Luna: New Moon

‘I’ve found something,’ Wagner says.

‘Tell me.’

‘I recognised one of the protein processors. You wouldn’t be able to see it but, to me, it’s like putting your name up in neon.’

‘You’re talking kind of fast, Little Wolf.’

‘Sorry. Sorry. I met up with the designer – we went to university together. Same colloquium. She gave me an inbox address. Dead of course. But I got the pack to work on it.’

‘Slowly slowly. You did what?’

‘Got the pack to work on it.’

The Meridian pack are agriculturalists, dusters, roboticists, nail artists, bartenders, sports performers, musicians, masseurs, lawyers, club owners, track-engineers, families great and small; a diversity of skills and learning; yet, when they come together, when they focus on one task, something marvellous happens. The pack seems to share knowledge, to instinctively complement each other, to form a perfect team; a unity of purpose: almost a gestalt. Wagner has seen it rarely, participated in it once only but never called on it until now. The pack convened, minds and talents and wills blurred and merged and within five hours he had the identity of the engineering shop that built the assassin-fly. There’s nothing supernatural about it; Wagner doesn’t believe in the supernatural; it’s a rational miracle. It’s a new way of being human.

‘It was a one-shot engineering house called Smallest Birds,’ Wagner says. ‘Based in Queen of the South. Registered to Joachim Lisberger and Jake Tenglong Sun.’

‘Jake Tenglong Sun.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. The company produced one item, delivered it and then dissolved.’

‘Do we know who they delivered it to?’

‘Trying to find that out. I’m more interested in who commissioned it.’

‘And do you have any leads on that?’

‘I may take this up with Jake Sun, personally,’ Wagner says.

‘Good work, Little Wolf,’ Rafa says. Another agonising slap on the back. Every bite mark shrieks. Rafa has steered Wagner to the edge of Adriana’s progress through the well-wishers.

‘Mamãe, happy birthday.’

Adriana Corta’s lips tighten. Then she leans towards him, an invitation to kiss. Two kisses.

‘You could have shaved,’ she says, to small laughter from her entourage, but as she wheels away into the party she whispers in his ear, ‘if you want to stay a while, your old apartment at Boa Vista is ready for you.’

Marina hates the dress. It catches and itches, it’s voluminous and uncomfortable. She feels naked in it; vulnerable, that one too-abrupt move and it will fall from her shoulders around her ankles. And the shoes are ridiculous. But it’s fashionable and it’s expected and while no one would whisper if she turned up in a pant-suit or men’s tailoring, Carlinhos makes it clear to Marina that Adriana would notice.

Marina is trapped in a dull conversation whorl dominated by a loud sociologist from Farside U and his theories about post-national identities in second and third generation lunarians.

All this and you can’t come up with a better name for moon-dwellers that Lunarians, Marina thinks. She runs phrases: Moonfolk, lunarites, loonie moonie moonish loonish. None good. Rescue me, she pleads to the orixa of parties.

She spies Carlinhos pushing through the press of bodies and festive familiars and cocktail glasses.

‘My mother wants to meet you.’

‘Me? What?’

‘She’s asked.’

He’s already leading her by the hand through the party.

‘Mãe, this is Marina Calzaghe.’

Marina’s first impression of Adriana Corta had been coloured by a knife blade at her throat, but she seems to have aged more than the intervening lunes – no, not aged: withered, collapsed, become more transparent.

‘Many happy returns, Senhora Corta.’

Marina’s proud of her Portuguese now, but Adriana Corta flows to Globo.

‘It seems once again my family is obliged to you.’

‘Like they say, I was just doing my job, ma’am.’

‘If I gave you another job, would you execute it as faithfully?’

‘I’d do my best.’

‘I do have another job. I need you to look after someone.’

‘Senhora Corta, I’ve never been been good with small children. I scare them …’

‘You won’t scare this child. Though she may scare you.’

Adriana’s nod directs Marina across the room, to Ariel Corta, a brilliant flame at the heart of a clutch of soberly dressed court officials and LDC technocrats. She laughs, she throws her head back, tosses her hair, weaves ideograms of smoke from her vaper.

‘I don’t understand, Senhora Corta.’

‘I need someone to mind my daughter. I fear for her.’

‘If you want a bodyguard, Senhora Corta, there are trained fighters …’

‘If I wanted a bodyguard she would have one already. I have dozens of bodyguards. I want an agent. I want you to be my eyes, my ears, my voice. I want you to be her friend and her chaperone. She’ll hate you, she’ll fight you, she’ll try to get rid of you, she’ll shun you and snub you and be vile to you. But you will stay with her. Can you do this?’