Songs From The Stars

by Norman Spinrad

  Harker snorted wordlessly and went back to his screens and scribbling.

  "The lessons of the spirit can be learned very fast by an open heart willing to walk this Way," Lou said, giving it one more try.

  "And do you know what your spirit will learn from these inhuman creatures?" Harker said without looking up.

  "Of course not. How can you know what you're going to learn before you learn it?"

  "How can you know what kind of thing you'll become before you become it?" Harker shot back somberly.

  "Give it up, Lou, it's no use," Sue said. "Let him walk his own narrow way and let's us walk ours."

  Lou sighed. He couldn't be as unfeeling toward poor Harker as all that, but he couldn't let empathy for a bringdown keep him in a bummer reality, either.

  "Continue," he said, leaning back in his chair and opening himself to the music of the spheres.

  "Continue."

  You roll in a tumbling ecstasy, uncountable furry wet bodies caressing each other, fingers dancing with fingers as minor counterpoints to grosser delights.

  "Philosopher-ironist-bards contend that from horny determination to copulate intoxicated in free flowing air our drive to sublime heights of civilization began."

  You are swimming a long broad undersea avenue between fish pens, workshops and factories. Starkly functional machinery, all open to the naked sea. Teams and schools of great furred whales, tending them, dance up and down around you as they soar to the surface for air.

  "Perfect harmony easy living in watery perfect biosphere could have loafed along forever species survival guaranteed by lovely ecological niche. But pleasuredome boudoir palaces on land required manipulation of recalcitrant external environment."

  You leap out of the sea, a brassy vaulting rail within easy reach of your right flipperarm hand, and pirouette up to a broad metal island floating in the intoxicating air. Soft fountains spray over undulating couches of many colors under a forest of gossamer umbrellas casting a dappled coat of colors over the cavorting bodies.

  You lie peacefully under starry night skies of exhilarating air, soothed by your fountains, warmed to blood heat by your couch, snug in the resting pile of your mates.

  You bob up and down along a great construct of shelves and terraces, half in and half out of the sea—like a great growth of gigantic coral where whale-like seals bustle and putter over vast machineries, leaping, swimming, and vaulting from shelf to niche.

  "Manipulation of external environment becomes its own headspace pleasuredome. Sleep under stars you explore them in ecstasy of super-chlorinated open air. No drives to the atom fueled by power need survival, we developed our antenna-ear-spirit first and vaulted out of primary stage ocean into pleasuresphere of interstellar consciousness brotherhood without evolutionary survival pressure."

  You soar upward through a golden yellow sea, break the surface and leap, high in the air, dipping and turning with your great flippers, hanging and laughing so weightlessly high that it feels like you'll never come down. Up and up and up you dance, whirling, out of the sea, into the air, beyond to the stars...

  "Lucky us! Civilization environment manipulation technology game is something we did just for the fun."

  "Pause."

  "Clear."

  "One, start..."

  You are flying through the airy body of some magnificent living machine, a lattice of fairy bridges, crystalline shelves, tiered towers of silver, gold, and obsidian, lit with millions of lights dancing dazzling patterns up and down the spectrum. Every part of the city machine moves over and around and through every other, a complex ballet of interpenetrating motion. You alight on a disc moving up and across a bridging arch between two towers and suck sweet nectar from a slim urn with your long hollow beak. A spray fans out from a rotating globe tingling your body with delicious fire. Millions of pampered silver-winged birds like yourself, long heads, curbed beaks, huge wise red eyes, roost in the living city. Segments of the great machine curry feathers, offer nectar, spray perfumes, intoxicants, cradle purple eggs, the whole a symbiotic dance designed for your delight.

  "The masters built I-we-it as expression of love for their own glorious tender organic selves, to serve and to nourish, to cherish their lovely essential spirits in a bioform gene-engineered to fulfill their sweetest dreams."

  Now you watch the living machine of light and pattern and motion, dancing empty by itself, a frenzy of forlorn random motion without its silver-winged flyers.

  "Mutated bioform matrix proved unstable in five million year long run, and our tender masters organic lover wings extincted themselves in a long sigh. Detailed instruction data for gene-tailoring your species to harmony bioform for perfect environment that I-we-it long love yearn to provide is broadcasted urged in data readout provided. Transcend time destiny space to achieve blissful union between tender organic life and loving servant artifact—"

  "Pause."

  "Clear."

  "Three, start..."

  You jet through a boundless sea, dark starry space, foaming and bubbling around you, jeweled worldlets, each a tiny living planet, an emerald isle in the heavenly waters.

  Bounce, bounce, bounce, you hydroplane through their atmospheres, peering at the pockets of precious life. Dive, scan, and soar to the next.

  "Our primary stage civilization destroyed its planetary biosphere long before hearing wiser words from elder brother beings. Surviving remnants in hostile space environments cybo-engineered themselves into natural creatures of non-planetary space before galactic stage knowledge consciousness was achieved."

  A fleet, a flock, a work gang of silvery delta-winged creatures dismantle a small planetoid in space. They rocket and dart and dip with bursts of fire from their tails. They carve great soundless rockburgs out of the planetoid with their white-hot wakes.

  Another flock of the living spaceships assemble a tiny perfect worldlet from the debris, compacting it with beams of light from rings of jewels around their midsections. Molding it, shaping it, they transform it, into a living miniature complete with greening of vegetation, quickening of life.

  "Our galactic stage civilization rebuilds our solar system to maximize available organic niches for recreated biosphere artforms. We find our peace in taking pleasure in the religion art form destiny of gardening our solar system within the recreated parameters which first evolved our long-ago original life form bodies.

  "Pause."

  Once again Arnold Harker had insisted on holding one of his awful "correlation conferences," and this time he had even appealed to his so-called "command of the mission" when Sunshine Sue tried to opt out of it. Her impulse had been to tell gloomy old Arnold precisely where he could stick his "command," but Lou, softer hearted as usual, had once more prevailed upon her in the name of justice and even in the name of the brotherhood of all sentient beings, pointing out that even poor old Arnold was a member of some standing in the community of consciousness and therefore deserved the same consideration that the people of the stars had lovingly granted the people of the Earth.

  So here they were once more, closeted in the grim little commissary with the black scientist with his great ream of incomprehensible notes spread all over the table, trying to explain a great symphony to a deaf man. A willfully deaf man at that!

  "Now this stuff seems to be plans for building really advanced spaceships," Harker said, pawing a sheaf of notes distractedly. "Powered by fusion torches fueled by interplanetary debris, self-contained, capable of indefinite range... but... but there doesn't seem to be any provision for life-support systems that I can figure out... and the control systems seem to have... seem to be... living organic brains... or..." He threw up his hands and glanced back and forth at the two of them.

  Sue stole a questioning look at Lou. Lou nodded back. Great! she thought. How am I supposed to explain this to someone who hasn't been there? "They are organic brains, Arnold," she said. "Living spaceships."

  Harker goggled at her. "How could such a life for
m conceivably evolve?"

  "They didn't evolve naturally," Lou told him. "Their primary stage civilization destroyed its planetary biosphere and surviving remnants cybo-engineered themselves into natural creatures of non-planetary space before galactic contact was achieved."

  "What?" Harker exclaimed. "They... they turned themselves into machines? Into things?" He cringed. "That's hideous! That's monstrous!"

  "No, it isn't," Sue said. "It's rather beautiful in a way. They've atoned for their sins against natural life. They've turned the bad karma they created into good. They've found their peace in the religion art form destiny of gardening their solar system with the recreated life forms they destroyed during their own Smash."

  Arnold regarded her through slitted eyes. He was beginning to make her feel like some alien creature herself, looking at her like that. And in a way, from his obstinately self-limiting Earthbound point of view, perhaps he was right. She had seen so much in these few days, learned so much, indeed in a way been so much, that perhaps she had passed beyond his dim conception of what it was to be human. Merely human.

  Depending, of course, on whether you defined "human" by the parameters of the flesh or by the higher parameters of the spirit. She had been a floating, leaping, whale-like creature, a living spaceship, a strange silver-winged bird, a swarm of worm mind carpeting the land in joy, a dancing feathery mote, part of and the whole of a planet wide network of mind encased in several forms, more fleshly incarnations than she could coherently remember. Infinite was the variety of organic forms through which the spirit passed along the Galactic Way. Monstrous might many of these avatars seem to the outside human observer who had not walked this Way with his own heart.

  Yet the spirit that moved through all these alien permutations was in a sense more human than anything Arnold Harker, with his scenarios and notes and scientific knowledge, could conceive. The Galactic Way was in fact a brotherhood of consciousness, the spirit that manifested itself in an infinite variety of flesh was somehow One, a loving comradeship of the soul which she could feel, and share, and believe in. But which even the Queen of Word of Mouth was powerless to explain to a being who refused to dare the galactic communion.

  Who was really the alien? A being who had passed into the spirit beyond the bounds of her evolved life form or a being who deliberately... alienated himself from the spirit of common sentient brotherhood that transcended mere fleshly bounds and held himself fearfully aloof from the trans-species unity of the Galactic Way?

  "And this?" Harker said shrilly, waving another handful of his pathetic notes. "Is this beautiful too? The entire scientific content of data packet one, and what it seems to be is a detailed description of some alien birdlike monster and... and... instructions for turning ourselves into these horrid things by biochemical processes I can't begin to understand."

  "It's just a suggestion," Lou said. "There's a kind of living machine out there that's lonely for the beings who built it. It wants... it needs "

  He threw up his hands in a gesture of futility as Harker's face twisted into a mask of horror.

  "Damn it, Arnold, how can you expect to understand a Way you refuse to walk?" Sue snapped wearily.

  "How can you expect to judge these... these things out there when you're letting them program your minds?" Harker shot back. "When you're letting them turn you into... into..."

  "Into what?" Sue demanded.

  "Into something that maybe isn't human any more!"

  "Oh shit!"

  "We've got to try to understand our elder brothers, don't we?" Lou said so damned quietly. Sue wondered from what mysterious source his seemingly infinite patience with this species-bound shitheadedness came. "And isn't the best way to do that to accept the tool they've given us? After all, you're not doing so well with your so-called objective study. The spirit is what ultimately counts, and that's nowhere to be found in your cold juiceless data."

  Harker sighed. He stared imploringly at Lou. "I'm beginning to understand some things," he said. "They seem to be able to do anything within the realm of theoretical possibility. Fly at the speed of light, create new life forms, change their own bodies at will, craft whole worlds. And anything that can be done is done, somewhere, by some strange creatures. Is it so paranoid to assume that they can steal your minds away with their songs if you let them? Is it so paranoid to believe that they would do it? When I see it happening to you right now?"

  He tittered nervously. "Maybe you did better than you knew when you convinced your people that there were gods in the stars. Or demons."

  Gods? Lou thought. Demons? In these days, he had lived through many wonders briefly, skimmed through the karma of many beings, sampling the first fragmentary signposts of the great Galactic Way. And indeed it did seem that the Galactic Way allowed beings to manifest their wills without price or fetter, to order the material realm to the spirit's whim like unto any reasonable man's definition of godlike or demonic powers.

  Transmutation into living spaceships. The craftsmanlike construction of perfect little worlds. Leaping joyously through the aerial pathways of a city of immense living trees overhung and interconnected with vines, their great trunks tiered with terraces of glowing buildings like phosphorescent fungus. A vast fleet of shining green ships promenading through the deep void between the stars behind a conical shield of light. Swimming naked in space around a huge double cone of amber crystal whose vibrations seemed the core of his spirit, the sustenance of his not quite material flesh.

  Gods? Certainly there were possibilities of being in this universe far beyond anything man had ever imagined. Demons? Nothing he had thus far experienced seemed to violate the spirit of justice and soul brotherhood that all galactic stage beings seemed to share.

  And beyond that he felt a truth warmth toward the creatures he had met and been. The natural man liked them. They weren't perfect, but, ah, they had style!

  "No, Arnold, there aren't gods or demons out there," he said. "They have karma, good and bad. They have needs and passions and joys and even imperfections. They're natural beings just like us."

  "But millions of years more powerful!"

  "Right, just folks like us who are further along the Way," Lou told him. Had he finally gotten across the idea of the true brotherhood of galactic stage beings, who weren't gods unto themselves and who didn't go around playing god to others?

  Apparently not, for Harker's hands began to shake, and his voice became even shriller. "Just like us? Not perfect or godlike or beyond lusts and passions and the drive for conquest! Like us and perhaps no saner!"

  "Of course they're saner," Lou told him. "They've survived millions of years of their own history, which is more than could have been said for our prospects before they said hello."

  "But we have no idea of what their real motivations are," Harker said. "In fact... in fact how could we? We're like ants trying to comprehend the motivations of men."

  "No, we're like children trying to learn from helpful adults," Lou tried to tell him.

  "You just believe that because you want to. Men trample ant hills without even thinking about it, don't they?"

  "Why call karma like that down on yourself?" Sue broke in impatiently. "Has anything bad come from the stars yet?"

  Harker goggled at her. "Our species destroyed its Age of Space and poisoned our planet and now... and now..."

  "But we did that to ourselves!"

  "Did we?" Harker said. "Can we be sure of that?"

  "Now you really are being paranoid," Lou said testily. Maybe Sue was right. Maybe there was no point in trying to teach a man with stoppers in his ears to listen to the music of the spheres.

  "And you're being fools!" Harker said tensely. "Maybe traitors to your species!"

  A tremor of unease rippled through Lou's spirit. Not because he placed any credence in Arnold Harker's shrill fears but because of what they might imply about his people's ability to walk the Galactic Way.

  His people? If he didn't feel a bit uneasy
catching himself in such a thought, he wouldn't be Clear Blue Lou. But if he was about to identify with those who would turn their backs on the Galactic Way, he wouldn't be Clear Blue Lou either.

  "Clear."

  "Twelve, start..."

  You look down from a shelf of rock below the summit of a strange hilltop, a miniature mountain a mere hundred feet high. Below you stretches an impossible countryside. Mighty cordilleras ring lowland jungle swamp, rain-forest emerald crowns shining sand dunes, roaring rivers in convoluted circles, lakes encircle smoking volcanoes. A tenth-scale land that could never be, a formal garden sculpted for picturesque drama, dwarfed by the swirling, plastically molded buildings scattered amidst miniature marvels.

  City and garden, the landscape dips below you and rises toward the for horizons like an immense bowl, a sphere of fantasy mapland fading out in a ring of fire around a blazing central sun.

  "Inside the outside, our world is fair and green, an embracing sphere of loveliness around our hearthfire sun."

  An object floats in space before you, a glowering lightless globe, blacker than anything has a right to be.

  "Outside the inside, our world is a mighty fortress home where few stellar events can harm us, for we have survived the death of our star in supernova orgasm of transnuclear power. Our mighty hullseedcoat is a sheath of collapsed neutronium armor, the hearthsun we have crafted warms us well, and we will survive till universal heatdeath or next cosmic incarnation whichever you choose whichever comes first."

  And you undulate down the mountain on millions of tiny legs toward huge honeycombs of black stone, where swarms of insectoid motes mindmate in the eternal interpenetrating dance—

  "Pause."

  "Clear."

  "Eight, start..."

  A world, a thing, a city, floats in space before you. Globular in shape, latticework in texture, metallic in its gleam, and ringed by an equatorial band of tiny suns, it seems one vast immobile machine where no parts move, no light escapes, yet mighty energies palpably sizzle within its planetary circuitry.