Songs From the Stars (27 page)

The golden bird was vaguely like a huge solar eagle—crafted of metal, winged, resting on three wheeled feet. The dozens of mutating lights all over its surface enveloped it in a random rippling of rainbow shimmers. This was magic, but it bore the solidity of manufacture. Unearthly manufacture.

For a long moment the gods were silent, as if allowing the humans to absorb the enormity of their presence before revealing their full selves.

Then a thin high droning built up from silence into an enormous demanding wail of strings, and a round doorway in the body of the golden bird opened to heavenly trumpets. Da-DAH! the trumpets blared again, and a ladder of metallic rungs and rope unrolled from the doorway to the ground like a magic carpet.

Then a being emerged, crouched in the doorway surveying the world of men. His body was covered with silver scales, whether garment or skin it was impossible to tell. His hair was human, though cropped like a black helmet over his skull. His face... his face... his face...

His face was chaos. It seemed to float above his body, a world unto itself, glowing with its own ever-changing light. Blue. Green. Yellow. Red. Flashes of light rotated across the creature's unfathomable countenance in dappling patterns that shattered the illusive features into an ever-changing mandala of jig-saw pieces that refused to form a static whole. Purple lips, tiny dark night eyes, emerald beak, a glowering green frown, huge yellow orbs, brooding blue brow, a twisted amber sneer...

Every avatar of that which lay behind the surface of the human mask flickered across that terrible godlike visage, a countenance infinite in its transformations, a mirror of the universe of spirit as it moved through flesh, changing and yet unchanged.

Keening music rose again as the living god descended his stairway, and a trumpet fanfare sounded as he set his feet upon the Earth.

And then the being spoke in a great world-filling voice—huge and directionless and punctuated by musical flourishes as if an entire orchestra were contained in its throat.

"People of the Earth. I bring you greetings from the people of the stars. We watch your planet with love."

A great drum roll broke like a wave, lightnings flashed, and then the awful voice spoke again. "Sunshine Sue! Clear Blue Lou! You are summoned to your destiny as it is written in the stars."

A great collective gasp went up from the multitude that became a babble of wonder and recognition punctuated here and there by nervous laughter as the star being's words revealed the obviousness of the visual sign.

The great cathedral wing arching above them glowed... Clear Blue Lou blue. The golden sky chariot it bore was... Sunshine Yellow.

The crowd parted in awe for Clear Blue Lou and Sunshine Sue as they walked trancelike through it toward the celestial portent upon which their ensigns were emblazoned for all to see. Few were those who dared mutter a greeting or word of dire warning to Lou and Sue as they approached the edge of the mystic circle, the interface between humankind and the space of the star being, their eyes fixed upon the celestial creature, their faces transfigured by a calm that seemed to transcend both fear and awe.

They walked a few paces beyond the front rank of townspeople, then paused, as if hesitating to venture farther into the circle of awful magicks.

Drums rolled like thunder. His great voice punctuated with strings and horns, his visage a dance of burning avatars, the star being spoke again.

"People of the Earth. We watch your planet with love. We mourn your fallen state. High above you in the clear blue heavens waits a great ear through which the people of the Earth may hear the songs and wisdom of the people of the stars. We give to you this chariot of the sun to bear these message carriers to the highest place in all your world, to listen, to return, and to bring the wisdom of the stars to your fallen people."

Thunder clapped, then rumbled onward as the voice of the god spoke above it.

"We choose Clear Blue Lou, perfect master of the Clear Blue Way to speak his justice on the glories of the heavens so that the people of the Earth may walk the Galactic Way and know that it is good. We choose Sunshine Sue, Queen of Word of Mouth, to spread our great word throughout your planet so that our knowledge may be shared by all. Step forward, chosen son and daughter of the Earth, to meet your destiny in the stars."

Hand in hand to the oohs and sighs of the crowd and a celestial chorus rising into a hymn to glory, Sunshine Sue and Clear Blue Lou slowly walked beyond the circle of humanity to accept the destiny ordained from on high.

Drum rolls accompanied them up the ladder, and then the star being ascended to the rising thrum of heavenly strings, drew up his staircase, and closed the door to the sky chariot behind him to a clap of thunder and a bright flash of lightning.

There was a long moment of silent stillness under the canopy of blue light, as rhythmic flashes of lightning etched this mythic moment into the back of every brain.

Then soft music began playing and the wheeled feet of the sky chariot left the ground. The golden bird floated slowly upward as the music began building toward a mighty crescendo, as the sky itself seemed to recede in a bright blue glow, becoming a great blue wing across the starry black sky.

Like a feather rising above a flue, the firebird soared aloft, clutching the golden sky chariot in its claws, while the music crested into a triumphant song of heavenly glory.

When it had dwindled to the size of a great blue eagle, there was a final clap of thunder, and the firebird suddenly disappeared in a last blaze of lightnings.

Only the dark silence of the night remained—and the golden speck of the sky chariot floating up into the black sky, a second Venus ascending to its starry realm.

Thousands of eyes watched it as it slowly became but one bright star among many. Then a great tongue of fire exploded from the yellow speck, and it began to move ever faster across the dark vault of the heavens. Low thunder echoed across the plateau, an eerie thrilling sound, a steady peal without waver or end. Faster and faster and faster, the golden speck moved across the sky, as if goaded by the bright flame it rode.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the thunder began to fade toward silence as the sky chariot became a meteor ascending from the Earth... a single star moving across the firmament... a tiny point of light that finally vanished in silence into the dark heavens.

Quiet reigned. Crickets began to chirp. A nightbird called. It was a long time before anyone spoke.

"I saw it, but I still don't believe it," Clear Blue Lou muttered dazedly as he closed the final fasteners on the uncomfortable suit that encased him in clumsiness and the burden of great weight. "You really are a sorcerer, lady. It was the greatest art I've ever seen, but was it truth?"

"I may not know what truth is, but I know what I like," Sue said, screwing the round metal helmet onto the collar of her spacesuit and winking at him silently from behind the thick glass faceplate.

Lou helped her into the right-hand acceleration couch, then donned his own helmet and climbed into the center couch next to Arnold Harker, who had already wiped off his makeup and suited up and was peering out the window as he checked out the controls.

It was unpleasantly confining inside the suit. The thing must have weighed a hundred pounds, he was already sweating and itching in places he couldn't scratch, and his cock was mated to a hose that led to a piss bottle inside the infernal contraption, which was surely the worst place that organ had ever been. He looked out at the crowded little world of the spaceship cabin, through a window in a steel bucket, breathing sour air that stank of oiled metal.

"Radios on," Harker's voice said from speaker grids inside his helmet. It was thin and colorless and it seemed to rattle inside Lou's brainpan.

"How long did you say we had to wear these damned things?" Sue's voice said as if from across a large room, though she was sitting right next to him.

"I told you, till we reach the Big Ear," Harker said testily. "Now strap in. We're reaching launch altitude."

Lou did up the acceleration couch straps, still trying to catch up with the changes. A few minutes ago, he had been part of a glorious scene that would live forever in legend, and now he was stuffed inside this instrument of torture, breathing rancid air and waiting to be shot into space. Perhaps it was a blessing that there was so little time in which to think.

"Launch altitude," Harker said mechanically. "Initiate launch program." And he punched a button on the computer console beside him.

A ghastly roar exploded into being, a sound that set the spaceship cabin vibrating and shook Lou's teeth in his jaw.

"Oh shit!" Sue screamed as the spaceship took a sudden gut-wrenching drop, plummeting like a stone.

Then Lou felt an avalanche slam up against his back, not a giant's swift kick, but an endless pressure that squeezed him down into the cushions of his couch, and he could feel the spaceship surge forward, roaring and rattling like a water tank in an earthquake.

"Eeee..." he heard a male voice groan shrilly, and it took him a moment to be sure that it was Harker's and not his own as the pressure against his back wheezed air from his lungs.

A leaden blanket seemed to press on his body, a blanket that got heavier and heavier and heavier as the bone-thrumming roar went on and on and on and the cabin of the spaceship became a quaking cacophony of vibrating and groaning metal.

"Is this fucking thing coming apart?" Sue snarled thickly.

"Shut up," Harker whined sickeningly, "just shut up!"

Lou's body got heavier and heavier. Bright spots flickered before his eyes. He could hardly raise his head far enough to get a glimpse out the window, where the sky was purpling brilliantly from blue to black.

He was so heavy now that he couldn't move. He could feel the flesh of his face crawling backward like melting wax. His tongue was a dead thing in his mouth. His vision sparkled with butterflies of light that seemed to be guarding the mouth of a long black tunnel, down and down and down he went, crushed into the dark dream of oblivion...

... emerging in a blessed smooth silence that caressed the ears like the soothing murmur of the sea. It was so quiet now that all he could hear was his own breathing echoing underwater in his helmet. It was such a relief that he seemed to be floating in ecstasy, weightless even inside the gross suit, free and light as a feather.

"Oooh," Sue moaned, "I think I passed out. What happened? I feel like my body doesn't know which way is up."

Only then did Lou realize that his body was trying to tell him that he was falling; only then did a vacuum clutch at his guts. But he knew what this must be. This must be what Harker had called weightlessness. They were not plunging to their doom, they were in orbit, beyond the pull of the Earth, flying freely through outer space in an endless gliding swan dive. The falling feeling faded as he gave himself back to the glorious floating sensation.

"We're in orbit," he told Sue quickly. "Our bodies weigh nothing. We're not falling, we're floating." The spirit must master the flesh in this strange space, or the flesh would surely sicken the spirit.

"Thanks..." Sue muttered. "Hey... thanks! Say, this feels good! Hmmm, too bad we're in these damned chastity suits; can you imagine what it would be like to—"

"Please!" Lou shouted as the thought of free-floating sport began to engorge his member within the tight confining ring of the piss bottle hose.

"Oooh... I don't feel good... I'm going to vomit..."

Harker was making green gurgling sounds over the radio. Through the window of his helmet, his eyes were glazed and his face was deathly pale.

"Harker! Snap out of it!" Lou commanded. "You can't let yourself vomit inside your helmet!" The thought was horrifying, and the sight would be something he could well do without. "Close your eyes... You're floating in warm thick water... You're not falling, you're flying free as a bird..."

"Oooh, I don't know... I didn't think it would be like this..." Harker groaned. Then he was finally quiet, and Lou could hear his jagged breathing slowly smoothing out in a series of gulping sighs.

"Now open your eyes and be here now!"

"Oooh..." Harker moaned. "I think I can hold it back now... I didn't know, I—"

"Oh look!" Sue exclaimed in childlike wonder, gazing out the window.

Lou gave his attention to what lay outside, and even through two thicknesses of glass, the vision took his breath away and sent his spirit soaring.

The Earth was a huge living globe beneath them, rolling with slow majesty through crystal blackness sparkling with unwinking stars. Seas shone a lucent blue under patterns of swirling cloud. Continents—green and brown, veined with rivers and dappled with lakes—humped out of the seas like the backs of fabled basking whales. Where the curve of the planet met the blackness of space, the interface was a shining corona of deep purple. It was staggering, it was beautiful, and it was palpably alive.

But it was grievously wounded.

Lou saw great holes pocking the skin of the continents that rolled beneath him, punched in horribly deliberate-looking patterns along the coasts, up and down the wide river valleys, and around the shores of the larger lakes. Sere brown deserts seemed to eat into the fragile-looking patches of green like an advanced case of mange. Great scars gouged in the flesh of the planet glowered an ugly purple.