Songs From The Stars

by Norman Spinrad

  Inside the cloud chamber, Lou put his hands on his hips, and cocked his head at Little Mary Sunshine suspiciously. "Now what was it you wanted to show me?" he said.

  Little Mary Sunshine seemed to be choking back a giggle as she stared soulfully into Lou's eyes. "This," she said, flipping off her blouse proudly to display a superb pair of naked breasts with purposefully erect nipples.

  Lou broke up. He couldn't help himself. "Oh ya got me!" he cried, collapsing into giggles. He bent over and addressed Mary's nipples as if they were the eyes of her face. He pointed an admonishing finger between them. "But I don't want to hear a word about Eagles or Sunshines or sorcery!" he said. "Keep your mouth shut and attend to business!"

  Little Mary laughed. "That's not going to be easy," she said, tumbling him backward onto the softly padded floor of the cloud chamber.

  It took quite a while for Little Mary Sunshine to attend to business, and she didn't keep her mouth shut most of the time either, but true to the spirit of bedfriendship, she refrained from attempting to use: their fleshly intimacy to influence him on behalf of her tribe afterward.

  Paradoxically, Lou was feeling warmer toward Little Mary as they came down the stairs together, and perhaps through her, toward the Sunshine Tribe itself. Maybe she had achieved what she set out to do by running no number at all. And if that had been her number in the first place, well, who could deny the sweetness of that...?

  Apparently everyone who might have a stake in whatever it was Clear Blue Lou might be feeling.

  A sea of eyes tracked them down the stairway, and the fact that the measuring glances were doing their poor best to be covert only made the seething vibes that much more obvious. Clear Blue Lou has gotten it on with the Sunshine Tribe—that was where it was at as far as all these non-detached observers were concerned. North Eagle muttered imprecations to three of his fellow tribesmen at the headfood table and then pointedly turned his back. Sunshines flashed vibes of tribal appreciation in the direction of Little Mary. Levan smiled knowingly in his booth, apparently pleased by his interpretation of the implications. Eagles measured the reactions of Sunshines and Sunshines measured the Eagles reacting to them. Though on an obvious level, Lou had indeed been had by the Sunshine Tribe—and quite royally too, thank you—on a higher level, the cause of justice had been well served by the pleasures of the flesh. The vibes had been intensified, and Lou's vision of justice was beginning to come together.

  The karma of the Sunshines tasted sweet in his mouth, whereas the karma of the Eagles tasted sourer every moment. Such had been the general perception of La Mirage all along, but now Lou was synced into that vibe, the aesthetic conviction that seemed to contradict the legalistic facts of the situation. The Eagles had stained their tribal karma knowingly, whereas the karma of the Sunshine Tribe gave off no foul odor of self-knowledge of evil. If the Sunshine Tribe had knowingly dealt with sorcery, the sin had been Sunshine Sue's alone; her people believed in their own innocence.

  There was no reason why an erection could not dowse out justice and every reason why a giver of justice should allow himself to be a natural man.

  Lou kissed Little Mary a chaste public good-bye, pulled a vibrational cloak of privacy around himself, secured more reef and wine, and commandeered a solitary booth from which vantage he could observe the configurations of the ripening party.

  The common room was jammed now, and he suspected there was little going on in the cloud chambers above. The buffet was beginning to look ravaged, spirits were flowing like there was no day after, and a fogbank of reef had rolled in. Eagles and Sunshines gathered by themselves in little groups; the vibes were now too intense for them to mingle. Indeed, most of the partyers were divided up into groups and factions, tables, booths, and clots of them; soothsayers and mages, mavens and magnates, craftsmen and astrologers, locked in private paranoid realities. The vibes were keening toward longed-for karmic release, and the energy level was building.

  Thus there was an audible mass intake of breath and then a babble of frenzy when the Lightnings entered the Court of Justice.

  Two mountain william men and four women, all naked to the waist, their chests draped with long necklaces of beads and medallions and animal bones. The men wore fringed pants of crudely tanned buckskin and the women short skirts of the same material. All six of them had long manes of untidy hair, and their eyes were reddened, their pupils enormous. They floated through the mob scene as if they were in their own reality, and the people of La Mirage gave them plenty of body space.

  As well they might. Not only were they mountain Williams, not only were they fried to the eyeballs, they were the people who had created this foul karma, and they were self-admitted servants of sorcery. Waves of sullen anger not un-tempered with a certain paranoid dread swept the Garden of Love. The villains of the hour had arrived.

  But the Lightnings seemed unaware of the protective aura of danger they gave off; they slithered around like nervous serpents anticipating the booted heel. Lou stood up and commanded their presence with an imperious crook of his finger. By the time they reached his booth, everyone in the room had focused in on this confrontation. A tide of bodies surged forward. The blond male Lightning whirled around to glare at the hostile circle of eyes. His black-haired mate cringed and spun him around. The Lightning women were totally elsewhere, swaying to unheard music.

  "Everybody cool it," Lou ordered. "I want to have a little talk with these people."

  A murmur of approval swept the room at his harsh inflection of the last, and a bubble of psychic space formed around them as the Lightnings sat down—the males across the table from Lou with a woman on either side, and the other two women sandwiching Lou between them.

  "Thanks man," the black-haired man said, "that was getting a little heavy and we're flying high. I'm Nate and this is my mate Buckeye, and we're as good as any of these low-lander shits."

  "That's right, who they kidding, they serve the demon god just like us," Buckeye said with belligerent vehemence.

  Lou studied the two Williams narrowly. Demon god? It appeared they were already too stoned to know what they were saying.

  "You mean the Spacers?" he said.

  "Spacers, demons, sorcerers, all the same thing," Nate said. "Serve 'em, and you get gifted; cross 'em, and you get cursed."

  "Theirs is the power," Buckeye said nervously. "You serve 'em like they tell you, or you end up doing what they want anyway; they don't give a shit." Lou had the feeling these williams weren't connecting up with reality at all. They didn't seem to know what they were saying, and they certainly didn't seem to realize whom they were saying it to.

  "Hey, I'm Clear Blue Lou, remember?" he said, snapping his fingers in their faces. "The giver of justice in your case? And you're sitting here totally whacked out telling me that you're servants of black science?"

  Nate seemed to come down from somewhere and realize to some extent where he was and what was happening. But Buckeye, his eyes wild and his body vibrating, continued to rave on. "We all serve the demons!" he roared. "Theirs is the power! Nobody thwarts their will!"

  The whole room was listening now, and Buckeye finally grew aware of it. "Lowlander assholes!" he shouted. "You're as black as we are! You just don't have the balls to admit it!"

  A knot of male Eagles came surging through the crowd from one direction and a mob of Sunshines from another, and scores of hands were balled into fists. Ug-ly! Lou bolted to his feet and held up his arms.

  "We don't have to listen to this shit!"

  "Not from mountain william assholes!"

  "Break 'em up, Lou!"

  "Let's have some justice now!"

  "I'll speak justice when and how I see it!" Lou roared. The tumult guttered into silence. "And I don't like what I'm seeing right now," he said more quietly. "As for you," he said to the Lightnings for the benefit of the sullen onlookers, "get your asses upstairs, all of you!"

  Talk about bearers of bad karma, these Lightnings seemed to enjoy being w
alking bummers! How black did this sorcery get?

  Sunshine Sue entered the Garden of Love as the recipient of the best vibes the Court of Justice had to offer at the moment, or so it seemed to her. Salutes and high signs and greetings from all and sundry, for some strange reason. The only bad vibes came from the Eagles and, unsettlingly enough, from a few of her own people who apparently still weren't convinced she hadn't gotten the tribe in over its head.

  If only they knew, she thought wanly. If only all of them knew.

  Across the crowded room, Levan was motioning her to his booth; since Clear Blue Lou was nowhere in sight and Levan could be counted upon to have all the strands of the web in his hands, she made her way through the crowd in his direction.

  "Hi Sue!"

  "We're with you!"

  "Damn Eagles!"

  Something really weird was going on. Why was everyone save the Eagles openly showing her their support? It was as if they expected her to come out clean. Even if the town's sympathies were really with her, the movers and shapers of La Mirage did not make a practice of standing too close to someone in danger of being painted black.

  And of course, she was now guiltier by far than anyone but she herself knew. She was in fact here as an agent of sorcery, whether she liked it or not. She was deeper into black science than she had thought it possible to get.

  Arnold Harker had gotten to her on levels where she didn't even know she had levels. The prize of a Sunshine World Broadcast Network would probably have tempted her into this plot even if she had real free will. But it terrified her to know that the Spacer scenario was so cogent that her will didn't enter into it at all. "The scenario is behavioristic," Harker had said. She still didn't know quite what that meant, but the vibe at least was all too clear. An utter ruthlessness that chilled the soul.

  Yet Arnold had also shown her that this ruthlessness was far from cold-blooded. The Spacers followed their dream with a burning passion, sterile and pointless though it might seem to her, a passion that seemed to have leached Harker of all other feeling. What could be blacker than that?

  Yet, on another level, how different was it from her own obsession? Like the Spacers, was she not selling the clarity of her soul for a dream that went beyond the ultimate question of black or white?

  As she made her way to Levan's booth, she felt an unsettling psychic distance from the sophisticates of La Mirage, whose peer she had always felt herself to be. There was an insubstantiality to them, a diminishment. They were children who dared not look behind the programs that ran their lives, who risked not their souls in the service of dreams which seemed to transcend accepted definitions of good and evil.

  And wasn't that very attitude the essence of sorcery?

  "So you finally find the time to pay your respects to a poor old man," Levan said by way of greeting. "Where have you been? Didn't you get my messages?" The old man slumped back in his chair, puffing a reef pipe, while one of his young cuties hovered in attendance.

  Even Levan seemed less cogent now, less alive and real. His only dream was to preserve an illusion that was breaking apart before her eyes and against her will, whatever that was now. Who the hell am I? Sue wondered. What's happening to me?

  "I was out selling my soul to the Spacers, and the fine print in the contract took a lot of negotiating," she said dryly as she sat down. "What's going on, Levan? Where's Clear Blue Lou? How are things looking for me?"

  Levan shooed his girl away in search of more goodies, leaned forward, and smiled crookedly at Sue. "Your cause is looking up," he said. "Lou is upstairs with the Lightnings, singeing their dirty hides, I hope. And after he talked to North Eagle, he repaired to his cloud chamber with one of your tribeswomen, a gesture lost on no one. You can get good odds now if you want to risk a wager on the survival of the Sunshine Tribe."

  "What?" Sue exclaimed. He's already gotten it off with one of my tribeswomen? Politically advantageous to her cause though it obviously was, she found herself consumed by a flash of anger. Who the hell was it? That's my business! But of course she couldn't let any of this on to Levan. And she did not at all like the irrational jealousy she felt at the thought of someone else getting it off with the horny son of a bitch.

  "Surprised?" Levan said. "But then you don't know Lou. Last night he had a tryst with two star-crossed lady lovers whose tribes were tearing them asunder. A public statement of support, as it were."

  "How romantic," Sue snorted.

  "The town seems to think so," Levan replied with a smirk. "And you, I gather, have a somewhat more cynical assessment?"

  "Oh no, no, no," Levan oozed. "Lou really is as warmhearted as he is hot-blooded. But he's also a man who knows how to deliver a message subtly enough so that its political intent is accomplished without calling attention to itself. Bedding an Eagle and a Sunshine together was his way of showing La Mirage his intent to deliver a justice the town can live with."

  "And getting it off with one of my tribeswomen...?"

  "Why, a gesture of intent to deliver justice that the Sunshine Tribe can live with, of course!" Levan told her.

  "You make him sound like quite a man," Sue said dubiously.

  "Oh he is, he is," Levan replied. He cocked an ironic eyebrow at her. "I'm sure you'll enjoy meeting him." He laughed around a cloud of reef smoke, slumped back, and regarded her shrewdly. "In fact, I'll wager you're thinking about it already."

  Does this old man see right through me? Sunshine Sue flashed through a moment of panic.

  But Levan seemed to be regarding her less with suspicion than with grandfatherly amusement. He seemed to think that it was Clear Blue Lou who was moving toward her as lover and savior, having already signaled his intent in cryptic fashion. Perhaps Levan even thought he had had a hand in crafting this politically desirable liaison. No, even Levan the Cool, Levan the Wise, was an innocent when it came to this level of sorcery. It was she who saw through him.

  Nate and Buckeye Lightning hunkered down on the soft floor of the cloud chamber as if they were facing Clear Blue Lou across some tribal council fire. Lou himself was barely aware of the incongruity of the setting—the soft candlelight, the pink incense fumes, the memory of the lovemaking that had taken place here not so long ago. Only the four Lightning women seemed to sync into the sensual vibes of the chamber, reclining together in a stoned-out heap, brain-burned into a simpler and sweeter world.

  "All right, now let's get to the bottom of this," Lou said firmly. "You've openly admitted that you're servants of black science. You want a chance to deny that now? Be-cause otherwise, you know what I'm going to have to do..."

  "Aw, we're all really ripped, is all," Nate whined. "Buckeye didn't mean—"

  "Don't tell me what I mean!" Buckeye shouted angrily. "I know what the fuck I mean! And I also know that this dude can't touch us—"

  "Shut up, Buckeye!" Nate hissed, elbowing him in the ribs.

  "Let him speak!" Lou commanded.

  "That's right, you tell him!" Buckeye growled, bleering at Lou. "You fly an eagle, don't you, perfect master, and the solar cells for it came from us, and you know where we got 'em from. The demons gifted you too. You're as black as we are. The demons have you too."

  "I'll be the judge of that," Lou said. But he didn't like the ring of justice in the ugly truth he was hearing. These Lightnings were self-admittedly evil, and they had open contempt for anyone less honest about his tainted morality than themselves. And who could say there was no truth in that?

  "That's not what the demons tell us," Buckeye said smugly.

  "What? What's not what the demons tell you?"

  "The demons have protected us with a curse," the mountain william told him. "We're under their protection. You disband the Lightnings, and nobody gets gifted with solar cells or nothing anymore. You got the balls to do that, low-lander?"

  Great was Lou's ire. Nobody was crazy enough to threaten a giver of justice in the middle of the process. Not even the Spacers would likely dare that. Surely they didn'
t suppose they could save these assholes from disbandment with such a crude threat. More to the point, would they take such a risk just to save a tribe of mountain Williams that they had set up in the first place? No way! Those black-hearted bastards!

  "You really believe that?" he said. "You really believe the Spacers can save your tribe from disbandment after you've openly admitted to peddling atomic power?"

  "You can't afford not to let us get away with it," Buckeye insisted belligerently.

  "Come on," Lou said, "you're not really that stupid.

  "You think the Spacers care enough about your dirty hides to risk playing a game like that just to save them?"

  "But they said..."

  "The demons... the demons lied to us?" Nate said softly. Finally the message was getting through.

  "What do you think? That the Spacers are so righteous that they wouldn't lie to you to get you to do their bidding? That they'd throw away everything they're doing just to avenge your disbandment? Are you really that stoned?"

  "Oh shit," Nate said woodenly. "They just used us. They told us they'd protect us, and now they'll just throw us away."

  "And you were so stupid you didn't see it coming?"

  "Y' don't understand," Nate said shakily. "Y' don't know what the demons are like. They told us what we had to do. If we didn't do it, we'd never be gifted again."

  "And you'd be forced to make a righteously white living," Lou said unsympathetically.

  "You don't understand," Nate insisted. "We didn't know the Eagles would find the atomic cores in the radios. But when they did and when the Spacers told us we had to admit we knew about it, what could we do? We were caught anyway, and who else was going to protect us? You? Lowlanders? Man, you can't fight the demons, they don't just tell you what to do, they make you do it."

  "And you had no choice in the matter?" Lou said harshly.

  "We had to serve them!" Buckeye said shrilly, apparently finally realizing the deep shit his tribe was in. "We couldn't help ourselves."