Diamond Star

by Catherine Asaro

  "Staver said you're from a Skolian world," she said.

  "Rediscovered world. A stranded Ruby Empire colony."

  "Until the Skolians found you."

  "Not Skolians," Del mumbled. "Earth. Texans, to be precise."

  "Texans!" She chuckled. "What a combination. The ancient, enigmatic Ruby Empire collides with the Lone Star State."

  "With the what?"

  "Don't worry," she murmured. "It's not important."

  Yeah, right. He was starting to see what was going on. Staver had drugged him with a truth serum. It wouldn't work, though. Imperial Space Command had given everyone in Del's family training to deal with interrogation. His siblings in the military even had specialized neurotransmitters in their brains that blocked them from answering certain questions under stress. But gods, what if Staver had given him something his body couldn't handle? Although as far as Del knew, his body wouldn't have a fatal reactions to a truth serum, it wasn't anything he wanted to test.

  He had a good guess why Staver gave him a serum. However abhorrent free humanity might find the Aristo practice of keeping providers, it was legal among the Traders. What Staver and his group were doing was illegal on an interstellar scale. They could go to prison for a long time if the Allied authorities caught them. If the Traders caught them, they would be executed, except anyone like Staver who had more value as a provider. Del didn't doubt Staver would prefer the death penalty to a lifetime of slavery and torture.

  Of course they wanted to know why Del had offered to help. Nor did he blame them for taking precautions. If they hadn't, he wouldn't trust the security of their organization. But he still didn't like being drugged.

  "Del?" Lydia asked. "Are you there?"

  "What?" He tried to focus. "Yeah, I'm here."

  "You were telling me about your home."

  "I was?"

  "That it was one of the ancient colonies."

  "Oh. Well, yeah. But that's boring." He tried to sit up, then sighed and lay down. His vision blurred.

  "You'll feel better in a while," she said.

  "I hope so."

  "Staver told me your family had a run-in with the Traders."

  "My father." Before Del could stop, he said, "And my mother."

  She went very still. "What happened?"

  The words hurt like broken glass. "An Aristo came to our world. He caught my father. My father tried to escape." The words wrenched out. "He was climbing a cliff. The Aristo shot it. It came down on my father. Pulverized his legs. Blinded him. The Aristo kept him like that for days, barely alive, with no treatment. Nothing for the pain." His voice cracked. "My brother Shannon rescued him."

  "My God," Lydia said. "Did your father survive?"

  "Yes. He—yes. Shannon killed the Aristo." The words tore out of him as if they were ripping his insides. "In retaliation, the Aristo's children kidnapped my mother. Our military eventually pulled her out, but—" He struggled to hold back the soul-parching words. "It took my parents a long time to recover."

  "I'm terribly sorry," she said in a soft voice.

  Del spoke unevenly. "In the meantime, I took care of the house, the farm, my father's duties as the Dalvador Bard."

  Her brow furrowed. "Did you say a bard?"

  The words, The King of Skyfall hovered on his lips, a specious title the popular media had given his father. But he managed to say only, "He was a historian for our village. They're called bards."

  "He's lucky he had you to look after things."

  The painful words kept tearing out of him. "After my parents recovered, I took one of the only offworld trips I've ever done. A vacation. I went to Metropoli. And I died there. Great get-well present, Mother and Father. Your idiot son killed himself."

  Silence followed his words. Then Lydia said, "You did what?"

  "I had a lethal reaction to a drug." Del didn't want to open his eyes and look into her confused face.

  "But you're alive."

  "They put me in a cryogenic womb."

  "Until they could revive you?"

  "Yeah, until whenever that happened."

  Lydia exhaled. "No one should have to go through all that."

  He finally looked at her, accusing with his gaze. "And I never tell that to anyone. What did you do to me?"

  She stroked his head, her touch soothing. "It's nothing."

  He shoved away her hand. "Like hell it isn't. You just ripped out very private pieces of my life."

  A man walked out of the shadows behind Lydia. Staver. "We had to be sure," he said. "We gave you teracore."

  Del recognized the name. "A truth drug."

  "That's right." Staver took a chair by the wall, brought it over, and sat in it backward, resting his arms on the top. "That sounds horrific, what your family went through."

  "Shannon was only fourteen," Del said. "He had never hurt anyone in his life. But he killed the Aristo."

  "Tell me about him," Staver said.

  "I don't want to."

  "Why?" Staver asked. "Does he have something to hide?"

  "Of course not," Del said, irritated. "He was gentle. I didn't think he was even capable of rage. But he found our father." He exhaled. "My little brother committed murder that night."

  Staver stared at him. "How could a boy kill such a powerful lord?"

  Del really, really didn't want to talk. But he couldn't stop. "The Aristo couldn't bring in weapons or shields without alerting our defenses. He barely got himself in." His voice hardened. "Vitrex didn't reckon with the fury of a boy who saw his father crushed."

  "Vitrex?" Staver asked.

  "The Aristo."

  "How did he know your world had empaths?"

  "Well, that's the priceless question everyone wants answered, isn't it?" Del said bitterly. Everyone in three empires knew the Ruby Dynasty lived on Skyfall. Exactly how Vitrex had infiltrated their defenses, they didn't know. Shannon had killed him before they could find out.

  "Del?" Staver asked. "What is it?"

  "Nothing." Del sat up slowly, his head swimming and his sight blurred. "Don't ask me any more. It hurts too much." He swung his legs over the edge of the ledge and regarded Staver. "Do you believe me now? I want to help you."

  "I have no idea why you think we're doing anything that would require help," Staver said.

  "Why would you have drugged me otherwise?" Then Del said, "And it was in your mind."

  Staver shook his head. "You couldn't have probed my mind without my knowing. I'm an eight point four on the Kyle scale."

  His confidence didn't surprise Del. That was a phenomenal rating. It meant Staver was such a powerful empath, he was rarer than one in a hundred million people. The scale didn't even go up much past ten, or one in ten billion.

  "That's impressive," Del said—and dropped his shields, not slightly as he had done in the forest, but all the way. Then he politely "knocked" at Staver's mind. Hello.

  Staver's eyes widened. Gods, man!

  Del raised his shields again. He had made his point.

  "That was incredible," Staver said.

  Lydia looked from Del to Staver. "What just happened?"

  Staver exhaled. "A tidal wave hit me and said, 'Hello.' "

  "I didn't hear anything," she said.

  "Are you a psion?" Del asked. When she shook her head, he spoke with an openness that didn't come naturally to him. "Staver reacted that way because he's such a strong psion. So we could set up a two-way link. But it's difficult to maintain that kind of mental intensity with another person even for short periods of time."

  Lydia didn't look surprised, which made Del suspect she was used to working with psions.

  "What is your Kyle rating?" Staver asked him.

  "I'm not sure," Del said. Which was true. It was impossible to measure ratings for the Ruby Dynasty. The sum total of all humanity wasn't enough to determine how many Ruby psions occurred naturally in human populations. His family had ratings higher than fourteen, which meant they were rarer than one in on
e hundred trillion, and all humanity numbered no more than several trillion. The only reason more Rubies existed was because the Assembly had deliberately bred them, heirs and spares to keep the Kyle-mesh powered.

  Del only said, "My rating is above nine."

  "It doesn't surprise me." Staver considered him. "Suppose, for the sake of argument, we could help providers. Why would you join us? You know what would happen if the Traders caught you."

  "I wouldn't go into their space. But I can offer you financial help." Del's gaze never wavered. "In the millions." For something like this, if Staver checked out, Del would gladly use his dynastic accounts.

  Lydia's mouth opened. Then she caught herself and closed it. Staver had more success in acting impassive, but his astonishment trickled past even his formidable shields. What Del had offered didn't come their way often. To put it mildly.

  "I wish we were helping providers," Staver said. "That we had this sort of 'underground railroad.' Except we are talking about escape across the stars. The Star Road, eh? If we had one, your offer would have been much appreciated."

  Del waited. When Staver had nothing more to add, he almost said, That's it? They put him through all this for nothing? But he bit back the words. They were being careful.

  Staver stood up. "Are you steadier?"

  "Sure." Del rose to his feet. He had thought his vision was still blurred, but he felt all right. The room was just dark.

  "We should get back to San Francisco," Staver said.

  Del would have insisted on an antidote, except he didn't want to risk taking unfamiliar drugs twice in one day. Instead he frowned at Staver. "I shouldn't go anywhere with people. I might spill all sorts of embarrassing stuff the next time someone asks how I feel about being Prime-Nova's pretty boy."

  Staver smiled. "The teracore should wear off in about thirty minutes. It will take longer than that for us to get back if we take the scenic drive up the coast."

  Scenic indeed. Staver wanted to extract more information from him. Del had to admit, though, the view from that cliff-side road was spectacular. He had never seen an ocean so close before. It astonished him that humans had once taken vessels of wood, metal, and canvas out on that endless water. Starships seemed safe in comparison.

  So he went with Staver and struggled to be patient. If they wanted his help, they would contact him.

  The New Filmore didn't seem new to Del; the building was at least sixty years old. Mac told him it had been built on the site of something called Filmore West, so "new" came from that. Regardless, the acoustics were a dream, and his voice filled the place. The audience liked him from the moment he came on, after a warm-up from a local band. People filled seats and thronged the floor, dancing or standing, with girls sitting on the shoulders of their boyfriends so they could see over the crowd.

  "It's great to be here in San Francisco!" Del called out. The audience shouted their agreement. Randall was morphing his guitar, coaxing out waves of music. Anne had turned on the echo engine for her drums, creating a resonance that gave them an incredible, rich, powerful sound. Jud sat in the center of his morpher like a fighter pilot in a cockpit.

  Jud glanced at him with a questioning gaze. Del knew what he wanted to do. "Carnelians." Del never intended to perform it in public. But tonight he did sing "Starlight Child":

  When the forever snows

  Tightened their embrace

  While my dreaming thoughts froze

  You rose with newborn grace

  Nothing ever will compare

  Nothing ever will come close

  Your eyes, your skin, your shining hair

  Starlight child, my heart knows

  He moved around less than usual because the song was more difficult than his others. The words were birds taking flight, soaring out of him with joy and pain, rising into the crystalline night of Earth until they found their way to the glittering stars.

  XV: The Perfect Virt

  The Los Angeles Coliseum was the largest indoor venue Del had played, and tonight people swarmed the place. The crowd poured into the lot behind the Coliseum as the band's hover-van pulled up.

  "Are you sure the security guys will meet us?" Del asked for the third time. "They didn't in Chicago."

  Mac was sitting across from him in the circular seat. "They'll be there."

  "We should have used the underground tunnels," Del said uneasily.

  "I thought you wanted to see your fans," Randall called from a seat up front.

  Del felt trapped. "I didn't know it would be so many people."

  Jud looked up with a start as the van jerked. "What the hell was that?"

  The craft settled on the ground, and its turbines powered down.

  "Van, why are you stopping?" Mac asked.

  "If I keep going," it said, "I could injure someone out there."

  "I'm glad we sent the instruments earlier," Anne said. They had learned their lesson at the Chicago Sports Fields.

  Del stood up. "Let's just get it over with."

  "I dunno," Randall drawled. "Could be rough out there. All those women might want to kiss you."

  "Ha, ha," Del said. Although he did want to connect with his audience, it was no longer flattering when people pulled at his clothes, his hair, his body. Sometimes it had sexual overtones, especially with women, but often people just wanted to touch him. Maybe it all had subliminal sexual messages; he didn't know. He just wished it would stop.

  The Coliseum was a mammoth circular structure that filled a city block and towered above them. Holos morphed up and down its sides, splashes of color mixed with giant images of Del's face, of Del leaping in the air, of Del shouting into the mike. Too much Del. He wanted to escape himself.

  As Cameron opened the van, people surged forward. Four guards stepped out of the crowd, armor glinting, faces hidden by helmets. When Del and the band jumped down, the guards formed a bulwark around them. Their armor reflected faces from the crowd: a girl calling, a man tossing a crumpled paper, a youth craning to see. People pressed in, and the guards held them off as they escorted Del and the band forward. They couldn't stop every touch, not without getting rough, which would defeat the whole point of "meeting fans." A hand slid through Del's hair, another person brushed his lips, a third scraped his legs. He pushed away someone pulling his belt, undoing it. Someone else shoved a guard and knocked him against Del. The guard grabbed Del's arm, holding him up.

  "This is too much," Del said under his breath.

  "No kidding," Jud muttered next to him, pushing a dreadlock out of his eyes.

  Then they were under the overhang of the Coliseum, in its shadow, the entrance looming before them. An airlock membrane slid across Del's skin as he went inside. The last guard stepped through behind him and flicked his gauntleted hand across his belt. The air shimmered, and when Del turned around, he saw the crowd pressing forward against an invisible barrier.

  Del set his palms against the barrier while he looked out at the people. They stared back as if he were an exotic creature they had trapped. Then a girl at the front smiled shyly. Like the release of gas through a valve, Del's tension flowed away. He smiled at her and waved. A ripple of approval went through the crowd as people waved back at him.

  "You all right?" one of his guards asked.

  Del looked up. The giant had taken off his helmet, revealing a man with a rugged face and sandy hair.

  "Yeah, sure," Del said, trying not to sound shaky. "Sure. I'm fine."

  Submerged within ghostly holos that rippled throughout the giant Coliseum, Del crooned into his mike:

  No answers live in here alone

  No answers on this spectral throne

  Nothing in this vault of fears

  This sterling vault, chamber of tears

  But his tears had never been steel, for he was vulnerable in a way his sterling vault would never know:

  Tell me now before I fall

  Release from this velvet pall

  Tell me now before I fall

>   Take me now, break through my wall

  No answers will salvage time

  No answers in this tomb sublime

  This winnowing crypt intertwined

  This crypt whispering in vines

  He sang, mourning the time he had lost in cryogenesis, in his life, in his soul, but he sang also with joy for his rebirth:

  No answers could bring me life

  Yet when I opened my eyes

  Beyond the sleeping crystal dome

  Beyond it all, I had come home

  The audience listened and danced and tried to climb on the stage, but Del didn't think anyone really understood the song. Who among them had lost nearly half a century of his life while the universe went on without them? He had no answers because there were none. It had just happened.

  Death had called his name, but by a fluke of luck, he had escaped its summons. Cryo had kept him alive, and if that rebirth had been a form of hell, at least he had survived. He had no answers for why he should have survived, but gods willing, maybe he would live long enough to find at least one.

  After the concert, Del helped the stage crew take down the light amplifiers. Why, he didn't know; he was no tech or light expert. But he liked the manual labor. Princes weren't supposed to, but he was more farm boy than royalty. So he did whatever tasks the bemused techs gave him. When they finished, he walked back to the green room with Cameron at his side, his bodyguard silent, respecting his need for the privacy of his own thoughts.

  The band had left a hover-car so Cameron could drive Del to the hotel. Mac surprised Del by approving of his staying late. He considered it even better than sneaking Del out of the Coliseum. People would believe Del was long gone, probably to a party, which was what everyone seemed to think he did all the time. What he really wanted was his bliss-node. He needed to untangle his mind.

  Del had spent most of the night since the concert lost in thought. He kept wondering if he should talk to his family. He just didn't know what to say. Look at me. He had achieved his heart's goal, to have his music accepted. And it felt wonderful. But when he thought of telling them, it seemed trivial. They were making history, literally changing how humanity existed among the stars. And what did he do for a living? He yelled into a mike he didn't even really need.