Luna: New Moon

‘The wedding is re-staged. We’ll split the costs. Can you give me a guarantee that your son will actually be there?’

‘I offer no guarantee,’ Lucas says. ‘I can’t speak for my son.’

‘Are you his father or not?’

‘As I said, I can’t speak for Lucasinho. But I stand by his decision with all my heart,’ Lucas says. ‘For me, I say, fuck you, Bryce Mackenzie.’

A third tic: a chewing in of the top lip. Those others had been irritation. This is fury.

‘Fine.’ Bryce’s blades enter from the lobby and help the man from the sofa, steady him on his stick and surprisingly neat feet. He stalks past Lucas, click by click. There is a third pleasure, Lucas realises, a small, mean but very sweet one, in discommoding Bryce Mackenzie.

At the door, Bryce turns, one finger raised, his stick dangling from its wrist-loop. ‘Oh yes. One final thing.’ Bryce takes a step forward and slaps Lucas across the face. There is little weight in the blow; Lucas reels from the shock, the daring, the implication. ‘Name your seconds and your zashitnik if you are to be represented. Time and location to be decided by the court. The Mackenzies will have blood for this.’

One by one the familiars of the Kotoko appear around Abena Maanu Asamoah. Her breath catches. She is more awestruck than she thought. The adinkras glow in her lens, every second a new one appears. She is ringed by shining aphorisms. Abena prepared her room respectfully. The board’s members may be the people you meet in the tunnels, in the tubefarms, on the streets and in the compounds, but the Kotoko is more than its individuals. It’s continuity and change, lineage and diversity, abusua and corporation. Anyone may consult the Kotoko; the implied question is, why do you need to? Abena has tidied away her few things, folded up the furniture, set biolights, black, red and white in a triangle on the floor and put herself at the centre of them. She’s showered.

Last to appear is the Sunsum, the familiar of the Omahene. Abena shivers. She has summoned powerful forces.

‘Abena,’ says Adofo Mensa Asamoah. The familiars speak with the voices of their clients. ‘How are you? Greetings from the Golden Stool.’

‘Yaa Doku Nana,’ Abena says.

‘Oh you’ve tidied, lovely,’ says Akosua Dedei from Farside.

‘Nice touch with the lights,’ says Kofi Anto from Twé.

‘So, what do you need to ask us?’ says Kwamina Manu from Mampong. The hidden question.

‘I made a promise,’ Abena says, her fingers unconsciously twisting the chain of her Gye Nyame necklace. ‘And now I’ve had to honour it, but I don’t know if I had the right to promise anything.’

‘This is about Lucasinho Corta,’ says the familiar that Abena knows is Lousika Asamoah.

‘Yes. I know we owe the Cortas for Kojo on the moon-run, but what if the Mackenzies turn on us like they turned on the Cortas?’

‘He asked for sanctuary,’ Abla Kande from Cyrillus agrarium says.

‘But was it mine to offer?’

‘What would the moon think of us if we failed to honour our promises?’ Adofo Mensa says. Voices whisper in chorus around the ring of familiars: Fawodhodie ene obre na enam. Independence comes with responsibilities.

‘But the MacKenzies, I mean, we’re not the biggest family, or the richest or the most powerful …’

‘Let me tell you a little history,’ says Omahene Adofo. ‘That’s true. AKA is not the richest or the oldest of the Five Dragons. We’re not exporters; we don’t keep the lights burning up there like the Cortas, or Earth’s tech industries fed like the Mackenzies. We’re not industrialists or IT giants. When we came to the moon we didn’t have political backing like the Suns or wealth like the Mackenzies or access to launch facilities like the Vorontsovs. We weren’t Asians or Westerns; we were Ghanaians. Ghanaians going to the moon! Such presumption! That’s for the white people and Chinese. But Efua Mensah had an idea, and saw an opportunity and worked and fought and argued her way all the way up to the moon. Do you know what she saw?’

‘You may become rich by shovelling the dirt, but you will become rich by selling the shovel,’ Abena says. Every child learns the proverb as soon as they’re socketed, lensed and linked for a familiar. She’s always thought it dull and worthy, old people’s wisdom. Storekeepers and greengrocers; not glamorous like the Cortas and the Mackenzies with their handsome dusters or the Vorontsovs with their exquisite toys.

‘We bought our independence dear,’ Adofo Mensa says. Her familiar is made from the Siamese Crocodiles and Ese Ne Tekrema, the adinkras of unity and interdependence ‘We don’t surrender it. We will not be bullied by the Mackenzies.’

‘By anyone,’ Kwamina Manu adds.

‘Are you answered?’ Omahene Adofu asks.

Abena dips her head and purses her fingers in the accepted lunar way. One by one the familiars of the Kotoko wink out. Last to shine is Lousika Kande Asamoah-Corta.

‘You’re not, are you?’

‘What?’

‘Answered.’

‘I am, I’m just not …’

‘Reassured?’

‘I think I put the family in danger.’

‘How many people are there on the moon?’