Songs From the Stars (20 page)

"What do you export and to whom?"

Clarke smiled somewhat fatuously at her. "Virtually all my Section's production goes to Aquaria," he said. "I'm really responsible for maintaining your culture's so-called white technology. Over a million solar cells a year, the total supply of advanced electronic components. Your own radios. Control circuits for solar eagles." He bobbed his head at her in ironic greeting. "Meet your secret benefactor."

"It sounds like very expensive altruism to me," Sue said dubiously.

"Oh indeed it is," Clarke said. "More expensive than you can even imagine in terms of man-hours and energy units. More man-hours than anything we do, save production for Operation Enterprise. Perhaps double or triple Aquaria's total annual electrical production."

"Why?" Sue asked.

Why? Because it takes that much work and energy to—"

"I mean why do you do it at all?"

"For the greater good of all," Clarke said evenly.

Sue snorted. The Export Manager's expression hardened.

"Well then, because you people are benighted superstitious fools," he snapped. "Without our so-called black science, your so-called white technology would swiftly fall apart."

"But why should you give a damn?"

Something seemed to pass between Harker and Clarke, and when the Export Manager spoke again, his composure was carefully restored, and if he wasn't being sweetly sincere, he was giving a good imitation. "There are only a relative handful of us, and Aquaria, for all its faults, is probably the highest civilization of any significant size remaining on this planet," he said earnestly. "We help you despite your low opinion of us because Aquaria is the only possible base upon which to build a new Age of Space when—"

A glance from Harker seemed to cut him short, and old Willard, as if on psychic cue, picked up the response in seamless mid-sentence.

"—when Operation Enterprise creates the basis for a new unified planetary culture. The ability to see the Earth once more as a world entire. To search out all the remaining pockets of humanity on our blighted planet, to bring our scattered peoples back together through your own vision of a world satellite broadcast network." The Enterprise Production Manager fixed Sue with an intense stare that seemed quite sincere to Lou. "On a certain level, we dream the same dream," he said.

Sue seemed to be as impressed by this as Harker had no doubt intended, but as far as Lou was concerned, this all seemed like a carefully crafted little exercise, all talk and no spirit, designed to justify the what of black science while skirting the true essence of the how or why. None of it seemed really relevant to the justice they were ostensibly requesting him to render.

It wasn't till they were down to picking over the remains of the filling but unappetizing meal that Harker seemed to notice his hooded indifference. "Don't you have any questions?" he finally asked. The other Spacers dutifully regarded Lou with rapt interest, and even Sue seemed to be studying him for some clue as to what was behind his non-reaction.

"Yeah, I've got two questions," Lou said grimly, leaning back in his chair and steepling his hands in front of him. "And I'm afraid I already know the answer to the first one. You're using atomic power here, aren't you?"

Harker's eyes widened. "I congratulate you on your scientific perception," he said approvingly.

"Atomic power?" Sue exclaimed. She looked at Lou peculiarly. "How do you know that, Lou?"

"How else are they going to generate all the electrical power we've seen here?" Lou said, shrugging at her. "Isn't that right, Harker?" he snapped, glaring at the sorcerer. "All these wonders are built on radioactive death, aren't they?"

"That's putting it a bit melodramatically," Harker drawled.

"The reactor's well away from the main installations, radiation leakage is minimal, and it has a triply redundant safety system," the Life Support Manager said as blandly as she had endorsed the nutritional quality of the food. "We've used nuclear reactors for centuries and we've had only ten core meltdowns, nine of which were successfully contained."

"The risk is well within acceptable parameters," Harker added, a shade more sharply, "and you've already seen the advantages."

Clear Blue Lou had heard just about enough. "Atomic power is just going too far, Harker," he said angrily. "For any reason. I need know no more to speak my justice on this evil!"

There was a long moment of hostile silence. The Spacers glared at him with what seemed like contemptuous superiority. Even Sue seemed dubious about his firm decision.

"You're wrong," Harker finally said in a tightly controlled voice.

"Really? Then suppose you answer my second question. How do you justify all this to yourselves? Manipulating the karma of Aquaria with your scenarios, living out here in a hostile wilderness in air-cooled boxes, risking atomic death not only for yourselves but for the rest of the world. As far as I'm concerned, all this is evil and pointless, even self-torture. But I don't believe that even sorcerers act without reasons that make sense, at least to themselves. Why, Harker, why? What really moves your spirits?"

"Operation Enterprise—"

"You're lying to me!" Lou snapped. "All this just to send a spaceship to some ancient space station? Just to make an empty gesture? If that really is the truth, then you people really are insane!"

"It's no empty gesture," Clarke insisted in a clipped tense voice. "It will be the beginning of a new human renaissance..."

"One spaceship flying into outer space in the face of a whole world's hostility?" Lou said scornfully. "That's supposed to turn human history around? I don't believe it, and I don't believe you believe it either!"

Willard's old eyes suddenly blazed with a strangely youthful intensity. "When we get to the Ear, human history will not merely be turned around, it will truly begin!" he said fervently. "Even you will understand when the songs—"

"Willard!" Harker snapped angrily.

"Oh, why not tell him?" the old man said. "Why not—"

"Because now is not the time!" Arnold Harker said harshly, shooting the Enterprise Production Manager a glance of such poisonous intensity that Willard seemed to wither into silence under its force. Clarke's eyes became hooded and he drummed his fingers nervously on the table. Marta Blaine seemed somehow confused and left out. What was Harker hiding? And was he hiding it even from some of his own people?

Harker seemed to make a conscious effort to control himself. "Tomorrow all your questions will be answered," he told Lou more calmly. "You promised to withhold your justice until you had learned all. Do try to keep an open mind until then."

"And if I don't... ?"

Harker glared angrily at him for a moment. Then his lips creased in a sardonic smile. He shrugged. "It doesn't really matter, does it?" he said. "The scenario is behavioristic. And you've followed it too far to be allowed to turn back now."

"Should I consider that a threat?" Lou said, challenging the sorcerer with his eyes.

"Threats are unnecessary," Harker told him. "Consider it a promise."

"At last we're alone," Sunshine Sue said sarcastically, sitting down on the edge of the severely functional bed next to Lou. "Now would you mind telling me what that was all about?"

"What was what all about?" Lou said evenly.

Great gods, is he really this dense, or is he just trying to be difficult? Sue wondered. "What was the point of being so difficult at dinner?" she said. "I mean, like it or not, one way or the other, we are in their power."

Lou sighed. He waved his arm in the air wearily. "Look at this place," he said, "and tell me that black science isn't deadly to the spirit!"

Sue dutifully scanned the small bedroom, with its sterile pastel blue walls, its plain steel-framed bed, its cold electrical lighting. After the loathsome dinner had ended, Arnold Harker had ushered them to these quarters, telling them that this was a temporarily vacant "standard couple apartment." This grim unromantic bedroom. A sitting room with angular metal sling chairs and couch, a bathroom with cold metal fixtures, windows that looked out over ugly gray buildings and a stark wasteland. Not even a kitchen. She tried to imagine lovers turning this impersonal place into a home, but she had to admit her imagination failed her utterly.

"So they're not the most romantic people in the world," she said. "Is that any reason to attack them openly in their own lair?"

"I wasn't attacking them. I was trying to get at the real truth."

"The truth about what?"

Lou put his arm around her shoulder. Sue was not exactly feeling romantic, but she didn't pull away. This was the only friend or ally she had in this alien land, and it wouldn't do to forget it, even if he was beginning to seem a little too righteous.

"Could you live here?" Lou asked rhetorically. "Could I?"

"Of course not. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"They can," Lou pointed out. "They do. They live their lives inside these boxes. They breathe manufactured air. They mindfuck people. They dare to use atomic power. They choose to poison their own karma. What makes them willing to live like this, Sue? What makes them willingly ignore the cost to their own spirits of everything they're doing? What is it that they aren't telling us?"

"They're just fanatics," Sue said. "They believe that bringing back the Age of Space justifies anything necessary to getting their spaceship launched." And for my own reasons, she thought uneasily, I'm not sure I don't agree with them. In a way, there was something almost admirable in so total a dedication to what you believed in that you were willing to sacrifice your own spiritual health to realize your dream. Of course, there was also something disgusting about it, as Arnold Harker had shown her with the touch of his flesh. The question was, was this bravery or blindness? And the answer, she realized, was precisely the mystery that Lou was pointing to. He had done it to her again. He really was Clear Blue.

"You mean what do they really expect to bring back from space that's worth all this, don't you?" she said. "I keep forgetting that my reasons aren't theirs. You're right, from their point of view, I don't see the sense. It's hard to believe they're willing to turn themselves into such cold creatures just to get to a space station and look down upon the Earth or to live in more dead places like this on other planets."

"And yet Harker believes that something is going to make this sour karma taste sweet to me," Lou said, shaking his head in bewilderment. "He's so sure of it that he seems to be willing to stake the whole destiny of black science on it. And the destiny of what's left of the human race too. How can that be? What could possibly transcend this foul karma?"

Sue sighed. "I know what my answer is, I think," she said softly.

"Do you? If this is the karma of your electronic village, if these people are examples of its future citizens, then might not your dream be ultimately black?"

Sue did pull away from him now. "Are you telling me I'm evil?" she demanded.

"No," Lou said, reaching out for her. "But you've just told yourself that no one thinks of themselves as evil. No matter how evil they may look to everyone else. The Spacers can't just be wicked. That's not an explanation."

"I see your point," Sue said, "but I wish you hadn't played perfect master with me to make it."

Lou looked at her strangely. "I'm sorry," he said, "really I am. It's just that there's something about all this that brings out the righteously white in me. Especially since Harker seems so utterly certain that something is going to change my mind."

Sue sighed. She touched his cheek and moved closer to him. "You're forgiven," she said, letting him pull her down onto the bed beside him. "Try to forget about it for tonight," she said. "Tomorrow, I have a feeling we're going to find out something that will change your mind, and I doubt either of us can do anything about it."

"That's exactly what's bothering me," Lou said. He turned off the electric light, and they lay there for quite a while in the anonymous dark, tasting the manufactured air and listening to the faraway drone of hidden machinery before the flesh could overcome the spiritlessness of this unnatural place, which seemed to have invaded even the shared karma between them.

When they finally sought what comfort they could in each other's bodies, their lovemaking was coldly fierce, wordless, and perhaps deliberately exhausting, at least on Lou's part.

Or so Sue thought as she lay awake long after he had fallen asleep with his head on her breast, wondering whether this man whom she had known so briefly but with whose karma she seemed so inextricably entwined would ultimately prove to be her soul mate or her judge. If no one thought of themselves as evil, then who could be sure they were good?

And might not that conceivably apply to you too, my Clear Blue lover?

"I can't believe this heat!" Clear Blue Lou moaned, mopping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. They had been flying north for over an hour now, above a dun-colored landscape that seemed to shimmer and crack under the unrelenting sun. The heat was horrific even with all the flaps of the eagle cabin rolled up, and Lou had to admit that the electrically cooled air of Starbase One was no mere luxury in this environment; without it the human animal could not survive two days here. Assuming there was some valid reason why human animals had to inhabit this utterly hostile environment.