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

Back to start

Back to Chapter 8

CHAPTER NINE

Finding Marcel was easy. Getting him to talk wasn't. I strode up to him with all the impetus of my suspicions. "Look, Marcel, I need to--"

"No, no, no!" he yelled, not at me but at the unfortunate Richter, who had wandered into his line of sight. "Not there! You expect lasers to go around corners, now? Check your marks next time!" He glanced at me. "What do you need, Andy?"

"I need to talk to you, Marcel, about--"

Something beeped. "I'm a little busy right now, Andy. We're not going to be able to fix that blown holo projector before the show, so I've got to rearrange the ones we have to cover the gap--yes, what is it?" he said into a hand communicator.

I waited while he irritably explained to somebody on the other end that if two stagebots were trying to install each other as lighting units then one or both of them obviously had a serious programming deficiency and the only way to stop them was to turn them both off. "Then pull their chips and check the programming. Isn't that obvious? Did you really have to ask?" He stuck the communicator back in his pocket. "I don't know where the company finds these idiots..." he muttered.

I took my chance. "Marcel, I need to talk to you about Paris Paradise."

Did he twitch at the name, just a little? "What about him?" He started toward the control booth. I followed him.

"Did you know him?"

"Of course I knew him. I've been stage manager for every Single for the last ten years."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"Went back to Paris, I suppose. What do you care?" He reached the control booth and palmed the lockplate.

"That flashman who got backstage on Carstair's Folly--"

The door opened, and Marcel went in. "Yeah?"

"He said he was Paris Paradise."

"So? Look, Andy, I've got a lot of--"

"Was he?"

Marcel flipped switches without looking at me. "Paris was just a kid like you when I knew him a couple of years ago. That flashman was a lot older than I am. How could it have been Paris?"

"You tell me."

"Ten minutes to test," Marcel said into a microphone, his voice booming on the stage. Then he turned to face me. "I know you're nervous about the end of your run, Andy--"

"That's not--"

"--but we've got some big problems with the equipment right now and I just don't have time for this nonsense. I don't keep tabs on the Singles after they leave. Once they're off my stage, they're no concern of mine. And off my stage is where I want you right now, you understand?" He pointed toward my dressing room. "Now!"

I glared at him, then stalked off into the darkness of the hold. He knew something, I was sure of it. But what could he be hiding? That that flashman really had been Paris Paradise? That was just crazy...

I groaned as I got closer to my dressing room and saw Meta sitting outside it with her back to the door. She scrambled up and waved as I came closer. "Andy! I heard you had to quit rehearsing, so I thought--did you know there's a pool on this ship? We could go swimming--"

"No, we couldn't. Listen, Meta, you're a great kid, and I'm really happy you're a fan of Sensation Singles, but I'm only going to be a Single for a few more days and after that I've got a whole new career to worry about, and that means that right now I've got a lot of thinking to do. So why don't you just go off and pester someone else and leave me alone?"

Her smile faded and her face turned white; then, without a word, she turned and ran out of the hold. I took half a step after her, then stopped, shrugged and went into the dressing room. She'd be going home as soon as we got to Fistfight City anyway, and I really didn't need her added to my list of things to worry about. Besides, if there was something nasty going on behind the scenes, I'd be doing her a favor by keeping her out of it.

My respite from rehearsal didn't last. After supper and late into the night Marcel had me back at it, with no let-up for the rest of the trip. I didn't complain, this time; the altered holoprojector array changed several of the dance sequences drastically, and I had to work hard to polish them to performance level. Qualls wasn't happy about it, either; I could hear him yelling from halfway down the hold as I approached the stage the day before our scheduled arrival on Farris. "...concert is crucial! If this contract with The Dealer falls through you'll never work again!"

I couldn't hear Marcel's reply, but Qualls's voice suddenly boomed even louder. "Don't try to shift the blame. The company's been cutting expenses. If you couldn't do the job with the budget you were given you should have said so, and we would have found someone who could have."

Sensation Singles cutting expenses? First I'd heard of it. Very interesting. I decided not to announce my arrival just yet. They were arguing backstage, off right; I approached the stage from the front, where I could hear them as clearly as if they were performing for my benefit.

"Maybe you should be doing some cutting back of your own," Marcel snapped. "Then you wouldn't need your little sideline. It seems to be putting you under a great deal of strain."

Qualls quit shouting; his voice turned low and poisonous. "My 'little sideline' is none of your business. You don't talk about it--not even to me. You know why."

Silence. Then, "Yeah, I know."

"Good. Then you also know that it is in your best interest to insure that my 'sideline' remains profitable. So get back to work, Stage Manager. I'm sure the little streetslug will be arriving for rehearsal very shortly, and I don't want to see him."

I ducked down to make sure Qualls got his wish as he stormed off, but I still heard Marcel say, in a low voice, "I don't blame you."

I resisted the urge to chase Qualls and strangle him with my bare hands. Streetslug? And I was putting my future in his hands?

And what "sideline?" Yeah, I'm a streetslug, all right, I thought. I know slime when I step in it--and you're covered with the stuff, Mr. Manager Man.

But just what was that slime made of? I wanted to pressure Marcel for an answer, but it sounded like Qualls was standing over him with a pretty big stick. Too dangerous, I decided--at least, too dangerous on the ship. Once we were down in Fistfight City, my orbit, if I didn't like the scan, I could lift.

Yeah? I thought. If I lifted before the show, I breached my contract, and Andy Nebula's credit stayed behind. Then what? Back to living hand-to-mouth as a street musician? Scrounging food, hiding and running from flashgangs and meatmen until one day I didn't hide well enough or run fast enough?

Maybe I'm overprogramming here, I told myself. Maybe Qualls's little scheme is just a scam--negotiate a bigger deal with The Dealer than he'll tell me about and keep most of it for himself. I might even let him get away with it. The important thing about the Hydran gig will be playing my music in my way.

I cleared my throat and marched cheerfully and noisily onto the stage to begin rehearsing.

The next day we made planetfall, timing our landing to synchronize shiptime with local time at the Fistfight City spaceport. I stood on the duracrete as cranes lifted the modules from the hold, my dressing room among them, breathed the air full of the sharp tang of rocket exhaust and ozone, looked up at the cold, austere mountains beyond the city, and wished I was anywhere else but there. So much for the old home town, I thought. Give me the Pleasure Planets any day.

But here I was, and I had a concert to give. I looked at the Spaceport's main terminal and grinned a little. This time I'd walk through there with nothing to fear except hordes of fans and media.

Did I say hordes? An hour later Qualls and I and a half-dozen Sensation Single staff made our grand entrance through customs, and while a crowd formed to ogle and photograph, it was far from a horde, or even a throng. More like an intimate gathering, at least compared to the crowds that had greeted me everywhere in the early days of the Single.

Meta had joined us when we boarded the ground transport from ship to terminal, looking subdued and not meeting my eyes. Well, she'd be gone soon, anyway, I told myself. Probably even before the concert. As if to confirm it, Qualls whisked her off somewhere before we were out of the terminal, presumably to arrange for her return to Carstair's Folly. I wondered what exotic lies she would tell her friends about me.

I couldn't help looking closely at every mirrored pillar in the terminal, but Dry Ice, if he still lived, didn't put in an appearance, not even to mock. Once I did think I caught a glimpse of Hydran orange in the distance, and thought of Rain, soaking up new experiences, but the crowd shifted and when I looked again the flash of color had vanished.

Shortly thereafter, so did the crowd. By the time we stood on the sidewalk we could have been any anonymous band of tourists wondering why they'd ever wanted to come to Murdoch IV in the first place. "Are you sure anyone is coming tonight?" I said to Marcel over the noise of the wind that whipped grit into our faces.

"Not my concern," he said, stone-faced. "I just set up the stage."

"Thanks for the power-boost, gladeye," I muttered. I looked around for Qualls, but he hadn't come back yet, with or without Meta. Instead I saw the transport coming to take us to the crashball stadium in the north end of town where our stage equipment and dressing rooms had already been hauled.

A sullen drizzle began as we climbed into the transport. I decided to try Marcel again. "I hope their concert tent doesn't leak," I said as I settled by a window.

He grunted. "No tent. The stage will be covered but your fans are on their own."

"I should have guessed." I leaned my forehead against the cool glass and watched as familiar rain-slicked streets slid by, even grayer and grimier than I remembered. You can't have me back, I said to them silently. I'm sticking to my contract no matter what Qualls is up to. As long as he takes me off this planet again, I don't care if he robs me blind...

Qualls, without Meta, met us at the stadium, wearing the same long black weathercoat I'd first seen him in. "Looks like we'll fill ground-level and most of the lower seats," he told me as we crossed the pavement to the shelter of the grandstands. "The rest depends on walk-ups."

"In this weather?" The rain pounded the pavement around us, and the spray-soaked wind had developed a wintry bite. Qualls didn't seem to notice, and I resolved to buy a weathercoat of my own at the first opportunity. "I wouldn't come out to hear me on a night like this."

Qualls shrugged. "The Dealer will be here. He's the only one that matters. Look, I've got to make a call. I'll talk to you later." He hurried off, leaving me to find my own way through the gray duracrete tunnels beneath the stands to the fenced, private parking lot where they'd set up my dressing room and the other modules. A runner met me at my door. "Sound and vid check in forty-five minutes, Andy," he said breathlessly.

"Thank you," I told him, and watched him dash away, up the ramp toward the field, feeling odd to know it would be the last time I would hear those words. I turned and palmed my dressing room lockplate, figuring the feeling would go away as I plunged into the routine of getting ready for a concert. Instead, it got worse. Each familiar step of preparation was for the last time. Sure, I hoped to perform again--on Hydra and elsewhere--but not as Andy Nebula. I even caught myself thinking that maybe my Single wasn't all that bad a song, all things considered, and trying to remember the faces of the holodancers. "Back in my old orbit--data retrieval overload," I muttered.

At last the people came--about thirty thousand, not great, but not too bad, either, considering the weather, the venue--and the planet. The warm-up group, some local glamcrash band, played to half-hearted cheers, then came the knock on my door, "Five minutes," from the runner, and the long walk up the ramp and through the backstage maze. Finally I stood in the wings in my mirrorcloth tights, listening to the crowd thunder and the pounding of the synths, watching the lasers building the holos in the smoke, and for the first time I realized I didn't want to stop being a Single, that if I could, I'd do it forever.

But I couldn't. I'd reached the end I'd always known would come. "Break a leg, Kit," Marcel's voice said in my earpiece--the first time I could remember he hadn't called me Andy.

"Thanks, Marcel," I said; and then the opening chords crashed and, for the last time, Andy Nebula danced into the spotlight.

#

On to Chapter 10...