Luna: New Moon (28 page)

Yemanja has chosen birthday dresses: for itself the triple-crescent of the moon herself and for Adriana: Pierre Balmain, 1953, a wing-collared suit, long-sleeved, a tight pencil skirt and an outsized bow on the left hip. Gloves. Bag. Elegant. Flattering on eighty-year-old flesh. Before she dresses, Adriana swims for twenty minutes in the endless pool. She venerates the orixas outside her window with gin and incense. She takes her medication and gags as little as she does every day. She eats five slices of mango while Yemanja updates her on her family’s business. A thousand concerns flock, but they will not land today. Not on her birthday.

First to greet her is Helen de Braga. A kiss, an embrace. Now Heitor Pereira wishes her congratulations for the day. In her honour he wears a fantastical uniform, braid and buttons and shoulder pads that would be ridiculous did he not bear it with such dignity. An embrace, a kiss.

Are you well?
they ask.

I am joyful,
she says. Death gnaws at her, a little more gone each day and her succession is uncertain but she woke this morning aflame with joy. Joy in the small things, the particular fall of the sunline across the faces of the orixas, the creep of the water up over her body as she lowered herself into the pool, the sweet-sour musk of the mangoes, the rustle of the fabric of her party clothes. Marvellous banalities. There are still new sensations to appreciate in this small world.

Now the grandchildren come running. Robson has a new card trick to show her:
in the shuttle, anzinho.
Luna brings flowers, a posy of blue that matches her dress. Adriana accepts them though her skin crawls at the touch of the once-living, now dead. She sniffs deeply – Luna giggles:
Violetas have no smell, Vo.

Next the okos. There is only one remaining at Boa Vista. Amanda Sun embraces her mother-in-law and kisses her on each cheek.

The madrinhas now. Amalia and Ivete and Monica, Elis casting an eye over Robson, adjusting the knot of his tie, the set of his collar. Rafa, Lucas, Ariel and Carlinhos have long moved out of Boa Vista but their madrinhas remain. Adriana would never banish them from Boa Vista: Cortas honour their obligations. She would rather have them in one place, under her sky, rather than scattered across the world with their gossip and secrets. Like that other one. The faithless one. One by one the madrinhas embrace and kiss their benefactor.

Last in line are the staff. It’s a long process, shaking the hands, acknowledging the good wishes for this auspicious day but Adriana Corta works assiduously; a word here, a smile there. Security falls in behind her at the entrance to the station. They form a dark-suited barricade between Adriana and her grandchildren, her oldest retainers, her people. Everyone, from her Director of Finance to her gardener, has reskinned their familiars in party shapes and colours.

The station out-door swishes open. Hands reach for knives: Heitor Pereira had balked at holding the party outside Boa Vista but Adriana insisted. Corta Hélio would not cower inside its fortress. The hands fall away. It’s Lucasinho, with a small paper box.

‘Happy birthday, Vo.’ The box holds a cake, a green-frosted dome delicately decorated with a baroque lace of icing. ‘It’s Swedish Princess cake. I don’t know what Swedish means.’ Embrace and kiss. Lucasinho’s pierces dimple his grandmother’s skin.

‘With or without clothes?’ Adriana asks. ‘I do hope without.’ Lucasinho blushes. It’s quite adorable on him. ‘Are you wearing make-up?’

‘I am, Vo.’

‘That colour liner really brings out the gold in your eyes. Maybe highlight the cheekbones a little more. Play to your strengths.’ He is a sweet boy.

The party will travel in two trams. Entourage first; Adriana, immediate family and security in the second shuttle. In the three-minute journey Robson shows his vo his new card trick – it’s themed around people evacuating a leaking habitat: court cards all escaping from the top of the deck – and everyone gets their fingers a little green and sticky with Lucasinho’s cake.

João de Deus is a working city and Adriana Corta would never sacrifice profit to declare a universal holiday, even on her eightieth birthday but many residents and contractees have taken a few minutes’ leave and turned out to salute the First Lady of Helium. They watch the fleet of motos ferry the Cortas down Kondakova Prospect and up the ramp to the hotel where Lucas has arranged the birthday lunch. They applaud, some wave. Adriana Corta raises a gloved hand in acknowledgement. Blimps in the shape of cartoon animals manoeuvre on hushed micro-fans through São Sebastião Quadra like a divine circus. Adriana looks up as the shadow of M-Kat Xu falls over her. She smiles.

Heitor Pereira’s people have been working for days, discreetly securing the hotel. Since mid-morning they have been discreetly scanning the guests. Applause; turning heads. Adriana arrives in the middle of a cocktail reception, whirled from face to face, party dress to party dress; kiss to kiss. Her boys, her handsome boys in their best suits. Ariel is late, Ariel is always late for family. Lucas is visibly annoyed but he is not his sister’s keeper. This is a world without police, even family police.

Family close and far: a warm embrace from Lousika Asamoah, always Adriana’s favourite among the okos. Cousins by blood and marriage; the Sores from Carlos’s side of the family and minor clans; allies by nikah. Society next. An apology has been received from the Eagle of the Moon – no Eagle has ever accepted Adriana’s birthday invitation. Adriana dances an elegant waltz among Asamoahs from Twé and immaculate Suns from the Palace of Eternal Light and Vorontsov grandees; houses lesser and petty, socialites and trend-setters, reporters and celebrities, amors and okos. Lucasinho’s moon-run cohort are here, self-conscious and remaining in each other’s social orbit. Adriana Corta has a word for each. Her social wake spirals off a hundred conversations and liaisons.

Politics last of all. LDC bureaucrats and Farside University deans. Soap stars and chart musicians, artists and architects and engineers. Adriana Corta has always filled her anniversaries with engineers. The media: social net reporters and fashion commentators; sharers and content-creators. The religious: Cardinal Okogie and Grand Mufti el-Tayyeb; Abbot Sumedho and, all in white, a Sister of the Lords of Now. Irmã Loa curtsies to her patron.

Ariel appears at her mother’s side. A kiss and an apology, which Adriana waves away.

Thank you
.

If I’d missed your eightieth, you’d never have forgiven me.

That’s not what I’m thanking you for
.

Ariel snaps her vaper to its full length and lets the party claim her.

Adriana looks up in delight at the sound of music. Bossa nova. The party parts before her as she is drawn to its source.

It’s the same band we had at Lucasinho’s moon-run,
Adriana says.
How lovely.

Lucas is at her side. He has never been more than two steps away from her through all the social turns and pirouettes of Adriana’s progress.

All your favourites, Mamãe. The old tunes.

Adriana runs her hand over Lucas’s cheek.

You are a good boy, Lucas.

Wagner Corta slips late into the restaurant, still trying to get comfortable in his print-fresh suit. The dimensions are right but it sits wrong, tight where it needs to be generous, rubbing where it needs to caress.

‘Lobinho!’ Rafa greets Wagner open-armed and effusive. Crushing embrace, heavy back slaps. Wagner winces. Man-breath. Wagner can identify the constituents of every cocktail his brother has thrown down his throat. ‘It’s Mamãe’s birthday, could you not have shaved?’ Rafa looks Wagner up and down. ‘And your familiar isn’t familiar.’

With a thought Wagner banishes Dr Luz and summons Sombra though everyone who knows he is of the two selves can tell he’s the wolf from his fidgeting in his skin, the way he looks as if he is listening to several conversations at once, the generous stubble on his face.

‘She missed you at the receiving line.’ Rafa scoops a cocktail from a tray and slips it into Wagner’s hand. ‘Just make sure you get to her before you get to Lucas. He’s not in a forgiving mood today.’

Wagner barely made the express; savouring every moment with Irina. She had bitten him. She had sucked his flesh so hard she left bruises. She had pinched and twisted and made him cry out. She had tugged his skin with gentle loving teeth. The sex had been the least part of it, perfunctory, obvious. She awoke sensations and emotions new to Wagner. His senses rang all night. He picked up the suit from the station printer, changed in the train washroom, gingerly pulling shirt and pants over still raw wounds and bruises. Each tiny pain was an ecstasy. She had obeyed Wagner’s instruction and left hands, neck, face unmarked.

‘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?’

Marina has no words. This is impossible, to do, to refuse. In her scratchy dress she stands in front of Adriana Corta and all she can think is
but Carlinhos won’t be there.