From the Street to the Stars (Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, Book 1)

Chapter 9: Homecoming

Finding Marcel was easy: he was on the rehearsal stage. 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 shot me an irritable glance. "What do you want?"

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

Something beeped. "I'm a little busy right now, Kit. 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 run a diagnostic. 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 jumped down from the stage and headed up the aisle 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, Kit—"

"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 ex-Singles. Once they're out of my sight, they're no concern of mine. And out of my sight 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!"

"Kit," I said.

"Sorry, Kit... 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?"