Free Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

them.
    Especially fuck his father.
    The emergency suit-liners were not designed for third gens and it takes Lucasinho five minutes wrestling to pull it on. There is no room in the suit shell’s pressure pouch for his clothes. No loss. He can print new gear in João de Deus. He unpins his Lady Luna and packs her in the pouch. The emergency suit is a bulbous sci-fi robbie-robot, hi-viz orange, with flashers. Roomy enough inside for Lucasinho to move around. Jinji copies into the suit system and powers it up. On the surface he will be out of range of the network. Clamps clunk. Seals lock. Pressurisation hisses and fades.
    ‘Let’s take a walk,’ Lucasinho breathes. Jinji marches Lucasinho into the outlock. Lucasinho remembers his last outlock. Naked bodies. Knee to knee. Naked Abena Asamoah opposite him. The sweat evaporating on her perfectly curved breasts as the pressure reduces. He will have those breasts. Out there in the world. He will find them. He’s owed them. She has drawn his blood.
    He does not think about the inlock. The tangle of bodies, pulsing in and out of consciousness. The pain the red the black the pain. The scream of emergency repressurisation.
    The outer door slams open.
    Jinji controls the hard-shell’s servos and pushes the suit into a fast, loping run. Security will know a lock has been opened, a suit taken. They won’t know who had taken the suit, where it was going, how fast. They will work that out, but by then Lucasinho will be in, repressurised, out of the shell suit and lost among João de Deus’s crowds.
    You’re not so smart, Pai.
    Lucasinho steps out of the João de Deus lock and rides the elevator downtown. The suit will cycle out and jog back to Boa Vista under its own power. Emergency suits are too valuable to leave scattered around the Sea of Fecundity. A life might depend on it one day. It is almost as tough to pin the moon-run token through the pressure weave as it was to pull the skin-tight suit-liner on. He’s ruined its integrity. He hopes a life won’t depend on it one day. Hopes his life won’t depend on it. No: that was the last time Lucasinho Corta intends be on the surface.
    João de Deus is a half-made town; raw rock and low lintels, its prospekts and quadras tight and lean. Safety doors spasm and jerk, the sunline flickers. It smells of shit and body odour and environmental systems straining at their performance limits. The water tastes of batteries. Too many people, scurrying people. Always someone in front of you, in your way. Elbows and breath, ghosting through floating hosts of familiars. The signs and names, the handbills and graffiti are all Portuguese. João de Deus is Helium-ville, a frontier town. A company town and that is why Lucasinho is not staying here.
    ‘If you were my father, what would you do?’ Lucasinho asks Jinji.
    I would freeze your cash accounts.
    So Lucasinho heads to the station, not the fashion printshop.
    Suit-liners are commonplace in João de Deus, even acceptable. In Meridian Main Station, twenty heads have turned by the time he gets to the main escalator and up on to Gagarin Prospekt. Got to get out is this suit, even if he does wear it well? Could he persuade everyone it’s a new micro-trend? 1950s is so last lune. Surface-worker chic. Blue collar is the thing: so honest and now . He starts to walk a little big. Lead from the package, the lower belly. Swagger. He feels good. He’s done a thing. Because Boa Vista couldn’t hold him and family couldn’t keep him. Because he ran away, by his own cleverness and cool. Because he’s free. Because he is back. That’s not just a thing. That’s things . Lucasinho Corta feels more than good; he feels great.
    The waiter can’t hide the stare as Lucasinho orders a vaper and mint tea and stretches out in the café chair. Is it the suit or the muscles inside it? Lucasinho arches his back to tighten his stomach muscles opens his legs to show off the thighs. He likes to be looked at. I’m a