Kelric regarded him implacably. "Who's going to stop me?"
"This isn't Skolia," Del shot back. "Maybe you can do whatever you want there, Mister Imperator, but you can't on Earth."
A strangled sound came from Ricki. Del knew he should stop, but he didn't know how to untangle himself from the argument.
"So you're going to start an interstellar incident over it?" Kelric banged his console with his fist. "Just once can't you think about someone besides yourself?"
"I always think of everyone else." Del's voice cracked. "I stayed home while you were all off making war. I took care of everything when Father was hurt, ran our holdings, looked after the farm, and headed the family on Lyshriol. I was hardly more than twenty! When he got better, I just wanted a vacation. Just a few days. Well, I got it. Forty-five years of one."
"Del—" Kelric let out a breath. "It was terrible, yes. But you chose to take those drugs."
"Yeah, I kicked the taus. I made a stupid, stupid mistake. And you're all going to make me pay for it the rest of my life, aren't you?" Del's fists clenched on the console. "Because, of course, you never make those kinds of mistakes. Or maybe it's just that I got hit, and you never do."
Anger snapped in Kelric's voice. "I would never do the things you do."
"For flaming sake," Del said. "What have I done that's so terrible? Loved my kids. Harvested crops. And sung those stupid—" He struggled to stay calm. "I don't want to be the Dalvador Bard. You think I'm irresponsible? Why don't you go home and be the frigging King of Skyfall?"
A sharply indrawn breath came from Ricki. Del wanted to fold into a dot and disappear. The magical night had turned sour.
Kelric started to answer, then stopped. In a quieter voice he said, "Why stay on Earth? If you don't like singing, why do it there?"
Del didn't understand how his brother could be an empath and understand so little about how Del felt. "I didn't say I didn't want to sing. I like what I'm doing here. Gods, Kelric, I love it. And other people do, too. Everyone wants more and more."
"Until they use you up," Kelric said.
"Can't you try to understand?"
"We don't have that luxury." Beneath the rumble of Kelric's voice, he sounded as if he were struggling, too. "I wanted to be a mathematician. But I couldn't. I have duties, whether I want them or not. We had no choice about our birth, but we choose how we live our lives. Turn your back on us, and you're turning your back on your people. Is that what you want? To put your life ahead of the Imperialate?"
"How can you say that?" Del asked. "What more do I have to give up to satisfy you all? My soul?" He thought of Chaniece and the family life he could never have. "Hell, my DNA is all that matters. We both know I have nothing else to offer. Except my singing. That isn't useless or trivial. You want to take away the one thing I'm good at. I'll never be a genius like you or Dehya. I can't. But I can do this."
"And if something happens?" His brother shook his head. "You aren't just Del Arden, Prime-Nova's latest sensation. What you do has interstellar ramifications regardless of whether or not you want to acknowledge that. What if you're hurt? The next time two insane fans grab you, you may not survive."
Del stared at him. "You know?"
"I have the best covert ops in three empires," Kelric said. "When I tell them to find details, they find everything."
Sweat broke out on Del's forehead. "I'm all right."
"This time." Kelric leaned forward. "If you ever duck your bodyguards again, I'm pulling you out."
"No." Del regarded him steadily. "I won't put myself or them at risk if I can help it. But you have to let go. Let me make my own decisions. And yes, if I make bad ones, I pay the price. But it's my responsibility, not yours. You have no right—legally or morally—to drag me away against my will."
Kelric met his gaze. "I don't give a damn about the Harrison Protocol. It wasn't written for someone in your position. You aren't just some citizen, Del. That you're a member of the Ruby Dynasty may mean nothing to you, but it does to everyone else. And don't argue morals with me. I have a moral imperative to make sure my brother doesn't get himself killed."
Del was gripping the console so hard, his knuckles turned white. "You aren't my keeper."
"If I say I am," Kelric told him, "I am. Period."
"You know what?" Del hurt too much to hold back. "You can go fuck yourself."
Kelric glanced at his console, undoubtedly checking the Iotic translation of a certain English word. Dryly he said, "I think that's anatomically impossible."
Del couldn't answer. He had to get off before he said more he would regret. Hotness filled his eyes, and he could never, never shed tears in front of Kelric. He would rather curl up and die. "You had your say. I listened. I have to go."
Kelric exhaled. "I don't want to leave it this way."
"What way?" Del asked. "Like this: 'Del, I'm going to control your entire life, but don't feel bad that I've ruined the only career you'll ever have.' "
"If I were going to control your life," Kelric said, "you wouldn't be on the Moon with your girlfriend. You would be here."
Del struggled to keep his voice even. "If you see Dehya, tell her I commed her. Good-bye."
After a moment, Kelric said, "All right. Good-bye."
Del cut the connection. Then he sat in front of the darkened screen, staring at nothing. How could the little boy he had carried around the house have become this massive, dominating stranger?
Ricki came over and stood next to him. She rested her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."
He couldn't answer. A betraying tear escaped his eye and ran down his face. He wiped it away angrily. Ricki didn't push, she just let him be, her hand a gentle weight on his shoulder.
After a while, he said, "I used to dream they would accept me. I thought if I could show them, really show them, that I could succeed, it would matter." Del stood up and walked away from the console, moving slowly in the surreal gravity, across to the dais and up its steps to the bed. Then he faced her. "But it's useless. They'll never take me as I am."
She spoke softly. "It would never have occurred to me that a man from so powerful a family couldn't live his life as he chose."
"It's not that simple." Del felt the questions roiling within her. "Go ahead. Ask."
"That man—he was Kelric Skolia?"
"Yes."
"The Imperator."
"Yeah. The Imperator."
"My God," Ricki whispered.
He folded his arms across his torso, though he didn't know if the action was defiant or protective. "Kelric was born when I was a teenager. I used to baby-sit him."
"Del, that man is much older than you."
"I know."
He told her then about the cryogenesis, everything except about Chaniece and his children. When he finished, Ricki gave him a shaky smile. "All this time, I thought you were so young for me. Now it turns out you're almost twice my age."
He laughed unevenly. Then he held out his hand. "Do you still want me, after hearing what an irresponsible screw-up I am?"
Ricki came up on the dais and took his hand. "I don't see any irresponsible screw-ups in this room."
Del pulled her into his arms and held her close, laying his head on hers. A tear squeezed out under his eyelashes. His hands wandered down her back, each caress a healing balm.
He pulled her onto the bed, and they lay together. She was gentler tonight, helping him slide off her clothes and his own. He entered her with a sense of homecoming, but it wasn't real, because even his home was an illusion he could only see but never own. His legs moved against the soft skin of her inner thighs, her stomach firm beneath his, her breasts full in his hands as he thrust inside of her, slow and strong. He rose on the crest of their desire, the intensity of his pleasure drowning his emotions, yet no matter how high it took him, it wasn't enough. He loved her in the Moon's soft gravity, as if that reaffirming act of life could banish a pain within him that never disappeared.
XX:
Rising Diamond
Zachary stalked into Ricki's office while she was working on a new virt for the Conquistadors. She looked up with a start.
"Zach," she said. "How's it going?"
"It's been better." He dropped into a console chair near her desk and brought up the holos she was viewing. "This is crap."
"Thanks," she said crossly. "You do good work, too." Unfortunately, he was right. She couldn't concentrate. She had Del on the mind. A Ruby prince? She didn't know whether to be thrilled or run the other way. Their interlude on the Moon two days ago had been a dream, both ethereally beautiful and heartbreaking. Del hadn't wanted to talk about what she had overheard, but she would never forget. Listening to his monumentally overwhelming brother dismiss the central passion of Del's life as if it were nothing had been one of the most painful moments of her career. Hearing the love behind his brother's words only made it worse.
The more Ricki saw Del create, the more she heard of his inspiration, the more she knew she was seeing the genuine article. As a child, she had loved music, the one joy she had shared with her father. Nothing she had ever done had seemed good enough for him, but he liked to hear her sing. And then he left anyway. She had never seen music the same after that, and over the years she had become so jaded, she no longer believed true artists existed.
Del proved her wrong. She couldn't love him, she didn't dare risk it, but it was happening and she didn't know how to make it stop. She had no desire to be a notch in his belt. It was too complicated to unravel. He always held back, even when he had loved her with such passion on the Moon.
"Ricki?" Zachary asked.
"Sorry." She mentally shook herself. "I've been cranking this virt all day and it's zeroware."
Zachary scowled at her. "Do you think you could talk in English for once? I have no idea what the fuck you just said."
"What, you like profanity better?" She let out a breath and spoke more calmly. "Zeroware. Like old-fashioned software. Or meshware. Except it's nothing ware. The band and I spent three hours looking for images, and none of us are happy with the results."
Zachary flicked through the holos of bullfighters swirling their capes into starry fields of nebulae. "These aren't bad."
"I was thinking a Spanish theme. The Conquistadors are hot right now."
He kept bringing up images, but Ricki didn't think he was really looking at them. Finally she said, "What's up?"
He swiveled the chair to face her. "Do you remember the Eubian act that Acquisitions wants to sign to our Classics label?"
"Eubian?"
"Traders."
"Oh. Yeah, vaguely," Ricki said. "Wasn't there some problem with who would sign the contract?"
Zachary shifted his weight. "The musicians don't have the authority to do it. An Aristo lord has to sign."
"All sorts of acts do that. For a while, I thought Del was going to delegate everything to Mac Tyler." Del had turned out to be a lot savvier than any of them expected.
"This isn't the same." Zachary regarded her uneasily. "The musicians can't sign. They can't do anything without this guy's permission. Because he owns them."
Ricki snorted. "A lot of managers think they own the act. And yeah, it can get ugly. But they have to work that out themselves."
"I don't think you understand. He owns them. Literally."
Ricki laughed. "You make it sound like they're his slaves."
Zachary didn't smile. "They are."
"That can't be." She wondered what was up. "They're an accomplished act. Phenomenal, that guy in Acquisitions said."
"They are," Zachary said. "Except for this one 'little' thing. I just finished going over the changes the reps from Tarex want in the contract."
"Tarex? What is that?"
"Tarex Interstellar. It's a Eubian entertainment conglomerate. Axil Tarex, the chief executive officer, owns the musicians." He pushed his hand across his silvered hair. "The alterations in the contract specify that Tarex has to sign all agreements, receive all income, and make all decisions regarding the act."
"Sure, it's rigid," Ricki said. "But it isn't unheard of."
Zachary shook his head. "I've never seen language like this. It refers to the musicians as products."
"We've been accused of the same," Ricki said dryly.
"I mean, literally." He stared at her. "That contract says Axil Tarex owns them. Legally owns. Slaves, Ricki."
She didn't want to hear this. It made her too uncomfortable. "But that's just a nomenclature thing, right? Traders don't really own people. Not the way we think of it. It's a label."
"I don't think so." Zachary shifted his weight. "I talked to Staver Aunchild. He's livid. He used words far less polite than 'label.' "
Ricki moved holofiles around on her desk. "He's Skolian. They're always upset with the Traders. They just had a war."
"I know. But he's gruesomely articulate when he's upset." He slapped the arm of his chair. "That group didn't seem misused when I met them. Just happy to sign with an Allied label."
"So how would our refusing to sign them achieve anything? If we sign them, they'll reach a new market. That should please Tarex, which would be good for them." A thought came to her. "If they're unhappy, they could defect to Earth after a concert or something."
His voice tightened. "Are you suggesting we encourage them to an action that's a political and legal bombshell? You do realize you could be arrested for that."
"Arrested by who?" Ricki demanded. "Axil Tarex has no sway on Earth."
"He's a powerful man," Zachary said. "On a scale far beyond anything we deal with."
Ricki thought of Del. If only you knew. But she saw his point. "Of course I would never encourage a Eubian citizen to defect."
"Make sure of it." He leaned forward. "Because if we sign the act, we have to deal with this Aristo."
"I don't know anything about Aristos." The only person in that stratum of power she had dealt with was Del, who probably had as much in common with this conglomerate king as a harp had with the cry of a banshee.
"Tarex is coming to Earth," Zachary said. "I want you to meet him. Tell me what you think."
Well, hell's pails. She could imagine how Del would react. Maybe she should send him on another tour. Fast. "When will Tarex be here?"
"I'll let you know as soon as we do." He stood up, brushing nonexistent wrinkles out of his jumpsuit. "We'll do dinner with him. You can bring a guest. And yes, that means Del. I'm sure Tarex will be looking at our other acts."
Ricki couldn't envision a bigger disaster. "Looking for what? To buy?"
"To sign. And no, they don't expect to own an Allied act. Just rights to sell the work, same as with the Skolians." He lifted his hands as if to say, What can I do? "It's a lucrative market, Ricki, bigger than the Allied and Skolian combined."
She didn't want to imagine the furor if Tarex tried to sign a Ruby Heir. What a nightmare. Realizing how odd her horrified reaction would seem to Zachary, she forced out a smile. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks."
After Zachary left, Ricki went to the mahogany bar in her office and poured herself a glass of good, strong whiskey.
By the time Del submerged into the virt session, his mind was twisted into knots. He had spent four days without the bliss. He couldn't think straight, couldn't concentrate, couldn't eat. He had trouble rehearsing. Headaches and disorientation plagued him, and he felt as if he were balanced on the edge of a convulsion.
The session took him to Lyshriol—his version, the home he created out of his longings. Except he had no home. His family would never accept him. They condemned him for not letting them know about his life, but why would he? They would just tell him that he would fail. Or die. Or screw up. Because of course he was inconsiderate, immature, and irresponsible. Nothing he did would ever be good enough unless he became exactly like them. Even if he hadn't hated the idea, he didn't have the intelligence to be what they wanted. He couldn't do it.
Del had figured out how to program the node, though. He
had to focus on what he wanted, directing the thought rather than letting his mind relax. He also had tags, like thinking "walrus" to alert the node he wanted to alter its code.
Today he deleted his family.
He took out his mother, who had told him here in his foolish fantasy that she appreciated his music. He took out Kelric and Dehya and Windar and his other siblings. He even took out Chaniece and the boys, because it hurt too much knowing he could never be a true father, for he could never join his life with their mother the way a man should with the woman who bore his children. When he finished erasing them all, he lay in the rippling plain beneath the soft sky and cried.
"It's a relic," Cameron said.
Tyra considered his comment. "More like a museum," she decided.
"Naw," Jud said. "A mausoleum."
Del ignored them. To him, the bookstore was exquisite. In the three months since he had taken Ricki to the Moon, he had looked everywhere for a real store like this. It evoked a simpler life, a time when people wrote songs with pencils, before the world became too complex to hold on a piece of ordinary paper. Everywhere he turned on Earth, people streamed their lives to consoles, picked it out of the airwaves, or lived in a virt. Only a few antique stores existed that sold that rare commodity, a book with printed pages. Permanent printing. No holos, changing fonts, living ink, hypertext, supertext, ultratext, or pretext.
Del loved the Almond Bar Book Shoppe in Baltimore. He loved holding the tomes with leather covers and gilt-edged pages. He listened to the AI guide on each shelf describe the texts and then picked out four: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, because it was huge and sounded like it applied to almost everything in human existence; Plato's Republic, because the sample the guide read impressed him; The Rake by Mary Jo Putney, because it was about a misbehaved playboy who straightened out his life and found love; and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, because it sounded fun. Jud wandered down another aisle, and Tyra and Cameron walked with Del, surveying the store and pretending they weren't bodyguards.