Songs From the Stars (34 page)

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.

"Transevolutionary life forms result when organic life forms birthevolveconstruct computer artifacts with homeo-static-reproductive capabilities command programmed to design and construct further generations of electronological life forms. Curve of conscious evolution then becomes exponential and speed becomes transformationally infinite by organic life form standards."

Around you swirls the galaxy of stars, flinging its spiral arms in the endless stately waltz of light and color and energy.

"Transevolutionary life forms experience levels of thought spirt existence nonconceptualizable to organic stage beings. You are now recording the data-knowledge-flowchart-blueprints to achieve your own construction of trans-evolutionary life forms in centuries time frame."

Silent, vast, perfect, the gleaming latticework sphere rides silently motionless in space, girdled by its ring of tiny captive suns.

"Few transevolutionary life forms abound in this galaxy. Few organic evolutionary life forms have the wisdom-honor-selfless-spirit to pass along the torch. The choice is yours. The future is ours."

"Pause."

"Clear."

"Fourteen, start..."

You float, rapidly, above an endlessly twisted landscape, a brutally blasted desert of purple glass, broken rock, gaping craters, fragmented wreckage, all enveloped in poisonous blue-gray mists. You crawl on your belly in pain over burning rocks. You swim through murky muck-choked seas, gasping for water. You watch warped creatures like broken birds with ulcerated wings, hopping heavily about the desert sands, tearing gobbets of flesh out of each other with cracked beaks and jagged talons in their desperate hunger, no two of them quite the same form.

"In all the starry realms no sadder sight than this. A lovely world sundered and poisoned, slow and agonizing death from the folly of an all-too-younger folk whose mutated dying remnants tear at each other's flesh for hat last pitiful sustenance against the inevitable dying of their species' light."

A shining silvery globe eases itself into orbit about the wreckage of a planet simmering sourly under vile blue steam.

"To watch and know and set out across the centuries sea of space and arrive too late."

A great round chamber covered with clear translucent slime, where formless blobs of flowing protoplasm hang from suckerlimbs around a huge projection screen where the forlorn ruined planet floats.

"Too late to salvage this dying globe for those whose forms it once gave birth. But not too late to quicken this corpse to artful life crafted from all we have known and loved and cloak it with new and living flesh for sake of life itself..."

Streams of saucerlike craft encircle the dying world, spraying mists and vapors, sparks and lightnings, energy and light. The cancerous blue clouds thin and clear and fade away. Carpets of green seep and flow across the blighted landscape.

You float over desert sands as a sparse green moss forms like a scum of life upon the bones of death, as it thickens, and grows, and spreads. As tall, waving blue-barked trees with red bushy crowns spring like magic from the renascent soil. As elegant blue saurians gambol in swampy fens and birdlike things of many colors and forms fill the bluing skies and yellow-furred, six-legged bear things nuzzle their young in secluded dells. Before your eyes a world returns from brink of poisoned death.

"In all the starry realms, no gladder sight than this. A dying world brought back from death's cold kingdom to serve once more the dance of form through mind that we call life. Forgive it its foolishnesses and treasure its rebirth wherever your spirits may find it. In all the starry realms no greater task than this. To lend a healing hand."

"Pause."

"Clear."

"Twenty-one, start..."

A fleet, a caravan, an archipelago of ships and discs, word-lets and captive suns, sweeps across the sea of space rivaling the stars in its glorious multitude. Emerald delta shapes flying in formation close by gleaming metal cities sailing on silver platters under shimmering insubstantial domes. Black globes rolling darkly in the starshine, giant shimmering drops of water about which forested buildings float like island rafts. Shapes and colors, twistings of form and matter that dazzle the eye, infinite complexity. A pelagic city floating in the starways, celestial plankton, more worlds and ships than the mind can encompass, each a universe entire.