Free Parallax View by Eric Brown, Keith Brooke

an explanation.
    Her stomach was grumbling, digestive juices burning deep in her belly. At least, she thought, Rube still had a useful part to play in the expedition, after all.
    She raised her comm to her lips. “Rachel...” she began.
    Weakly, Tanya replied, “Corrie, where are you?”
    Corrie smiled to herself, said, “Tanya, I think we’re going to be okay.”
    And then she opened her mouth and let the first of the sweet, bloody meat seep in...

Appassionata
    Mae Chang brought her hands down on the last chord of “Appassionata” and hung her head over the keyboard – drained, as ever, by the sonata which had become most closely identified with her playing. As the notes died in the vast auditorium the silence was replaced by the nebulous roar of applause.
    Moving on autopilot, Mae stood, stepped forward and dropped a bow to the faceless audience, her arms hanging loose like those of a marionette. A blonde girl, only a few years younger than Mae herself, pranced forward, primly erect, with a bouquet of red roses. The ovation increased.
    Trying to ignore the facial perfection of the girl – a mere fourteen or fifteen and already she had been surgically beautified – Mae hoisted the bouquet like a trophy and performed another bow.
    She could take no more.
    She rushed off-stage, holding back the tears. The crowd would think she was being modest: lovely Mae Chang, refusing to bask in the glory. She hated them all.
    Anton Selig was waiting in the wings. She let him hug her, ignoring his gush of superlatives. When she tried to pull free, his hands moved to her shoulders, turned her. “They want you, Mae, darling,” he said. “They need you.”
    She let him propel her back on-stage to receive her ovation.
    She dropped her head and waited for it to end. After the sublimity of the Beethoven, she must confront this charade, this mindless adulation of her so-called genius. She knew the audience did not, as Anton claimed, love her: what they loved was their own appreciation of what they were told was great music. This specious love – from the audience, from her manager, from the media and all the attendant sycophants – served only to point up the fact of her loneliness.
    This time when she hurried off she brushed past Anton, past the gawping stagehands, the groupies and the snapping paparazzi. By the time she reached her dressing room she was running.
    She slammed the door behind her, exhausted and, at the same time, curiously excited. Now she could look forward to a reprieve of three weeks before Paris, Milan and New York. She would practise as it suited her and, for the first time in eighteen months, she would take a holiday.
    Three weeks’ respite.
    Her tears had dried by the time a tentative rap sounded on the door.
    “Yes?”
    Anton edged in, burdened with flowers. Two men, one a cameraman, accompanied him. She let them record her removing her make-up, going through the cards attached to the flowers. After a short, non-penetrative interview, the cameraman left.
    The other man remained. She had assumed he was with the cameraman. She studied him more closely now: small and grey-suited, a trim moustache at odds with a long grey pony-tail, he stood confidently before her.
    “Mae,” said Anton. “I’d like you to meet Conrad Ventori.”
    “Ms Chang. An exhilarating performance.” Ventori took her hand, kissed it. Mae squirmed at the intimacy.
    Anton opened a carton of Moët et Chandon, then one of Diet Coke for Mae. “Signor Ventori has a fascinating business proposition to put to you – one which I feel we should consider quite closely.”
    Ventori leaned casually against the wall, although Mae realised that there was little about this man which could be described as “casual”.
    “I represent the multimedia arm of PK Syntronics. Our labels include Galaxy, Romulus, Beatle, Indotron – I expect you are aware of us?”
    Mae was careful to keep a blank expression on her face, standard camouflage. The