Diamond Star (27 page)

"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 her 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 Cafe 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 blatantly 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."

Bonnie gave Del one of her soft, shy smiles. "We all voted. We gave you the highest rating. A ten. 'So hot, it sizzles.' "

Del laughed, delighted. "Can I vote? Like ten thousand times?"

Jud winked at him. "Only once. It recognizes your m-signature. But yeah, sure, you can vote for yourself."

"It won't make much difference," Anne said. "The NorthAm Central Node gets millions of votes. They're the top counter for holo-rock stats in North America."

It was finally sinking into Del what they were telling him. " 'Sapphire Clouds' never got on a national counter."

Randall leaned forward. "They post the music charts at six a.m. We'll find out then how we did."

"This is good, isn't it?" Del said. "Maybe we'll hit the top hundred!"

Jud punched at the air with his fist. "That would be a wail, wouldn't it?" He put his arm around Bonnie and pulled her against his side.

Del finally registered how close Jud and Bonnie were sitting. He kept his smile to himself, though. He would give Jud a hard time later. He liked them both, and it seemed a day for good things.

It was hard to sleep after that, but Del dozed for a while. Cameron woke him up, shaking Del's shoulder.

Del squinted at him. "Huh?"

"Wake up," Cameron rumbled at him. "The new chart goes up in about a minute."

Del smiled sleepily. "You're getting into this, too."