Oh, shit.
"I was strolling through the m-verse to see if you were getting play," Ricki said. "And golly, farm boy, look what I found. Seems you've been playing a lot."
Kendra's voice rose into the air. " . . . one of Baltimore's hottest new singers. But don't let that rock star reputation turn you away. Del Arden is a sweetheart."
"He took us to dinner," Talia said, her dimples in full force. "What a night!"
Kendra laughed sensuously. "Talia, you're the innocent one. That's why you just watched."
Talia's cheeks reddened. "Watched what?"
"Nothing much," Kendra admitted. "But his kiss is dynamite." She looked out of the holo with satisfaction. "What a dream. Del Arden. Pick up his latest cube. It's called The Jewels Suite."
"A dinner date with two of them," Ricki murmured. "With you for dessert. How charming."
Del's face was flaming. "They asked me to sign my vid. So I took them out to dinner."
"For asking you to scribble your name on a little box of glim-flex? Gosh, you're nice." She snapped her fingers and the holo vanished. "What else, Mister Sexpot Arden?" Her voice was no less dangerous for its silken tone.
"I didn't do anything," Del said. "Just one kiss. Then I stopped. Because I thought of you." Which was true. No wonder Mac had told him not to get involved with his producer. This could turn into a nightmare. "We left the virt after—"
"You were in a virt?" Ricki sat up so fast, the covers flew off her body. "You were fooling around with those two bee-brains in a sim? Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Del sat up, boiling. "I guess I'm stupid, Ricki. I can't imagine why you would bother with me. I should just leave."
"No! Don't you understand? The vid's recorded!" She looked as if she wanted to shake him. "Anything you did with those little groupies is in their cubes. You know what virtisos are?"
"I don't care." He yanked the covers off and started to get out of the bed.
Ricki pulled him back. "They could do whatever they want with those files."
He stared at her, jolted out of his anger. It hadn't occurred to him they might fool with his holos. They had seemed so nice. They were nice. Nothing he picked up from their minds had set off his mental alarms.
"What did you mean, virtiso?" he said.
"They're fans who follow around celebrities." She let go of his arm. "They try to get to know the star so they can build more realistic sims. They like real recordings because it's easier to crack the security on those. The images from a session you do with other people don't have as many protections as images we put in when we make the virt. If those girls figure out how to unlock their session with you, they could edit your images. Like take out your clothes. You want naked holos of you all over the mesh? Del Arden, the prince of prurience."
Del's face flamed. The Skolian Assembly would have collective heart failure if nude images of him showed up in public. He would have heart failure. He would die of embarrassment.
"Kendra and Talia wouldn't do that," he said.
"My God, you're naïve," Ricki said.
"I really didn't do anything with them. Except one kiss."
"And next time?" she asked coldly.
"Who says there will be a next time?"
"You're a rock singer." She sounded like she wanted to hit him for something he hadn't even done. "There'll be a next time."
"Why are you so sure?" Del touched her lips. "I don't know what you want. A boyfriend? To own me? To mold me into something that isn't real? I don't think I can be what you want."
She sat, waiting. Then she said, "And?"
"And what?"
"The words that follow a statement like that are usually, 'Maybe we should take a break from each other.' "
A flush spread through him. "Is that what you want?"
It was a moment before she answered. "I don't think so." She had a stillness about her, but even with her instinctive mental shields raised, her apprehension leaked to him. He couldn't tell what it meant. He thought she wanted to say no, it isn't what I want and couldn't bring herself to speak the words, but maybe that was just his ego misleading him into believing she wanted him.
"And do you?" she asked.
His perception shifted. Did he want to end it? Knowing his family would disapprove of her didn't put him off. If anything, it made him want her more. Hell, he would like her even if they liked her. She understood him in ways no one else ever had. But he had no idea how to deal with her.
"I don't want to stop seeing you," he said. "But I can't handle things this way. You disappear in the morning. You try to control my life. I'm not your toy. I hate it when you treat me that way."
"I can only be myself," she said. "You may want things from me I can't give."
Disconcerted, Del said, "That's supposed to be my line."
She blinked. "It is?"
"I've used it too many times." It wasn't something he was proud about.
She actually smiled. "You're kidding."
"Why would I be kidding?" he asked, miffed.
"You seem . . . I don't know. More innocent than that. But maybe not. I don't know. You seem experienced and innocent at the same time." She made a frustrated noise. "Oh boggers, I can't figure it out."
Del couldn't help but laugh. "Boggers? What does that mean?"
"Stop trying to distract me," she growled. "What 'too many times' have you used that line?"
Del didn't want to talk about it, but he doubted she would show him any mercy until he did. So he said, "My girlfriends on Lyshriol were like me. Naïve, I suppose. People marry young there. In a place like that, sure, I seemed experienced. But compared to your life, I'm not." He stopped, flushing. "If that makes sense."
"It explains a lot." She considered him with an unsettling scrutiny. "Why were you different from other people there?"
"It's nothing."
"It's never nothing. Didn't you want to be like your friends?"
Del clenched his fist in the quilt. "What friends? The ones who betrayed me?"
Her voice quieted. "You sound furious."
Del lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Apparently it picked up his agitation, either from his body language or messages Ricki's bed sent it, because it changed from dim grey to soothing ripples of green and blue light, as if he were underwater.
"You know that song 'Emeralds'?" he said.
She was sitting next to him, watching his face. "The one about jealousy."
"You know it's about that?"
" 'Green as the bitter nail / They drove into my name / I won't try to fail / Just to satisfy their game.' " Ricki grimaced. "We've all known people like that."
"I was fourteen. It was a group of boys older than me. They pretended to be my friends." It was the curse of being an empath; self-delusion was impossible. They had hated him for his title, his family, his singing, and most of all because of Chaniece. "They wanted my twin sister. But I wouldn't even let them talk to her." He had known exactly what they wanted to do to her. Their craving had been so intense, he had caught the images from their minds. No way in seven hells would he have let them near her.
"What happened?" Ricki asked.
"One night I went swimming at the lake. They snuck up there and caught me when I came out of the water."
"Did they hurt you?"
"They beat the crap out of me." The unwelcome memories jolted him. "I thought they were going to kill me. I screamed for help, and one of my brothers heard. He knew mai-quinjo, a form of hand-to-hand combat. He got them off me, even with one of him and five of them. If he hadn't—" He was shaking from the furious memories. "If I wouldn't let them at my sister, I would do, right? What great revenge. Fuck the helpless kid senseless." Del took a deep breath. "But my brother stopped them."
She splayed her hand on his chest. "No wonder you get so angry when you sing that song."
"You could tell?" He had thought he hid his emotions better.
"Only because I know you." She lifted he
r hand in a gesture that mirrored a move in mai-quinjo. "You know those dance steps you do, like this? Some look like martial arts moves."
"They are." In his youth, Del had shown only a desultory interest in the combat training he and his brothers learned, but after that night at the lake, he had vowed to become a master.
"And the girls?"
Del really didn't want to talk about this while he was in bed with his girlfriend. "Well, you know."
She wasn't letting him off that easily. "No, I don't."
Oh, what the hell. "The first time I seduced a girl, a few weeks later, I just wanted to know I could, that the whole thing at the lake hadn't changed me or that they hadn't seen something about me I didn't know myself. And with the girl . . . well, you know." He smiled. "It was fun. So I kept doing it. Proving my manhood to myself."
Instead of getting angry, she got a glint in her eyes. "You should have seduced every one of those bastards' sisters."
Gods, what a thought. It would have started a war between him and the other youths that probably wouldn't have ended until someone died. "Althor, my brother, told me to keep away from them. So I did. And he told my 'friends' he would kill them if they ever bothered me again." Del let out a strained breath. "What scared me the most was that he meant it."
"Because they attacked someone he loved."
"Not just that." Del had never talked about this before, not even with the therapist his parents had sent him to when he was fifteen, when they were trying to understand why their son had turned so unrepentantly promiscuous. "Althor was everyone's idol. The great hero. Smart, strong, powerful, handsome. He grew up into a man everyone admired. An honor student at the military academy. A decorated fighter pilot." Bitterly he said, "Until the war killed him."
"I'm sorry," Ricki said softly.
"You don't know what it was like for him." The words had been pent up in Del, but now he released the dam. "Imagine being considered the epitome of everything masculine in a sexually rigid culture. And he didn't like women."
Ricki squinted at him. "You mean he didn't like them as people? Or that he was gay."
"I don't know what gay means. He liked women fine as people, he just didn't want them as lovers. Except on Lyshriol, a man can't love a man." Del remembered as if it had all just happened, though it was nearly sixty years ago. "He had to live in a culture where people practically worshipped him, but they would turn on him with hatred if they knew the truth. When he saw how my 'friends' planned to humiliate me, he lost it." He put his arm over his eyes. "He told me once that one of the cruelest things a person could do to someone was to use their sexuality against them, that it turned love into a field of cruelty."
To Del's surprise, Ricki said, "He's right."
"He was right about a lot of things." His voice cracked. "But he died and I lived, so I guess the universe has no justice."
"Don't be so hard on yourself." She spoke in a gentle voice he had never heard from her before. "You both deserved to live. The injustice is that he died, not that you survived him."
Del lowered his arm so he could see her. He had never guessed this side of her existed. "I wish I'd known you back then."
She was quieter now, her anger either gone or submerged. "I always imagined that a boy who grew up in a rural culture would live a more sheltered life."
He hadn't meant to tell her so much. "You can't shelter people from human nature."
"I guess not. But it inspired your art."
He gave an incredulous laugh. "What art? I make noise. I jump up and down and shout." He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Such talent, and I waste it on trash." He pushed up on his elbows. "What I do is junk. Popular fodder."
"What a load of bullshit," Ricki said. "Who told you that?"
"Admit it! We can spin fantasies all we want, but when you come down to it, my work is garbage."
She scowled at him. "No, when you come down to it, you incredibly stupid man, your work is brilliant."
"Oh come on, Ricki." He mimicked his own singing voice. " 'Running through the sphere-tipped reeds, suns like gold and amber beads.' Yeah, real deep."
"You're singing about the loss of childhood innocence. To make it work, first you have to evoke childhood."
"Compare what I do to the classics. Listen to those words."
"They're all the same!" She launched into a surprisingly good imitation of an operatic soprano. " 'Save me, Lord, have mercy on me, redeemest my sinning ass.' " Dropping back into her own voice, she said, "It only sounds impressive because it's all in Latin."
"The Latin Requiems are beyond compare," Del told her. "What more spiritual way to ask for God's redemption than with that exquisite music?" Ever since Mac had given him the works by Pavarotti, Del had been devouring Earth's music. It was so far beyond anything he had ever done, he didn't see why he bothered with his own work.
"We all create in our own way," Ricki answered. "The Fred Pizwicks of this world will say you're nothing if you don't do it the way he likes or if you commit the even greater sin of doing it better than anyone else. You can't listen to them. Del, you don't have to be redeemed for being different. It isn't wrong."
"My lyrics are trite." Del wanted to stop, to keep it all to himself, but it was pouring out past the holes in the fortress around his feelings Ricki had breached. "My music is stupid."
She took his hand and pressed it as if that were enough to stop his endlessly cycling thoughts. "I don't know who's feeding you this crap, but you should stop listening to them." Softly she said, "Even if their voices are only in your heart."
Del stared at her, wondering what aliens had taken away Ricki and left this compassionate person in her place. "You know," he said. "When you cut out the hard-nosed producer stuff, you can be a really decent person."
She raised an eyebrow. "Meaning I'm not the rest of the time?"
Ai! He should have kept his mouth shut. "Ricki, no. I didn't mean it that way. Only that you're a complicated woman with far more facets than I realized when I met you. A woman worth taking the time to know."
She smiled wryly. "You're very good with those lines."
"It's not a line. I mean it." He took a breath. "I want to keep seeing you, and I hope you feel that way about me."
She spoke wryly. "You know, I can see why you had so much success with all those girls. It isn't just because you know what to say. A lot of men can do that. But you mean it. Women can tell. We know when a guy bullshits us. You don't. That's why we like you."
"You're slipping up," Del said with a grin. "You admitted you liked me."
She scowled at him. "You confuse me."
Dryly he said, "Then we have something in common."
Ricki laughed, then sighed as if in defeat and lay next to him. "Ah, Del. What am I going to do with you?"
He pulled her into his arms and nuzzled her hair while he stroked her breasts. "This."
She held him around his waist. "You have completely too much energy, Mister Arden. We should go to sleep. You have a rehearsal early tomorrow."
Del had revealed so much more of himself tonight than he had ever intended, he decided to take one last plunge. "Promise me something. In the morning, don't leave before I wake up. Get up with me. We can go into the studio together."
She hesitated. "I guess I could do that."
He had an odd sense, as if she had given him far more than he knew. He feared he was getting in deeper with her than he could handle. But maybe he thought too much. What happened, happened. This new life of his might end tomorrow, but as long as it went on, he wouldn't freeze himself with the fear of losing either his heart or his life.
* * *
Del's first stop on his new tour was at the Blues Town Café in a Pennsylvania college town. Eighty people jammed the place. Cameron stood by the door with his feet planted wide and his arms crossed, wearing his supposedly mock urban-camouflage fatigues, which were probably the real thing. How Cameron managed to look so trendy while being so blatantl
y military, Del had no idea.
Jud turned down his morpher, Randall turned down his stringer, and Anne took it easy on her drums so she didn't break everyone's eardrums. They didn't even have a stage. Del just stood at the front of the room and sang. He felt good. Ricki had stayed with him that night he spent with her, and his rehearsals were going well. Tonight his voice filled the place, and he let go, stepping from side to side, having fun.
The audience loved it. Their energy poured into him, and he gave it back. They wouldn't let him stop. The show went an hour longer than scheduled, until finally the cafe owner said she had to close because of zoning ordinances. In Del's heightened empathic state, he could tell she was pleased. She had made more money tonight than in the past two months combined.
Afterward, they piled into the hover-van and headed to West Virginia for the next show. It took Del a while to come down from the high of the concert. He wished he had a virt to submerge into, to relax his mental knots, but he didn't feel anywhere near as wound-up tonight as after the bigger shows.
Around four in the morning, Del drifted to sleep, slouched in one of the long seats toward the front of the van. After a while, someone shook him.
Del opened his eyes blearily. "What?"
"They want you to listen," Cameron said. He was in the next seat over.
"Huh?" Del slowly pulled himself up straight. Jud, Bonnie, Randall, and Anne were in the circular seat at the back of the van, all bent over Jud's mesh screen.
"Del! Listen to this." Jud turned up the mesh audio, and a voice rose into the air. Del's voice:
Shimmering radiance above,
Softening this lost man's love.
"Hey," Del said. "That's 'Diamond Star.' " He rubbed his eyes. By the time he came fully awake, the song had finished. It was the shortened version Prime-Nova had released from his vid.
"Why are you picking up a Baltimore feed here?" Del asked.
Anne raised her head and met his gaze, her eyes warm. "It wasn't Baltimore. That was continental."
"Continental?" Del's groggy mind couldn't absorb her meaning.
"The North American holo-rock chart," Bonnie said.
"This is the caption with the song," Jud said. He flicked a holo, and an eight-inch-tall image of Del in a white shirt and leather pants formed above the mesh. A man said, "That was 'Diamond Star' by Del Arden, from his anthology, The Jewels Suite. Register your votes at the North American Central Node."
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