Diamond Star (31 page)

"Let's go," Del said. He felt like they were on their own covert operation. Mission Rock Festival. Hah! His Imperator brother would have a fit.

Del tucked his hair under a green cap and donned the goggles. Everything turned blue, like the lenses. Mac carried the sack with Del's clothes for the concert, and Cameron opened the door. As they stepped into the late afternoon sunlight, Del inhaled the fresh air. Jud claimed that long ago the people of Earth had almost destroyed the atmosphere with pollution. They must have cleaned it up, because it smelled wonderful, and
right,
appealing to him at some instinctual level.

"Nice day," Cameron said.

"Yeah." Del watched the crowd as he and Cameron headed for the tent. Everyone was blue.

A woman with blue-blond hair peered at him. "Aren't you Del Arden?"

Damn. How could she tell? "No," Del said. Cameron moved between him and the woman.

A man on Del's other side said, "Hey! It
is
him."

"Can't be," a kid said. "Arden isn't playing the festival."

Del shot Mac an alarmed look, then realized no one could see his eyes behind the goggles.

Someone pushed Mac. At the same time, the woman who had first spoken stepped past Cameron. As the Marine gently caught her arm, someone behind Del dragged his goggles around his neck and pulled at his cap. Flustered, Del grabbed the cap. He was too late; his hair fell out in its distinctive spill of curls.

"It's Del Arden," someone said. "Look! Over here!"

The people pressed closer. Cameron loomed at Del's side, holding his arm, and Mac took Del's other arm.

"Del, we love you," a woman called.

Del grinned at her. "Hey, I love you, too."

Another woman grabbed his hair. While Cameron fended her off, someone yanked Del's shirt, then let go when it didn't rip. Someone else shoved at Mac, and he swore as he stumbled.

Del was getting flustered, as more people tugged his clothes. The crowd stretched everywhere, rumbling. Someone yelled, but they were too far away to make out words. Excitement rolled over the throng, and the smell of cooking meat assaulted Del's senses. Then a woman pulled him to the side and kissed him, her lips soft on his cheek. He didn't know whether to kiss her back or run. Cameron hustled him away, but they had lost Mac. Looking around, Del glimpsed his manager a few paces back. The older man was flushed, and Del worried someone might knock him over.

Someone dragged Del away from Cameron. Several someones. Four women, with spiky hair and pretty faces. They were running their hands through Del's curls, which he would have liked, except everything was jagged and confused and happening too fast. One kissed him, pressing her lips against his. Del lost his balance and started to fall. More people pushed in, and for one dizzying moment he thought he was going down under the crush of their feet.

Cameron heaved him back up. "Move aside," the Marine barked at everyone. "Let him through."

The tent loomed in front of them, its entrance shimmering. A guard motioned them in, his gaze darting to the crowd. Then Del was inside and everything went quiet, the chaos muted. A thump came from outside, but no one followed them. He realized then that the shimmer he kept seeing was a molecular airlock around the tent. From school, he vaguely remembered the airlock was something called a "lipid membrane," with a variable permeability. Del hadn't learned the biochemistry that well, but he understood the result; you could tune the membrane to be leaky or watertight to many things, including air--or people.

"Hey!" Jud said as they all gathered around Del. "You okay?"

"I'm fine!" Del said, laughing. "Those people are crazy, though. Did you see those girls?" He looked around behind him. "Mac got pushed--oh! There you are." Mac was coming toward him, disheveled but otherwise fine.

Anne let out a breath. "That was some gauntlet."

"I've seen people line up for autographs," Jud said. "But never anything like the way they were grabbing you."

"You all right?" Mac asked Del as he came up to them.

"Sure." Del felt queasy, but it was because people had been shoving Mac, not him. "You're the one I was worried about."

"I'm fine," Mac assured him. "That was bizarre, though."

"They like him," Anne said. Though she smiled, she looked as uneasy as Del felt. "A
lot.
"

Del had no objection to people liking him. But if it meant he would be trampled, he could do with a little less friendship.

Mac stood in the darkened wings of the stage, watching Del. Despite the short notice, the gauntlet an hour ago, and unfamiliar instruments for the band, it was Del's best concert yet. Instead of drowning in empathic stage fright, he embraced the effect, amplifying the audience's excitement. Mac suspected that many performers who were considered "magnetic" did something similar, giving back emotions they picked up. Del strode across the stage, wailing in his magnificent baritone, his voice soaring. He stopped at the front and knelt down, crooning to a woman:

Angel, be my diamond star
Before my darkness goes too far
Splinter through my endless night
Lightening my darkling sight

Why your darkness?
Mac had always wondered who Del was singing to in "Diamond Star."

When Del finished, he shouted to the audience. "Thank you all for coming. You've been great!"

A roar surged from the crowd overflowing the meadows in this former industrial complex outside Chicago, which over the centuries had softened into a luxuriant parkland. People flattened the grass, camping out, picnicking, playing sports, dancing. Most could only hear the music through the globes that whirred and spun everywhere.

The audience applauded, cheered, and stamped as the band left the stage. Mac stood with the vibration of those pounding feet shuddering through him and wished he didn't feel as if they were coming to trample the young man who stirred up all that fervor.

Del and Jud came over to him. "Hey," Del said, smiling. "I think they liked it."

Mac smiled. "You're into understatement tonight." It pleased him to see Del so calm despite the huge audience.

"It's so hard to believe this is happening." Del stared at the people, gazing past the light amplifiers that hid him from the crowd. Jud stood at his side, a wordless support. They made a good team, Jud as the musical genius who brought Del's songs alive.

The pounding increased, and people waved mesh screens over their heads, thousands at once, until a sea of glittering light rippled around the stage. Anne and Randall came over to Del, their faces flushed, and Cameron stood nearby, looming and silent.

"We better do the encore," Anne said with a husky laugh. "Before they shake down the stage."

Del grinned. "Let's go!"

They ran back out, and the audience screamed. So
many.
Mac wondered what incredible force rose out of the raw, driving soul of rock, that it could bring six hundred thousand people together with such energy. Del had no idea of the power he wielded.

Mac hoped he never found out.

XIV: The Star Road

"What's this?" Anne asked. She was relaxing on the hotel couch, her long legs stretched across a table in front of it while she looked through a holofile of Del's songs. " 'Carnelians'? That sounds like part of
The Jewels Suite.
"

"It was," Del said as he sank into an absurdly expensive armchair. Randall stood at the bar, pouring himself a drink. Jud was working on the console near the window, with holos of musical notes floating in the air.

Anne sang the first verse of "Carnelians":

You dehumanized us; your critics, they died
You answered defiance with massive genocide
Hunt us as your prey, assault, and enslave
Force us bound to stay, for pleasures that you crave

Randall wandered over. "That's strong stuff."

Del shifted uneasily. "Mac said it was too political."

Jud glanced up at them. "What's it about?"

Del knew if he said
the Trader Aristos,
they'd ask questions he didn't want to answer. So he just said, "Oppression, I suppose."

"This isn't your usual stuff." Anne continued singing:

They strangled our summers, your Carnelian Sons
You anguished the mothers, in your war of suns
With a heart that freezes, you shattered my kin
You thought you were leaving no one who could win

She flipped through more of the holofile. "You have two versions here with different music."

"It's not finished," Del said. He wished she would put it away. Before he could say anything more, though, the door hummed.

"Who's that?" Randall asked. He downed the rest of his ouzo.

Jud switched his console to a view of the entryway. A group of gorgeous people in glimmer-glam clothes stood outside, including Ricki.

Del sat up straighter. "So let them in."

The door opened, and the sleek crowd swept inside: Mac, Ricki, Staver Aunchild, and several execs from Prime-Nova.

"Hey, babe." Ricki swayed over, dynamite in a clingy blue dress that covered her from neck to knee and yet somehow made her look as if she was wearing nothing.

"Hey," Del said. He was still angry at her, but he missed her, too. In his youth, he would have rebuffed her to avoid dealing with his tangled emotions, but he couldn't do that anymore. Since they couldn't talk about it now, either, he just watched her. When she leaned over him, he grabbed her around the waist and yanked her into his lap. He no longer cared what people thought about them.

"Stop that," she murmured, kissing him, her lips warm against his. When he tried to pull her closer, she slipped out of his lap and onto a couch next to him.

Conversation swirled as people settled into seats or went to the bar. Ricki called someone over to give Del a drink, and soon he had a gin and tonic. He set it on the table by his chair.

"I don't see your point," Staver said. He was talking to one of the Prime-Nova execs, a man named Orin something. "So what if the Trader Empire has no Kyle technology. That doesn't make them any less despicable."

Del blinked. It was strange to hear an argument about the Traders here, in his protected circle of friends on Earth.

"How's the tour?" Ricki asked Del, sipping her drink.

"It's good," Del said, half his attention on her and half on the argument between Staver and the exec.

Ricki followed his gaze and grimaced as if she had taken a bite of a sour fruit. "They've been arguing all morning." She indicated the exec. "That's Orin Jenkins, from Acquisitions."

"From what?" Del asked.

"Acquisitions," she said. "Vid-bids. They find new talent. He's thinking of signing a Eubian band."

That felt like a blast of cold air. "You mean the Traders?"

"That's right. Did you know
they
call themselves the Eubian Concord? It's Skolians who say Traders, supposedly because the Eubians sell people." Ricki waved her glass at Staver. "He's pissed off."

It didn't surprise Del. He didn't want to be on the same planet as a Trader band.

"I don't know what the hell is 'Kyle technology,' " Orin was saying. "Some mumbo-jumbo about telepathy."

"Kyle space is just another universe," Staver said. "Except your thoughts determine where you are there. If you think about Pittsburg, then you're close to everyone else who's thinking about Pittsburg even if in our universe they're across the galaxy."

Orin snorted a laugh. "I think, therefore I move?" He looked across the suite at Ricki and winked. "If that were true, I wouldn't be here, Staver dear. I'd be over there on the couch."

"Sorry," Staver said dryly. "
You
don't go into Kyle space. Only your thoughts. You can think about her all you want, but you can't touch."

"Too bad," Orin said.

Del was simmering, but before he could tell Orin to go flip himself off, Ricki laid her hand on his arm. "Let it go, babe," she murmured. "He's just spouting."

He gritted his teeth, caught off guard by the intensity of his reaction. After all, she had to put up with those news holos of women kissing him at the Chicago concert. He needed to unsnarl his responses to her. He had thought he was incapable of anything except a casual love affair, but he was no longer the kid who could convince himself he didn't want more.

"I've heard about this Kyle space," Orin said. "But if you can't go into it, what's the point?"

"Think about it," Staver said. "If you talk to someone with a Kyle link, you're right next to them, even if in our universe you're on different planets. That's how we get instant communication across such huge distances. Our laws of physics don't apply there, so the speed of light has no meaning."

Orin shook his head. "Your Kyle space has no substance. No physical evidence."

"You want evidence?" Staver said. "Interstellar civilization as we know it wouldn't exist if we didn't have fast communications. We live a real-time existence. We could talk right now to someone in another star system if we had access to the Kyle-mesh. Imagine if it took months, years, even centuries to send a message."

"Starships carry messages," Orin said. "And they get around light speed. I don't understand the physics, but at least it can be demonstrated in the real world."

Mac spoke up. "The physics is pretty straightforward. You add an imaginary component to your speed. It gets rid of the singularity in the relativistic gamma function. Ships go around the speed of light by detouring into the complex plane."

Ricki made an exasperated noise. "Oh, well, that sounds so simple, Mac, I can't imagine why I didn't think of it myself."

Del laughed softly. "The Varento starship drive. It'll send you out of this world."

Her smile turned sultry. "You bet, babe."

"Sure, ships can carry messages," Staver told Orin. "That still takes time. You can't communicate instantaneously that way."

Orin raised his glass to Staver. "If this Kyle-mesh was so important, my people would have developed one, too."

Staver gave him an unimpressed look. "You can't."

"Sure we can." Orin finished his drink with one swallow.

"How?" Staver asked. He looked genuinely curious. "To use Kyle space, you need psions. To create, power, and maintain a mesh in Kyle space, you need Ruby psions. They're the only ones strong enough. It would fry anyone else's brain."