Songs From the Stars (5 page)

But today the Exchange seemed neither dynamic nor harmonious. The place was more than half-empty. The outer ring of the Exchange floor under the dome was divided up into display areas rented out by purveyors of La Mirage's products. Ordinarily, this would be a continuous sweep of marvelous goods on sale for fancy prices, awash in buyers and hype. Now half the stalls were vacant. The central area was usually a raucous camp of mountain Williams, selling the components that made all of it possible, getting stoned, making music, dancing, and doing everything but setting up cook fires to make it like their upper canyon camps. Now there were no Williams at all. The central aisle around the william encampment was usually filled with hawkers selling food and drink and smoke, as well as astrologers and soothsayers. Now there were fewer refreshment stalls and more soothsayers, who seemed to be garnering most of what customers there were.

The lair of Levan was a roofless cubicle on the outer north rim of the floor. Inside, the old man held court reclining on a green divan, beside a large table heavily laden with wines and medicines and smokes and an endless untidy smorgasbord of unappetizing snacks. Vases of cut flowers were everywhere. It seemed more like a sickroom than a place of business, and the frail bedrobe-draped body, the mess of thinning white hair, the liverish wrinkled face, completed the illusion of a dying doddard. Only Levan's bird-brilliant eyes and the product of his twisting mobile mouth gave the lie to this impression of decayed senility.

But that was more than enough. The old man was railing away at a constipated-looking fellow dressed in the severe Castrotown mode, all blacks and whites. "Local interdiction be damned, I'll take no further action until justice is given! Look at what's happened to business already! Everyone's afraid they're going to get stuck with interdicted goods and hardheads like you have apparently convinced the mountain williams that La Mirage is under some kind of curse!"

The old man's face lit up when he saw Clear Blue Lou, but he quickly rearranged it into a simulacrum of petulance. "Lou! It's about time you got here! The town's going crazy! Don't you have any compassion for a sick old man?"

"So you're Clear Blue Lou," the Castrotowner said. "I hope you'll be willing to take more righteous action to protect the whiteness of Aquaria, unlike friend Levan. We must make sure that the rest of the questionable science that is purveyed in this evil place is freer from sorcery than—"

"When I see, I'll speak," Lou said frostily, "and when I speak, I'll speak justice." Whatever the facts, this kind of strident white righteousness always rubbed him the wrong way.

"Lou and I have some serious matters to discuss, if you don't mind," Levan said, vibing Lou his thanks.

"Of course," the Castrotowner said obsequiously. "And of course, everyone has faith in the justice of Clear Blue Lou." He shot a parting glance of distaste toward Levan. "Especially the gray folk of La Mirage."

"Thanks Lou," Levan said when he had gone. "The righteously white have been crawling all over me to go further ever since the latest. Suspending trade in Lightning components and making it impossible for anyone to buy eagles or radios or electrical equipment isn't good enough for them! Now they want me to interdict everything the Sunshine Tribe uses and shut down the Word of Mouth operation. Next, they'll want me to ban Lightning-type components generically and shut down what's left of business in this town, as if I'm not unpopular enough already!"

"But that can't be decided until I give justice," Lou said, taking a seat at the foot of the divan.

"Oh, that's not good enough for them now, not since the Lightning Commune started saying that the Sunshine Tribe knew that the radios they bought had atomic power cores."

"WHAT?"

Levan peered at Lou owlishly. "You didn't know? Oh yes, now it's all over town that those brain-burned Williams claim that Sunshine Sue knowingly bought loathsome black science from them, and now everyone's looking at everyone else as if they were the black plague and searching for Spacers in the woodwork."

"But that's an open admission that they're practicing black science themselves..."

"You think I don't know that?" Levan said. "What's more, my instincts tell me that they're lying. Sunshine Sue isn't that black, she's certainly not that stupid, and she's always played by the rules of the game. She's been set up; you can't tell me she hasn't."

"But how and why and by whom?"

"How?" Levan snorted. "The Lightnings sold her the radios and then tipped off the Eagles, who for some reason got a sudden attack of righteous whiteness and denounced her. Why? The answer to that one is who, and we both know who really made the piece of black technology that's at the heart of this situation, now don't we?"

"The Spacers deliberately set up Sunshine Sue?" Lou said. It didn't make sense. "But why would they want to ruin the Sunshine Tribe?"

Levan lit a pipe of reef, puffed, shook his head, and spoke more slowly. "It could be part of something really sinister, Lou. Everything's at a standstill already. What if the karma of this situation forces us to disband Word of Mouth and ban Lightning-type components generically? Imagine Aquaria without solar cells or eagles or Word of Mouth and with everything else that comes out of La Mirage smeared black with the scandal..."

Lou took Levan's proffered pipe, toked deeply, and tried to make sense out of it. Without the La Mirage free market, Aquaria's supply of electronic components would dwindle away to a trickle of inferior imitations. It might even be worse, since only the mountain williams "knew" how to produce these goods at all. In short, without what was permitted to sleaze through La Mirage, Aquaria's white civilization would be crippled. Without the venial gray sins that were committed here, virtue would be unworkable.

"It doesn't add up," Lou said. "Why would the Spacers help us build a white technology on the sly and then create a situation that cripples it?"

Levan shrugged. "My soul may be well flecked with gray, but I'm no Spacer," he said. "Could this be preparation for some kind of invasion? Cripple our technology and then—"

"It could never happen," Lou blurted instinctively. "We'd never let—" He stopped in mid-sentence, for the flow had brought him to a clearly flashed vision of the likely truth in all its subtle awfulness.

"I smell a satori," Levan said, eyeing him narrowly.

"Could be," Lou said slowly. "I mean, if we're forced to dismantle half our technology to prove our righteous whiteness to ourselves, we just won't do it. Instead, we'd have to admit self-consciously that our vaunted white science has a black lining, that without a certain amount of black science, the law of muscle, sun, wind and water is unworkable. They may have caught us in a nasty karmic paradox."

Even Levan the Wise, Levan the Cool, blanched at this prospect. After all, his whole life had been spent in the maintenance of the very necessary ambiguity that these Spacer machinations seemed designed to resolve into disaster, the vital illusion that was the spirit of La Mirage. And from the look of the town, that wire-walking act was getting pretty shaky already.

"Is this karma punishment for our sins, Lou?" Levan sighed half seriously.

Lou laughed ruefully. "Somehow," he said, "I can't see the Spacers as the avenging angels of righteousness. Perhaps they seek to make the temptations of black science more open and watch as we're forced to blacken our souls to survive. They make much more sense playing the snake."

Levan sat up, leaned forward, and tried to assume a grandfatherly pose. "Whatever you do, you must also restore the harmony of La Mirage, my young master," he said. "You know how this town feels about you, Lou. You won't let your people down, will you, my son?"

"Would I do that?" Lou said, and he meant it. But he also knew that he would be beyond the bounds of such affection and loyalty when the voice of justice spoke through him.

After a dose of what awaited her at the Sunshine Tribe's transport depot and tribal hostelry in the eastern suburbs of La Mirage, Sunshine Sue decided to avoid the Market Circle headquarters of the tribe for the moment. Everyone she wanted to avoid was clamoring to see her, and everyone else was asking her politely to keep her distance.

After a quick meal, she had grilled Gloria Sunshine and the craftsmen who had examined the sorcery-tainted radios in the office she had commandeered while casually tending to a vast assortment of business with other people. While she let them convince her that only a true black scientist could have discovered the hidden atomic cores in the merchandise, she hoped that this public performance would convince her own people that the Lightnings were lying, that she hadn't knowingly betrayed her tribe to black science.

Then she went through the blizzard of messages awaiting her. Levan wanted to see her at once, half a dozen scribes wanted interviews, and most of the astrologers and soothsayers in town were eager to improve her destiny for a stiff fee. There were dozens of notes from old friends and lovers telling her they were with her in spirit, but asking her to accept their regrets for wanting to make discretion the better part of valor.

To hell with it all! she decided. I'm just going to take a bath and see no one for the rest of the day.

She was just toweling herself down in her quarters and beginning to cool out a little when some bozo knocked on the door, despite the message she had left not to be disturbed.

"Go away!" she shouted. "I don't want to be bothered."

"Not even by a representative of Space Systems Incorporated?" said a basso voice on the other side of the door.

"What?" Sue shouted. "What did you say?"

"I'm a representative of Space Systems Incorporated. I must speak with you privately on a matter of vital mutual interest."

Sure you are! Sue thought sourly. And I'm the wicked witch of the west! Still, anyone who was crazy enough to claim he was a Spacer deserved some craziness back. So she went to the door with the towel wrapped low under her armpits, exposing a goodly amount of breast. Maybe I'll just tease this maniac and see what happens, she decided.

A creepy-looking young man stood in the doorway, heavy with pudge, bald on top, doughy like a baby around the jowls, and weird looking around his intense watery blue eyes. He seemed to stare right through her half-draped body without reacting. This is a sinister black scientist? He was a total turn-off, his seeming indifference to her fair flesh infuriated her, and she felt like an asshole. But she was damned if she was going to show it.

"So you're a Spacer?" she purred sardonically. "Well come on in and let's get acquainted."

The pudgy man took a seat by the dressing table while Sue reclined provocatively on the bed, letting the towel ride high up her bare thighs, determined to get a sexual rise out of this creature so she could torment him with rejection. "So?" she said in a sultry voice. "What do you really want?"

"I'm John Swensen, and I represent Arnold Harker, Project Manager for the implementation of this scenario," the so-called Spacer said. "He wants to meet with you at once; the scenario calls for it." He did seem a little sweaty now, staring carefully at a fixed point slightly above her head as Sue let the towel drop a little, exposing the aureole of one nipple. "A great opportunity will be yours if you follow the scenario nominally."

"Scenario? Nominally? Great opportunity? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The scenario that brought you to La Mirage. It has been followed nominally thus far. You bought the radios, our operative in the Eagle Tribe arranged for the so-called black science to be revealed, and here you are to be judged by Clear Blue Lou. Phase two requires—"

"Shit, this is serious, isn't it?" Sue said, sitting upright and drawing the towel more protectively around her. Suddenly she felt all too naked. This confirmed her worst conjecture—the damn Spacers had set her up, and this creature had just established his credibility by telling her how. Unlikely as he seemed in the role of a sorcerer, he was the real thing.

"Of course it's serious!" the Spacer said in his first display of excitement. "It's a moment of great destiny for you and for the world. Phase two of the scenario will reveal the true reasons for what we've done and present you with a gift that will make you forever grateful for your compliance."

"Grateful!" Sue snapped. "My compliance! You try to destroy everything I've built and you expect my compliance! You tell your Project Manager that he can stick his bleeding scenario up his—"

"Phase two will undo all the damage caused by phase one, I assure you," the Spacer said fretfully. "You'll regain all you've lost and reap far more if you follow it." His fat face seemed to harden suddenly as he reached the down-and-dirty bottom line.

"Besides," he continued in a much more threatening tone, "if you don't follow the scenario, you'll be judged guilty of black science, your tribe will be disbanded, and you'll lose your current persona through karmic rebirth. Phase one guarantees all that. You cannot rationally refuse to follow phase two. To deviate from nominality is to assure your own destruction."

Sunshine Sue studied the Spacer with disgust, anger, loathing, and no little fearful respect for the powers his unprepossessing person represented. The bastards had her. They had set this up with hideous precision, and her only hope was that they were telling the truth about extricating her from their own trap. Certainly no one else was about to. Their ironclad logic did indeed compel her compliance with this "scenario" of theirs, but if they thought they'd ever get any gratitude from her for trapping her in their dirty mind-fuck, they had another think coming.