Luna: New Moon

That night he runs with his pack up into the roof of the city. Up there, as close as architecture allows to the light of the Earth, old service tunnels have been scraped out into chambers and vesicles. It’s a bar, a club, a lair. It’s like partying in a lung. The air is stagnant and stale. The bar smells of bodies and perfumes and cheap vodka with the polycarbonate tang of the manufactories. The light is blue, Earthshine blue, the music real not piped privately through familiars and so loud it’s physical.

The Magdalena pack from Queen of the South has come to Meridian. They’re the oldest of the moon packs; from the dream-time they have been led by Sasha Volchonok Ermin. Né claims to be the oldest wolf on the moon; first to lift up ner eyes and howl at the Earth. First to claim the pronoun. Né’s a First gen, a head shorter than any of ner pack, but ner charisma lights the bar like Diwali. Wagner finds ner intimidating; né has no regard for him, thinks him a soft aristocrat, no true wolf. Ner pack are rough and aggressive and believe themselves true heirs of the two natures. But they give good party. Already fighters are lining up in the pit, stripped to skins and hankering to wrestle. Wagner is a talker not a fighter and he finds a cavity in the warren of tunnels equally distant from the cheering and the DJ where he holds three conversations simultaneously with a roboticist with Taiyang Moongrid, a broker in physics-limited derivatives and an interior designer specialising in custom woods.

A Magdalena girl arrives on the edge of the conversations. When the Earth is round the wolves of the moon scorn mundane fashion: she is dressed in a lime-green suit-liner, be-scribbled by marker pens in the frenetic, spiralling, winding doodles of the Earth-lit visual imagination.

‘You’re small you’re sweet you smell good,’ she whispers and Wagner picks out every word from the weave of small talk.

‘That’s a look,’ he says.

‘It was a thing, then not a thing, so now a thing again,’ she says. ‘I’m Irina.’ Her familiar is a horned skull with flames flickering from its eyes and nostrils. Another look that was a thing, then not a thing, then a thing again. Wagner has always wondered where the short-lived fad for graffitied suit-liners came from.

‘I’m …’

‘I know who you are, Little Wolf.’

She closes her teeth on his earlobe and whispers, ‘I like to bite.’

‘I like to be bitten,’ Wagner says but before she can haul him away he puts a hand on her breastbone. He can feel every heartbeat, every breath, every surge of blood through her arteries. She smells of honey and patchouli. ‘I have to go to my mamãe’s birthday party tomorrow.’

‘Then respect your Mom and don’t show her too much skin.’

The two suits step in on either side of Lucasinho. He doesn’t know who they are but he knows whose they are.

Lucas Corta sits on the couch where Lucasinho slept. Neat, precise, hands lightly resting on his thighs. Flavia crouches in a corner, among the saints. Her eyes are wide with fear. Her chest heaves, she visibly fights for every breath. Her hands flutter at her chest. Lucasinho has never seen this before but every moon-born know what it is. Her breath has been shorted. She is drowning in clear air.

‘Give her her breath back!’ Lucasinho yells. He crouches beside Madrinha Flavia, his arm around her.

‘Of course,’ Lucas Corta says. ‘Toquinho.’ Flavia takes a deep, rattling, whooping breath, breaks into coughing and choking. Lucasinho pulls her close. Her eyes are scared.

‘Wagner pays for—’

‘I made the LDC a better offer,’ Lucas says. ‘It seems a sensible precaution. If you don’t breathe, you don’t talk.’

‘Fuck you,’ Lucasinho says.

‘You’ve been off the network so you may not know that we’ve scored a famous victory. Corta Hélio. Your family. We’ve staked out new helium-3 exploitation territories in Mare Anguis. The Court of Clavius has recognised our claim. I’ve secured the future for you, son. What do you say to that?’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

Madrinha Flavia’s breathing is even now but still she cowers as if each breath might be her last.

‘Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Switch on Jinji. Go on. You might as well.

Boot is successful, Jinji says. Full access to your accounts has been restored.

‘Feels good to have money and carbon and network, doesn’t it?’ Lucas says. ‘Toquinho.’ The pattern of notes above Lucas’s shoulder spin. There is a spray of virtual notes.

I’ve received a contract transfer, Jinji says. It’s the Four Elementals account for Flavia Vila Nova. Do you accept?

‘Your madrinha looked after you,’ Lucas says. ‘It’s only proper that you should look after her.’

Do you accept? Jinji urges.

‘Flavia,’ Lucasinho says, ‘It’s your account. Pai wants me to take it over. I have to do that.’ Then, to his father, ‘I accept. It’s still your money.’