Picking himself up from the floor of the rehersal hall, The King surveyed the mess. Equipment and stage props which had not been anchored according to ship's regulations were spread across the room. That no one had been under them when they fell was pure luck, and he looked around for his tour manager to find out why safety precautions had been ignored.
"Henry! Are you all right?" Harp Zadney appeared from behind a sound projection unit that had previously been one of three in a stack along the opposite wall. "That was a pretty strong one for this sector, I almost blacked out. Not as big as the one we hit on the Broadway, back in '86. That one Took two people and injured ten more. Remember that?"
"Why wasn't this equipment anchored properly?"
"I told the grunts to do it; don't know why it didn't get done." Harp was rubbing his elbow and shaking his head to clear the fuzz from inside it.
"Grunts can't be counted on, that's why they have grunt jobs. You're the manager and it's your responsibility to make sure things get done." Stomach fluttering and his hands numb, Henry was shaky from after shock and his voice was sharper than he intended. He looked at equipment and instruments scattered across the room. "We're lucky rehearsal was over before we hit the anomaly, or we'd have half the cast out with injuries. Get someone in here and make sure this stuff is picked up and secured correctly." He turned away from the slapped look on Harp's face and strode out the door into the spiral corridors of the FTL cruise ship, Queen of the Stars. He let his tingling feet carry him, but his mind was still in the rehersal room.
Harp was a good manager and an old friend who sometimes got too comfortable with himself and let things go. Generally they were small and unimportant. Henry suspected that Harp felt displaced by Annasi, demoted from constant companion to occasional friend.
Since the wedding, Harp had spent more time pandering to the Media than attending to details he delegated to others who didn't always get the job done right.
Not that Henry was ready to complain about Harp's effectiveness. The Media focused telelenses that peered into nearly every moment of his life had promoted him so well that he had gone from being a working musician, grateful for a contract with Lucus Enterprises, to "The King" in half a year, standard. Once Annasi had made it clear that the Media reps were to keep their distance from her, the time she spent with Henry was not shared with anyone else. Henry Leroi Burgoine was content with his life, except for an uncomfortable prickling in his mind after the anomaly.
Crossing the connecting court from helix 3 to helix 5, a shortcut bypassing the Media Lounge where he was expected for interviews, he hurried along the corridor to the suite he shared with his wife. He needed to be certain that Annasi had not been Taken.
The occasional random disappearances that occured during or within stronger anomalies had formal scientific names, but Henry couldn't remember them. Even the scientists didn't use them. No one knew what happened to the people who vanished, where they went or how they got there. After more than two centuries of research and debate, scientists could not explain or describe what an anomaly was, or how to detect one before it happened to FTL ships.

Spending his adolesence performing with bands on FTL cruise liners, Henry had experienced anomalies before. He knew the statistics; one FTL flight in twenty experienced an anomaly, one anomaly in five hundred was strong enough to do any damage. Of those, two out of seventeen would pluck living bodies from their clothes and twist them out of known existance.
The odds were good, Henry told himself as he slapped the security lock beside the door to his suite, there was no reason for concern - except the sinking emptiness he'd been feeling since the anomaly. The door hissed open to an empty room.
"Annasi!" There was no answer. He checked the other rooms but did not find Annasi in the suite. The scented wessersilk robe she had been wearing earlier was collapsed over a chair beside the roomcomp, the reader screen was active and the seat of the chair was warm. Her ID bracelet, required of all starship passengers, was on the floor, its clasp seal unbroken.
"Annasi!" This was a wail as he sank to a chair beside him. On the screen was a poem. It looked like a message at first, a note for him to find. Then he recognized it as one that Iyon Harrach had written while he waited to die.

Henry grabbed the blue wessersilk robe and buried his face in it. He was trembling with the emptiness in him, frightened at the rate it expanded, terrified at the thought of the universe turned hollow for the rest of his life. He breathed deeply in an effort to control his sobs, and failed. He was on his knees, weeping, when ship's officials came in asking questions, routine after measurable anomalies. Raging, Henry drove them out then sat in Annasi's chair, now cold, and gazed across the sudden void of his life to the night he'd met her.
Small, she was, notably slender in a room full of fashionably stout women, poised and fragile in a simple flowing gown. She sat in a shadowed corner and watched with laughing eyes while the other women at the party competed for Henry's favor without success. Once her silence had his attention, they danced together until the band went home.
Daughter of the famous diplomat, Reina Gai of Perilane, Annasi was on Lucus visiting an aunt she called "The Dragon". The title was well earned, from Henry's perspective, since the aunt had opposed their courtship energetically, and boycotted the wedding on the grounds that Annasi was too well bred to be seriously involved with a popular musician. Even one as popular as Henry was apparently becoming.

Harp did what he could to stimulate the Media interest by arranging Exposure Events where Henry could feed the insatiable public appetite for glamour and gossip. At Harp's insistence, Henry hosted receptions at VillaDamore, personally leading publicity tours through the mansion while it was being remodeled.
VillaDamore was a beautiful house, with banks of tall windows that gave the rooms an airy brilliance. A broad curving staircase with a polished wood banister, a food service area large enough for a party of fifty and generous employee housing in a seperate building behind the gardens, made the estate ideal. Isolated, but not remote, it was surrounded by rolling hills and scattered trees, an easy commute from studio and theater. Henry might have bought it even without the name; House of Love.
Annasi had been delighted with the house when he showed it to her, dancing, arms extended, across the expanse of bright marble floor, spinning in and out of the sunshine and shadows cast by the long wall of windows in the reception room. Her footsteps and laughter filled the empty house as she consulted with archetects and decorators, finding buoyant pleasure in the task of preparing the House of Love to be their home. Her spirit was reflected in every room.

The mourning King paid no attention to knocking on his door, did not notice when it stopped. He stared beyond the reader, willing Annasi to reappear and illuminate the cold shadows opening in him.
"Henry?" Harp's face slid into view, a friendly hand heavy on Henry's shoulder. "Henry. We need to talk to you."
Bringing his focus to the face in front of him, Henry shook his head. He noticed that he was no longer sobbing, his eyes were hot and dry. It seemed strange, abnormal, not to be weeping.
"Henry, Annasi is gone. The ship is listing her as Taken by the anomaly. The Media reps are demanding a statement." Harp's face was small across the distance, his concerns seemed trivial in the darkness left where Annasi wasn't. He tried to feel, but couldn't.
"Do you want to contact her family, tell them about it before the Media gets there? Henry?"
"No Media. Tell the bloodsuckers to stay out of this." His voice was raw, throat aching around the lump in it.
"We can't do that, M. Burgoine. You are in the public eye, it is the price you pay for success." The ship's psychwarden moved into Henry's view as he spoke. "We will notify your wife's family, if you like, but you must issue a statement or those "bloodsuckers" will tell their own stories, not yours.

Henry closed his eyes to shut out the painfully white uniform in front of him. "There is nothing left..."
"There are contractural obligations, although, given your present condition, I think tonight's performance should be cancled." The psychwarden was making notes on his handcomp. "M. Zadney has arranged a small press conference and..."
"No." Henry was surprised his voice didn't crack. "I'll go on tonight. The Media reps can wait until then for my statement."
"Henry, take the night off. You could use the rest."
"No, Harp. I can handle the stage, but the bloodsuckers get up close and I don't know what I'd do..." Henry looked at his hands and seeing them tremble, he clenched them, making grey knuckled fists. "How long do I have before showtime?"
"Two hours. But you're in no condition..."
"That's my decision, not yours, Harp. How's the rest of the cast?" The effort of focusing on business helped keep him from sinking back into the emptyness.
"All accounted for; shaken but unharmed. They'd do best with a night off, too."
"Tomorrow night, they can have off, if you like. Tonight, I need - I need... DON'T!" Henry grabbed at the psychwarden, reaching for the reader controls, "Let that be! She was - was reading..." Overwhelmed again by the reality of her absence, Henry sucked a racking sob and covered his face.
"Get out, all of you." He regained some control. "Call me in time to dress."
"Henry..." Harp stopped when the psychwarden touched his shoulder with a shake of his head. The door hissed shut behind them as Henry turned to the reader and studied the screen once more.

Carefully rubbing tender knuckles, Henry studied his Maul. The frame was bent and the keyboard twisted slightly from an impact with a telelens and the head it was attached to. The memory core had sprung and was leaking gel; it would have to be replaced. The telelens would need to be replaced as well, and Henry knew that he had not solved the problem with Media Reps by breaking his 36 key Maul on one rude lensman's head.
But it had felt good at the time. Satisfying, to swing the instrument in a horizontal arc and catch the lens and then the head, watch the pushy rep fall back off the stage, into the pressing mass of his fellows. There would be Psychwardens and Litagaters dining together and sending him the bill and in the end, Henry knew, he'd pay damages, replace the lens unit and the Rep would make six times that amount writing about the ordeal and vilifying Henry.

The rule is clear with every media pass given: No reps or lenses on stage. This lensman broke the rules and Henry (his Litagators will argue) felt he was being assalted. But the truth was that Henry was just pissed off.