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poisoned Sue's own by their fatal affair with black science. But it was the devices of black science, the
    "hardware," that had brought man to ruin, not the "software," which was concept and spirit alone, a path of the Way, independent of science, white or black.
    Now the world lay poisoned perhaps unto death; a person's world was the area in which he lived and what sparse news moved up and down the creaky Word of Mouth net, and before Sue had built Word of Mouth with her secret software lore, not even that.
    How limited we ire if only we knew, Sunshine Sue thought as she sped up the dry lake bed toward La Mirage with the speed of the wind. How fast I seem to be moving and yet how slowly our thoughts crawl from town to town and mind to mind! Now, as so often since that day in the Rememberers' hut, she felt like a poor lorn creature trapped outside her proper time. The secrets she alone knew tormented her soul with impatience for the distant rebirth of the electronic global village that might one day reunite the scattered remnants of the species in a web of consciousness beyond her poor imagining, a worldwide community of spirit that might yet heal what was left of the shattered Earth.
    Up ahead, she could see wagons inching up the switchback road that ascended the mountain to La Mirage, and beyond, the great central peaks of the Sierras that rimmed the known world. East of the horizon lay the terra incognita of black science—out of sight, but hardly out of mind.
    Yes, the law of muscle, sun, wind and water was the Way. But could the present world of crawling, limiting isolation truly be called good?
    It was destiny that had taken her to that Rememberers' hut, destiny too that had made her a member of the Sunshine Tribe where her secret knowledge could be put to use. And if destiny required that she risk graying her soul in the service of her dream, then so be it. For surely that dream was in the end whiter than the rigid narrowness of the asshole righteous.
    And if her silent patrons now sought to destroy what she had built for their own unknown reasons, those Spacer bastards were going to have one hell of a fight on their hands.
    "Move, damn you, move!" she shouted into the wind, pushing against the steering gear as if she could squeeze more speed out of the sail cycle by sheer force of will. Why couldn't this bloody thing go faster?
    * * *
    The mountains began abruptly at the northern end of the dry lake bed; from this angle, the Sierras were a vast ziggurat staircase reaching upward and eastward. La Mirage was built atop one of the lower flattened steps of the cordillera stairway, and the lake-bed road ended abruptly at the foot of a severe three-thousand-foot slope.
    Here the road became a torturous zigzag, climbing the mountain in an endless series of steep switchbacks, forty miles of crawling agony to ascend three thousand feet. A procession of horse-drawn wagons inched up this nightmare back door approach, dwindling away to insect-like dots toward the heights.
    Barreling along the valley road at top speed to the last minute, Sunshine Sue slammed on the sail cycle's brakes and came to a screeching stop in a cloud of dust right outside the cabin that the Sunshine Tribe had built many years ago at the foot of the mountain road. Half a dozen sail cycles with furled yellow sails and four Sunshine yellow solar eagles were tethered to the hitching rail. No sail cycle could ascend the mountain road, and the geography precluded radio contact with the town, so from here to La Mirage, Word of Mouth—and Sunshine Sue herself—would travel the last three thousand feet straight up by eagle.
    Teddy Sunshine, the station honcho, emerged from the cabin even as Sue was shakily unwinding her cramped legs from the long drive. Sue pointed to the line of solar eagles, not wanting to waste even a minute, and they met under the golden shadow of the nearest eagle wing.
    "What's the word from La Mirage?" she asked breathlessly, stowing her