Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonald

Author:Ian McDonald [McDonald, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781473216778
Google: ekoyDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B078X1Q1BC
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2019-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

The room is warm, comfortably furnished in beiges, tastefully decorated in framed prints, and it is a death-trap. Vidhya Rao sits panting in er well-upholstered chair, blinking, dazed, panicked. E must run, e must flee, e must do something. A thousand needs and notions swarm like insects and e cannot move.

Moments before, e was deep in the Three August Sages’ surrealism network, carefully so carefully chipping overburden from their imaginings of possible futures, revealing tesserae that hinted at an unseen mosaic. Those hints should have been enough. Hints were never enough for Vidhya Rao. E came back again and again to the Three August Sages: a 1950s Googie-style UFO diner with everyone as roller-skating Martians, a universe made of carnival-balloon demons, a 2020s Gold Coast sunrise party, a Hindu pantheon that spoke only in iambic rhyming couplets. Each time, e uncovered more of the mosaic. Fascination became fear, became terror. E had to see more, know more. Until e felt a vibration, a nerve touched, an alert triggered so sensitive only one who had spent days in the Three August Sages’ kaleidoscope of tumbling realities would be aware of it. Security was alerted. Whitacre Goddard knew what e had seen.

If Whitacre Goddard knows, the terrestrials know.

E must get out: of the room, of the Lunarian Society house, of Meridian.

E stands chest heaving on the balcony, a heavy neutro in a sari. E must move fast. E has never known how to do that.

Not that way, says a voice in er ear. A service exit highlights on er lens. Here.

E slams the service door behind er. Halfway down the steps e is stopped by a hard clattering rattle from inside the club. Again, closer, and again. E has never heard anything like it.

Drone-launched flechettes, the voice says. The drone is still in the building.

A sustained, meteorite rattle.

The standard load-out is four rounds.

Vidhya Rao hobbles painfully to the door to the service alley.

A moto will arrive in forty seconds.

‘Who are you?’ Vidhya Rao asks as e pulls open the service door. ‘You are not my familiar. I didn’t order a moto.’ E steps into the alley, a dark cave cut into raw rock.

Get back into the building.

‘Tell me, who are you,’ Vidhya Rao demands.

Get back at once!

Vidhya Rao sees lights, movement, mass; then e stumbles back into cover as the moto accelerates into the back wall of the service alley. The crash of impact sends er reeling.

The moto was hacked.

Vidhya Rao stares numb at the wreckage. The way is blocked. E imagines erself trying to clamber over the shattered aluminium and carbon. Back. Out. E is gasping by the third turn of the stairs.

‘Activate Whitacre Goddard personal security protocol.’

It is Whitacre Goddard trying to kill you, the voice says.

Vidhya Rao wrenches open the service door. The upper floor of the Lunarian Society is a surreal nightmare; every surface needled with toxic quills. Death by a hundred thousand spikes. There is a body at the top of the stairs. Vidhya Rao forces down er nausea and edges past the martyred corpse, wary of the needle-studded walls.

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