Authors: Ian McDonald
‘We’re ready.’
She rests a hand on Lucasinho’s shoulder. Sasuit haptics communicate the nap of the terrain, the touch of a hand.
‘Luca, it will kill you.’
He only caught a glimpse; he was not allowed to see what Lousika saw; his uncle, her oko; but what he did see he will never stop seeing.
‘Nana, they’re waiting for us,’ says one of the guards. She carefully steers Lucasinho to keep his back turned to the dead thing. The moon kills ugly.
The Vorontsov team hook first Lousika, then Lucasinho, last Abena to the winches. Lucasinho swings out over the black gullet of the lock shaft. He glances down, his helmet beams splash around the wall of the pit. The enormous blast of Boa Vista’s depressurisation has scoured the shaft clean of anything that might snag and tear a sasuit. Still, it is a descent into dread and darkness. The refuge has been beaconing constantly but it could have shifted, become jammed, failed, ruptured.
‘Lowering.’
It must have been likewise when Adriana first descended into the lava tube she would sculpt into her palace. Light on rock, the vibration of the winch through the drop line.
You came up this when you stormed out on your pai,
Lucasinho thinks and feels a brief burn of embarrassment.
How differently you make the return trip.
Then Lucasinho’s proximity sensors beep and his feet touch down. Crunch and texture of wreckage under his boots. He unsnaps the harness and steps out into Boa Vista. The Vorontsov team has rigged working lights; they hint at more than they reveal: dark shadows in the eye sockets of Xango. Pavilions fallen and strewn like unsuccessful card tricks. Leafless trees, frozen to their hearts, eerily underlit. The full, sensual lips of Iansa. Hints and glints of ice: the frozen tears of the orixas; Lucasinho’s helmet beams playing across dead lawns rigid with frost, lenses of black ice in the dry pools and watercourses. What water wasn’t blown away in the DP has flash frozen in a frosted glaze.
Lucasinho blunders into a lost object and sends it skidding across the tiled pavement. His helmet beams locate it: the wreckage of the old Corta Hélio board table; cracked, missing a leg. He sets it upright. It keels over immediately. Through broken door frames and smashed chairs, under trees draped in shredded bedding. His boots crunch vacuum-frozen twigs and crumbs of glass. Not a pavilion stands. He plays his helmet lights across the faces of the orixas. Oxala, Lord of Light. Yemanja the Creator. Xango the Just. Oxum the Lover. Ogun the Warrior. Oxossi the Hunter. Ibeji the Twins. Omolu, Lord of Disease. Iansa, Queen of Change. Nana the Source.
He never believed in any of them.
‘I will bring this back,’ he whispers in Portuguese. ‘This is mine.’
A second pair of helmet beams strike out and fix him in a pool of light, a third: Lousika and Abena have arrived, but he walks ahead of them, down the dead river bed between the orixas, down to where the rescuers are waiting.
Many languages are spoken on the moon and the vocabulary cheerfully borrows words from Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Yoruba, Spanish, Arabic, Akan.
Abusua:
Group of people who share a common maternal ancestor. AKA maintains them and their marriage taboos to preserve genetic diversity
Adinkra:
Akan visual symbols that represent concepts or aphorisms
Agbada:
Yoruba formal robe
Amor:
Lover/partner
Anzinho:
Little angel
Apatoo:
Spirit of dissension
Banya:
Russian sauna and steam bath
Berçário:
Nursery
Bu-hwaejang:
Korean corporate title: vice-chair. See also, hwaejang, jonmu
Caçador:
Hunter
Chib:
A small virtual pane in an interactive contact lens that shows the state of an individual’s accounts for the Four Elementals
Choego:
Korean corporate title: Foremost
Churrasceria:
Brazilian/Argentinian barbecue
Coracão:
My heart. A term of endearment
CPD:
Social identity number in Brazil, necessary for a number of important social and financial transactions
Craque:
Sports superstar
Escolta:
Bodyguard
Four Elementals:
Air, water, carbon and data: the basic commodities of lunar existence, paid for daily by the chib system
Gaye Nyame:
Adinkra symbol meaning ‘Except God, (I fear None)’
Globo:
a simplified form of English with a codified pronunciation comprehensible by machines
Gupshup:
The main gossip channel on the lunar social network
Hwaejang:
Korean corporate title: President
Irmã/Irmão:
Sister/brother
Jo/Joe Moonbeam:
new arrival on the moon
Jonmu:
Korean Corporate title: Managing Director
Keji-oko:
Second spouse
Kotoko:
AKA council, of rotating memberships
Kuozhao:
Dust-mask
Ladeiro:
A staircase from one level of a quadra to another
Madrinha:
Surrogate mother, literally ‘Godmother’
Malandragem:
The art of the trickster, bad-assery
Mamãe/Mae, Papai/pai:
Mother/Mum, Father/Dad
Manhua:
Chinese manga
Miudo:
Kid
Moto:
Three-wheel automated cab
Nana:
Ashanti term of respect to an elder
Nikah:
A marriage contract. The term comes from Arabic
Norte:
A person from North America
Oheneba:
‘Little Princess’ – term of endearment
Oko:
Spouse in marriage
Omahene:
CEO of AKA, on an eight-year cycle rotation
Onyame:
One name for a Supreme being in Akan traditional religion
Orixa:
Deities and saints in the syncretistic Afro-Brazilian umbanda religion
Patrão:
Godfather
Sasuit:
Surface Activity suit
Saudade:
Melancholy. Sweet melancholy is a sophisticated and essential element on bossa nova music
Shibari:
Japanese rope bondage
Ser:
Form of address used to a neutro
Siririca:
Brazilian slang for female masturbation
Terreiro:
An Umbanda temple
Tia/Tio:
Aunt/uncle
Yin:
Digital signature
Zabbaleen:
Freelance organics recyclers, who then sell on to the LDC which owns all organic material
Zashitnik:
A hired fighter in trial by combat: literally defender, advocate
Lunar society has adopted the Hawaiian system of naming each day of the lune (a lunar month) after a different moon-phase. Thus the lune has 30 days and no weeks.
1: Hilo
2: Hoaka
3: Ku Kahi
4: Ku Lua
5: Ku Kolu
6: Ku Pau
7: Ole Ku Kahi
8: Ole Ku Lua
9: Ole Ku Kolu
10: Ole Ku Pau
11: Huna
12: Mohalu
13: Hua
14: Akua
15: Hoku
16: Mahealani
17: Kulua
18: Lā’au Kū Kahi
19: Lā’au Kuū Lua
20: Lā’au Pau
21: ’Ole Kū Kahi
22: ’Ole Kū Lua
23: ’Ole Pau
24: Kāloa Kū Kahi
25: Kāloa Kū Lua
26: Kāloa Pau
27: Kāne
28: Lono
29: Mauli
30: Muku
Copyright © Ian McDonald 2015
All rights reserved.
The right of Ian McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 20225 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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