‘Who else has it ever been?’ Rafa leans low over the table. His anger smokes. ‘Bob Mackenzie has never forgiven Mamãe. He’s slow poison. Not today, not tomorrow; not this year or even this decade, but some year, some day. The Mackenzies pay back three times. They’re striking at the succession. They want you to see everything you’ve built come apart, Mamãe.’
‘Rafa …’ Ariel begins.
‘Kyra Mackenzie,’ Rafa interrupts. ‘She was at the party. Did anyone search her, or did we just wave her through, because she was one of Lucasinho’s friends?’
‘Rafa, do you think the Mackenzies would risk all-out war?’ Ariel says. She draws long on her vaper. ‘Really?’
‘If they thought they could break our monopoly, they might.’ Lucas says.
‘It’s starting again, can’t you see that?’ Rafa says.
Eight years before, Corta Hélio and Mackenzie Metals fought a brief territory war. Extractors fallen in tangles of metal, trains boarded and shipments hijacked, bots and AIs crashed under bombardments of dark code. Dusters fought hand to hand, knife to knife in the tunnels of Maskelyne and Jansen and out on the stone seas of Tranquillity and Serenity. One hundred and twenty deaths, damage in the millions of bitsies. In the end, Cortas and Mackenzies agreed to arbitration. The Court of Clavius ruled for Corta Hélio. Two months later Adrian Mackenzie married Jonathon Kayode, Eagle of the Moon, CEO of the Lunar Development Corporation, the owners of the moon.
‘Rafa, enough,’ Adriana Corta says. Her voice is thin, her authority is incontestable. ‘We fight the Mackenzies through business, we beat them through business. We make money.’ Adriana rises from the table, stiff and worn in face and limb. Her children and retainers bow and follow her from the board room.
Carlinhos stands, purses the fingers of his right hand and bows to his mother. He has not spoken a word at this board meeting. He never does. His place is out in the field, with the extractors and refiners and the dusters. He’s the duster, the fighter. Rafa can outshine him with his charm, Lucas bludgeon him with his arguments, Ariel tie him up with her eloquence but none of them can walk the dirt the way he does.
Lucas detains Heitor Pereira a moment.
‘You made a mistake,’ Lucas whispers. ‘You’re too old. You’re past it, and you’re gone.’
In the lobby outside the board room Wagner Corta waits. Adriana and her retainers pass without looking at him, then Lucas and Ariel. Ariel nods, a tight smile. Carlinhos claps his brother on the back.
‘Hey brother.’
Wagner is the conspicuous absence at the board table.
‘I want a word with Rafa,’ Wagner says.
‘Sure. You want to bike back to João?’
‘I’ve something else planned.’
‘Catch you later, Lobinho.’
‘A word about what?’ Rafa says. He perches on the inside lip of Oxala’s right eye. Behind him water tumbles slowly.
‘The fly. I want to take a look at it.’
Rafa has made sure that Wagner received Heitor Pereira’s schematics. Rafa makes sure Wagner receives all data from every board meeting.
‘You’ve got everything.’
‘Respect to Heitor and even your R&D, but there’re things I’d see he wouldn’t.’
Rafa knows that Wagner’s life is complicated and lived in the shadows on the edge of the family and that his contribution to Corta Hélio is solid but hard to quantify, but he is an outstanding engineer of the small and intricate. Sometime Rafa envies his two natures; the dark precision, the light creativity.
‘Like what?’
‘I’ll know it when I see it. But I will need to see it.’
‘I’ll let Heitor know.’ Socrates, Rafa’s familiar, has already sent the notification. ‘I’ve told him not to let Adriana know.’
‘Thank you.’
Wagner has been the shadow in the family so long his siblings have evolved an alternative social gravity, informing him, including him while keeping him invisible, like a black hole.
‘When will we see you around, miudo?’ Rafa says. Adriana is looking back, waiting for him.
‘When I have something to say,’ Wagner says. ‘You know me. Keep breathing, Rafa.’
‘Keep breathing, Little Wolf.’
‘Ariel.’ Lucas calls to his sister down the length of the Oxala steps. Ariel turns. ‘Going back already?’
‘I have business in Meridian.’
‘Yes, the reception for the Chinese trade delegation. I couldn’t ask you to miss that.’
‘I told you clearly at the party.’
‘It’s family.’
‘Oh come on, Lucas.’
Lucas frowns in puzzlement and Ariel sees that he cannot understand what she is saying. He believes absolutely that his every act is for the family, only the family.
‘If the positions were reversed, I would do it. Without a thought.’
‘Things are simpler for you, Lucas. People are taking an interest in my career. My skin has to be airtight. I have to be clean.’
‘No one’s clean on the moon. They tried to kill Rafa.’
‘No. Don’t you ever do that.’
‘Maybe not the Mackenzies. But someone did. We’re Corta Hélio: we’re good, but we’re good at only one thing. We extract helium. We keep the lights burning down there. That’s our strength but it’s also our vulnerability. AKA, Taiyang; they’re everywhere, doing everything. They’ve got more than one place to go. Even Mackenzie Metals is diversifying – into our core business. We lose the business, we have nowhere to go. We lose everything. The moon does not suffer losers. And mamãe. She’s not what she was.’
Ariel had been glancing away from Lucas, breaking his powerful eye contact. Even as a child, he won every staring-game. Now he says five words and she can’t look away.
‘Even you must have noticed,’ Lucas says. Ariel takes the barb. It is months since she was at a Corta Hélio board meeting.
‘I know Rafa’s been managing her public engagements.’
‘Rafa Corta. The Golden Boy. He’ll run this business into the dust. Help me, Ariel. Help me, help mamãe.’
‘You’re a bastard, Lucas.’
‘I’m not. I’m the only true son in this entire place. I need something on those Chinese, Ariel. Not much. Just a tiny edge. They’ll have something. A little loose skin I can tear.’
‘Leave it with me.’
Lucas bows. As he turns away from his sister, a smile breaks on to his face.
One light for doors locked, two for undocking. Three for departure. A small tremor in the rock as the induction motors levitate the car. And the tram is gone. It is only five kilometres from Boa Vista to João de Deus station. From Rafa’s hugs, farewells, and, yes tears, it might be worlds.
Lucas observes his brother’s bare emotion with discomfort. The corner of his mouth twitches. Everything is big with Rafa. It always was. The biggest bully, the loudest laugher, the charismatic boy, the golden light; as profligate with his anger as his pleasure. Lucas has grown up as his shadow: restrained and precise; honed and holstered like a taser. Lucas feels as profoundly and intensely as his older brother. Emotion is not emotionalism. One is script, the other performance. Lucas Corta has room for emotion but it is a private room, windowless, white and airy. White rooms, without shadows.
Rafa hugs his brother. This is undignified and embarrassing. Lucas huffs in pain.
‘She’ll come back to you.’ It’s the kind of platitude that is expected in situations like this.
‘She doesn’t trust me.’
Lucas cannot understand his brother’s emotional incontinence. This is what marriage contracts are for. Trust and love are no architecture for a dynasty.
‘While Luna is here, she will come back to you,’ Lucas says. ‘She understands. I’m keeping Lucasinho here until the security situation improves. He’ll hate it. It’ll be good for him. Give him something to work against. He has it all too easy.’ Lucas claps Rafa on the back. Make light of it. Get over it. Let go of me.
‘I’m going to get Robson back.’