The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  Professor Pelter went out with a head full of secrets.

  Gutan didn’t know how many variables there were in machine settings, and this had to be factored in with the variables in human subjects. The possibilities had to be calculator-boggling. With just the right settings and just the right subject, maybe the memory trail, as it rocketed back, wouldn’t kill the subject.

  He suspected with this thought that the monitors couldn’t control the speed of memory recapture, that the subjects needed more time to adjust to each setting before going back, before traversing lives. They were being overwhelmed.

  Was one life every life?

  Gutan had to laugh at these thoughts. An opium-saturated ex-mortician thinking about philosophy, about the meaning of life? If not for a couple of turns of fate, he might still be working in his family’s funeral parlor, just as so many Gutans had done for more than two centuries.

  It seemed like only a short while ago that he had worked with his family, but it had been nearly three decades. What had happened to his life? When the family business slipped beneath the waves he felt a shock to his system, a shock to the chain of his bloodline, and in all the time since then he had not recovered.

  He felt guilt for something he’d never discussed with his family or with those few friends he’d had over the years, friends who inevitably came no closer to him than acquaintances. Barriers. He always kept them up. Barriers protected him from discovery.

  It was this terrible personal truth that kept him from wanting to see anyone in his family. He had a sister, two brothers, nephews and cousins somewhere, but would never see any of them again. Maybe they didn’t want to see him, anyway. Maybe they knew what went on in the shadows.

  The opium helped Gutan deal with this, and thus far he hadn’t experienced the usual sleepiness or other adverse side effects. It wasn’t ordinary somniferous opium, according to the mail-order literature that came with it. Gutan had noticed a need for ever-increasing doses, however, in order to achieve the desired state of euphoria.

  When Gutan was off duty he thought about being on duty, couldn’t wait to get back to work. Despite his shame, this work intrigued him, and he wanted to learn more about Mnemo than the iceberg tip he had seen so far.

  He harbored no doubts that this project was big, far greater than a traveling execution machine. He sensed glimmerings of that truth and of a greater one beyond, like the glimmerings of the smile he thought he saw at times on Fork’s sheet-metal face.

  McMurtrey hadn’t considered for an instant the possibility that he might freeze in front of a crowd. Never before had he spoken to large gatherings, but it occurred to him that a crowd might be easier to handle in one sense than an individual. With individuals he had this chronic, nagging tendency to be distracted by mannerisms. With a crowd, he assured himself, he wouldn’t focus on any individual. It would be a sea of sameness, and his thoughts would remain in line.

  So with his chicken on his shoulder that sunny afternoon, McMurtrey went to the podium on the makeshift stage and faced the multitude.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder and belly to backside as far as he could see—on the beaches, on the roads, on the rocky hillsides. Big black speakers had been placed everywhere so that all might hear.

  The ocean was a cool pale blue, lapping relentlessly in shimmering wave armies at the shoreline, wearing the land away little by little, imperceptibly. McMurtrey, as he stood there listening to the waves and watching them, thought he heard the subtle raspings of shoreline erosion, and in his mind’s eye he tried to envision the great storms of history at this place—as if all were occurring at once in a tremendous blast of water, wind and sound.

  Then the storms subsided and the people grew quiet, with the exception of a stooped woman in the front who waggled her fingers in the chicken beak ritual and sang out loudly:

  “O Chubby Mother,

  Let me rubba your belly . . .

  Let me rubba your belly”

  One of my followers, McMurtrey thought. God, she’s one of the stupid zealots!

  McMurtrey touched his lips, asking for quiet.

  He stood in afternoon sunlight telling the people he was a fraud. He told them everything, and it gushed forth in a torrent of phrases he hadn’t known he would use.

  The woman in the front moaned that she didn’t believe it, and other solitary cries rang from the throng. It saddened McMurtrey that his words were like knives in the hearts of some, but he knew this had to be done, that ultimately it would be for the best.

  When he had said everything, it seemed natural, comfortable, a confessional. He had purged his conscience, bared his tainted soul before all. He stood naked before them.

  He saw tears in the audience among those of all denominations, most evidently among the pious, whom he could see glowing softly yellow when he squinted. Nowhere, not even among those who bore swords and other weapons on their hips, did he detect even the flickering of a sneer or any sort of unkind expression. This despite the fact that he stood before them with a fat chicken on his shoulder.

  It should have been a mockery; they should have been hurling vegetables and fruit at him.

  As they waited for him to speak further, he looked beyond the people on the highest hillside, to the sky. A small cloud was chasing a puffy fat one, and they traveled on a high wind. He heard the wind beyond the sea noise, beyond the whisperings of the crowd.

  He looked back at them, and raised his voice to be heard above all the sounds crashing in his ears. His words boomed through the speakers:

  “I’ve told you of my life, that I’ve wasted years, that I’ve been a charlatan, a liar. Now, like the boy who cried wolf, I’m asking you to believe me when I tell you that God has spoken to me.”

  “Verily, it is so!” came a shout from the crowd. It was a man’s voice, deep and resonant.

  “We believe you!” a teenage girl exclaimed. “Praise the Lord! Our ships have come!” She had a shiny, bronze-colored stunbow strapped to her back.

  “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?’” a man called out, from just in front of the podium. He held an open Babul, and an electronic concordance pendant dangling from his neck flashed the scriptural reference in orange: NESI 18:14.

  A bearded man in a black caftan stepped forward, holding his Kooraq high. It was a brown leather tome, with elegant, flowing script inscribed on the cover. The man’s lips barely moved, and a voice seemed to come not from him, but rather, as in the case of a ventriloquist, from the volume itself: “WE BELIEVE IN ALLAH, AND IN THAT WHICH HAS BEEN SENT DOWN ON US. . . . TO HIM WE SURRENDER!”

  Then a Floriental man in a Wessornian business suit stepped forth with a long rolled scroll, identified himself as an Ota, and said, in a very high, clear voice: “THE WISE MAN NEVER STRIVES HIMSELF FOR THE GREAT, AND THEREBY THE GREAT IS ACHIEVED!’ WE DIDN’T CALL FOR THE SHIPS! WE DID NOT BUILD THEM! HAD WE SOUGHT THESE SHIPS, WE COULD NOT ENTER THEM, FOR THEY WOULD NOT EXIST.”

  “I think he’s saying it’s okay to go,” a woman said, within earshot of McMurtrey. “Who cares what he says?” a man said. A few in the crowd chuckled, a rolling, gentle sound. Then other holy men and women stepped forward and spoke, with each giving reasons from their sacred scriptures why people should travel by ship to God’s domain far across the universe. No one spoke against the ships, not even a number of atheists who made their presence known. All agreed that it would be a great adventure, and that someone should embark upon it, although all present did not want to make the journey.

  Generally, McMurtrey was impressed with the respect that each religion displayed for others. There were a few rude individuals in the gathering, but their choppy words of criticism toward other faiths fell as stones into a pit—unanswered—and these outcasts fell silent.

  After waiting more patiently than he might have, McMurtrey wanted to continue his address. He asked the various representatives to yield to him.

  They did so graciously, and McMurtrey spoke for a while long
er.

  Then he paused, and a current of assent swept all around, building to a crescendo of chanting: “PRAISE GOD AND McMURTREY! PRAISE GOD AND McMURTREY!”

  McMurtrey saw the faces of many in the audience uplifted toward him, as if people were beholding divine light. To them, his words were God’s words.

  McMurtrey spread his arms wide, gazed reverently at the sky.

  But a solitary male voice rose from the multitude, to McMurtrey’s right. It cut through sanctified air like a razor on flesh, making McMurtrey shiver. But he was not cold. “Why you, Rooster?” the voice asked. “Why in the name of all that’s holy did God select you as His messenger?” As the man spoke, he pushed his way through the crowd. People let him past, and soon he stood on the bottom step of the stage, staring up defiantly at McMurtrey. “He has a gun!” someone shouted.

  McMurtrey saw it even as he heard the warning, but he didn’t flinch.

  An elephant pistol was holstered on the man’s hip, but he wasn’t making a move for the weapon. He wore a green sportscoat and was tall, with thinning brown hair combed straight back through untamable cowlicks. The eyes were the pale blue of the sea, looking through people, looking through this fraud, Evander McMurtrey.

  McMurtrey was glad he hadn’t lied, for men such as this would have seen the truth and exposed him, McMurtrey’s knees quivered, threatening to fold on him and send him crashing to the floor of the stage.

  He noticed that this man had a lot of nervous tics, the sort that invariably had distracted McMurtrey in the past, flooding his brain with images that blocked the thought patterns required for conversation. One of the man’s eyelids twitched occasionally, he tapped one foot on the step importunately, and his trigger finger, like an insect leg, rubbed the adjacent thumb.

  Inexplicably, McMurtrey didn’t feel his thoughts muddling. He felt strong, at the crest of a momentous event. This was a purposeful strength, and it seemed capable of carrying him a long way.

  McMurtrey took a deep breath and met the man’s gaze. “Your name?” McMurtrey asked.

  “Johnny Orbust. I’m a Reborn Krassee, here to debate the Lord’s word and way with you, Rooster.”

  “I always like to know who I’m talking to,” McMurtrey said. He squinted, detected no aura around the man. Then as he looked out upon the crowd in this fashion, McMurtrey no longer saw any auras, not even around individuals he had seen glowing before.

  “Sun bothering you?” Orbust queried.

  “No . . . it’s . . . You want to know why the Lord didn’t select a great leader for this task? Why not a person of grand stature, a person capable of engendering the admiration of millions? Why a man who goes around with a chicken on his shoulder?”

  Orbust smiled sardonically.

  “I’m not here to sell myself to anyone,” McMurtrey said, smoothing the green plumage on No Name’s backside. “Far from it. I’ve denigrated myself before you, exposed my life for the utter farce that it’s been. But the fact remains that God did speak to me and He did produce these marvelous ships. He communicated with many of you as well, or you wouldn’t be here. Perhaps not as He spoke to me, revealing His location, but differently. I sense the truth of this. As I look upon your face, Orbust, and upon the countenances of so many here, I know this is fact.”

  Orbust’s jaw dropped. He took a step back, off the staircase and onto the ground. He bent over and lifted a pant leg, revealing a small sheath strapped to his calf.

  A weapon, McMurtrey thought, preparing to duck behind the lectern. Why not the cannon on his hip? McMurtrey didn’t see anyone moving toward Orbust to stop him, felt alone and abandoned.

  Orbust seemed to have a second thought and paused. He let his pant leg down without pulling forth whatever the sheath held, and straightened.

  “What did God say to you?” McMurtrey asked, staring so intensely at Orbust that he forced the man to look away. “It wasn’t . . . words. . . . “ Orbust said. “I felt . . . compelled to come here.”

  “You came here concerning a ship? A particular ship that will carry you to Heaven?”

  Orbust looked at the ground, like a child being reprimanded. “Y-yes. I saw it on televid.” He pointed. “That white one!”

  It was the same ship McMurtrey had selected for himself, likewise for no reason he could form into words.

  “Others are here to board that ship as well,” McMurtrey said. “It will hold many passengers. When God’s location was announced and we had no way to go there, many of us formed visions of how we would voyage to God. These ships are from our imaginations, from transmitted thought waves. I didn’t fully realize it myself until scant seconds ago, as I gazed out upon you and absorbed your energies. It wasn’t the first time I had known these energies, and they were familiar to me.” The crowd grew exceedingly quiet. McMurtrey felt an adrenalin surge, and the ensuing words came with a rush: “In days past, your thoughts and mine were channeled through me with such force that they materialized into objects. These ships are not mirages. While I sense what has happened, I don’t fully understand how. But it is something I cannot question, and I sense many of you believe this with me.”

  By the hush in the crowd and the trusting, childlike faces that stared at him, McMurtrey saw he had struck a responsive chord. They were hanging on his every word.

  “THESE ARE OUR CREATIONS!” McMurtrey shouted. “ENTER THEM!”

  Orbust’s impertinent question didn’t require an answer. Not in words. Ironically, God had selected the lowliest prophet in the history of mankind for the most important assignment, a pilgrimage to the Master of Masters.

  Gutan took a puff on his opium pipe, watched the subject. She had her eyes closed, awaiting the inevitable that would be brought on when Gutan made the prescribed machine settings and adjustments.

  He heard Fork rolling back, the harsh whirrings and squeakings Gutan didn’t always notice.

  If this was an elaborate, veiled experiment, it now occurred to Gutan that it had to go beyond the data pouring into the computer system. And theft protection had to be more extensive than the satellite tracking system that his implanted chip said watched the truck-trailer rigs at all times. There had to be eyes everywhere inside, something or someone watching Mnemo at all times. Might it be Fork? Or Gutan himself, transmitting via the chip to headquarters, made complacent by the opium that had appeared too conveniently in his life?

  Could Gutan destroy the memory machine if he decided he wanted to? Or did the job chip contain within it a governor that prevented such acts? If the opium was part of the conspiracy, part of the veil, how could he have the thoughts he was experiencing now?

  He didn’t want to destroy the machine, couldn’t envision doing anything like that.

  He studied his pipe, the graceful curvatures of the dark wood stem that circulated the narcotic through his body. A special variety of opium, part of the conspiracy?

  He wanted to dash the pipe to the floor and stomp the addiction mechanism to pieces. Then he recalled something he had heard, about drugs inducing paranoia in certain people.

  With one hand he slammed shut the door of the mnemonic machine, and through the dark yellow-tinted glass of the door saw the subject’s expression change from serenity to terror.

  Gutan glanced at the electric clip pad on the countertop to his left, noted the subject’s name, Anna Salazar, and the required machine settings. He began to make the settings.

  Mnemo’s wide instrument console had a thousand tiny dials, half as many miniature toggles and levers, and ninety-three buttons so small they had to be pressed with a metal pick that was kept on a narrow, lipped shelf. All controls were numbered without explanation as to function, but the job chip implanted in Gutan’s cerebrum gave a smattering of information. The dial he was turning now, Number 271, was a sensory deprivator, tied in with the gelatin on Salazar’s body and designed to free the logjam of current events that was suppressing old memories. Sensory stimulation would follow.

  The gelatin covering Salazar�
��s body glowed pale red for an instant, indicating Sensory Deprivation engaged.

  Professor Pelter referred to the gelatin as a “Variable Texture Suit,” an electrically conductive surface that could make a subject believe he was wearing any manner of clothing, touching any surface, tasting any type of food ever created, smelling any smell. Pelter had refined and identified more than 600,000 different smells, nearly 100,000 different sounds, thousands more textures, temperatures and tastes. His remarkable machine could simulate any of these sensory enhancers in infinite variety, carrying a subject back in his memory to lives long forgotten.

  Gutan knew from his own experiences before this job that were legion. Sometimes as an adult he picked up the pungent aroma of shrubbery that was reminiscent of a yard he used to pass on the way to elementary school. Prison-system cooking aromas were like those of school cafeterias, and embalming fluid odors brought back days spent in the family funeral home. So Mnemo’s capabilities hadn’t surprised Gutan that much.

  He lifted a small blue lever in a vertical channel on the console, until it reached the numeral “1.” A brief blue glow in the gelatin indicated Sensory Stimulation engaged, a phase-one injection. They were starting her out slowly, getting her used to the machine. It had to be easier on the body that way, and to this extent she seemed lucky. Automatic testing would follow, for dream images and recent memories, with subtle suggestions from the machine based upon information programmed into it about the subject’s life history.

  When the government computer beeped twice, as it would in a few minutes, Gutan would set the stimulator lever on “2,” and so on. Then to other controls, bringing more power, and back the subject would go. In a sense, Gutan and the Feds monitoring the equipment went along for the ride. Even Pelter went along, for his one-of-a-kind machine still lived.

  Another dial, Number 140, was a Climate Control setting, and this Gutan set on zero to begin, neutral. He wouldn’t have to reset it for this subject, since Mnemo’s built-in computer would take over when things really got rolling. If a subject was experiencing a life in ancient Afsornia, for example (as in the recent case of a dispatchee at San Felipe Penitentiary), the computer would set temperature, humidity and air components according to known historical data and probabilities—thus enhancing the odds of stimulating more memories. All the foods, ancient and modern, were in other automatic mechanisms that Gutan didn’t have to fool with.