Free Cold as Ice by Charles Sheffield Page B

stood, as he was standing now, two feet closer than Belt politeness permitted.
    She turned from the port, stretching arms and shoulders that had been too long in one position. He moved to her side, towering over her. He had a lanky, lean build, and one of the first things that she had noticed about him was his hands and their long, pale, flexible fingers. She coveted them through the eyes of a professional keyboard player. He could probably span a twelfth with no difficulty. Her own coffee-colored little hands struggled to play a ninth.
    She visualized a keyboard, and in the same moment realized that she had forgotten all about her agent's call. "Did you tell Magnus when I'd be able to get back to him?"
    "No. He was being pushy, so I told him you weren't here, that you were a thousand kilometers away, down in the guts of Jupiter. He didn't like that at all. Probably thinks his precious ten percent might be in danger."
    So the disdain between the two ran both ways. Wilsa sighed and scanned the chamber. "Can I put in a call to him from here?"
    "Sure. I've got it set up for Call Back. Press the send button and you'll have a direct circuit to Klein on Ganymede." He looked across at a chronometer. "You should do it soon, though, while the geometry's good. No relay station is needed if you act now, and there's less than a four-second, round-trip travel time for signals."
    Wilsa pressed the button at once. The time to pick-up somehow seemed less than four seconds. Magnus Klein must have been sitting right by his receiver.
    "WhereyoubeenforGodsake?" said a grating voice. "Get your butt over here."
    "Why? What happened?"
    A longer delay. "What do you think happened? What I said would happen. We're signed—for your Galileian Suite. System premiere performance nine days from now. That's what I've been doing while you Were goofing off. Hurry up back."
    "What terms?" asked Wilsa. But while she was waiting for her words to laser out to Ganymede and the reply to return to Hebe Station, Tristan Morgan was shaking his head. "What a bastard ."
    "A bastard doesn't do anything except have the wrong parents."
    "Worse than a bastard, then. Why do you let a jerk like Magnus Klein push you around? He's just taking advantage—"
    "Eighty thousand for the first performance," broke in the harsh voice from the speaker. "Option for four more at thirty thousand per—which I'm sure we'll get. We keep recording rights for all but the first performance. I figured you'd be better on the second or third night. We split broadcast royalties with them for the premiere."
    " That's why." Wilsa patted the speaker and made no attempt to lower her voice as she went on. "Magnus is a real tough son of a bitch. He told me he'd get that, but I didn't believe him."
    She winked at Tristan and waited through another four-second silence.
    "Well, you damn well should have," said the voice, louder and angrier than ever. "I always deliver what I say. I told you, I know these guys better than they know themselves. Hell, I was raised here. So you get your ass back to Ganymede. Sharpish, or I'll be an even tougher son of a bitch."
    The line went dead and the Connect light blinked out. Wilsa shrugged. "The Master's Voice."
    "You're going to take orders from that little monster?"
    "He's half a head taller than I am. Tristan, I have to go. As soon as possible. I've got a concert in nine days, including the first performance of my new suite. It's my biggest chance anywhere outside the Belt halls, and my reputation in the whole Jovian system will be on the line. I have to practice 'til I bleed ."
    She did her best to sound worried, and reluctant to leave. But deep inside, she was bubbling over. She had poured her heart into the Galileian Suite for over a year, slaved over it, living on Vesta but dreaming of the chance to give the first performance out on the big Jovian satellites. Ganymede of course for preference, but she would have settled for Callisto.
    It had been a wild dream.