"Del!" Her smile lit up the screen, and Mac almost missed her next words, he was so flustered. Women that beautiful shouldn't exist; they made it impossible to think. Except then she scowled, and for a moment she looked just like Del.
"What the blazes is this about you staying on Earth?" she said.
"I'm glad to see you, too, Mother," Del said sourly.
"I'm delighted to see you, honey. But if ASC is pressuring you to stay there, we will deal with them." She leaned forward. "You don't have to do this."
"No one is pressuring me," Del said. "I met some people. Musicians. Like me. I want to see more."
"Oh, Del." Roca sighed. "You're wasting that magnificent voice of yours."
He clenched the console. "I don't consider it a waste."
"I can't imagine what Earth could offer that you couldn't do better here."
"I won't know unless I check it out."
Roca gave him a dour look. "I heard the music those soldiers of theirs listened to. You can do better than that. Much better."
Del stiffened. "Maybe I don't want to do 'better' than that. I liked what they listened to."
"It's not safe for you to stay on Earth."
"Why the hell not?"
"Do you have any bodyguards?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Del growled. "A Marine who pretends he's not a Marine."
"And how is that different from ASC holding you in custody?" Roca demanded. "Can't you see this is a trick by General McLane?"
"No, Mother. I'm just too stupid to imagine anyone would ever trick me."
Her golden cheeks flushed red. "Don't take that tone with me, young man."
"Then quit treating me like a child."
Roca's voice went too quiet. "I remember your telling me something like that before you went to Metropoli."
Del looked ready to hit someone. "Yes, I died on Metropoli. I made a stupid, stupid mistake. And you'll hold it over me forever, won't you?"
"Do you have any idea what the lifestyle is like in these 'music scenes'?" Behind the anger in her voice, her strain showed. "I don't want to pick you up in a coffin."
"Damn it, I can't live my entire life afraid to breathe. Why can't you believe I've learned from my mistakes?" Del clenched the edge of the console. "I'm staying here. I'm going to enjoy their music and see this woman. If I choose not to come home, it's my business."
"Woman?" Roca said, sitting up straighter. "What woman?"
Del flushed. "Just, um, somebody I met."
"Don't you ever slow down?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Sometimes . . . discretion is better."
"Why don't you just say it?" Del thumped the console. "Your son is a whore."
"Del, stop it! Don't talk about yourself like that."
"Why not? Isn't it what Devon Majda called me?"
"She most certainly did not. She would never speak that way about a Ruby prince." Roca regarded him steadily. "You would never have agreed to that arranged marriage anyway." She rubbed her eyes, then dropped her arm. "Del, that was years ago."
"Not to me."
"So now you have another girl."
"Woman."
"What's her name? Her family? Does she know who you are?"
"Why ask me?" he asked. "My dear brother, Kelric the Imperator, has spies who will find everything out."
"Del, what a thing to say."
He took a breath and spoke more quietly. "If you're asking, does she know I'm a Ruby Heir, the answer is no. I'm not planning on telling anyone."
Relief washed over her face. "I think that's best."
"Mother, I don't want to argue with you." He regarded her with eyes that, except for their color, were exactly like hers. "Don't fight me on this, all right? If it doesn't work out, I'll come home."
It was a moment before she nodded. "Stay in touch with us."
"I will. I promise."
She let out a breath. "Take care of yourself."
"I will."
After they closed the connection, Del sat staring at the blank screen. When he had been quiet for several moments, Mac came over to him. "I'm sorry."
Del started, as if he had forgotten about Mac. "For what?"
"For being here."
"It's all right. If I had wanted you to leave, I'd have asked. Anyway, it's done." His voice lightened. "For me. I wouldn't want to be Fitz McLane right now. When Mother is done letting him know what she thinks, he'll think a hurricane hit him."
Mac could imagine. What a way to go, though, lambasted by one of the most beautiful women alive. "If you want to stay, our government has neither the reason nor the wish to deport you. Just make sure you get the proof of your age."
"I will."
Mac didn't know what else to say. He saw only the scars left by whatever had hurt Del and his family; he had no idea what caused them.
He just hoped it didn't end up destroying Del.
V: Openings
Del heard the crowd at the Merriweather Post Pavilion before he saw it. They filled the outdoor theater and the meadows that surrounded it, an area that had once been a Maryland city and now stretched in parkland for miles. The hover-van with Del's band pulled up in the secured area behind the huge stage. As he jumped down, he heard the rumble of the audience, tens of thousands of voices filling the air.
Del shuddered. He felt the crowd. The pressure pushed down his mind, and he had to intensify his empathic shields so much, it left him distanced from everyone. Muffled.
The main band, Mind Mix, had already arrived in a nondescript van designed to sneak past the crowds flowing around the stage, as people maneuvered for a glimpse of the stars. The area swarmed with techs, media mixers, and news teams recording the arrival of important musicians. No one paid attention to Del's group as they walked to the housing under the stage.
His band consisted of Jud Taborian and two musicians Mac had found. Del didn't understand their instruments. Jud played the morpher, which looked like a cross between a set of keyboards and a starship control panel. It changed shape according to how Jud played. He could coax it to sound like almost any instrument that resembled a keyboard, even something as exotic as the percussion xylophone. Under Jud's skilled touch, the morpher's AI followed Del's improvisations in rehearsals. Jud had a biochip in his brain he used to jack into the morpher the way one of Del's fighter-pilot brothers would hook into a starship. Del couldn't imagine learning such an instrument, but Jud made it look easy.
Nor had Del ever seen anything like the stringer played by his guitarist, Randall Gaithers. It morphed as well, to sound like Earth instruments that had strings: electric guitars, acoustic guitars, basses, cellos, even an electro-optic violin. Randall often combined several types of strings at once, creating a gorgeously full sound.
Anne Moore played a classical instrument: drums. They fascinated Del. Before coming to Earth, he had never used percussion. The effects added a quality to his music he had known was missing but couldn't pinpoint. She was better than any of the drummers on the vids Mac had sent him. A long-haired beauty, she had a sophistication that didn't fit the Prime-Nova "look." Jud and Randall didn't really fit it, either, Jud with his dreadlocks and Randall with his baggy clothes. It bothered Del to know that if he bombed, the higher-ups would assume his band hadn't worked out because they didn't fit the marketing slots. From the comments Zachary had made, Del wondered if anyone at Prime-Nova even noticed that Del's musicians played better than any of the ones the label hired for their vids.
Mac had also hired a tech. Bonnie. Small and shy, she had soft brown hair and big eyes. Although usually unassuming, she turned into a lion with the equipment. She knew it better than an asteroid miner knew how to dodge space debris. And of course the taciturn, hulking Cameron came with them, too, pretending not to be a Marine. He actually fit in perfectly with the other buzz-haired, impassive roadies. Apparently the military look was hot right now for those who could pull it off. Why they wanted to pull it off, Del had n
o idea, but then, they probably didn't have aggravating military dictators for brothers.
He walked with Randall under the stage. Del was too nervous to talk, especially to Randall, whom he didn't know outside of their rehearsals this past week. So they went in silence down a hallway with swirled tubes of light on the ceiling. Media mixers hurried past, conferring about some indecipherable effects they had dreamed up for the Mind Mix extravaganza. Anne and Jud were ahead of Del, discussing one of his songs, and Mac walked nearby with a stagehand, asking about acoustics. The anticipation that had buoyed Del earlier today had vanished. He felt nauseated. He was going to go out on stage and throw up. He wished he had listened to Mac and told Ricki he couldn't do this. But it was too late. He had to go up there no matter what.
Not that he knew when he would have told Ricki. He hadn't seen her since their night together. Mac knew how to reach her, but Del hadn't yet asked. Perhaps it was his pride, or maybe his uncertainty about what he wanted. She could have left her comm code instead of vanishing without a damn note. He told himself he didn't want involvement, so he should be relieved she didn't put any pressure on him. But that didn't explain why it hurt so much that she ignored him.
The room at the end of the corridor swirled with colors. Del groaned. Having blue walls ripple around him was too much. Too many people were here, everyone keyed up for the concert he was supposed to open in less than thirty minutes. He couldn't handle the empathic onslaught. He was shutting down, and he didn't know how to stop it from happening.
A man with a vaguely familiar face appeared out of the crowd. "Del?" he asked. He turned on a laser-light smile that creased his handsome features. His hair looked brown, though it was so short, Del couldn't tell if it was light or dark.
"Del Arden?" the man asked.
It startled Del to hear his middle name used as his last name. Prime-Nova insisted. They said the name "Valdoria" was too long, as if humans had devolved past the ability to deal with four syllables. General McLane wanted the change, too. Del didn't see why; the Valdoria name was virtually unknown. People knew the Ruby Dynasty by the name Skolia, as in the Skolian Imperialate. But even Mac told him to change it, so Del had quit arguing.
"Yes, I'm Del Arden," Del said.
"Good to meet you." The man stuck out his hand.
Del shook his hand, confused. "Hello."
Another man came over, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with low-slung trousers and a slouch to match his scowl. "Hey." He looked Del over. "So you're the opener?"
"That's right," Del said. Now he recognized them from holos Mac had shown him. The first man was Rex Montrow, the vocalist for Mind Mix, and the other was Tristan Holtrane, their drummer.
"Sorry about the rehearsal peat muck-up today," Rex said. "Our corking flight was three hours over in the City and we missed our linker here."
"It's, uh, all right," Del said. He barely understood what Rex had just said. "We rehearsed anyway." He hadn't felt shaky when they had gone through his set earlier today. He'd been fine. But then, he hadn't had forty thousand people listening to him.
"Great," Rex said, a little too heartily. "We've been doing three-hour shows. Having you soap up that first hour will help."
Tristan glowered at Del with the brooding stare that made him famous. Del had thought it looked forced in vids, but now the drummer seemed genuinely angry. If Del hadn't been on the edge of an empathic overload, he would have eased down his shields enough to figure out why. But if he tried that now, he would probably go catatonic.
"Where else have you played?" Rex asked. Although he sounded friendly, an edge underlay his voice.
"Offworld," Del said. What could he tell them—that their warm-up act had zero experience? If he had been Tristan, he would have glared, too.
"Offworld what?" Tristan demanded. "Pony shows?"
"Hey." Rex shook his head at the drummer.
Another man came up, a blond exactly the same height as Rex and Tristan, sporting the same muscular build and a similar face, with regular features and a straight nose. Jessup Tackman, the morpher for Mind Mix. Even their names sounded similar. Del wondered why Prime-Nova didn't just clone their artists.
Tackman grinned at Rex and said what sounded like. "Hoyce says the lonny sardines are packed tight. Forty Kay."
What? Del knew Tackman came from a place called Australia, but he had thought they spoke English there.
Someone touched Del's elbow. Rex looked past Del and turned on his smile, Tackman nodded to someone behind Del, and Tristan aimed his scowl in that direction.
"Hey, Mac," Rex said.
With relief, Del turned to find Mac next to him.
"Good to see you," Mac said to Rex. He took Del's arm. "I'm going to steal him before you three wear him out."
Although they all chuckled at that, it sounded forced.
Del went with him, glad to escape Tristan's glower. "I don't look right, Mac. I need to cut my hair."
"You can't," Mac said.
"What do you mean, I can't?"
"It's in your contract," Mac said. "Remember? You agreed to a costume clause."
"I thought that meant I couldn't wear anything Prime-Nova found offensive."
Mac spoke dryly. "As far as they're concerned, that includes changing your style. They hired a singer with lots of curls. You need their okay to stop having curls."
"That's ridiculous!"
"Yeah, but it's how they do business." Mac led him to a corner where a beefy man in faux urban-camouflage fatigues and a woman with straight black hair were arguing.
"He's got triple the allowed levels," the woman was saying. "It's the third time this tour. Hell, Curtis, it's the third time in the past two weeks."
"He has to go on." The man, Curtis apparently, was shouting. "You aren't the police, Soo-Ling. You can't shut down the act."
"He signed a contract." She tossed a holofile at him, and he barely caught it. "If Tackman can't keep clean, I'll have him kicked off that stage."
Mac cleared his throat, but Curtis and Soo-Ling ignored him. "If you disrupt this tour," Curtis said, waving the holofile, "Prime-Nova will come down on you with nine-hundred-ton lawyers."
Soo-Ling didn't look the least bit cowed by the threat of overweight lawyers. "Ten thousand dollars," she said. "The fine comes out of his take from the tour."
"Five thousand," Curtis said.
"Hell, no," Soo-Ling said. "Tackman is flying. He keeps this up, he's going to fall apart out there."
Mac cleared his throat again, louder this time.
Soo-Ling swung around. "What the hell do you want?"
"This is Del Arden," Mac said. "The opener."
"Oh." She exhaled and spoke more quietly. "Sorry, Mac." She motioned Del over to a medical station against the wall. "I'll be with you in a minute." Turning to Curtis, she said, "Nine thousand."
Del shot an alarmed look at Mac.
"She's going to check you for drugs," Mac said as they walked to the medical station. "Keep clean. If they catch you drilling, the fines come out of your take for the concert. Too many times, and they'll cut you from the tour."
"They do drug testing for concerts?"
"It's in your contract," Mac said. "Under moral standards."
"I thought those meant I couldn't do anything obscene."
"That, too." Mac stopped by the med station, which resembled a two-tier table on wheels. "Prime-Nova has an agreement with Nacon, the North American Narcotics Administration. If the company polices its artists, Nacon won't arrest them."
Soo-Ling stalked over, still arguing with Curtis, who was apparently Mind Mix's manager. "Get him a babysitter, Curtis." She scowled at Del. "Put your arm in the cuff. And don't argue with me. It's been a long day."
"Soo," Mac said softly.
"Sorry," she muttered.
Del squinted at the med station, which had nothing that looked like a "cuff" to him. The closest was a tube of light glimmering above the top tier. Regarding it dubiously, he put his arm insi
de the tube. Something whirred, and then he couldn't move his arm. Startled, he jerked on it, trying to pull away.
"Hey," Del said, alarmed. "It's got me."
"All you found was neuro-amp," Curtis was telling Soo, oblivious to Del. "How are these guys supposed to go three hours every night with no relief and nothing to keep them awake? It's impossible."
"Tackman should try sleeping." Soo-Ling punched panels on the med station. "Not partying every chance he gets."
"Soo, Del has to go on soon," Mac said.
Del tried harder to free his arm, to no avail. He winced as pins pricked his skin. He couldn't see anything; he just felt it. A display of holos appeared above his arm showing a man's body, including muscles, organs, circulatory system, skeleton, and a neurological map. Symbols scrolled by under the images.
"Uh, could someone get my arm out of this thing?" Del asked.
"They're too overbooked to have a party," Curtis told Soo-Ling. "Maybe if Prime-Nova backed off their tour schedule, they wouldn't be so fucking desperate to stay awake."
Del wasn't surprised Tackman was taking neuro-amps, if he had to deal with bizarre tubes of light while everyone ignored him.
"Well, here's good news." Soo was studying a display on the med station. "Their warm-up is clean. Healthy nanomeds, no chemicals, and no neural stim." She glanced at Del. "Stay that way, babe. You'll have a lot less trouble."
Babe again? Del liked it from Ricki, but he was tired of it from everyone else. With a tube of light holding him prisoner, though, he was too nervous to be annoyed. Besides, except for Bonnie, he was the youngest person here.
The light tube suddenly vanished, and his arm fell onto the padded top of the station. Mac let out a breath, as if he hadn't been sure the cuff would release Del, either.
"Thanks, Soo," Mac said.