Now available
Lost in Translation

The paperback from DAW Books

Praise for Ed's previous novel, Lost in Translation:

"Edward Willett has arrived, and SF is the richer for it." -  Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

"A believable, absorbing, thought-provoking and highly enjoyable read." - Kathy Tyers, Author of the Firebird trilogy, Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura, and Star Wars: Balance Point

Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star
Published by Roussan Publishers

Nominated for the 2001 Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award
Named to the Our Choice list by the Canadian Children's Book Centre

CHAPTER THREE

Qualls took me to lunch, upstairs in a fancy restaurant in a part of the spaceport I didn't even know existed. He invited Rain along, too, and the Hydra accepted eagerly, although the waiter who greeted us didn't look too happy about the alien's presence. Neither did the half-dozen patrons whose variously horrified or disgusted faces I glimpsed among the ferns and fountains that mostly hid the tables and chairs. But Rain, as far as I could tell (not very far, I admit), was unperturbed. His eyestalks practically tied themselves in knots as he ogled everything, and he chirped musically to himself all the while.

The waiter showed us to a table by a window overlooking the spaceport. Close to the terminal the bulbous gray shapes of four commercial passenger ships loomed over the scurrying vehicles that serviced them. Off at the edge of the field large freighters crouched like distant thunderclouds. But my eyes went immediately to a sleek and silvery yacht that gleamed among the others like a silver knife carelessly tossed among old spoons.

"Like it?" Qualls asked.

Instantly on guard, I put on my best bored-stiff face and turned my back on the window. "It's a ship. So what? You own it, meatman?"

His eyes narrowed. "I told you, I'm not a meatman."

"Yeah?" I flicked his card onto the table. "You buy and sell people. What do you call it?"

Rain had two eyes on me and two eyes on Qualls. I wondered if he could feel the tension between us, or understood it. So Qualls said he would make me a star. Well, I wasn't buying real estate on Earth just yet. I trusted myself--no one else. Especially not someone who would treat streetslime to a meal in a restaurant like this.

If I even got the meal. I had my doubts.

But Qualls surprised me by laughing. "Maybe you have a point, Kit. Enough business for now. Are you hungry?"

He knew I was hungry. But I shrugged. "Not much."

"Well, I insist you try something. This restaurant has surprisingly good food, considering the location." I wondered if he meant the spaceport or the planet. "Waiter!"

He ordered dishes I'd never heard of, and they came in minutes. Qualls only picked at a small plate of purple roots--or were they worms?--but both he and Rain watched as I devoured everything the waiter set in front of me. Pride's all very well, but I'd never seen a meal like that in my life and figured I might never see one again. Calories are calories. I ate.

At last, too full to eat any more--a new sensation I liked very much--I sat back and stared at Qualls. He gazed stolidly back. "Well?" I said.

"Well?"

"Well, what is it you want? And don't feed me more biowaste about making me a star."

"No waste." He pointed to his card. "I am what that says I am--a talent scout for Sensation Singles, Inc."

"He speaks the truth, Kit," said Rain.

"How would you know?" I snapped.

"I spoke to him on the ship coming in."

"He could have been lying to you, too."

"To what end?" asked Rain. "He would gain nothing by it."

The thought occurred to me that they had both lied, to set me up, but even I wasn't that paranoid. "Then why me? Why here?"

"Sensation Singles have to come from somewhere," said Qualls. "Very specific somewheres, actually. Each one is carefully chosen from a particular socio-economic and planetary background. Our computer projections indicate it's time for a tough, street-smart male from this part of the galaxy. Fistfight City's streets are the meanest in Confederation. Drugs, prostitution, cyberjacking--you name it. That makes it perfect." He shrugged. "The choice of you specifically? Coincidence. I heard you outside my hotel the day I arrived. Musical ability isn't absolutely necessary, but it's nice when we can find it, and I'm sure you can learn the dance steps."

"You're saying the you're going to 'make me a star' because I was in the right place at the right time--pure luck?"

"Pure luck."

"Huh." Good luck and I weren't really on speaking terms--but it was easier to believe I'd lucked out than that some stranger had crossed the galaxy to find me. "So what's in it for me?"

Qualls smiled. "Fame and money."

"As a Sensation Single? I'll be forgotten in a year."

"Absolutely. But the money will last a lot longer." He pointed at me. "What do you want?"

"Enough food to eat. A warm, dry place to sleep."

"And after that?"

"I've never even gotten that, yet."

"Forge food and shelter. You'll have enough money to do anything you want. So what will you spend it on?"

I laughed. "Myself." I glanced out the window. "Maybe I'll buy a yacht."

"No need."

"What?"

"You've already got one." He nodded at the gleaming silver ship. "That's The Bullet. For the express use of Andy Nebula."

"Andy who?"

"Andy Nebula. The next Sensation Single." Qualls cocked his head and one corner of his mouth quirked upward. "You?"

I stared out at the yacht. Money, fame, a chance to leave Fistfight City...and though I wasn't about to tell Qualls, I did dream of something more than being warm and fed. I dreamed of writing, performing and recording my own music, of making some kind of permanent mark...with money, even that might be possible.

I let the last of my suspicions go. "Me," I said.

"Orbital, gladeye!" shrieked Rain at a pitch about an octave above high C. The window vibrated dangerously.

"Uh, thanks," I said, removing my hands from my ears, wondering what he was so happy about. Nobody had offered to make him a star--not surprising, with a voice like that.

He backed away from the table. "I'll leave you to your business discussions," he said at a more normal pitch. "I am pleased, gladeye Kit, to see my new friend honored in this way. I look forward to your performances." He scuttled off.

"Thanks," I said again, to empty air.

Qualls leaned forward. "First things first." He pulled a computer out of his coat and unfolded the screen. "This is our standard contract. Let me just go over a few points with you..."

#

And so it began. Almost like in my official biography. Within a day I had new clothes, a new name, a new hairstyle, and an extremely comfortable apartment, a self-contained module aboard The Bullet, which was much larger than it had appeared from the restaurant. The Bullet also contained a full-sized stage, a full stage crew (humans and robots) and enough dancebots and holoprojectors to recreate everything ever choreographed since the first caveman pranced around a campfire. Two days after I signed Qualls's contract we lifted from Fistfight City. I hardly noticed, since I was trying to push my sweating and aching body through my second dance lesson at the time.

Rehearsal followed rehearsal. The dance steps came more easily. I quit kicking the lightweight dancebots across the stage accidentally or stumbling through the holo-projected "walls" of the set. The music I learned in a single day, since it had been computer-written to stick in your head the moment you heard and (just as important) vanish forever a few months later.

I rehearsed all day, every day, and well into every night--not that those terms mean much on a spaceship. In the meantime, the Sensation Singles publicity machine went into high gear. I was photographed, holographed and made into an animated doll; the celebrity-hungry press on all seventy-nine Confederated Worlds received my largely fictitious biography; when deemed ready, I recorded my Single; sometime later I danced through the entire extended version of the song (exactly twenty-two minutes) under the scrutiny of both flatscreen and holovid cameras; two weeks after that my song and video hit the airwaves, and three days later I debuted in the Big Wheel, a giant amusement satellite orbiting Decca VI, to fifty thousand screaming teenagers, each of whom had been carefully chosen to look good on the Andy Nebula Live special that went out Confederation-wide the very next day.

I'd never performed for more than a dozen people at a time in my life, but as the concert approached I felt no nervousness, only exhilaration. I'd rehearsed to the point I could do my song and dance in my sleep--and often did, in my dreams. I considered it vastly superior to the last few Sensation Singles I'd heard; heavy on the dance beat, of course, and the lyrics were nothing special, but the set blew me away. I could have sworn, first time they turned on the holos and I stepped into the picture, that I was back in the alleys of Fistfight City--except these alleys looked even darker and more dangerous. The dance moves, stylized from police vid of gang fights, supported a basic story line of boy (me) meets girl, boy loses girl to flashgang leader, boy bravely fights gang leader and wins, boy and girl ride off into sunset. It would have been a lot more fun if the "girl" had been real instead of a dancebot...

I stood in the wings, listening to the crowd chant, "An-dy, An-dy, An-dy," and felt their energy pour over me and into me like a wave. "Better get out there before they tear the satellite apart," Marcel, the stage manager, said in my earplug. A pounding drumbeat began, the roar of the crowd rose to an incredible volume--and then the set lit up, the stringsynths rasped through the blistering instrumental solo that opened the piece, and I dashed out on stage.

I couldn't see a thing through the lights and the holowalls and everything else, but I could sense every individual in that vast crowd screaming my name. I rode their energy and danced and sang like I never had before, even for the vid. I wasn't streetslime any more--no way. At the climax I smashed the "gang leader" dancebot out of my way with a spinning, leaping kick, and thought, "Suck vacuum, Dry Ice!" Every screaming kids out there knew, knew I was the greatest thing they had ever seen, and in that moment, I knew it, too--and I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Qualls had kept his word. I was a star.

When it was over, I stood backstage, panting, mirrorcloth tights soaked with sweat, and thought I heard, in the blood pounding in my ears, words of caution. "It won't last...it can't last..." But as I ran on-stage again to accept the wild, screaming, standing ovation, as I watched blue sparks crackling around the hands of girls braving the sting of the static fields to get as close to me as possible, I forgot that warning voice. This was what I was meant for.

Kit, the ragged streetkid from Fistfight City, was gone for good. He'd been replaced by an interstellar superstar--me.

Andy Nebula!

#

On to Chapter 4...