Read Online Songs From the Stars by Norman Spinrad - Free Book Online
Authors: Norman Spinrad
Tags: Science-Fiction, post apocalypse
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buy 'em."
"Ah, I dunno. All the lowlanders are scared of demon stuff now."
"Lightnings ain't exactly lowlanders."
"Yeah, but all the tribes that buy demon stuff from us gotta sell the stuff they make to lowlanders, and the lowlanders are scared of demon stuff now."
"Assholes are scared of it, but they gotta have it."
"Ah, I dunno. What you think. Live Oak?"
Oh shit! Sunshine Sue thought. What have I gotten myself into? Now she knew what this place really was, and it terrified her that they were letting her see it. This was where the Spacers passed the components they made on the other side of the mountains to the outlying mountain william tribes. This was the place no one wanted to know about, the bottom-line point of entry of black science into Aquaria, where the Williams were dealing directly with sorcerers and knew it. This was far deeper into black science than Sunshine Sue cared to get—especially since she didn't see how the Spacers could afford to let her out. And now these Williams were looking at her very peculiarly. Gods forbid that these brain-burn cases should ever cop to who she really was!
"Uh, I think the lowlanders'll be scared off for a while, but when Clear Blue Lou takes care of things, they'll be buying again," she said. "The whitely righteous ain't all that white and they ain't all that righteous. They ain't gonna do without the demon stuff for long."
The mountain Williams laughed. "Yeah, they end up serving the demon god same as us, 'cept they ain't got the balls to own up to their karma."
Sunshine Sue blanched. This stoned-out bullshit was starting to cut a little close to the bone.
"Mike, your burros are loaded now. Thor, your people will receive four burro-loads of solar cells; these are not to be sold to the Eagles."
A tall spare man loped briskly into the room. His black hair was cropped close to his skull with a hard line between hair and skin at the neck and around his ears—the weirdest male hairstyle Sue had ever seen. He had a similarly cropped black beard that dramatically framed his angular face and set off his piercing blue eyes. This one really looked like a sorcerer, he spoke with precise tones of absolute authority, and the two williams shambled to their feet as he made his entrance.
"I'm the Project Manager," he said, turning to Sue with the same arrogant assurance. "Follow me please."
He turned on his heels and loped down the hallway, forcing Sue to trot after him like a good little girl. It was hate at first sight.
The Spacer led her into a medium-sized room decked out with more of the steel-framed sling furniture; the black material definitely didn't feel like leather when Sue gingerly lowered herself into a hammock-like contraption. A fortune in energy units blazed from an electrical light in the ceiling and another on the burnished steel desk. There was a thing in a corner that looked like a much more advanced version of the computer she had bought from the Lightnings last year. One wall was an amazingly huge and perfect mirror, something she would have thought impossible to craft. Each of the other three walls displayed utterly realistic pictures of utterly unreal subjects—an image of planet Earth floating in space, something like a steel eagle flying over a nightmare landscape that might have been hell, and another picture of ringed Saturn.
There was no attempt to disguise this lair as other than it was. It crowed of black science in all its evil glory; it reeked of unnatural craft, of petroleum fumes, and coal dust, and smashing atoms—of all that the world shunned. And unguessably more.
What did anyone really know about the Spacers anyway? That they favored La Mirage with laundered sorcery? That they manufactured electronic components beyond the Sierras using black power sources? That their black science had been handed down in a direct line of evil perfect masters extending back beyond the Smash?
But how much was legend and how much was fact? Truth was, no
"Ah, I dunno. All the lowlanders are scared of demon stuff now."
"Lightnings ain't exactly lowlanders."
"Yeah, but all the tribes that buy demon stuff from us gotta sell the stuff they make to lowlanders, and the lowlanders are scared of demon stuff now."
"Assholes are scared of it, but they gotta have it."
"Ah, I dunno. What you think. Live Oak?"
Oh shit! Sunshine Sue thought. What have I gotten myself into? Now she knew what this place really was, and it terrified her that they were letting her see it. This was where the Spacers passed the components they made on the other side of the mountains to the outlying mountain william tribes. This was the place no one wanted to know about, the bottom-line point of entry of black science into Aquaria, where the Williams were dealing directly with sorcerers and knew it. This was far deeper into black science than Sunshine Sue cared to get—especially since she didn't see how the Spacers could afford to let her out. And now these Williams were looking at her very peculiarly. Gods forbid that these brain-burn cases should ever cop to who she really was!
"Uh, I think the lowlanders'll be scared off for a while, but when Clear Blue Lou takes care of things, they'll be buying again," she said. "The whitely righteous ain't all that white and they ain't all that righteous. They ain't gonna do without the demon stuff for long."
The mountain Williams laughed. "Yeah, they end up serving the demon god same as us, 'cept they ain't got the balls to own up to their karma."
Sunshine Sue blanched. This stoned-out bullshit was starting to cut a little close to the bone.
"Mike, your burros are loaded now. Thor, your people will receive four burro-loads of solar cells; these are not to be sold to the Eagles."
A tall spare man loped briskly into the room. His black hair was cropped close to his skull with a hard line between hair and skin at the neck and around his ears—the weirdest male hairstyle Sue had ever seen. He had a similarly cropped black beard that dramatically framed his angular face and set off his piercing blue eyes. This one really looked like a sorcerer, he spoke with precise tones of absolute authority, and the two williams shambled to their feet as he made his entrance.
"I'm the Project Manager," he said, turning to Sue with the same arrogant assurance. "Follow me please."
He turned on his heels and loped down the hallway, forcing Sue to trot after him like a good little girl. It was hate at first sight.
The Spacer led her into a medium-sized room decked out with more of the steel-framed sling furniture; the black material definitely didn't feel like leather when Sue gingerly lowered herself into a hammock-like contraption. A fortune in energy units blazed from an electrical light in the ceiling and another on the burnished steel desk. There was a thing in a corner that looked like a much more advanced version of the computer she had bought from the Lightnings last year. One wall was an amazingly huge and perfect mirror, something she would have thought impossible to craft. Each of the other three walls displayed utterly realistic pictures of utterly unreal subjects—an image of planet Earth floating in space, something like a steel eagle flying over a nightmare landscape that might have been hell, and another picture of ringed Saturn.
There was no attempt to disguise this lair as other than it was. It crowed of black science in all its evil glory; it reeked of unnatural craft, of petroleum fumes, and coal dust, and smashing atoms—of all that the world shunned. And unguessably more.
What did anyone really know about the Spacers anyway? That they favored La Mirage with laundered sorcery? That they manufactured electronic components beyond the Sierras using black power sources? That their black science had been handed down in a direct line of evil perfect masters extending back beyond the Smash?
But how much was legend and how much was fact? Truth was, no
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