Authors: Ian McDonald
‘How are you?’
‘Bored bored bored bored bored.’
‘But you are all right?’
Kojo leans back, arms behind head.
‘Still coughing up bits of lung but at least I can lie on my ass now.’ He lifts his left foot. It’s enclosed in what looks like a sasuit boot, with tubes running from it into the base of the bed. ‘They’re growing me a new toe. They printed a bone out, and the stem cells. It’ll be back in about a month.’
‘Brought you something.’
Lucasinho takes the seal-pack from his bag and opens it. The medical bots flutter in distress as their sensors register chocolate, sugar, THC. Kojo props himself up on his elbow and takes an offered brownie, sniffs at it.
‘What have you got in this?’
‘Fun.’
‘That’s what I heard you were having with Grigori Vorontsov.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Afua.’
‘This time she’s right.’
Kojo sits up in the bed. His face is puzzled.
‘What happened to Jinji?’
‘I’m not wearing him.’
Not wearing a familiar is like not wearing clothes. Or skin.
‘Afua said you’d run out on the family. Your father cut you off.’
‘She’s right about that too.’
‘Wow.’ Kojo studies Lucasinho closely, as if looking for sins, or parasites. ‘I mean, you can breathe all right?’
‘He’d never do that. Grandmother would never forgive him. She loves me. Water is okay too, but he has frozen my carbon and data accounts.’
‘What do you do for money?’
Lucasinho spreads a fan of cash.
‘I have a useful aunt.’
‘I’ve never seen this before. Can I smell it?’ Kojo riffles notes under his nose. He shudders. ‘Just think of all those hands that have touched it.’
Lucasinho sits on the bed. ‘Kojo, how long are you going to be in here?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Just, if you’re not using your place …’
‘You want my place?’
‘I saved your life.’ At once Lucasinho regrets playing his ace. It’s unbeatable, it’s low.
‘Is that the reason you came here? Just to hide out at my place?’
‘No, not at all …’ Lucasinho backtracks. No words will convince. He offers a brownie. ‘I made these for you. Really.’
‘I’m not supposed to have anything recreational until the toe grows back,’ Kojo says and takes a brownie. He bites. He melts. ‘Oh man these are great.’ He finishes the brownie. ‘You’re really good at this.’ Halfway down the second, Kojo Asamoah says, ‘You have the apartment for five days. I’ve reset the lock to your iris already.’
Lucasinho pulls himself up on to the bed and curls up like a pet ferret at Kojo’s feet. Now he takes a brownie. The medical bots hum and swarm and register their patient’s increasing level of stonedness. The two teenagers munch and giggle the sweet hours down.
The tall double doors open and the delegates rise from their sofas and drift away, conversation looping into conversation. The Pavilion of the White Hare is ended.
‘So, Senhora Corta, what did you make of your first taste of lunar politics?’ The banker Vidhya Rao slips in to Ariel’s side.
‘Surprisingly banal.’
‘Attention to the banal keeps us alive,’ Vidhya Rao says. The chef Marin Olmstead hurries to the elevator lobby, impatient to rez up his familiar and arrange his report to Jonathon Kayode. ‘Of course politics doesn’t have to be this banal.’ E touches Ariel’s arm, an invitation to linger, to conspire. ‘There are councils within councils.’
‘I’ve only just got my feet under the table at this one,’ Ariel says.
‘Your nomination was not universally welcomed,’ the banker says. E beckons Ariel to sit with er. The touch of vat-grown leather has always made Ariel’s flesh crawl. She can’t forget its provenance: human skin.
‘It would be impolitic to name names,’ Ariel suggests.
‘Of course. Some of us argued strenuously for your admission. I was one of them. I’ve followed your career with interest. You are an exceptional young woman, with a stellar career before you.’
‘I’m far too vain to blush,’ Ariel says. ‘I hope so too.’
‘Oh my dear, this is not wishful thinking,’ Vidhya Rao says. Er eyes are bright. ‘This has been modelled with a high degree of precision. The Rao forward is the least of my achievements. What every investment bank desires is the ability to see the future. To predict which prices will go long and which will short, that would give us a powerful advantage.’
‘You said “us”,’ Ariel says.
‘I did, didn’t I? For the past seven years I have been developing algorithms to model the markets. In effect, I have created shadow markets running on quantum computers, from which it is possible to make educated guesses as to the movements of the real markets. The accuracy is surprising, though we find it’s a less useful tool than we had imagined – acting on that information shows our hand, so to speak, and the market moves against us, abolishing any advantage Whitacre Goddard might enjoy.’
‘Voodoo economics,’ Ariel says. ‘Black magic.’ She snaps her vaper to full length and locks it rigid. She ignites, inhales, lets out a curl of vapour.
‘We found a more useful application for the technique,’ Vidhya Rao says. E leans forwards, demands Ariel meet er eyes. ‘Prophecy. That’s religious gobbledegook of course. I mean useful predictions based on highly-educated guesses derived from fine-scale computer modelling. Modelling the lunar economy and society. We have three independent systems, each running the model. Taiyang constructed three quantum mainframes, I developed the algorithms. We call them the Three August Ones: Fu Xi, Shennong and the Yellow Emperor. They seldom agree – one has to find patterns in their output, but they agree with a high degree of confidence on one person. You.’
Ariel’s outward demeanour is calm and elegant – her court face – but she feels a shock of cold electricity run from her heart to the root of her brain.
‘I’m not sure I like being the Chosen One to a cabal of quantum computers.’
‘It’s nothing so tendentious. We naturally modelled the Five Dragons. You are the major shapers of the economic and political society. You emerge as a significant figure in the Corta family. The significant figure.’
‘Rafa is bu-hwaejang.’
‘And Lucas is the power behind the throne. You do know he is planning to take over the company. Talented boys, but they are predictable.’
‘And you’ve predicted my unpredictability.’ Ariel looses another stream of vapour into the air. Effortless cool. Inside, she is electrically alert.
‘The Three August Ones were unanimous. The Three August Ones are never unanimous. I shall be frank, Ariel. We want to make a bid for your potential.’
‘You’re not talking about Whitacre Goddard.’
‘I’m talking about a movement, a ghost, a philosophy, a diversity.’
‘If you give me good versus evil, this conversation is over.’ But the small neutro has her attention. Curiosity conspires with vanity.
‘Your mother built the moon.’ Judge Reiko’s voice. Ariel had not seen her reenter the lobby. ‘But the political legacy of the LDC and the Five Dragons is essentially feudalism. Great Houses and the Monarchy, dispensing territories and favours, monopolising water, oxygen, carbon allowance. Vassals and serfs indentured to their sponsoring corporations. It’s like Shogun Japan or medieval France.’
Reiko sits beside Vidhya Rao. Ariel begins to feel targeted.
‘The Three August Ones agree that this model is unsustainable,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘The Five Dragons have reached the pinnacle of their power – last quarter profits from derivatives trading exceeded those of the Five Dragons for the third quarter in a row. Financial entities like Whitacre Goddard are in the ascendant.’
Ariel holds Vidhya Rao’s eyes until the banker looks away. Corta disdain.
‘The woman in Hamburg plugging her car into the charge point on the street, the girl in Accra who recharges her familiar chip from the school touch-pad, the boy in Ho Chi Minh City playing his DJ set, the man in Los Angeles boarding the HST to San Francisco; what they plug into is Corta helium.’
‘Eloquently put Senhora Corta.’
‘It’s more eloquent in Portuguese.’
‘I’m sure. The fact remains, the future is financial. We are a resource-poor, energy-rich economy. It’s obvious that our economic future lies with weightless, digital goods.’
‘Weightless goods turn strangely heavy when they fall on you. Or have you learned nothing from the Five Crashes?’
‘The Three August Ones …’
‘We are an independence movement,’ Nagai Reiko cuts in.
‘Of course you are,’ says Ariel Corta with a feline smile and a slow draw on her gleaming vaper.
‘We have our own pavilion. The Lunarian Society.’
‘More talking.’
‘Words are better than blades.’
‘And you want me.’
‘The Lunarian Society draws from all Five Dragons and levels of society.’
‘It is much more democratic than the White Hare,’ Vidhya Rao interjects.
‘I’m a Corta. We don’t do democracy.’
Vidhya Rao can’t disguise er scowl of distaste. Nagai Reiko smiles.
‘You want to invite me to join your society,’ Ariel says.
Vidhya Rao sits back, honest surprise on er face.
‘My dear Senhora Corta, we don’t propose to invite you. We want to
buy
you.’
With a bed under his back and money in his pouch, Lucasinho hits the party circuit. It’s never hard for a Corta boy to find a party. He follows a chain of acquaintances of acquaintances to Xiaoting Sun’s apartment up on Thirty Aquarius Hub. His reputation has preceded him. You skipped out on your father? I mean, no network, no carbon, no bitsies? Where are you sleeping?
Kojo Asamoah’s. While he’s growing a new toe. I saved him. But they roll straight with the next question:
Whatever are you’re wearing?
Xiaoting Sun has hired Banyana Ramilepe, the new narco-DJ. She mixes and prints custom highs and moods and loves into juice for a battery of vapers. Lucasinho drifts through the party, gorgeous in tight pink, inhaling empathy, religious awe, pleasure that’s better than any sex, euphoria, golden melancholy. For twenty minutes he is in deep deep love with a short, wide-hipped serious Budiño girl. She is an angel, a goddess, love divine, every day he’ll just sit and stare at her, sit and stare. Then the chemicals break up into nothing and they are sitting and staring at each other and he drops new juice into his vaper. By the end of the night a boy and a girl are drawing hallucination-creatures on his suit-liner with marker pens.
No one comes back with him to Kojo’s.
At the party the next night in Orion Quadra there are two girls in suit-liners, fluorescent green and hi-visibility orange. He’s still trying to work out if one of them was at the Sun party when a bubble-blonde white girl appears in front of him and asks,
Can I see the money?
He flicks out the notes and fans them like a street magician.
And this is bitsies?
Five ten twenty fifty one hundred.
A crowd has gathered, the notes pass from fingers to fingers, feeling the textures, the crumple.
And if I just took it?
And if I tore it in half?
And if I set fire to it?
It would be dead money,
Lucasinho says.
This stuff doesn’t have insurance.
A boy takes a five bitsie note and scribbles on it with a pencil. He’s one of those moços whose tongue sticks out a little when they concentrate. He’s not used to writing.
What about this?
He’s changed the Five to Five Million.
Doesn’t make any difference,
Lucasinho says. The boy has left another message, written along the edge in a hand so bad Lucasinho can barely read it. A location in Antares Quadra, and a time.
Antares Quadra is eight hours behind Orion so Lucasinho has only enough time to stuff the suit-liner in the laundry, get his head down, shower and order in some carbs-for-cash before he finds himself at the top of West 97th, in sun-down dark, with riders on luminous bicycles blazing past him. It’s a long climb when elevators and escalators don’t take folding money. He’s at a downhill; an urban bike race down five kilometres of precipitous city architecture. Zigzagging down ramps and stairways. Stupendous leaps, soaring high over roof tops to land in narrow alleys, and on and on, swerving around hairpin corners, accelerating up ramps to leap and fly again. On and on, hurtling down the dark, steering by night-vision lenses and luminous arrows sprayed on walls and the lamps of Antares West, blowing whistles to warn pedestrians and night-strollers. A girl’s hand snatches Lucasinho into a doorway as whistles blare out of nowhere and two bikes streak past, leaving luminous after-imagines on his retinas.
Oh my God, is it you?
It’s me, Lucasinho says. He’s become a celebrity. He buys her mejadra from one of the stands at the top of the run not because she is hungry but because she wants to see cash at work.
You have to do all those sums in your head?
It’s not so hard
.
Together they watch the streaks of light race through the alleys and over the roofs and down the walkways, dipping in and out of sight as they duck under build-overs or round corners. Far below, on Budarin Prospekt, tiny luminous spirals wind around each other: bikes at the finish line. The times don’t matter. The winner doesn’t matter. The race doesn’t even matter. What matters is the spectacle, the daring, the sense of transgression, that something wonderful has fallen out of the sky into safe, conventional lunar life.
There are a lot more suit-liners tonight. Two of the guys are decorating each other with the luminous paint the downhillers use on their bikes. Lucasinho’s presence has somehow graced the downhill. Two girls come to Lucasinho through the crowd. They are dressed as nineteenth-century European males: tail coats, wing-collars, top hats and monocles. Kiss-curls and kill-you-deadly make-up. They carry canes in their gloved hands. Their familiars are little dragons, one green, one red. One of them whispers a time and a place in Lucasinho’s ear. He feels her teeth tug on the metal spike in his ear-lobe. Pleasurable little pain. Abena Asamoah licked his blood at his moon-run party.