Songs From The Stars

by Norman Spinrad

  The Giving of Justice

  Unfortunately, the walk back to the La Mirage Grande gave Clear Blue Lou time to think. The night was wearing on into the fringes of morning, and he could almost taste the tension in the empty streets. No one would rest easy until justice was given, and what was the perfect master of the Clear Blue Way doing? He was following his throbbing dowsing rod into danger and confusion, that's what he was doing!

  No reason why justice couldn't give you an erection, but no reason why an erection guaranteed justice, either. And when they finally found themselves alone behind the closed door of his room, he knew all too well that it was hardly justice that he lusted for right now. This fiery creature was going to quite literally fuck him for all he was worth and all she was worth as well. And she had let him know it, daring him to refuse the challenge.

  It was mad, it was brave, it was down and dirty, it was the most deliciously nasty game he had ever played, and oh, how it turned him on! It was also a little frightening, for when the truth was revealed in all its naked splendor, he just might find himself in bed with sorcery and liking it.

  And he didn't understand why that possibility was just making the moment that much tastier.

  "Well, here we are," Sue said, glancing around the room, her eyes lingering for a moment on the bed. "And here I am."

  And she fell forward into his arms, her mouth reaching up for his. Lou moaned, and quivered at the knees, and his mind shut off, and he found himself eagerly flowing around her, surrendering to the overwhelming energy that she seemed to be pouring into him by near-desperate act of will.

  They staggered to the bed and toppled back onto it, Sue uppermost, still locked in the long charged kiss. She ran her hands up his thighs in a purposeful seeking that sent a bolt of lightning up his spine and made him break his lips away in a moan when they found their mark.

  She smiled smugly down at him, catching him in the opaque hidden depths of her eyes as she undressed him with teasing fingers. "And now for a taste of justice," she said, gobbling him up in her masterful mouth.

  For masterful was the word for how she seized the mainline that went right to the core of him and caught his being in the iron grip of ecstasy. Slowly and teasingly, feeling out his responses, then fully and openly, until he felt his soul would pour out into her, did she catch him in her spell, a protoplasmic pleasure that reached down into his very cells, to which he could not but surrender.

  Almost.

  No woman who could do this could have cold void at her heart. But no woman who could do this with those knowing eyes wide open could be doing it without purpose either.

  Not quite, lady, not quite yet, Lou thought, taking her by the cheeks and pulling her head away. Before he would surrender what was left of his will to the natural man, he had to see those eyes in the truth of uncontrolled ecstasy, and he was damned if he'd take his own pleasure until he did.

  He pulled her to him, kissed her with mocking chasteness on the mouth, rolled her under him around the kiss, then propped himself up on his elbows looking down at her.

  "And now for a taste of truth," he said.

  He slowly stripped off her clothes, staring steadily into her eyes with an expression of ironic appraisal. She arched her back up toward him as he slid her garments out from under her, looking back at him with prideful self-knowledge as her breasts bobbed up into his face.

  Ah, she was lovely, and oh, did she know it, and ooh, how Lou loved that!

  "Well?" she demanded. "Am I worth it? Are you glad you're compromising yourself?"

  "There'll be no compromises here," Lou said throatily, and he fell on one of those small perfect breasts, nibbling and licking the sweet hard nipple until he heard her whimpering in pleasure. Then he slowly trailed his mouth down over her body, savoring every inch of it—the swelling curve of her breast, the hollow of her stomach, the silly grace note of her navel, the taut skin of her inner thighs, the heat and smell and taste of her. She curled her hands into his hair and pretended to resist, but he sensed that the game was purely sensual now, and when he began to slide toward the quick of her against the teasing tension, she sighed and melted backward into the luxurious taking of pleasure, the natural woman surrendering the last veil.

  Oh Lou, I think I'm afraid of you! Sunshine Sue thought as she danced on the tip of his tongue. For with that tiny point of connection, he was letting her know just who he was and how deep into her being he could reach. He had pierced the games and scenarios to the essence and left her hanging helpless on a lance of pleasure.

  Oh, he was a perfect master all right, and his mastery went deep. He was dissolving her fears in pleasure, and what a loving thing to do! Her heart could not help but respond to the sweetness of that any more than her body could help respond to his mastery of her flesh.

  Yet she knew all too well that this pleasure had a higher purpose than its own. He was opening her up to him, he was letting her know he could do it, he had accepted her challenge and turned it back upon her. The game was still on, but now the levels reached higher than she would have ever believed possible. Ah Lou, Lou, you're as subtle a creature as I am, what a wonderful thing to find! We both play the same games. How fortunate that we both enjoy it. And how nice that we're evenly matched.

  She reached down with both hands, pulled his mouth up to hers, and then they were kissing, mouth to mouth, a dance of acknowledged equals, tongue on tongue, ego on ego, a kiss that took and acknowledged pleasure in every level of this ultimately earnest game.

  "Nice to know you," Sue said, as she welcomed him deep inside her with a rolling twist of her hips.

  Sunshine Sue regarded him with open and sapient eyes even as Lou felt her dancing a challenging counterpoint to his rhythm, rubbing the edge of her pleasure against his own, letting him feel her feeling him, then sending him off on a trip of his own where the master became the ecstatically willing student. Her mouth twisted and flowed in abandoned taking of pleasure even as her eyes read his with a certain knowing amusement.

  It was a place he had never quite been before, a place whose elusive truth he sought with the focus of his being. He could feel the sweetness of her; he felt that in a certain sense he was looking down into her honest heart; he felt the pleasure she took in the pleasure she was giving, and the pleasure she gave in the pleasure of taking. The intimacy was real. He tasted her spirit and found it good.

  Yet he knew that he neither possessed her fully nor comprehended the whole. There was something burning deep inside her that had nothing to do with him or this moment, an inner secret she both guarded and longed to have released.

  Fuck me! her body seemed to tell him. Fuck me out of my mind! If you dare. If you can. It was a new level of the game, perhaps the final level; the feat of cocksmanship to which he had been challenged and the truth he sought were both somehow aspects of the path to justice.

  Trust me, he tried to say with his body, with the rhythm of his hips and the depth of his stroke. Open up to me, let me all the way in. Ride me to wherever it is that you want us to go.

  Up and over the top into new country went Sunshine Sue, with her legs wrapped around Lou's body, and her spirit wrapped around the taking of pleasure that she now allowed herself to the full, open to the goodness of his power to lovingly overwhelm.

  For overwhelmed her he had, matching her karmic challenge measure for measure, playing every level of the game she was calling like the master he was, and now fucking her into truly letting her be fucked by him.

  At the peak of this orgasm of the body and spirit, Sue felt herself floating up weightlessly toward the bright sun of ecstasy, felt Lou releasing himself into the arms of her soul, surrendering himself to the sweetness he saw there, and thereby holding up to her the mirror of her own essential goodness as she tasted him drinking deep of what he found there.

  I'm all right, she thought as she lapsed into sweet repose. For he was all right, and he found her good. He was indeed a perfect master and a giver of justice, and
the truth of this had been proven to her by the natural man.

  She snuggled into the crook of his shoulder and just relaxed for a long moment listening to the synced rhythm of their heavy breathing. Finally he spoke softly against her ear.

  "Okay, you win, lady. You're going to get what you came for."

  Whatever it was, he had done it to her again. She sat up beside him and studied those big green eyes. There was amusement there that seemed of a loverly kind, but there was also the cool clear unfathomableness of the perfect master. It seemed that the game wasn't over after all.

  "Are you playing another game with me after all we've meant to each other?" she said archly.

  "Same game we've been playing all along," he said. "It's called the seeking of justice. And now I see how it can be found. I'm going to give you your heart's desire. I'm going to let you choose justice for yourself."

  "What?"

  "Isn't that what you were after all along?" Lou said slyly. "Isn't that why you seduced me?"

  "I seduced you?"

  He laughed boyishly. "Well, you tried," he said. "And you certainly succeeded in wrapping the giver of justice up in your karma. I can't kid myself into believing I'm a detached observer. So you've won the right to speak justice on yourself."

  "Hey, this isn't funny," Sue said. "I'm beginning to think you mean it."

  "I do."

  "But after the scene I made at the Court of Justice, everyone will think you're a fraud if I come out too clean."

  Lou nodded. He smiled at her sardonically. 'That's part of your karma now too," he said. "You can't say you didn't ask for it."

  Oh no! Sue thought. I can't make you look like a fraud now. And you know it. Because you're not a fraud. And you know that too, you son of a bitch!

  "You really are a perfect master, aren't you?" she said.

  "I try," he said dryly. "But now it's your turn. Tell me what to do with you."

  "You know what to do with me," Sue said archly, throwing herself into his arms. But it didn't work. He gently pried her loose. "This is real," he Said with deadly seriousness. "Justice must speak through you. Don't blame me, lady, that's the way you set it up yourself."

  And damn it, he was right, lighter than he even knew. All her life she had taken her own destiny in her hands. She had been karmically arrogant enough to act on the conviction that the dream she followed was a higher good than any of which her fellow beings were aware. Indeed, she had been willing to take the evolution of the human spirit into her own hands, and she had been pretty ruthless about it. This was her Way, and it had brought her to this moment.

  And here she was, having willingly sold her soul to black science, being told to judge herself, and being unable to avoid agreeing with the justice of that sentence. Harsh would have been the justice she gave on herself in her heart of hearts were it not for one thing—her destiny still tasted sweet to her in the face of all logic and Lou had shown her that he thought so, too.

  "Ah, you don't know how deep that cuts," she sighed.

  "Don't I?"

  No you don't! she thought. You may be a master, but you're not perfect. She longed to tell him everything, especially that which she didn't understand herself. But there was more at stake here than her own feelings.

  "Lou, do you think my soul is black?" she asked tentatively.

  "I think your soul is many colors."

  Ah, what a perfect Clear Blue answer! But he was also deliberately evading the heart of the matter, or rather not allowing her to put off any of what she was feeling on him. All right, she decided, you asked for it.

  "Hear my justice on the Sunshine Tribe!" she declared with mock pomposity. 'Neither I noir any of my tribe knew we were buying black radios. The Sunshine Tribe has done nothing to stain its karma beyond the usual standards of La Mirage. As giver of justice, I therefore declare the Sunshine Tribe white as the driven snow and hold it blameless of all wrongdoing."

  "And you?" Lou asked solemnly.

  "Me?" Sue sighed. "You have no idea what I've done. What I'm doing right now. What I believe must be done."

  "But you do," Lou said. "That's why you must speak justice for yourself."

  "I can't, Lou. I honestly don't know how."

  Lou studied her narrowly. "Are you asking me to do it, then?" he said. "You want to tell me about it and accept my justice with an open heart?"

  Sue studied him back. Great gods, was this a trap all along? She sighed. If so, it was a perfect one. Is there anything else I can do? Once I'm forced to admit that I can't judge myself, is there anyone else I can turn to?

  She sighed again. She gritted her teeth. "Everyone knows that the Spacers set me up," she said fatalistically. "What no one knows is why."

  "And you do?"

  Sue nodded. "The only thing the Spacers want out of this is you," she said.

  "Me?" Lou exclaimed, and Sue knew that she had reached territory where even his Clear Blue vision would probably be clouded.

  "You, love," she said softly. "I've met the sorcerer behind all this. The whole situation was set up so you'd be my giver of justice and we'd make love and I'd convince you to meet with sorcerers, and I think I'm going to do just that."

  "WHAT?"

  "Things don't look so Clear Blue anymore, do they?" she said sadly. "And it's even worse than that. They want you to aid them in a kind of sorcery. And I want you to do it too."

  Lou managed an ironic intake of breath. "Uh, I'd be interested in knowing what the hell you're talking about," he said.

  "The Spacers are weirder than anyone knows," Sue told him. "I got off with one, and I don't even know if I had any choice in the matter. I probably didn't even have any choice not to do what I'm doing right now. I don't like them, and I'm doing what they want me to do, but I've got to convince you to do what they want anyway."

  "And what might that be?"

  Sue took a deep breath. She looked into his eyes. Incredible as it was, he seemed to be withholding judgment even in the face of this. He had spoken truly when he said she would give justice for herself. What clarity it took for him not to hate her now! But how far could he really walk with her? How sure was her own step?

  "Black science is building a spaceship," she said. "They want you to help them let it fly. And so do I."

  Lou just goggled at her, speechless. Oh Lou, how can I make you understand?

  "They're building a spaceship," she repeated. "I don't understand why they think they're doing it, but I know why I want it to fly. Badly enough to risk doing what I've done to help them. Badly enough to try to persuade you to help us, even though it convinces you I'm the blackest person you've ever met."

  "Do you realize what you're talking about?" Lou said incredulously.

  "I know exactly what I'm talking about," Sue said testily.

  "A spaceship? Like the rockets that destroyed the pre-Smash world? Burning thousands of tons of carcinogenic filth? Black science polluting the very heavens with their evil? Stirring up a holy war against themselves for the twisted pleasure of slaughtering a children's crusade? Do you realize what you're saying?"

  "I'm afraid I do," Sue said. "And I'm afraid I still believe it's worth it."

  "What could be worth that...?" Lou said. But there was as much fascinated curiosity in his voice as anger or dubious disbelief. Oh Lou, she thought, maybe you will understand.

  And if you don't? she thought. If you find my dream black at its heart, might not I stand convicted of sorcery in my own eyes? But either way, she would at least be released from the paradox in her own heart as she shared it with the only person she could trust. The person she had no choice but to trust.

  "I'm going to try to tell you," she said. "For better or worse, I'm going to tell you who Sunshine Sue really is, and what I believe, and just how far I'm willing to go. Then you tell me whether I'm white or black, Lou, because I'm not sure I even care anymore."

  The longer he listened, the more Lou understood about Sunshine Sue, but the more he understood,
the more complex the problem of justice became. Truth be told, he had been close to the final vision even before he met her—the Lightnings to be disbanded, the Eagle Tribe slapped on the wrist, the Sunshine Tribe to be allowed to continue to function after all its equipment had been recertified righteously white. Only the question of justice for Sunshine Sue herself had hung in abeyance pending the tasting of her soul.

  And now that he had tasted her and found her sweet, it seemed that on the ultimate level, her spirit had to be the same shade as his. If we taste good to each other, we must be the same flavor.

  But what flavor was that?

  It was certain that the dream that burned inside her would be called sorcery by anyone outside the ambiguous reality of La Mirage. Hidden lore from a Rememberers' hut. An "electronic village." Linking human consciousness electronically to recreate the higher unity of pre-Smash man. It all stank of sorcery. After all, the "mass consciousness" she was trying to recreate had slaughtered billions and poisoned the Earth.

  Yet you could point to nothing about it that seemed to violate the law of muscle, sun, wind and water. This "software science" of "media" seemed neither white nor black. An art purely of the spirit, "independent of the hardware," or so she claimed.

  On the other hand, Lou could see that such a "radio network" as Sunshine Sue dreamed of creating could become an instrument of mindfucking on a scale beyond anything the blackest heart lusted after if put to the wrong use.

  But what Sue seemed to sincerely find in this dark art was exactly the opposite, a new Way, a path to greater clarity that all the peoples of the Earth might walk together hand in hand. "Extended electronic senses" to bring anything that happened anywhere into the consciousness of everyone all at once. Surely that could only bring the vision of all closer to the Way and form a commonwealth of consciousness and a brotherhood of man.

  He loved her for this vision and through that love tasted the whiteness of her soul and the sweet karma that seemed to be the pot of gold at the end of her rainbow. The perfect master, the giver of justice, and the natural man all longed to take her hand and be her companion along this Way.