Songs From The Stars Page 4

  "So you're Clear Blue Lou," the Castrotowner said. "I hope you'll be willing to take more righteous action to protect the whiteness of Aquaria, unlike friend Levan. We must make sure that the rest of the questionable science that is purveyed in this evil place is freer from sorcery than—"

  "When I see, I'll speak," Lou said frostily, "and when I speak, I'll speak justice." Whatever the facts, this kind of strident white righteousness always rubbed him the wrong way.

  "Lou and I have some serious matters to discuss, if you don't mind," Levan said, vibing Lou his thanks.

  "Of course," the Castrotowner said obsequiously. "And of course, everyone has faith in the justice of Clear Blue Lou." He shot a parting glance of distaste toward Levan. "Especially the gray folk of La Mirage."

  "Thanks Lou," Levan said when he had gone. "The righteously white have been crawling all over me to go further ever since the latest. Suspending trade in Lightning components and making it impossible for anyone to buy eagles or radios or electrical equipment isn't good enough for them! Now they want me to interdict everything the Sunshine Tribe uses and shut down the Word of Mouth operation. Next, they'll want me to ban Lightning-type components generically and shut down what's left of business in this town, as if I'm not unpopular enough already!"

  "But that can't be decided until I give justice," Lou said, taking a seat at the foot of the divan.

  "Oh, that's not good enough for them now, not since the Lightning Commune started saying that the Sunshine Tribe knew that the radios they bought had atomic power cores."

  "WHAT?"

  Levan peered at Lou owlishly. "You didn't know? Oh yes, now it's all over town that those brain-burned Williams claim that Sunshine Sue knowingly bought loathsome black science from them, and now everyone's looking at everyone else as if they were the black plague and searching for Spacers in the woodwork."

  "But that's an open admission that they're practicing black science themselves..."

  "You think I don't know that?" Levan said. "What's more, my instincts tell me that they're lying. Sunshine Sue isn't that black, she's certainly not that stupid, and she's always played by the rules of the game. She's been set up; you can't tell me she hasn't."

  "But how and why and by whom?"

  "How?" Levan snorted. "The Lightnings sold her the radios and then tipped off the Eagles, who for some reason got a sudden attack of righteous whiteness and denounced her. Why? The answer to that one is who, and we both know who really made the piece of black technology that's at the heart of this situation, now don't we?"

  "The Spacers deliberately set up Sunshine Sue?" Lou said. It didn't make sense. "But why would they want to ruin the Sunshine Tribe?"

  Levan lit a pipe of reef, puffed, shook his head, and spoke more slowly. "It could be part of something really sinister, Lou. Everything's at a standstill already. What if the karma of this situation forces us to disband Word of Mouth and ban Lightning-type components generically? Imagine Aquaria without solar cells or eagles or Word of Mouth and with everything else that comes out of La Mirage smeared black with the scandal..."

  Lou took Levan's proffered pipe, toked deeply, and tried to make sense out of it. Without the La Mirage free market, Aquaria's supply of electronic components would dwindle away to a trickle of inferior imitations. It might even be worse, since only the mountain williams "knew" how to produce these goods at all. In short, without what was permitted to sleaze through La Mirage, Aquaria's white civilization would be crippled. Without the venial gray sins that were committed here, virtue would be unworkable.

  "It doesn't add up," Lou said. "Why would the Spacers help us build a white technology on the sly and then create a situation that cripples it?"

  Levan shrugged. "My soul may be well flecked with gray, but I'm no Spacer," he said. "Could this be preparation for some kind of invasion? Cripple our technology and then—"

  "It could never happen," Lou blurted instinctively. "We'd never let—" He stopped in mid-sentence, for the flow had brought him to a clearly flashed vision of the likely truth in all its subtle awfulness.

  "I smell a satori," Levan said, eyeing him narrowly.

  "Could be," Lou said slowly. "I mean, if we're forced to dismantle half our technology to prove our righteous whiteness to ourselves, we just won't do it. Instead, we'd have to admit self-consciously that our vaunted white science has a black lining, that without a certain amount of black science, the law of muscle, sun, wind and water is unworkable. They may have caught us in a nasty karmic paradox."

  Even Levan the Wise, Levan the Cool, blanched at this prospect. After all, his whole life had been spent in the maintenance of the very necessary ambiguity that these Spacer machinations seemed designed to resolve into disaster, the vital illusion that was the spirit of La Mirage. And from the look of the town, that wire-walking act was getting pretty shaky already.

  "Is this karma punishment for our sins, Lou?" Levan sighed half seriously.

  Lou laughed ruefully. "Somehow," he said, "I can't see the Spacers as the avenging angels of righteousness. Perhaps they seek to make the temptations of black science more open and watch as we're forced to blacken our souls to survive. They make much more sense playing the snake."

  Levan sat up, leaned forward, and tried to assume a grandfatherly pose. "Whatever you do, you must also restore the harmony of La Mirage, my young master," he said. "You know how this town feels about you, Lou. You won't let your people down, will you, my son?"

  "Would I do that?" Lou said, and he meant it. But he also knew that he would be beyond the bounds of such affection and loyalty when the voice of justice spoke through him.

  After a dose of what awaited her at the Sunshine Tribe's transport depot and tribal hostelry in the eastern suburbs of La Mirage, Sunshine Sue decided to avoid the Market Circle headquarters of the tribe for the moment. Everyone she wanted to avoid was clamoring to see her, and everyone else was asking her politely to keep her distance.

  After a quick meal, she had grilled Gloria Sunshine and the craftsmen who had examined the sorcery-tainted radios in the office she had commandeered while casually tending to a vast assortment of business with other people. While she let them convince her that only a true black scientist could have discovered the hidden atomic cores in the merchandise, she hoped that this public performance would convince her own people that the Lightnings were lying, that she hadn't knowingly betrayed her tribe to black science.

  Then she went through the blizzard of messages awaiting her. Levan wanted to see her at once, half a dozen scribes wanted interviews, and most of the astrologers and soothsayers in town were eager to improve her destiny for a stiff fee. There were dozens of notes from old friends and lovers telling her they were with her in spirit, but asking her to accept their regrets for wanting to make discretion the better part of valor.

  To hell with it all! she decided. I'm just going to take a bath and see no one for the rest of the day.

  She was just toweling herself down in her quarters and beginning to cool out a little when some bozo knocked on the door, despite the message she had left not to be disturbed.

  "Go away!" she shouted. "I don't want to be bothered."

  "Not even by a representative of Space Systems Incorporated?" said a basso voice on the other side of the door.

  "What?" Sue shouted. "What did you say?"

  "I'm a representative of Space Systems Incorporated. I must speak with you privately on a matter of vital mutual interest."

  Sure you are! Sue thought sourly. And I'm the wicked witch of the west! Still, anyone who was crazy enough to claim he was a Spacer deserved some craziness back. So she went to the door with the towel wrapped low under her armpits, exposing a goodly amount of breast. Maybe I'll just tease this maniac and see what happens, she decided.

  A creepy-looking young man stood in the doorway, heavy with pudge, bald on top, doughy like a baby around the jowls, and weird looking around his intense watery blue eyes. He seemed to stare right through
her half-draped body without reacting. This is a sinister black scientist? He was a total turn-off, his seeming indifference to her fair flesh infuriated her, and she felt like an asshole. But she was damned if she was going to show it.

  "So you're a Spacer?" she purred sardonically. "Well come on in and let's get acquainted."

  The pudgy man took a seat by the dressing table while Sue reclined provocatively on the bed, letting the towel ride high up her bare thighs, determined to get a sexual rise out of this creature so she could torment him with rejection. "So?" she said in a sultry voice. "What do you really want?"

  "I'm John Swensen, and I represent Arnold Harker, Project Manager for the implementation of this scenario," the so-called Spacer said. "He wants to meet with you at once; the scenario calls for it." He did seem a little sweaty now, staring carefully at a fixed point slightly above her head as Sue let the towel drop a little, exposing the aureole of one nipple. "A great opportunity will be yours if you follow the scenario nominally."

  "Scenario? Nominally? Great opportunity? What the hell are you talking about?"

  "The scenario that brought you to La Mirage. It has been followed nominally thus far. You bought the radios, our operative in the Eagle Tribe arranged for the so-called black science to be revealed, and here you are to be judged by Clear Blue Lou. Phase two requires—"

  "Shit, this is serious, isn't it?" Sue said, sitting upright and drawing the towel more protectively around her. Suddenly she felt all too naked. This confirmed her worst conjecture—the damn Spacers had set her up, and this creature had just established his credibility by telling her how. Unlikely as he seemed in the role of a sorcerer, he was the real thing.

  "Of course it's serious!" the Spacer said in his first display of excitement. "It's a moment of great destiny for you and for the world. Phase two of the scenario will reveal the true reasons for what we've done and present you with a gift that will make you forever grateful for your compliance."

  "Grateful!" Sue snapped. "My compliance! You try to destroy everything I've built and you expect my compliance! You tell your Project Manager that he can stick his bleeding scenario up his—"

  "Phase two will undo all the damage caused by phase one, I assure you," the Spacer said fretfully. "You'll regain all you've lost and reap far more if you follow it." His fat face seemed to harden suddenly as he reached the down-and-dirty bottom line.

  "Besides," he continued in a much more threatening tone, "if you don't follow the scenario, you'll be judged guilty of black science, your tribe will be disbanded, and you'll lose your current persona through karmic rebirth. Phase one guarantees all that. You cannot rationally refuse to follow phase two. To deviate from nominality is to assure your own destruction."

  Sunshine Sue studied the Spacer with disgust, anger, loathing, and no little fearful respect for the powers his unprepossessing person represented. The bastards had her. They had set this up with hideous precision, and her only hope was that they were telling the truth about extricating her from their own trap. Certainly no one else was about to. Their ironclad logic did indeed compel her compliance with this "scenario" of theirs, but if they thought they'd ever get any gratitude from her for trapping her in their dirty mind-fuck, they had another think coming.

  "Okay, so you've got me for the moment," she admitted belligerently. "Now what, sorcerer?"

  "My directive is to take you to the Project Manager at once," the Spacer said, rising from his chair. "He's waiting up in the mountain william country away from watching eyes. I'll be waiting over Canyon Boulevard in a silver eagle to lead you. We have to leave at once to get there before we lose the sun; it's a long flight up."

  "And how do I know you'll let me return?" Sue asked skeptically.

  "You have to take our word for it," the Spacer said almost pleadingly. "Besides," he said more coldly, "you really have no choice, do you?"

  And with that, he departed, taking any vestigial illusion of Sunshine Sue's free will with him.

  Just how far up into the mountains is this person taking me? Sunshine Sue wondered as she soared up a jagged rocky cleft that seemed to climb up forever into the mountain fastness that now towered all around her. Long shadows already obscured the rugged land below, and only the tops of the peaks still gleamed in full sunlight.

  She had been following the silver eagle for hours, and now the sun was starting to sink. Up here even the mountain william encampments were few and far between; in fact she didn't remember seeing one below for the better part of an hour.

  Where the hell am I? she wondered. What am I doing here? I must be crazy.

  She didn't know how far east they had come, but it was certainly far enough to become frightening. Outsiders didn't penetrate too far up into mountain william country if they knew what was good for them, and now it appeared that she was flying through country that the Williams themselves were none too eager to brave. This was terra incognita already. No one ever dared fly this far east. Soon the sun would be down, which meant that this was farther toward Spacer country than she could return from without spending the night where no whitely righteous foot ever trod. Where did Spacer country begin? And was she already in it?

  She shuddered in the sunset breeze that blew up the gorge through which she was flying. The canyon walls around her were deeply shadowed, forbidding and ominous in the pregnant aura of oncoming twilight. What might be slithering about the unseen landscape below?

  This is insane, she decided. I'm not following my way up here, I've been forced into this. Without being able to stop myself, I'm following their bloody scenario. I've got about as much free will as a gear in some Spacer machine. Up ahead the Spacer eagle veered off down a side canyon which opened out into what seemed like the last highland meadow before the central peaks of the Sierras rose up as an impassable barrier. A tongue of deep shadow extended east up most of the meadow, but the upper quarter was still a bright green where the day yet held back the creeping onset of night.

  Something round and bright gleamed high atop a peak of rock that loomed over the upper terminus of the meadow. Squinting against the brilliant contrast of light and dark, Sue made out a cluster of buildings at the top of the meadow and a cluster of eagles tethered beside them.

  An eagle's nest? All the way up here? It made no sense; there was no eagle traffic at all this far up into the mountains.

  But there it was, for all the world like any rest stop on the way from Mendocino to Lina, up here in the mysterious shadowy territory where the whiteness of Aquaria ended.

  After leaving the Exchange and checking into his usual free room at the La Mirage Grande several blocks away from Market Circle, Clear Blue Lou spent the afternoon making the rounds of the taverns and smokehouses, trying to pick up an inspiration for his choice of place of justice—and perhaps some sport for the night.

  Within reason, a giver of justice could ordinarily choose any place he fancied for the scene of his big party, and within a few days, it would be gladly turned over to him and rearranged to his liking. The present circumstances, however, seemed to demand that the Court of Justice be convened quickly, by tomorrow night if possible. This limited Lou's choices. On one level, he couldn't expect to have the town clear out the Exchange or a major public house overnight. On another, he knew damn well that La Mirage would be only too happy to let him run such a power trip under the current paranoid circumstances. But if he took advantage of this psychic injustice, the Court of Justice would open to bummer vibes. So he needed a place that would be immediately available without gross imposition.

  In the Sorcerers' Saloon, he ran into Kelly the Munificent, an old bedfriend who owned the Palace of Dawn. She let it be known that both her music hall and her bedchamber would be happily available to him on instant notice. The Palace of Dawn was the largest music hall in La Mirage and eminently suitable. Kelly was big and blond and a noble sportswoman of fucking. However, she was literally the intimate of most of the key figures in town, and involvement with her karma at
this point promised too many additional complications.

  "The trouble with you, Lou, is that you really are Clear Blue," Kelly told him good-naturedly when he explained his polite regrets. Perhaps they could sport after the giving of justice was over, he told her, and in any case, of course, she would be invited to the Court of Justice.

  His next stop was the Smokehouse, where the reef was the best in town, and the soothsayers and mages gathered to engage in dialectic, and where, if legend were to be believed, black scientists got stoned with the locals incognito. Today, however, Spacer machinations were the sole topic of conversation, and any black scientist in attendance would have gotten his ears scorched.

  An intense lady astrologer assured Lou that while Sunshine Sue's stars were bad, the heavens were about to look on La Mirage with favor. She also assured him that the stars would smile on their union if he cared to come to her place. It was the opinion of the La Mirage mages that Sunshine Sue was too cool to have dealt knowingly with black science, though opinions on the true color of her soul varied. The Lightning Commune was held in the general contempt reserved for mountain williams.

  But aside from the enigmatic Spacers, the true ire of the denizens of the Smokehouse seemed reserved for the Eagle Tribe, and there seemed to be a general conspiracy to paint them as the villains in Lou's eyes. Whether or not Sunshine Sue was guilty of black science, it was pointed out to him forcefully, the Eagles were flagrantly guilty of assholery.

  "Where's there percentage in this?" Mithra the Biomaster demanded indignantly. "Now their own manufactory is shut down too."

  No one seriously considered that the Eagles had acted out of a sense of selfless virtue, and it would have been jejune of Lou to suggest this possibility in this company, especially since he found the idea hard to swallow himself.

  "Business is terrible," Dusty Windman complained. "You can't even sell some farmer a simple wind generator without his insisting that it be examined by a neutral expert for sorcery. You've got to reharmonize the vibes, Lou, and if that means sanctions against the Eagles, well, they're the ones who really violated the rules of the game."