Luna: New Moon (24 page)

‘How long until that rover gets here?’

Jorge settles the guitar into its customary, comfortable position against his body. Left foot a step forward, weight balanced.

‘What would you like me to play, Senhor Corta?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing. I’ve brought you here falsely, Jorge.’

Sleep had come hard after practice with the band, sequences and chord progressions running silver through his musical imagination; ways of working a difficult syncopation with the drummer. Gilberto his familiar whispered in his ear:
Lucas Corta
. Three thirty-four. Jesus and his Mother.
I need you.

‘I don’t want you to sing.’

Jorge’s breath catches.

‘I want you to have a drink with me.’

‘I’m very tired, Senhor Corta.’

‘There’s isn’t anyone else, Jorge.’

‘Your oko; Lucasinho …’

‘There isn’t anyone else.’

On the balcony, a mojito mixed to Jorge’s taste. Lucas’s personal rum. Heading four o’clock now but São Sebastião Quadra bustles, robots and shift workers, maintenance and materiel technicians. The air is still, electric with suspended dust. Jorge tastes it on his tongue, in his throat. He would slip on his kuozhao to protect his singing voice but the dust-mask might affront Lucas.

‘I’m going to divorce my wife,’ Lucas says.

Jorge struggles for an appropriate reponse.

‘I don’t know much about nikahs in the Five Dragons but I imagine it would be expensive to buy out of the contract.’

‘Very expensive,’ Lucas says. ‘Ridiculously expensive. The Suns are used to fighting in court. They’ve been fighting the CPC for fifty years. But I am ridiculously rich. And I have my sister Ariel.’ Lucas leans on the rail.

‘If you don’t love her …’

‘If you think love ever had anything to do with it, you really know nothing about the way we marry among the Dragons. No, it was pragmatic, political, dynastic. They all are. First the marriage, then the love. If you’re lucky. Rafa was and it’s killing him. This is a celebration, Jorge.’

‘I don’t understand, Senhor – Lucas.’

‘I have pulled off a singular victory. I had a brilliant idea, executed brilliantly. I have defeated my enemies and I have brought power and wealth to my family. I am the toast of Four Dragons. Tonight this is my city. And all I see is a man huddling in a cave in an empire of dust. I was born in this cave and I’ll die in this cave and all my borrowed water and air and carbon will be taken back and paid out. I’ll become part of a million lives. It’s a mean sort of resurrection. And we never had a choice. My mother did. She traded the Earth for wealth. I didn’t have that choice. None of us do. We can’t go back – there is no back for us. This is all we have: dust, sunlight; people. The moon is people. That’s what they say. Your worst enemy and your best hope. Rafa likes people. Rafa hopes for heaven. I know we live in hell. Rats in a tunnel, banished from beauty.’

‘Should I sing for you, Lucas?’

‘Maybe you should. Everything is clear, Jorge. I know exactly what I have to do. That’s why I will be rid of Amanda. That’s why I can’t rejoice. That’s why I can’t hear you tonight. Jorge.’ Lucas brushes a finger along the back of Jorge’s hand. ‘Stay.’

‘Wake up.’

Hands grasp her under the shoulders and lift her. She was within a nod of sliding asleep into the water. Carlinhos crouches by the side of the water tank. He taps Marina’s cocktail glass, sticky with the sapphire residue of a Blue Moon. ‘Not a good mix. Drowning on the moon: it’s not good on the autopsy report.’

‘I felt owed a celebration.’

Marina had been on her last sips of oxygen when the relief rover dashed up over the horizon; shuddering with cold; anoxia blue as Carlinhos hooked her into the life support. The rover spun its wheel-housings and laid in a course at full speed for Beikou, a Taiyang server-farm on the rim of Macrobius. By the time Carlinhos bundled Marina through the outlock and the airblade had blasted her clean of dust she was slipping in and out of hypothermic unconsciousness. Fingers unsealing her sasuit. Hands peeling it from her. Intimate fingers unhooking her function tubes, the tug of caked lubricant and crusted body fluids. Hands lowering her into water, warm warm water what? Water surrounding penetrating caressing her. Water calling her back to life.

What is this?

‘Just a tank.’ Carlinhos’s voice. Those hands: his hands? ‘You nearly died out there.’

‘They wouldn’t have landed a ship on me.’ She could barely force the words through chattering teeth. She was coming back to life and it was agony.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Needed doing.’

‘I love the way you say that.’ Carlinhos said. ‘So
norte
. So righteous.
Needs doing
.’ He trailed a finger across the surface of the pool. ‘We’ll cover the water charge.’

Beikou is as close and introverted as a convent: Suns, Asamoahs and minor clans twine together in chains of linked polyamorys. The narrow, stooping tunnels ring with the voices of children in five languages; the triple-breathed air smells of bodies and sweat, the peculiar dust of computer systems, sour urine. For Marina to inhale it, to wallow in this egg of water, clenched inside the moon, Corta Hélio struck contracts with Taiyang and AKA. Marina leans back, lets her hair swirl out in the warm water. She can reach up and touch the sintered glass roof. Ao Kuang, Dragon-king of the East Sea, painted manhua-style, glares down from the close ceiling. Water laps against her breasts. Something has disturbed the pool.

‘What are you doing?’

She had blinked out again, blinks open to see Carlinhos shrug out of his sasuit.

‘I’m coming in.’

He lowers himself into the water.
You look tired,
she thinks.
You’re magnificent but bone tired. You move like an old crab
. Hetty’s activity log reported twenty-eight hours on the surface. The sasuits were rated for twenty-four.
We should all be dead.
She flicks water in Carlinhos’s face. He’s so tired he hardly flinches.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Did we get it?’

‘The Court of Clavius recognised our claim and issued a licence. We’ve already put out construction tenders.’

She lifts a little, painful fist; gives a little painful
yay
.

‘You know, maybe we are owed a celebration,’ Carlinhos says. ‘They make a really good potato vodka here.’

‘What was that about drowning looking shit on your death cert?’

‘Worse than a VTO moonship landing on you?’

‘You.’ She flicks water at him again. He can’t or won’t dodge.
Oh you man, you are so cute when you’re tired and stinky and stubbly and hurting and I could so do you now and you’re right in front of me, touching my knees, my shins, my feet and if I moved my hand just a few centimetres there and you moved your hand a few centimetres here we would, but I won’t because I’m a wreck and you’re a wreck and you’re still my boss and a Dragon and Dragons have always scared me, but most of all because we are like twins in a womb, curled up next to each other in this warm water and that would be prenatal incest.

She shuffles next to him and they lean comfortably, painfully against each other, like old people, skin to skin, enjoying each other’s weight and presence. A long-limbed teen Sun – Marina can’t make out their gender beyond skinny-gangly – ducks through the low door to serve Blue Moons. Laughter, pop music, children yelling, the burr of machinery, resound through the tunnels as it they were the pipes of a great musical instrument.

‘Corta Hélio.’ A toast.

‘Sea of Snakes. If I do nod off …’

‘I’ll watch out for you,’ Carlinhos says.

‘And I’ll watch out for you.’

The sex always begins the same way. One glass, cold-dewed. One measure chilled gin. Three drops of blue Curacao from a glass pipette. No music. Music distracts Ariel Corta from sex. Tonight she wears an exquisite Rappi ballerina-length dress with petticoats, a New Look Dior straw platter hat and gloves. Her lips are Revlon Fire and Ice red, and pursed in small concentration as she releases the drops of Curacao one at a time from the pipe. Tonight she uses the ten-botanical Dilma Filmus gave her. When the last drop has sent its ripples across the surface of the martini glass Ariel Corta steps out of her dress. Brassieres are unknown in lunar gravity and she eschews other underwear. Gloves, hat, lace-top hold-up stockings, Roger Vivier five-inch heels. Ariel Corta lifts the martini in her gloved hand and takes a sip.

The boys brought it home. Vidhya Rao’s tip was sound. Ariel’s short, secure conversation through private encryption with Lucas has proved three things. To Rafa, that she too has power. To her mother, that the Cortas truly are the Fifth Dragon. To Lucas, that she is always a Corta.
We want to buy you,
Vidhya Rao had said. Not bought; fee-ed. Hired, not owned. That is the difference between the trader and the consultant. You’ve triumphed. Ariel Corta raises a toast to herself and to all her clients and contractees and coterie. She takes another sip from her Blue Moon. Beijaflor shows Ariel herself through discreet cameras. Ariel poses to better admire her body. She is magnificent. Magnificent.

Before undressing she vapes a capsule of Solo. The Chemical Sisters, narco-designers to society, print it for bespoke, for these sessions. Hat on padded stand, gloves and stockings patiently and carefully rolled off. Ariel enters the sex room. Her skin, her nipples, her lips and vulva and anus crackle with sexual desire. Walls and floor are softly padded white faux-leather. The apparel awaits her, laid out in careful order, made to measure in white faux-leather. The boots first; high and tight and laced tighter still; tightest yet as she tugs in the lacing. She paces around the small room letting her thighs brush against each other, the tickle of the laces against her ass and vulva. She kneels, thrilling in the dig of the eyes and heels against her buttocks. Then the gloves, shoulder length and laced; pulled tight. She spreads her fingers, encased in tight white leather. The stiff, high collar. Ariel gasps as the laces tighten and she surrenders mobility and freedom. Last of all, the corset. A ritual, this; the exhalations, the carefully timed drawings-in of the laces until she can barely breathe. Her small breasts are proud and pert.

At age thirteen Ariel Corta orgasmed after pulling on a sasuit. She hasn’t worn one since but its tightness, its unforgiving constriction and control of the body has permanently shaped her sex play. Ariel Corta has never told a soul about the sasuit come.

The gag. A classic red-ball gag, matching her lip-gloss. She buckles it tight, tighter. This is for those times when she wedged half a bedsheet into her mouth to stifle the noises of her fabulous masturbation. It keeps the bubbles in the champagne. Ariel Corta squeals and begs into her gag. Beijaflor is outside verbal command but the familiar has played this game many many times. The dressing is complete.

Ariel softly claps her gloves together. Haptics engage; she strokes each breast, hissing into her gag at the touch of thick soft fur. She circles each nipple, delirious with pleasure. The haptics realign and she squeaks at the touch of bristles. The gloves follow a random sequence: Ariel is down on her knees, drooling ecstatically as she introduces the soft sensitive folds of her vulva to bristles that become vinyl nubs, then gritty abrasives. Long slow strokes with her right hand; her left explores the terrain of bare skin between the tight-laced leatherwear. She is bursting; blood and bone and flesh and fluid held in check by taut leather. Now the haptics run different sensations on each hand. Ariel in on her knees, leaning back to allow her fingers access to her fierce little vulva. Sharp heels dig into her ass, she can feel her cheeks spreading on the padded floor. She is blaspheming piously into her gag. Beijaflor shows her herself, thighs spread, fingers working, face upturned and eyes wide. Her cheeks are streaked with saliva leaking from either side of the gag. Haptics switch to prickles: now Ariel’s fingers move for her clitoris for the first time. She shrieks freely and joyfully into her gag. The Solo has hypersensitized her clitoris, her nipples, her vulva and the rosebud of her anus. Each touch is an agony and daring delight. Ariel Corta is bellowing mutely now. Beijaflor swoops the camera around her: close-up on her fingers, her eyes, the pillow of thigh-flesh over spilling her tight boots.

The foreplay lasts an hour. Ariel Corta brings herself to the edge of orgasm half a dozen times. But this is the foreplay. Sex is as ritualised as mass. A printer chimes, the haptics deactivate. Shaking, sleek with sweat and saliva flicked from her gag, Ariel crawls to the printer. Coco de Lune is the moon’s greatest sex toy designer. Ariel never knows what she will get until the printer chimes. All that is certain is that it will be customised to her body and tastes and that it will take many hours to explore its subtleties fully.

Ariel opens the printer. A dildo, a set of polished anal balls. The dildo is long and elegant, a classic old school moon-rocket, complete with four stabilising fins at the bottom. Each fin control a different haptic field. A silver pussy-rocket printed to the dimensions of her vagina and vulva. Not a penis. Never a penis. Ariel Corta has never allowed a penis inside her.

You’re beautiful,
Beijaflor whispers to Ariel in Ariel’s voice.
Love you love you love you.

Ariel moans into her gag, lies back on the padded leather, opens her legs.

Put it up you, in you, kilometres in you,
Beijaflor says.
Fuck yourself to death.

Ariel works the self-lubing pleasure balls into her anus. Corset and collar hold her rigid, unable to see what she is doing to her orifices. Beijaflor shows her close-ups and whispers filth and insults in her own Portuguese. Ariel works the balls in, pushes them deep, hooks a finger through the handle. She tugs gently, feels the drag and grate inside her. At orgasm she will pull them out, perhaps slowly, perhaps all at once. Then one by one she will push them in again.