Luna: New Moon

‘If I can find an advantage for my own people, I’ll take it,’ Adriana says.

‘The Iron Law,’ Duncan Mackenzie says. ‘Served us well. I must have a word with Adrian. He needs some new tricks for the Eagle.’

‘Why are you here, Duncan?’

Duncan Mackenzie has Lucas’s place at Adriana’s left hand; Lucas is banished to a low table from which he repeatedly glances with clear loathing. Adriana catches his glance: This is not your business.

‘Birthdays are a time for looking forwards.’

‘Not at my age.’

‘Humour me. Five years, where will we be?’

‘In this room, celebrating.’

‘Or up in the Bairro Alto, selling our piss and clawing for food and water and fighting for every breath. The moon is changing. It’s not the world it was when you and my dad fought. If we fight now, we will both lose.’ Duncan Mackenzie speaks on a private channel, Esperance to Yemanja, subvocalising his words. Adriana responds in the same small voice.

‘I have no desire to go back to the corporate wars.’

‘But we are heading that way. The Beikou fight was only the start. There’s been trouble at St Ekaterina and Port Imbrium. Someone will be killed. We caught one of your surface workers at Torricelli trying to sabotage a Mackenzie Metals rover.’

‘What have you done with them?’

‘We’re holding her. There’ll be a fee, but it’s better than what Hadley wanted, which was to put her out the lock.’

‘My grandson Robson is surprisingly good with a knife. Do you know where he learned that? From Hadley. He’s over there. See him showing a card trick to Jaden Wen Sun? He’s been doing that ever since he escaped from Crucible. If anyone’s touched him—’

‘I assure you no one has. But you have your son. My daughter is dead.’

‘We had nothing to do with that.’

The silent speech is becoming impassioned, betraying itself in clenched jaws, tense throats, moving lips. Ariel looks across from her seat at the round table. Adriana knows her daughter is a talented lipreader. It’s a useful courtroom skill.

‘Who profits if we fight?’

‘When Dragons fight, everyone burns,’ Adriana says. It’s a Sun proverb, of recent, lunar provenance.

‘I’ll rein my people in if you do the same for yours.’

‘Agreed.’

‘That includes your family.’

Adriana’s mouth twitches with anger at the presumption. Rafa takes his hot temper from his mother, but she has a control, shaped over decades of corporate wars and board-room battles, investor pitches and legal tussles that he has never needed to learn. Anger is one of his many privileges.

‘Rafa is bu-hwaejang.’

‘I’m not saying demote him. I would never presume that. I’m suggesting maybe he could share responsibilities.’

‘With whom?’

‘Lucas.’

‘You know my family too well,’ Adriana says.

‘We didn’t try to assassinate Rafa,’ Duncan says aloud.

‘We didn’t kill Rachel,’ Adriana says. Heads are turning now. ‘Excuse me, Duncan. I’ll pass the word. I’m expected to make a speech now.’ She taps her cocktail glass with her chopstick, a clear chime that silences the chattering room. Adriana Corta rises to her feet.

‘My dear guests; friends, colleagues, associates, family. I am eighty years old today. Eighty years ago I was born in Barra de Tijuca in Brazil, on another world. For fifty of those years, over half of my life, I have lived on this world. I came to it as one of the first settlers, I have watched two generations grow up; my children’s and my grandchildren’s, and now it seems I am a Founding Mother. The moon has changed me in many ways. It has changed my body so that I can never go back to the world I came from. To you of the younger generations, that is a strange notion. You have never known anywhere other than this world, and though I talk about the changes the moon has worked on me, they are nothing compared to the ones I see in you. So tall! So elegant! And my grandchildren, why, I think I would need wings to be able to fly up to kiss you! The moon has changed my life. The girl from Barra, Outrinha, the Plain One is the owner of a powerful corporation. When I go up to the observation dome and look with my bare eyes at the Earth, I see those webs of lights across night on Earth and I think, I light those lights. That’s another thing the moon changes in people: there is no gain from modesty.

‘The moon changes families: I see friends and relatives and colleagues from all Five Dragons, I see retainers and madrinhas; but I am not like you. You came with your families, you Suns and Asamoahs and Vorontsovs, you Mackenzies, you of no great family. When I set up Corta Hélio I offered every member of my family back on Earth the chance to follow me to the moon and work with me. Not one took my offer. Not one had the courage or the hope to leave Earth. So, I built my own family; my dear Carlos and his family, but also dear friends who are as close to me as family; Helen, and Heitor. Thank you for your years of service, and love.