Songs From the Stars Read Free

aeons. The Smash had not touched it. Even the awful black science of the pre-Smash Americans ad not been able to seriously mar these mothers of mountains. All they had left behind was a sparse network of roads where tall trees burst from the shattered concrete. Lou soared past fir-covered slopes where hawks and eagles circled, high verdant meadows where sheep and deer grazed. The world ended in a wilderness Eden whose far boundary was impenetrable to man. What irony that beyond the highest peaks of this primeval majesty lay a radioactive hell and the lairs of sorcerers!
    In all of this mountain fastness, the only significant human settlement was La Mirage, one of Aquaria's major towns, a long day's flight from anything of significance and two days from Palm by wagon on the torturous back-door road.
    What this bustling town was doing way out here in the middle of nowhere was generally considered best left unsaid. La Mirage was near nothing but the fuzzy mountain boundary between Aquaria and what lay beyond.
    And now the sorcerers beyond the mountains had showed their hand at work with uncool clumsiness. More than the fate of the Eagle Tribe, the Lightning Commune, and Sunshine Sue's Word of Mouth was at stake. La Mirage itself was now under a heavy cloud of black science of the most blatant sort.
    And the fact was that Aquaria needed La Mirage for the very reason that made it content to leave the doings in the shadow of the High Sierras out of sight and out of mind.
    An arcane chemistry took place here upon which the civilization of Aquaria depended. The children of Aquarius had built a civilization based on the white sciences, under the law of muscle, sun, wind and water. Now they could fly like eagles, and generate electricity, and pass messages along by solar radio. White science advanced year after year, and its mages and merchants did their business together in the La Mirage Exchange. New technology was manufactured most often in the workshops and factories of the town and from there diffused slowly outward.
    It was conveniently said that the scattered mountain William tribes in the eastern back country had preserved certain manufacturing techniques from pre-Smash days, and it was certainly true that these simple people zealously guarded their so-called trade secrets.
    It was also true, however, that somewhere up in the Sierras, mountain william country ended and the haunts of the
    Spacers began. It was hard to believe that there was no interpenetration. It was hard to believe, but most people tried.
    Expeditions too high up into the mountains had a way of not coming back. Besides, bounty flowed across the land from La Mirage, and none could prove that the law of muscle, sun, wind and water was violated by eagles or solar radios or sophisticated batteries and wind generators.
    Such was the delicate balance that allowed La Mirage to flourish. By such a nonexistent pact with the unnamable did Aquaria ultimately thrive in its righteous whiteness. Some perfect masters saw this as a fatal flaw, but Clear Blue Lou didn't believe in being bad for business. Which was why he was the favorite perfect master of La Mirage.
    Which was also why the nature of this klutzy confrontation pointed to machinations by the Spacers. Sunshine Sue might very well be capable of knowingly purchasing atomic-powered radios—her reputation was well grayed to say the least. But the Eagle Tribe had no percentage in wanting to expose her. Shining unwanted light into someone else's dark corner was against the rules of the game, if only because you yourself might be next.
    Around the next bend, the canyon that Lou was following widened out into a steep green meadow that swept upward before him. He valved more helium into his eagle and nosed it upward, slowly inching up above the steep slope, making his final climb to La Mirage in a long climbing arc.
    On the high mountain plateau above him was a town that had summoned his justice, a town that trusted him