Songs From The Stars

by Norman Spinrad

  She could see old Arnold blush under his beard. "You have no right to say a thing like that to me!" he whined.

  "Oh don't I?" Sue said, moving even closer, speaking her words into the air he was breathing. "What if I were to offer to sport with you right now, under these stars of yours? Could you untangle yourself from your scenarios long enough to be a natural man?"

  Harker started. He gaped. He flinched back again. He eyed her narrowly. "Practicing your technique for Clear Blue Lou?" he said snidely. "More proof that we've chosen well."

  "That's just what I mean. You're not man enough to take me seriously."

  "As seriously as you intended?" Harker said, leaning forward into her body space. "So you could then salve your wounded ego by making a fool of me in your own eyes?"

  "But I've done that already, haven't I, Arnold?" Sue said lamely, trying to cover up the shock she felt at having this creature, turned off or not, see right through her completely.

  "Really?" Harker said. "Well, then I might as well return the favor." He moved even closer, daring their lips to touch. "I'll take you up on your offer, unless of course you're not really the natural woman you pretend to be."

  And with that, he kissed her full on the lips, pressing his mouth to hers lightly, challenging her to pull away and show her true cock-teasing colors. Sue could not tell for all the world whether he was messing with her mind again, or whether this down-and-dirty game was starting to turn him on, too.

  "Of course, you know that this means war," she said, undoing the front of her blouse.

  "What a peculiar thing to say," Harker said woodenly as he ran his hands mechanically over her cool bare flesh. Sue found herself shrinking from his unwholesome touch—and yet that very queasiness filled her with an equally unwholesome lust.

  "Let's see what you've got, sorcerer," she said, thrusting a hand into his crotch as she slid down onto the bench and drew him down on top of her.

  Harker removed the remainder of her clothes with unsensuous speed and clumsiness, and Sue gritted her teeth in anticipation of a clumsy and fetid grudge fuck.

  But old mold turned out to be not quite what she had expected or indeed like anything she could have expected. He was reasonably dexterous and quite thorough but cold as ice. No false kisses of feeling lip to lip, no feigned sounds of passion. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew exactly what this was.

  He was maddeningly patient and in tireless control of his mechanically proficient performance. So much so that Sue tried to prolong the necessity of his effort as long as possible, partly to make a point and partly because this was a unique sexual experience, to say the least, and one which she knew she would not have the stomach to try again.

  He stayed with her like a hero—or like a well-lubricated machine—and made sure she was both satisfied and exhausted before he allowed himself a loathsomely controlled release in utter silence.

  "Well," he said when it was over, "have I proven to you that I'm a natural man?" He seemed to be studying her face for a reaction as if it really seemed to matter to him.

  You really think you're good, don't you? Sue thought. And she had to admit that by his own criteria of competence and control, the wretch had a right to think of himself as an accomplished technologist of sex. I could never tell you how awful you are in terms you could understand, she realized.

  "Let's just say you've made your point and I've made mine, Arnold," she said, disengaging herself from him and retrieving her clothes.

  He looked at her peculiarly, and for a moment, Sue thought she could see hurt and confusion flicker across his face. But then the sorcerer's mask reformed itself in its facade of arrogance and control.

  "Maybe they were the same after all," he said sardonically. "Maybe what just happened was as inevitable as what will happen when you meet Clear Blue Lou."

  Sue measured him in somewhat fearful amazement. Is he laughing at me inside? she wondered. Have I just been had? Did this son of a bitch just run another of his scenarios on me? Who had just mindfucked whom? She quivered in disgust and confusion.

  She had fallen into the realm of dark sorcery indeed.

  The Court of Justice

  Clear Blue Lou hated to be early to any party, even his own. The giving of justice was a social event, but the meaning of "social" went deep. The giver of justice chose the place of justice, decreed the refreshment and entertainment, and summoned whom he would to the Court of Justice. All parties to the dispute and all parties whose karma had been touched by it. Anyone he thought might contribute to the richness and complexity of the vibes. Anyone anyone else wanted to have there, within reason. Gate-crashers who were in no wise discouraged.

  Thus began an open-ended party that truly represented the totality of the karmic moment, a party that threw everyone even remotely involved together in a high-proof distillation of their common reality itself and let them boogie together until it all hung out.

  No reason why justice shouldn't be fun, and every reason why it should be a social event. Hopefully, good vibes in, good vibes out. And as a social event, a Court of Justice could at least be counted upon to be royally catered, since the perfect master ordered up the fare and the parties to the dispute paid the bill. Any hint of mingyness would be bad karma indeed, and disputants usually vied with each other in the addition of their own extras. Everybody was trying to prove that the vibes they contributed to the whole were noble and beneficent, and of course, no more so than to the master of the Court of Justice himself.

  "Punishing the guilty" and "exonerating the innocent" were merely enforcing the law. One who would give sweet justice must make it a boon to all. Ideally, no one should leave the party feeling bad.

  Needless to say, this was not always possible. The giving of justice was an art, not a science, and the degree of perfection was determined by the material at hand as well as the skill of the artist.

  And as he waited upstairs at the Garden of Love in his private cloud chamber for things to really get underway before he made his grand entrance, Clear Blue Lou wondered whether it was going to be possible to come up with happy endings for all this time around.

  Sunshine Sue was guilty of sorcery in point of fact, the meaningful question being only the color of her honest intent. The Lightning Commune had openly proclaimed their own blackness. The technically righteous Eagles should have been the heroes of the hour, but in reality, justice that did not chastise the "innocent" Eagles would leave La Mirage seething with paranoia and resentment. If he went far enough to clear the karma of La Mirage in the eyes of the whitely righteous, he might destroy what he was trying to preserve and play right into the unseen hands of the Spacers. But if he didn't go far enough, black science would win a public victory, and the sorcerers would also reap the reward.

  Lou could see no way around it: when justice was given, he was going to have to kick ass. And that was the part of giving justice that he liked the least. Sorcery cases were rare; most often disharmonies arose from the equal evil of mindfucking. There could be no greater crime against the Way than the theft of free will, and it was Lou's conviction that the villain himself was also the victim of programming that had seized his karma and bent it into disharmony.

  Thus the sweetest justice was obtained not by edict but through satori for all concerned, as he had achieved last night in saving the love of Carrie Sunshine and Laurie Eagle. He had cleared the tribal control programs through shame, not diktat.

  But when a perfect master could not achieve justice in this ideal manner, he had to be willing to take the moral responsibility for telling people what to do—in effect, committing a kind of mindfuck himself. Lou always felt like something of a hypocrite inside this paradox, and the only thing that let him accept such karma was the knowledge that a giver of justice who didn't feel like a hypocrite in such circumstances would not be truly walking the Great Way.

  And here, where the Way had been poisoned not by disharmonies among those who tried to walk it but by sorcery fro
m outside, there seemed no way through to justice that would not involve the kicking of unwilling asses.

  I don't like the headspace I'm getting into, Lou thought, as he left the cloud chamber and descended into the Court of Justice he had convened below. But of course, the head-space he was getting into was the headspace that needed him to be there. Getting into it was what the Court of Justice was all about.

  The cloud chambers around the outside of the tavern floor had been converted to private booths with tables, curtained off from each other but open to the rest of the scene. Sex was not the obsession of this party, nor would it be the entertainment. What liaisons of the bedchamber that might arise in this atmosphere would likely be intense and private, for intrigue, not casual sport, was definitely the vibe.

  Lou had timed his entrance well. The place was already fairly crowded, and many people of import had already arrived. Levan the Wise, hovered over by two liveried ladies in his employ, reclined in one of the booths, surrounded by traders from the Exchange and a dense cloud of smoke. In another booth, North Eagle, one of the four leaders of the tribe, sat alone nursing a flagon of wine, the glum object of many passing dirty looks. There were plenty of people in Sunshine Yellow in evidence, mingling freely and spreading their own Word of Mouth. Sunshine Sue had apparently not yet arrived, and the mountain william Lightnings would have stood out at once even in this mob scene.

  The long bar along one wall was laden with pastries, curries, pillaws, bowls of fruit, platters of vegetables, tureens of soups and chilis, and even a single large platter of roasted deer meat. Bottles of wine and distilled spirits lined the bar behind the food like a picket fence. At the Court of Justice, everyone served themselves, and there was a solid press of people attacking the buffet. Mages, merchants, Sunshines, Eagles, astrologers, magnates, soothsayers, and the unknown children of the night passing food and drink to each other, unified for the moment by the ceremony of culinary chaos.

  In the center of the room was a round table piled high with reef, peyote, arcane mushrooms, powerful herbs, dried un-nameables, and vials of magic extracts—the full Aquarian pharmacopeia of natural foods for the head. This smorgasbord of the psyche was not as crowded as the buffet spread as yet—the vibes were still too tight for all but the most daring or desperate.

  The rest of the tavern floor was a seethe of bodies and psyches, dancing from table to table, sliding sparking against each other in the process.

  And people were still pouring in. Here comes Kelly the Munificent and... uh-oh, isn't that the overeager lady astrologer from the Smokehouse?

  "Lou!"

  "Lou!"

  Kelly and the astrologer both spotted him at the same time. Then they spotted each other spotting him and started snake-dancing through the crowd toward him, shooting poisonous glances at each other. Flattered though the natural man might be, the perfect master had other things to think about tonight.

  The astrologer got to Lou first. "You chose your place of justice well," she said, sidling up to him. "The stars say—"

  "There you are Lou—uh, excuse me—I've got to talk to you before these people start bending your brain about the Eagles!" Kelly had arrived, fairly bumping the lady astrologer out of the way with a swipe of her ass, grabbing Lou by the elbow, and was already talking as she dragged him away. Neat move, Lou thought, glancing back over his shoulder with a gentlemanly shrug of regret at the lady astrologer.

  "Look Lou, North Eagle and I are bedfriends from way back if you know what I mean, and he feels just awful about the way people are treating the Eagles..."

  "Without making a judgment myself, I'd say the town feels pretty awful about the way the Eagles treated it."

  "Well North Eagle feels bad about that too, it wasn't really their fault, if you'll just talk to him, look how sad he looks!"

  Without even knowing it was happening, Lou had been steered over to the booth where North Eagle brooded alone, perhaps already slightly in his cups. Well, this was going to have to be confronted sooner or later...

  "Hello Lou," North Eagle grunted unhappily as Lou sat down, with Kelly shoving in beside him, neatly trapping him in this reality. Lou knew North Eagle slightly himself, and he had always been a good-time boy. But now he seemed morosely loaded.

  "Hello, North Eagle, how's your karma?"

  "Very funny. But then you probably think we smell like shit, too."

  "Hey, don't put the man on your bummer!" Kelly said, punching North Eagle affectionately on the shoulder. "He's here to sweeten your karma, isn't that right, Lou, so give him a chance!"

  "Gonna have to deal with some bad shit if he's gonna do that," North Eagle grunted with defensive belligerence. "Some really bad people..."

  "Like who?" Lou asked, pouring himself his first drink of the night.

  "Who do you think? Double-crossing Spacers, that's who! You think we wanted to create this mess? Tell me what we're getting out of it, man!"

  Over his shoulder, Lou saw that people were indeed eyeing this meeting with suspicion and distaste. Sunshines were drifting together to talk strategy. Levan dispatched one of his female minions into the crowd to drift casually in their direction. North Eagle, too, picked up on what Lou was seeing.

  "Yeah, we sure gained a lot of friends being good citizens, didn't we?"

  "And that's all you were doing, being whitely righteous?" Lou said archly. "You called the present unpleasantness down on your own heads because of your righteous wrath against black science?"

  North Eagle sipped at his wine, shrugged, grew calculatingly more intimate. "Aw, you know how it is, Lou," he said. "To make eagles, we need solar cells, which come from mountain williams like the Lightnings, who get them from..." He deliberately let the unsaid hang in the air. "Dealing with the williams isn't easy; you never know what may spook them. So we had this Eagle, Joe, who came from near their country, who the Lightnings insisted on dealing with. Had a whiff of gray about him, but what can you do? So the Lightnings try to sell this Joe this radio, and the assholes tell him about the atomic power core. So Joe goes to the tribal council and convinces us the Sierras are trying to trap us—he got the story out of the Lightnings by getting them loaded, or so he says. See, the Sierras paid the Lightnings to run this number. If we play it cool, which they're counting on, then we get denounced for not denouncing the radio, all the williams get spooked out of doing business with us, and the Sierras can take over the eagle business."

  "That's the biggest load of shit I've heard in quite a while," Clear Blue Lou said unsympathetically. "You're trying to tell me you couldn't smell it?"

  "No... yes... AW..." North Eagle sighed. "Okay, okay, so we weren't exactly surprised when Joe disappeared, and maybe he was... kind of... our Spacer connection, and maybe we sort of knew that someone east of here wanted us to do what we did... But what difference did that make? I mean, it was pretty clear that if we didn't denounce the atomic radios, we'd have a hard time getting solar cells, one way or the other..."

  "So you played a little quid pro quo with black science?"

  "Ah come off it, Lou!" North Eagle snapped. "Look around this place! Who isn't playing a little quid pro quo with sorcery! Without it, there's no La Mirage." He looked Lou straight in the eyes for the first time. "And you flew here in your eagle, didn't you?" he said more quietly. "If we're so black for doing what we had to do to make it, how whitely righteous does that make all you happy eagle freaks?"

  Kelly winced, clearly of the opinion that this zinger was not exactly calculated to win the pleasure of the giver of justice. But zinger it had been, and not without justice. The Eagles had only been playing the same old game, and not too many people here, including perhaps Lou himself, were in a position to be too whitely righteous about it. Black science was not their karmic stain. Nor was naive klutziness. However, what they had knowingly done was allow sorcery to blackmail them into creating this bummer to save their own commercial asses. And that, Clear Blue Lou decided, was karma that would have to be paid back.r />
  "Levan would like to see you when you have a moment." A young lady in Levan's livery spoke up from the swirl of people in front of the booth. How long had she been standing there? How much had she heard? Did it matter?

  "Okay," Lou said, shooing Kelly out of her blocking seat and sliding away from the table.

  "Tell Levan I'll be there in a bit," he told the Arbiter's emissary after she had covered his retreat into the crowd. He didn't want Le van's opinion on what to do with the Eagles at the moment. Instead, he made his way to the head-food table, which was much more crowded now. The party was rolling and people were no longer trying to hold back the changes. Couples and threesomes and foursomes were beginning to ease upstairs to the cloud chambers. Seers and mages were holding forth in a stoned-out manner. Someone was playing a guitar and a few fancy dancers were going into a clothes-throwing frenzy.

  Lou loaded a pipe with reef and turned away from the table, taking his first smoke of the night. "May I?" said a tall blond lady as she plucked the pipe from his mouth. It was Little Mary Sunshine.

  "Saw you talking with North Eagle over there," she said, taking a puff. "And I heard about your wonderful little threesome last night. So..." She leaned an elbow on his shoulder, propped her head in her hand, and blew breath-scented smoke at him.

  "So I thought you might be in a less righteous mood tonight," she said. "I mean, you've already gotten it on with a Sunshine and an Eagle, and you've already had your little talk with North, so don't you think maybe it's my turn?"

  "What did you have in mind?"

  She glanced around the room conspiratorially. "Is there someplace we can be alone?" she said nervously. "I want to show you something."

  Huh? Lou thought. Just when I'm ready to ride with the wind that's blowing, I find out I'm reading the signals wrong?

  "Uh, upstairs," he said, and he led her through the crowd and up the staircase, acutely aware as it was happening that people were making up their own minds about what they were seeing. Have I been had?