer any kind of excuse for this?’ Jade Sun says, always one discreet step behind Bob Mackenzie’s right shoulder.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘It’s not the fight, it’s never a fucking duster fight,’ Bob Mackenzie says. His voice is a rattle of respirators, his lungs half moon from years of inhaling dust. ‘They bent us over and fucked it right up us. Have you see the social net? Asamoahs, Vorontsovs, even the Suns are laughing at us. Even the Eagle of the fucking Moon.’

‘We would never laugh at your misfortune, my love,’ Jade Sun says.

‘Well you’re a fool. I would if I were you. Fucking Brazilians on kids’ bikes.’

‘They got the jump on us,’ Duncan says. ‘It’s a set-back.’ You smell vile, Duncan realises. A sickly excremental tang, the sourness of urine, the thin disguise of sterilising swabs and anti-bacterial. His skin smells, his hair smells. Oils and caked sweats and exudations. His teeth smell; his vile hideous teeth. Duncan can’t bear to look at those yellow stumps. How much better one fast, sharp punch and knock them out so he would never have to look at them again. That would kill the old man. Punch clean through packboard-soft crumbling bone into the soft pulp of his brain.

‘A set-back?’ Bob Mackenzie says. ‘We’ve lost our entire north-west quadrant project. We’ll be five years getting our helium operation out from under this pile of shit. Adrian had the tip-off directly from the Eagle. Adrian is a greasy little weasel but he knows how to protect a source. Someone leaked it. One of ours. We’ve a traitor. More than anything, I fucking hate traitors.’

‘I’ve read Eoin Keefe’s report. Our encryption is secure.’

‘Eoin Keefe is a coward who’s never put his balls on the block for this family.’ One step behind Jade Sun’s right shoulder; a lithe, intimidating presence, is Hadley Mackenzie. Duncan detests his father’s presence in his private rooms, but he is patriarch, silverback, he has the right. Hadley he resents because his presence implies soft words and murmured decisions among the green fronds of Fern Gully, decisions to which Duncan is not party.

‘Hadley has replaced Eoin Keefe,’ Jade Sun says mildly.

‘This is not your call,’ Duncan says. ‘You do not replace my heads of department.’

‘I replace who the fuck I want when the fuck I want,’ Robert Mackenzie says and Duncan understands the vulnerability of his position.

‘This is a board decision,’ Duncan murmurs.

‘Board!’ Robert Mackenzie shouts with all the spit he can summon. ‘This family is at war.’

Does Duncan see a small smile flicker across Jade Sun’s face?

‘We’re a business. Businesses don’t fight wars.’