The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  Some of the settings involved the injection of memory-enhancing nutrients, such as lecithin, phosphatidylcholine, arginine vasopressin and thiamine. Varying combinations of these and other neurotransmitters softened neuron membranes, produced acetylcholine in the tissues, improved synaptic connections and made further structural and chemical renovations, thus maximizing the ability of the brain to accept sensory stimulators.

  Gutan stepped back, saw his own reflection clearly in the tinted mnemonic machine door, with Salazar visible beyond.

  Like a camera lens adjusting focal length, he focused on Salazar, then back on his own reflection and then to the entire mnemonic machine itself. The machine was taller than Gutan and pentahedral front and back, but not at the sides. The flat surfaces circumnavigating the sides gave it the appearance of a big wheel that needed further refinement by its inventor before it would roll. It was pale yellow alloy, of indeterminate composition, with a darker yellow-tint oblong door taking up most of the front and an oblong LCD screen on top. The wide console was separate, on the side of the door, and linked to the machine via the entrance platform, which apparently had cables concealed within it

  On schedule, Gutan threw on the red master power switch. Salazar’s body jerked, and the LCD screen projected an explosion of orange followed by a wild array of other colors. A landscape came into focus: high arched streetlight in the foreground with a long driveway beyond, leading to a barn-shaped house. Colors faded to black and white, then contrast darkened and the screen became black.

  Salazar jerked again, hideously, and a “pop” sound issued from the machine. Six faces of men and women appeared side by side, then drew back, revealing frumpy-clothed forms. The clothing fell away, reappeared and fell away again.

  A whirl of faces, landscapes, buildings and colors filled the screen. Cars, homes and household articles appeared, from centuries past. They were going fast, piling on top of one another. The ferocious, hate-crazed image of a man came into focus, and suddenly the image folded in upon itself, turned inside out. Salazar screamed, the most awful, gut-wrenching sound in all of creation. Her arms ripped free of their restraint straps, flailed wildly, and her face was a picture of hideous terror, features distorted beyond recognition.

  For an instant Gutan saw his own reflection in the glass: His eyes were feral, satanic.

  Salazar’s body went limp, the screen grew dark and all became silent except for Gutan’s labored breathing. It always ended like this, with overwhelming images that stopped everything.

  Mnemo’s life-support systems couldn’t keep subjects alive when they went into trauma, and this seemed to be a great failing of the machine. Perhaps Professor Pelter should have worked in close or closer collaboration with medical technicians. Maybe he relied too much on his own knowledge, tried to do too much himself.

  These thoughts took but an instant, as in a dream. Gutan had experienced them previously, and more rapidly each time, perfecting them it seemed, honing them and getting them out of his way.

  He became frenzied, and beyond his own reflection saw what he wanted. He threw open Mnemo’s door, and in a superhuman effort freed Salazar’s massive cadaver from the seat and dragged it out.

  Twenty minutes later she was quick-chilled and lay in bed beneath Gutan. He used the slippery electropulmonary gel still on her to perform the sexual act, but rationalized that he wasn’t a complete degenerate. . . . He didn’t do this with children, and with a man only once—an act of desperation.

  Only after the passion subsided did his recurring worry about surveillance surface, those Federal eyes he suspected were everywhere. Why didn’t they put him under arrest? They had to know! The airspace once occupied by his severed finger throbbed from the cold, and he thrust the entire hand between his thighs, seeking warmth.

  The sleeping compartment was permeated with the strawberry odor of gel, and Gutan felt unclean.

  A wave of guilt struck him and he thought: I’m an ungodly son of a bitch if there ever was one! Why do I do these terrible things?

  He felt helpless to change. Why bother? When a life has as many debits as mine, nothing I do now can change the balance. Perhaps if I had started to change earlier, if I’d tried to overcome . . . But now my acts are heaped around me and I can’t get past them. It’s easier to continue. . . .

  He sat up despondently, sank his face into his upturned hands. They reeked of gel.

  I’ve always taken the easiest path. The choices I’ve made have not been thought out.

  Fear, always just beneath the surface of every other emotion he felt, flooded away the guilt and inundated it in a terrible wash of terror. His terror grew with each infraction, and beneath these torrents that threatened to drown him, he heard the rapid drumbeat of his heart, increasing in tempo with each passing moment.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes, stung them. Pain from his missing finger ran up his arm into his brain. It was nearly unbearable.

  In the dark, Gutan crawled over the mountainous form and stumbled out of bed, groping toward the bedstand for his opium pipe.

  Chapter 3

  All is never as it seems.

  —Ancient Saying

  It wasn’t quite the way McMurtrey had envisioned it. He thought that only those who had mentally projected these ships could enter them. But several days later, when two local boys figured out the complex puzzle-lock latch systems on every vessel and the townspeople got aboard, McMurtrey had to rethink the situation.

  Not only were the vessels accessible to everyone, they were extraordinary inside. Most of them had what appeared to be flight decks, and these ships had been fitted with compact fold-down beds that came out of the walls, something like old-style Murphy sleepers. The beds were operated by control panels that seemed to have identity scanners in them, so only certain people could operate them. Screens could be dropped around each bed, thus forming individual cabins. Only a few people on McMurtrey’s ship had located their cabins; McMurtrey hadn’t taken the time to find his, for he was vexed that God hadn’t given him much information—just that initial, somewhat cryptic communication, the appearance of the fleet and the brief perception of auras. He wished God would clarify matters.

  None of the “flight decks” contained instrumentation, and no control surfaces were apparent on the exteriors of the ships. An engineer that McMurtrey spoke with thought the vessels appeared spaceworthy from their components and shapes; but this man and a number of other experts were baffled for the most part.

  It seemed particularly bizarre to these engineers and to most everyone else that some of the vessels appeared more appropriately to be vessels of a different definition—that is to say, they had the look of massive containers for holding things. These had no flight decks or sleeping facilities. Inside the one straddling the main road to Domingo’s Reef there was a small, living conifer forest on fifteen deck levels, with a remarkable mirror-activated moisture-transfer mechanism that fed sunlight and rainwater to the ecosystem. Another vessel contained deck after deck of simple prayer rugs and bare praying platforms—with here and there religious statues and sacramental articles. Hoddhists, Nandus, Plarnjarns, and others of the Eassornian philosophies congregated in these structures soon after they were opened, but they didn’t pray in them. An air of hesitancy predominated, as people were afraid to assert themselves, afraid to proceed without clear-cut approval and instruction.

  Three weeks passed with little occurring. Many visitors grew impatient and left town. Property owners began to speak of having everything demolished and hauled off, and one of the Domingos told the St. Charles Beach Crier that he could secure heavy cables to the vessels and topple them onto flatbed trailers, by which they could be hauled off.

  The biggest problem seemed to be the ships that straddled houses and roads. It wasn’t known how heavy the vessels were, because no one could figure out what they were made of. An alloy, it was believed, and the town council sent for experts to figure that out and to determine if big helicopters could
lift everything away. Some people talked about using cutting torches. Insurance companies were going nuts, and their agents were getting in the way of the plans of the property owners, citing exclusions that would or could apply if anyone caused damage by bumping things around.

  The more that occurred along these lines, the more McMurtrey faded into the background. Increasingly, people said unkind things to him on the streets, or pixtelled him, or pounded upon his door, and he couldn’t come up with much to say in return. He stopped answering his pixtel or the door, and began sending a neighbor boy to the store for supplies. Letters piled up for him at the mail station.

  Isolation wasn’t new to Evander McMurtrey. He hadn’t ever cared much for socializing anyway.

  One evening when he was sitting in his darkened living room mulling events over, he heard clunking footsteps on the porch and a sharp series of raps at the door. He didn’t move, heard No Name rustle around in a specially built birdcage.

  There were more raps upon the door, louder.

  A man called out: “Open up, Rooster! We know you’re in there!” Something familiar and unpleasant in that voice.

  McMurtrey didn’t move. Why should he? Undoubtedly they wanted answers, and he had run out.

  The door handle rattled, followed by voices, low and urgent.

  A splintering crash shook the house, and McMurtrey jumped to his feet. The front door was kicked in, with the doorway full of silhouetted figures, their shapes outlined by backlight from the street.

  “There he is,” one of the intruders said, the same one who had called from outside.

  McMurtrey choked out a response: “Get off my property!”

  Someone heat-activated the light switch by the door, and half a dozen men filed in. They were led by a man in a sports jacket who toted a big pistol on his hip, and as this one moved into the light, McMurtrey recognized Johnny Orbust. The familiar voice.

  Orbust’s coat was green, with a lump under one arm that might have been another gun. And McMurtrey recalled the sheath strapped to one calf under the trousers. The visible firearm was in its holster, flap unsnapped. Orbust glanced around nervously, like a cat on unfamiliar ground.

  His companions were a mixed lot: a priest in black, but with an unusual red collar; just behind the priest a disheveled man long of beard and hair whom McMurtrey had noticed panhandling in town; then two very tall, thin men who looked enough alike to be brothers, both with angular birdlike features; and off to one side a fat little man with a stubble of beard and a girth that nearly equaled his height. All looked tough and hard.

  “Let’s go!” Orbust barked. His eyelid twitched nervously, and he gestured with one hand, beckoning McMurtrey.

  McMurtrey felt no fogging of his brain induced by nervous tics, hadn’t suffered that debility since God spoke to him.

  “Go where?” McMurtrey asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Those ships, Rooster,” the fat man snarled. He wore a long peacoat.

  “Ships in a row and nowhere to go?” one of the tall men said. Then he said something in a low tone to the fat man, calling him “Tully.”

  “Don’t bug me about the ships,” McMurtrey said. “I’ve told everything I know about them.”

  “The power that brought those ships is able to get ’em off the ground,” Orbust said. “Just one’s all we need. The white one you’ve been admiring yourself.”

  Orbust was directly in front of McMurtrey now. Orbust’s pale blue gaze followed McMurtrey’s line of sight to the pistol. Then their gazes met, and Orbust’s expression seemed to say, “Go ahead and try for it, if you dare.’’

  McMurtrey tried to relax, took a deep breath. He looked everywhere except at the gun.

  With a soft, rapid slap of sound, Orbust drew a Babul from inside his coat, and began reading scripture aloud. McMurtrey didn’t pay attention to the words, so surprised and intrigued had he been by the maneuver. When Orbust replaced the Babul, McMurtrey saw that it went into a shoulder holster.

  Then Orbust grabbed McMurtrey by an arm, and Tully took the other. They jerked him toward the door. The disheveled man was quoting more scripture and making commentary, something about the prophesies of Divan.

  “I can’t do what you want,” McMurtrey said. “Whatever power I had is gone.”

  “We’re gonna wind your little battery up,” Tully said.

  The chicken rustled in its cage, hopped through the open cage door and fluttered ungracefully to the floor. It hopped toward Tully.

  “Keep that thing away from me,” Tully rasped, “or I’ll—” The chicken squawked.

  McMurtrey stepped toward the bird, felt the men release their grasps on him. With a wave of his hand, McMurtrey ordered No Name back to its cage.

  With a tremendous commotion of wings, it complied.

  “What kinda stinkin’ chicken izzat?” Tully asked, scowling.

  “There’s no need for language like that,” Orbust said.

  A pen and a small notebook fell from one of Tully’s pockets. The notebook lay open on the floor, revealing Babulical passages written in calligraphy. This rough little man appeared to have a talent.

  “I say what I want when I want,” Tully retorted. He leaned over and retrieved his belongings. They went into a pocket of his peacoat.

  Angrily, Orbust turned toward his associate, and the fingers of his gun hand twitched near the holstered weapon. Then he took a deep breath and looked away.

  “Izzat a rooster or a hen?” Tully asked.

  “Hen,” McMurtrey said.

  “What are you, some kinda chicken-hugger?”

  “Enough of this,” Orbust said. He pulled McMurtrey through the doorway and outside.

  Tully again took hold of one of McMurtrey’s arms when they reached the street, and McMurtrey held back a little, exerting just enough reverse inertia to provide him with precious additional seconds to think. The night air was cool, with a breeze blowing in from the ocean,

  Orbust had a flashlight, and he played its powerful beam ahead of them, illuminating hazardous areas of broken sidewalk that the town’s antiquated street lamps failed to reveal.

  They were going toward the nearest white ship, the one McMurtrey favored. It stood as a plump monolith in lights from the town, and beyond it were the stars of God’s firmament. One star that might have been a bright planet caught McMurtrey’s attention. It was high in the eastern sky, clean and sharp against an inky background. McMurtrey wondered if a force could be riveting his attention to it, and if so to what purpose.

  It struck him that everything, even the tiniest, seemingly insignificant incident or object, had a purpose. They were threads in a heavenly tapestry.

  He felt a sharp pain in the arm that Tully held, and someone pushed him rudely from behind with the admonition, “Quit dragging your heels.” It was one of the tall men. McMurtrey couldn’t tell which, and didn’t look back. A street light popped and fizzled with static electricity, went dark and then came back on slowly, producing a sickly yellow glow.

  When they reached the ship, Orbust played the flashlight beam on it. A coarse-surfaced metal ramp led to the entrance hatch, and it was open, its puzzle-lock having been released. The men boarded.

  Inside it smelted pungently of urine and feces, and McMurtrey began breathing through his mouth. When the flashlight played against the walls he noted graffiti that hadn’t been there several weeks before.

  Orbust and Tully let go of him. The arm on Tully’s side throbbed.

  “Yeesh what a stench,” the priest said. He flipped on a powerful little incandescent lamp that McMurtrey hadn’t noticed he had, kicked several beer cans aside and set the lamp down in the middle of the cabin. This was the principal compartment of the ship, a tubular-shaped room, and overhead were a dozen or more mezzanines, stacked atop one another in circling, doughnut-shaped tiers. Hundreds of compact fold-down beds lined the walls of the mezzanines, some open and some concealed inside the walls.

  “Kids have been partyi
ng in here,” Orbust said. “This fleet has no management, no guards, and it’s deteriorating.” He turned off his flashlight, set it on the deck beside the lamp.

  “Don’t blame me,” McMurtrey said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Hocus-pocus,” the disheveled man said. “Do a little magic.”

  “We Krassians have to get to God first,” Tully said. “So get with it.”

  “Get with what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tully. “Talk to the ship, plead with it, whatever it takes. It don’t listen to us. Hell, bless it. Try everything. You’re the mover and shaker here, and nothing’s been happening with you hiding at your place.”

  “I think a blessing would be a capital idea,” the priest said, stroking the front of his red collar. The way light was hitting him, he looked like a man whose throat had been slashed. His nose hooked downward. “I’m Kundo Smith, Mr. McMurtrey. I live in this shire, so you might have heard of me.”

  McMurtrey shook his head.

  Smith appeared displeased at this.

  I’d rather refer to you as Redneck, McMurtrey thought.

  Someone nudged McMurtrey from behind, hissed: “The blessing!”

  “I know one that seems appropriate,” McMurtrey said. “A cousin taught it to me when I was young.”

  “Is it Krassian?” Orbust asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it isn’t offensive.”

  “Go ahead,” Orbust said hesitantly.

  McMurtrey cleared his throat, and his voice echoed through the high mezzanines:

  “‘When we hoist the silver goblets