Songs From the Stars (11 page)
"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 walking 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."
"And I suppose the Spacers forced you to accept their gifts too?" Lou snapped. "They forced you to start trafficking in black science, is that what you expect me to believe?"
"Aw..."
"Everybody does it..."
"But not everybody gets caught, is that it?"
Both of the mountain william men hung their heads and stared at the floor. It seemed to Lou that they were finally coming to realize that they had brought their current bad karma upon themselves. They had played with sorcery and they had lost. They might have been mindfucked into it by the Spacers, but it was their own greed that had allowed it to happen. The Lightning Commune had proven its own karmic unworthiness. It would be better if they could admit it to themselves.
"What—what are you going to do with us?" Nate asked, looking up at Lou with pleading eyes.
Lou pondered his answer long and hard. Obviously, the Lightnings had to be disbanded. But the purpose was to cleanse, not to punish, and he would do well to remember that. If these Williams were now ready to serve justice, perhaps justice might be able to serve them.
"That depends on you," he finally said. "Your tribe must be disbanded. The Lightning Commune's collective karma has become so thoroughly blackened that no one will ever dare do business with you again, even if I were to permit it. That much justice you've given yourselves already."
He paused, hardened his eyes, and spoke more slowly, chewing over each word as he said it for effect. "However, personal justice for each of you is something I must decide. You could each be exiled from the towns of men forever... you could each be karmically reborn... you could be required to work off restitution debt for the rest of your lives... Or you could give me a reason to be merciful..."
Nate and Buckeye's ears pricked up at this. Poor bastards! Lou found himself thinking. True justice was going to be hard to find in any of this. The Lightnings. Sunshine Sue. The Eagles. All of them had been led to blacken their karma, but the real villains were the Spacers, and those fuckers were beyond his grasp. Absolute justice demanded that he judge them, and that was impossible. The whole process, therefore, was beginning to seem a little hollow.
"You must choose to stop serving the Spacers and serve justice," he told them. "Justice not for yourselves but for those whose karma you have blackened. You must tell me the truth: did Sunshine Sue or any of her tribe know that the radios you sold them were black, or was that a lie that the Spacers ordered you to tell?"
Nate and Buckeye exchanged fearful glances, which alone was enough to tell Lou what he wanted to know. Levan's instincts had been right—Sunshine Sue had been set up. By the Lightnings, and the Eagles, and the sorcerers whose pawns they were.
"And if we tell you...?" Buckeye said in a bargaining tone of voice.
You've already told me, asshole! Lou thought. But I won't rob you of the chance to choose your own fate. "I'm not bargaining with you," he said. "I'm asking you to serve justice of your own free will."
"Aw... shit, all right," Nate said. "Truth is, we don't know. Yeah, the demons told us to say we told Sue about the atomic power cores. No, we didn't really tell her—"
"But that don't mean she didn't know!" Buckeye said belligerently. "Them Sunshines know as much about radio circuitry as we do by now; they coulda known! That Sunshine Sue's so black she'd sure as shit not care if she did know!"
"But you do admit you told the Spacers' lie for them?"
"Theirs is the power," Nate said, hanging his head.
"Over your tribe," Lou said, "not over each of you, not anymore. Your tribe existed only to serve the demons. Now I disband it, and you will all be scattered, each to follow his own personal Way and make of it what you will. Do try to walk a little more carefully from here on in."
The mountain williams regarded this with sullen acceptance, an inevitable bitter morsel which must be swallowed. Justice did not yet taste sweet to them. Lou hoped that some day it would. He hated justice forced upon the unwilling; if it tasted sour to those who received it, it could not taste sweet to him.
And how much more bitter food for the soul would he have to hand out before this skein of evil could be unraveled? What will my karma taste like after justice is finally given for all? he wondered.
"Here he is now," Levan said, and Sunshine Sue followed his line of vision to the stairs leading to the upper floor.
Six glum and unsavory Lightnings were slinking down the stairs trying to look invisible. Behind them was a spare man of medium height in a blue flying suit. Long brown hair fell in well-groomed waves to his shoulders, his mobile mouth was twisted in an ironic smile, and his big green eyes radiated a deceptively tranquil power, hooded, held back. Every eye in the room tracked him as he descended, but he didn't seem to acknowledge this tense and rapt attention. Or perhaps more accurately, he refused to let anyone see him acknowledging it.
So that's Clear Blue Lou! Sue thought as she watched him make his way toward their booth in a bubble of private body space. He didn't use this aura to brush off the people who crowded around him, but he didn't let his way become impeded either. Formidable without being arrogant. The cock of the walk so sure of himself that he could play against it. Sue could not help pondering how this would manifest itself in the bedchamber, and she was forced to admit that the fucking scenario still seemed to be working "nominally." The fucking scenario indeed!
"I have a feeling you've made up your mind about the Lightning Commune," Levan said when Clear Blue Lou reached the booth.
"I'll speak my justice on the Lightnings when I give justice for all," Clear Blue Lou said loftily, sliding into a chair opposite Sue.
And just when Sue had begun to discount her first impression and decide he was a pompous ass, he turned those big green eyes on her, beamed her a look complexed with promise and danger, and said, "And how can I speak justice for all until I get to the bottom of you, Sunshine Sue?"
Did he mean that the way I think he means it? Sue thought. The way he looked her up and down seemed to leave little doubt. "And you're a man used to delving the depths of whomever you want to, Clear Blue Lou?" she said dryly.
"I don't usually have any problems."
Sue slowly and deliberately stripped him with her eyes. "I'll bet you don't," she said somewhat snidely. But he had her playing his game already, or at least so he thought. A few double entendres, a zap with those eyes, the karma of the moment, and the bastard assumes I'm going to get it on with him already. That they both knew she was going to make him fight for it only added to the instant sexual tension and made the outcome that much more inevitable. And perhaps that much more tasty.
Levan grinned knowingly. "I knew you two would get along," he said smugly. The old shrewdie had them in the bedchamber together already. Indeed, he probably thought he had set it up himself, so thoroughly did it suit his own purposes.
"What do you mean by that?" Clear Blue Lou said archly. "The lady and I don't even know each other."
"But I know both of you quite well," Levan said with a leer.
"What is this, a public flesh market?" Sue snapped. "What am I, a fancy dancer auditioning for hire?"
Lou wagged a finger of mock admonishment at Levan.
"You're a dirty old man," he said. "Do you dare to suggest I could be persuaded to get it on with someone I'm supposed to judge?"
Levan just snorted.
"And are you suggesting I'm so corrupt as to offer my admittedly irresistible favors to a giver of justice?" Sue said, joining in the game of mock outrage.
Clear Blue Lou smiled ruefully at her. With her. He shrugged, cocking his head toward Levan. "A dirty old man," he said. "He assumes I'm as horny as he is."
"For sure," Sue said. "Imagine him thinking I'd get it on with someone like you."
Zingo! Lou's eyes widened. Oh really? they seemed to say. Skies above, what a game this is turning out to be! Sue thought.
"I mean, a perfect master and a giver of justice," she drawled, running her tongue over her lips. "An unattainable paragon of detachment and righteousness. Why I'll bet you're under a vow of celibacy for the duration."
Levan coughed on his reef. Lou, too, came close to breaking up. "At last a woman who understands me," he said dryly. Their eyes met and held. Perfect or not, he was surely a master of something.
"As I hope you'll come to understand me," Sue said, cutting through the play with an unwavering stare that in itself raised the game to yet a higher level.
Lou's voice hardened, his mouth tightened, and his eyes seemed to suddenly stare right through her. "I think we're beginning to understand each other already," he said. "Shall we mingle a little and discuss it?"
And damn it, her body began to tingle with anticipation as he took her hand, bowed ironically to Levan, and led her away from the booth. So this is what a perfect master is like as a man! It hadn't taken Clear Blue Lou long to get to her on levels where she didn't even know she had levels. The bastard knew all too well what a tasty morsel he was. He knew what the game was before she could even start playing, and he had let her know he was accepting her invitation to duel.
You think you're so good do you? she swore to herself. I'll show you! I'll show you a game that will leave you gasping for air and wondering what happened.
But she had a feeling that was exactly what he had in mind.
And where is the Clear Blue Way here? Clear Blue Lou wondered as he handed Sunshine Sue a glass of wine, clinked it with his own, and watched her eyes watching him watching her over the lips of their glasses.
Small but generously fleshed, almost muscular, she pulsed with sexuality, at least on his wavelength, and he knew that his mind could not hope to judge her clearly until they had cleared these sexual vibes in the only way possible. Which was to say that both wisdom and foolishness told him that he absolutely had to bed her. And he could tell she felt the same way about him; a woman after his own heart, she had made that clear up front.
But there was something more, something darker. True, there was good pragmatic reason for her to want to make political love to him, and there was too much measuring in those deep brown eyes for him to believe she was hot for the natural man alone.
Yet Sunshine Sue burned. That sweet little face under those deceptively angelic blond curls flamed with an intensity that was almost unwholesome. There was certainly nothing pure and simple in her vibes. She burned with some inner passion, breathtaking in its intensity, that cloaked her in tantalizing danger. Lou wasn't so far gone that he supposed this was mere mad lust for him, but he was certainly far gone enough for it to inflame his desire with an illusive energy he had never quite experienced before.
"Well, are you or are you not a sorceress?" he said. 'That's the essential question, and I don't know how I'm going to decide."
"Oh don't you?" she said evenly.
"You have a suggestion?" Lou said. What he wanted to say was let's get it on and get it over with. Why were they locked into this crotch-teasing game? And why was this game turning him on?
"Don't you?" she said, turning the screw a little tighter. If this went on much longer, he was liable to grab her right here.
"Should I?"
"Well, since you've already shared your cloud chamber with an Eagle, two Sunshines, four mountain william girls, and who knows what else, I assumed you had a healthy lust for naked justice," Sunshine Sue said, deliberately projecting her voice and creating an instant audience.
"So you think my justice can be bought in the bedchamber?" Lou shot back.
"Oh no, I just think you're a natural man. A fair man who believes in tasting fully of all points of view."
What's she doing? Lou wondered. What am I doing? What's going on? They were crowded up against the buffet bar, and about three dozen people were doing a bad job of pretending they weren't listening to this.
"And you want an opportunity to get yours in more fully?"
"Don't you?" she said.
Lou could hear choked-back laughter over his shoulder and see two astrologers sputtering in their drinks. What was she doing? Challenging his manhood publicly? Daring him to make a public display of bedding her?
As he had with Carrie and Laurie? And Little Mary Sunshine? Ooh, so that's it! he realized. She's letting the world know this is a karmic fuck. She's betting her destiny on it, right out in the open.
What a woman! he thought lustfully. And what a subtle game she's playing, he realized more clearly. You're a perfect master yourself, Sunshine Sue!
He leaned closer and touched her lightly under the chin. "This is getting a little too personal," he whispered. "Or not personal enough."
"Shall we go upstairs and get personal in private?" she suggested, touching her upper teeth with the tip of her tongue.
Not quite yet, lady, Lou decided. You're not gonna get me just the way you want me. "What I had in mind," he said for the benefit of the eavesdroppers, "is you and me just go outside and have a little talk."
Sue sniffed up her nose at him, another exaggerated public gesture. "And here I thought you were such a natural man," she said to all and sundry. "And all you want to do is talk."