Juanita Coulson - [Children of the Stars 03] Read online

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tour’s End

  Anthony Saunder glanced at the figure lurking in the darkened wings. Lighting effects from the stage beyond revealed the hidden watcher’s openmouthed wonder; the local merchant was mesmerized by the drama—and by the emota-sensors the actors wore. Jesse Eben, too, had noticed the play’s impact on the uninvited guest. He leaned toward his friend and whispered, “Tell me, kid: Is that the same mold-brain who refused to order our new releases?”

  The younger man nodded sourly. “Because, he said, our sensors wouldn’t add anything to an ed or entertainment package. He also said the only reason he wormed his way in here for React Theater’s final performance was to be polite.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jesse snickered, sharing Anthony’s contempt.

  Since they’d landed on Settlement Clay over a week ago, they’d been wining and dining that vid distributor, pressing the flesh and pushing Saunder Studio’s products hard. The merchant had countered with a litany of doom and gloom. Business had been terrible lately. And Anthony’s vids cost too much; sure, they were good, but not that much better than the competitors’. Besides, the distributor wasn’t confident the settlers would want to buy these new emota-enhanced chips. Maybe next year, if sales improved, he’d think about increasing his order.

  The old song and dance. It had gone on for centuries between Terran suppliers and their retailers. The-difference nowadays was that a company boss and his colleague had to travel a hell of a lot farther to touch bases with their markets. Light-years farther, in fact. Expenses had steepened proportionately, as well, in the interim. Painfully conscious of that last, Anthony and Jesse had economized to the bone on this survey tour. For months they’d shared transport and accommodations with the React Theater troupe. Their itineraries were the same. Most of the performers had worked for the Studio in the past and hoped to again in the future. They wanted to stay on Anthony’s good side, and added several of Saunder Studio’s best-selling dramas to their repertoire as free advertising for him. In return, he and Jesse had assisted with backstage operations at every stopover.

  And at that moment their expertise was needed. Anthony heard an anomaly in the sensors’ carrier waves. Potential disaster! With Jesse at his heels, he made his way through a clutter of boxes and luggage. The crew member tending the emota-apparatus looked up gratefully at his approach and stammered, “I... I’m sorry. It got away from me.”

  The tall, dark-haired man with the unusual pale-blue eyes smiled reassuringly and forbore to comment that it frequently did get away from the stagehands. Hassan, React Theater’s actor-manager, was too cheap to hire qualified personnel and overworked his employees, with predictable results. “Let us handle it,” Anthony said. He took over the boards, deftly tightening circuit feeds and smoothing out glitches. Meanwhile, Jesse fine-tuned the monitor link. Then the three of them peered anxiously at the view screens showing the audience out front—nothing but rapt expressions there. The spectators hadn’t detected the momentary bobble in the signal, thanks to the emota-sensors’ effect.

  Emota technology was a recent one, dating from a scant seven years ago, at the turn of the Twenty-second Century. Its original purpose had been medical, helping doctors treat the severely injured and mentally ill. Anthony had been among the first to realize the bio-boosters had other applications. Modified, the sensors greatly enhanced an actor’s or instructor’s words and gestures. Taking a gamble, Anthony had installed the gear on all his Studio’s production lines. Eventually that might prove him farsighted, not foolhardy. So far, balance sheets weren’t encouraging, and this market tour had meant still more red ink on the ledgers. But he and Jesse had no choice; they’d had to make the trip to keep sales healthy.

  The stagehand sighed in relief. “Glad you’re here to take care of this stuff.” She waved at the delicate sensor control boards. “They throw me every damned time. Nice having someone with your know-how to make sure the troupe wraps on a high note.”

  They’d do precisely that. Sophisticated tiny emota-sensor relays were attached to each of the actors’ costumes, gathering brain waves, pulse and breathing rates, and temperatures. The performers’ feigned responses to the drama translated into emanations of joy, fear, anguish, and rage. Combined and concentrated, the signals were broadcast to the audience, seizing it by its emotional throat.

  React Theater had chosen a guaranteed crowd pleaser for their big finish. Vaughn’s Challenge was Ian Dempsey’s most popular melodrama. Critics on Earth had flayed it, of course. But here on the frontier, it pushed all the right buttons: carving out a Settlement on a hostile planet; brave pioneers resisting pressure from unfeeling, callous Charter sponsors, who lived safe and secure back on Earth; natural catastrophes; star-crossed lovers; violent death; remorse; and, of course, victory!

  Veda Ingersoll, the troupe’s long-in-the-tooth leading lady, delivered a lengthy, tear-jerking passage. Greedy for the spotlight, her co-star Hassan almost walked on her lines in his haste to get to his own character’s passionate declaration.

  “Milking it outrageously,” Anthony noted, wincing.

  “Nah! Not milk,” Jesse said. “They’re churning out something my ancestors couldn’t have touched. Not kosher. Too much ham.”

  Anthony chuckled, but kept his attention on the readouts. Whatever he thought of the play, he had to hold the controls at peak efficiency. The more skillfully he did that, the greater the emota-sensors’ impact on the audience—each member of which was a probable local customer for Saunder Studio’s vids.

  The drama ended in triumph. History tapes gave a grimmer account of these events and what had followed. For the characters acting out their story amid solid-looking holo-mode scenery, time was frozen at 2083. Mankind was on a threshold, just beginning to reach out from the Solar System. The Saunder-McKelvey star-drive, invented by two of Anthony’s relatives, was available, but still a risky means of travel. Yet Captain Vaughn and his settlers had accepted that risk and numerous others. They’d conquered Wolf 359 Three, a world since renamed in Vaughn’s honor. And those settlers were still burdened with debts owed their sponsors. So were thousands of other immigrants, including the citizens of Anthony’s planet, Procyon Five. That was why the crowd loved the play; they identified with its theme and the characters’ struggles and hopes.

  Vaughn’s Challenge rolled on. For Anthony, though, truth intruded on illusion.

  2083. What had he been doing then, while Vaughn was taming a world?

  In 2083, I was eleven, trapped on Earth, dreaming of escape to the stars. I made it, but I’m still trapped, in a way, running as fast as I can to avoid failure. At least it’s a trap of my own making.

  Kilometers away, a heavy-hauler shuttle launched. The muffled roar could be heard even through the hall’s thick log walls. No one seemed to hear that reminder of the here and now. As the rocket’s sound faded, Hassan, Veda, and their supporting cast spoke the play’s final lines. The last poignant emota-sensor signals were beamed to the spectators. Actors posed in a defiant, heroic tableau. The crowd was breathless, not wanting to break the magical moment.

  Gingerly the backstage crew brought up the lights and erased the scenery projections. The actors were left standing on a bare, makeshift stage. Only then did the audience erupt in whoops and cheers.

  The performers basked in waves of adulation. The rest of their team, however, was busy tearing down and packing. The company had an outbound flight to catch. As the actors stepped into the wings between curtain calls, the wardrobe master detached the emota-sensor devices and brought them to Anthony. The costly little gadgets were locked and sealed in the case, readied fo
r transport. Equipment and baggage accumulated by the hall’s rear door. Gradually the area was being stripped. Nothing but the rented monitors would remain when the crew was done.

  The spectacle out front amused Anthony. Hassan and Veda were third-raters, their cast a bunch of has-beens and never-will-bes. On Earth or the Colonies, they would have drawn sneers, not this kind of adoration. Charter Settlement Planets’ audiences weren’t fussy. These locals didn’t know—or care—that what they’d seen was a badly acted chestnut. They were thrilled and grateful. Emota-sensors had supercharged their enjoyment. React Theater was an exciting change from much-used vids and, most important, it was right here on Settlement Clay. Touring acting companies this far out in the Terran sector’s boondocks were exceedingly rare.

  Little wonder the crowd was eating up the show. Those faces on the monitor told the tale. These people were pioneers, uncouth, uncultured, and tough; weaklings didn’t emigrate to the stars; they weren’t willing to deal with the frontier’s dangers and isolation. The hall was jammed with agri and forestry workers, teamsters, road builders, carpenters, medical personnel, shuttle pilots, cooks, butchers, merchants, and local government employees. There were a handful of Space Fleet troopers on furlough and some independent planet scouts, looking as rakish as old-fashioned pirates.

  Not a jaded critic from Earth among them!

  Nonhumans also had attended the drama. Five Vahnajes clustered on the far right side of the cavernous room. The tall, grayskinned lutrinoids were the guests of a Clay politico. He was explaining the play’s fine points to them. The Vahnajes responded with pointy-toothed smiles, their heads wobbling atop their snaky necks. On the opposite side of the hall, as far from the Vahnajes as they could get, were four Whimeds. The felin-oids’ crests and bright clothes made them stand out vividly among the humans.

  Now and then the Vahnajes scowled at the Whimeds, and the Whimeds returned the favor. That was a common situation. The Vahnaj Alliance once had owned an exclusive trade deal with Terra. Then the lutrinoids were the only e.t.s. mankind knew. But today, in 2108, Homo sapiens was out on the starlanes and learning that other races were interested in interspecies commerce, too: Lannons, Rigotians, Ulisorians, and especially the Whimed Federation. The Whimeds were real go-getters, moving boldly into markets the Vahnajes used to have all to themselves. Whenever the two races came into contact, they tended to bristle at one another. Fortunately, from what Anthony had seen, things never got any hotter than that. He supposed the aliens had watched the play—despite the chance of bumping into their rivals—for the same reason he and Jesse had played the PR game with that vid distributor.

  The e.t.s. were a magnet for the eye, but no concern of Saunder Studio. Anthony had produced some language packages and docu-vids about relations between the stellar civilizations, but they weren’t major items, and profits were minimal. He had no plans to expand the lines or push into non-Terran markets. Charter Settlement Planets Council strongly supported what it called “cross-species cooperation.” Anthony, however, had decided they could get that from businesses able to bear the cost of such do-gooder enterprises. His wasn!t.

  The applause seemed to go on forever, but finally the crowd was sated. The actors rushed backstage into their portable dressing rooms. Those cubicles would be the last paraphernalia loaded, once they’d been telescoped down into their traveling boxes. People bustled about, bumping elbows, cursing, trying to do everything simultaneously, rushing to complete preparations. They worked amid floating crop residue, the leavings of beasts of burden, and the pungent odor of disinfectant. The backstage area was actually a hastily converted loading dock. Most of the time this place was used to store harvested purgatio, Clay Settlement’s “green gold” export.

  The vid distributor bumbled his way through the confusion. “Saunder! Eben! About that order 1 gave you. I want to add five gross. Can you supply that much?”

  Anthony raised an eyebrow and said sarcastically, “We’ll try.” Jesse managed a pained smile and made an entry on his miniledger.

  “Great show!” The merchant pumped Anthony’s hand, behaving as if he were facing the man responsible for React Theater’s success. “You definitely got something going in that emota-sensor rig. Knew it all along. Sure grateful to be in on the ground floor. Hey! Veda! Hassan!” He galloped off to fawn on the troupe’s stars.

  The men from Saunder Studio swapped tired glances. “I hope our accounting department doesn’t panic,” Anthony muttered. “We could be buried in profits from such a windfall.”

  Jesse scratched his little salt-and-pepper beard. “Oh, he was really impressed with our stuff, all right. A couple more customers like him and we’ll go broke. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  As the company poured from the building, they were forced to slow to a crawl. React Theater’s stay here had been an SRO smash. Locals who couldn’t get seats in the hall had paid to watch the final show—and feel the emota-sensors’ effect—via meters-high view screens ringing the plaza. Now they clamored to see the actors in the flesh. Town militia held back the mob with difficulty. All of the performers reveled in the admiration, but Veda Ingersoll hogged the attention shamelessly; she flounced and tossed her blue-dyed mane like a starlet half her age, earning glares from her co-star and cast.

  Anthony snorted scornfully and edged past the bottleneck. He himself was vid-star handsome, and his face and name were well known throughout the sector. There had been a time when he could have stolen these hams’ thunder without trying. But that period of his life was over. He was a businessman now. His job lay behind the lenses. Hassan and Veda could wallow in their fans’ embrace, for all he cared.

  Someone grabbed his arm and wouldn’t let go.

  “Saunder! Anthony Saunder!” Heads turned, and recognition bloomed. People nudged one another as the grabby stranger blurted, “1 can’t believe it. Come all the way out to this back-world hunk of rock and meet two Saunders in one day!”

  Grimacing, Anthony braced himself for a familiar ordeal— the name-dropper. The Saunders and McKelveys were Terra’s most famous family. They touched the lives of billions. Some citizens were leeches, sucking up to and latching on to any member of the clan unlucky enough to meet such parasites. Actual ranking within the Saunder-McKelveys didn’t matter. Kinship alone was a touchstone of sorts. Anthony wondered idly which other Saunder this loudmouth would claim to have met.

  The man was certainly no local. His broad accent, fancy lace shirt, and exaggerated pantaloons were dead giveaways; he was another slumming tourist from Earth. Pioneers tolerated his sort for the credits they injected into the Settlements’ economies.

  “What a coincidence! They booked your cousin Colin into that grungy hostel where / stayed. What a nerve, but he never objected. You colonists are full of surprises.”

  Onlookers stirred, growling. “Colonists” was a term reserved for inhabitants of Mars and Earth’s other neighbor planets. Beyond the light-year boundary, Terrans were “settlers,” and proud of it. To them, “colonists” was a mild insult.

  Anthony mulled something else the tourist had said. Colin? On Settlement Clay? That was a surprise, an unwelcome one.

  “Guess I should expect you people to do crazy things,” the boor went on, “considering the way you have to live. Grubbing in the dirt alongside these stupid yokels. Tell me, Saunder: Doesn’t that make you feel like an animal?”

  Anthony wrenched free of the buffoon, but couldn’t get away. The mob hemmed everyone in too tightly. Pointedly snubbing the Earthman, Anthony stared over the tourist’s head—and locked gazes with a Whimed. Felinoids’ pupils had an umbralaca shape, not slitted like a cat’s but resembling miniature stars opening in large irises. The e.t.s.’ scrutiny could be unnerving. As if mutely apologizing, the alien blinked, then turned and vanished into the congested plaza. Anthony felt oddly annoyed by the brief encounter, and unsure why.

  Meanwhile, the Earthman was spewing calculated insults and a steady stream of false buddy-buddy c
hatter about the Saunders and McKelveys. Abandoning any pretense at subtlety, Anthony snapped, “Colin isn’t my cousin.” It was not true, technically, but maybe it would shut this clown up. He should have known better.

  “So okay. He’s the bastard. You’re the clone. Not much to choose. Must be why the pair of you came out here with all these cretins, eh? With your family connections, you wouldn’t be stuck in these Settlement stinkholes otherwise ... Hey! Quit shoving!” Shoving wasn’t all the crowd was doing. Pawing and buffeting, they knocked off the tourist’s cap and stomped it in the dust, snarling that they intended to do the same to the cap’s owner. His veneer of smug bravado peeled away, and he bawled for help. But his guide had mysteriously made himself scarce. Disgruntled militiamen had to rescue the offworlder from his own folly, hustling him none too gently through the mob and out of the plaza.

  Anthony and Jesse had grabbed their chance, making good their own getaway and scrambling aboard a waiting bus. The React Theater’s crew was already settling in there, yawning and fidgeting. They weren’t going anywhere yet; the troupe’s actors were still sharing a love feast with their fans. Jesse keyed his mini-ledger and began updating his records. Anthony leaned back in the carriage’s grass-stuffed seat, applying biofeedback to his fury, trying to calm himself.

  The tourist had called him a clone. Few people did that to Anthony’s face, though he knew there was plenty of gossip. “The

  high and mighty Saunders. Uncrowned royalty, the newscasters say. Hah! That family’s got plenty of skeletons in its closets.” Anthony was one of those skeletons.

  His reflection shimmered in the bus’s window. A dead man’s face peered back at him—-Patrick Saunder, martyred hero of the Crisis of 2041, savior of humanity who nobly gave his life for mankind’s future.

  He was dead, yet he lived on—or his genetic copy did-Cloning human beings was illegal today as it had been back in the Twenty-first Century. Nevertheless, Patrick’s widow Carissa had purchased five replicas of her slain husband. The boys were pawns an in intrafamilial struggle and, when that conflict was over, they were excess baggage. Anthony was the only one of the five to survive to adulthood, the only one to emigrate from Earth. He couldn’t escape his past, though. Being a clone was a lifetime sentence. The tourist had merely pointed out what everyone knew—that Anthony Saunder wasn’t a real man, just an artificial product of secret labs and Patrick Saunder’s DNA.