The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  She was studying his face intently, must have noticed the direction of his gaze. He felt hot around the temples, with perspiration there. He couldn’t take his eyes from hers.

  Her eyes were very gentle but mysteriously strong and ever so dark—he sensed layers of emotion and calculation within the darkness of those pupils. Were they brown? He couldn’t tell, but they were calming and hypnotic.

  Her eyes flashed, as if fingers had been snapped, and he emerged from a trance.

  “I like the way you look at me,” she said.

  Krassos! McMurtrey thought. What does she mean by that?

  He felt helpless and confused. He wanted to leap at her, drop the curtain and make wild, rampaging love. How many months had it been since he had been with a woman? Eight? Ten? Closer to ten, he thought.

  “Uh, excuse me,” he said, feeling like a fool. “I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that . . . ” Go ahead, a little inner voice said to him. Tell her you want to romp with her!

  He scratched his head, looked away. He had fumbled like this before with women, either consciously mishandling signals or failing entirely to interpret them until later, when all opportunity had dissipated. Too often he looked at women incorrectly, he knew, from the sexual standpoint. Invariably they picked up on this and turned away. Oh, he had a large and clumsy cuteness to him, and some women took to that at first. But it never lasted. This one wouldn’t last.

  Her gaze was angry now, starting to flicker away from his. It was happening again. Too late even to compliment her beauty. But what did he have to lose, if all was lost anyway?

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice too low. “Especially your eyes.”

  “What?” she said, her tone irritated. She licked a fingertip, applied moisture to one eyebrow and smoothed the brow down.

  “I said you have nice eyes.”

  Her gesture with the eyebrow hadn’t bothered him, and he felt good about this.

  “Listen, McMurtrey, do you know who I am? I’m supposed to be captain of this friggin’ ship. Number One Honchess. Yessirree Linda. But something is goofy here . . . mondo screwo. I passed up a cushy star freighter assignment to be here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a Merchant Spacer, and I received an air wave—you know, one of those new nearly invisible Wessornian Union radio bubbles that finds you and floats in the air.”

  “Yeah,” McMurtrey said. “I’ve heard about those. They burst, don’t they, and words flow out—up to what, fifteen-second messages?”

  “Right.”

  “If I had a suspicious mind, I’d say that someone used that technology on me to simulate God, the message about His location. But hell, I talked with Him for several minutes. Those bubbles can’t hold that much. Anyway, other things have happened, like the ships.”

  She nodded. “The air wave I got wasn’t anything occult. It was from Appy, and he promised me a captaincy. I was hearing publicity about you and God at the time, and it all sounded too interesting to pass up. But I’ve yet to see the controls of the ship. I’ve never seen a ship like this before.”

  “Appy drove me crazy too.”

  “I confronted him a while ago, and he told me to report to my berth right out here with everyone else, I’ve—-”

  “With the rabble, right?”

  “I didn’t mean . . . ”

  “Forget it. I feel demoted myself. You’d better keep this down . . . could panic the passengers.”

  She lowered her voice, but only a little: “Panic the passengers? You’re a passenger, McMurtrey. Aren’t you worried that we’re due to take off without a captain?”

  “Call me Ev, for Evander.”

  She nodded, with a tense smile. “Kelly.”

  “Kelly, it can’t be too bad. Somebody or some thing flew these ships here, and they should be able to take ’em off again. Maybe they’re gonna get us into outer space before your skills are needed.”

  “Well, I’m damned upset about the way this is being handled, and I’m gonna give that loudmouthed computer a piece of my mind.” She stalked off.

  McMurtrey explored his own cabin buttons, and when he was well on his way to figuring them out, he found he had a tiny enclosure like Corona’s. With the divider down it was about two and a half meters in length by the same width. A wide floor area was on one side of the enclosure, with one side of the bed and the bottom of the bed abutting the divider.

  McMurtrey bounced on the mattress, and it felt firm despite his great weight. The headboard had an illuminated amber screen with a wide bar at the base. When he pressed the bar, a number of book-tape titles appeared in red on the screen, along with instructions on how to use the device. Beneath the wide bar was a compartment with earphones, and the instructions said that any title on the screen could be ordered for listening.

  He heard voices outside his enclosure, muffled only slightly by the divider.

  The selection of book-tapes was varied, from bestselling fiction to collections of poetry, religion, the occult, history and politics. Some of the titles were eyecatching and most surprising, given the setting of the ship: Love Slaves In the Sunset . . . The Kinky Twins . . . Diary Of a Mad Hooker.

  Such titles on a ship of God seemed beyond belief, and he wondered if they might be testimonials, uplifting tales of sinners who had “found” the Lord. In any event he resolved not to dabble with those titles, for despite the frauds of his past he remained a man of substantial morality.

  He activated a tiny table-and-chair set that popped out of the deck in the wide area to one side of the bed. He rolled off the bed and sat on one of two opposing chairs. The chair flexed under his weight, but it held and seemed reasonably strong. A black-and-white gauge on the edge of the table showed his weight: 152 kilograms.

  He sat facing the headboard wall, noticed a little porthole there that had appeared with the dinette set. McMurtrey could see the ships lined up from Domingo’s Reef into town, and all ships were illuminated from within to varying degrees, with light coming from portholes he hadn’t known were on the ships. They were irregularly spaced portholes, leading him to believe that they only appeared when cabins were occupied and the dinette sets opened up. He fast realized that the porthole he was looking through had another curious feature. Since he was in the innermost partition of the ship, with other cabins outside his, he shouldn’t have had a port! It must have been an elaborate and ingenious arrangement of mirrors or a televid screen. He couldn’t tell the difference between looking into this porthole and looking out a window.

  McMurtrey only half heard the squawk of protest and the rush of wind made by beating wings. It was the voice that brought him to awareness, a rather loud and urgent tone that came from outside his enclosure.

  “Mr. Grand Exalted, I have your chicken.”

  McMurtrey had forgotten No Name for a while, so engrossed had he become in events that were carrying him along like a toothpick in a hurricane. This bird had gotten past Appy’s checkpoint, so it must have been approved. McMurtrey pressed a silver button with a trident on it, and the screen for his micro-apartment rose. As it lifted, McMurtrey first saw bare feet and hair-covered legs, with a slender bamboo pole broom lying on the deck to one side. Then, to his complete shock, an entirely naked man came into view. The man’s head was shaved, and he held the chicken in his hands, covering his genitals.

  “You’re holding that bird near a rather vulnerable spot,” McMurtrey said, regaining composure quickly.

  No Name was wriggling around trying to peck at the man, but the fellow had its neck and head grasped firmly in such a way that the bird was having difficulty attacking.

  “I’m here to give you the bird,” the man said, apparently unaware of his double-entendre. “This thing is feisty!”

  One of McMurtrey’s initial reactions was to tie this scenario in with the sexually suggestive book-tape tides he had seen. But the man had a tranquil expression on his face, leading McMurtrey to surmise that he must be the dis
ciple of a strange religious cult.

  “I’m a Plarnjarn, Digam sect,” the man said, placing the chicken in McMurtrey’s grasp. The man retrieved his broom.

  McMurtrey heard scuffling, turned and saw a small group of eavesdroppers standing on the other side of the mula-black’s uncurtained apartment. There were men, women, and children, all wild-eyed with fascination. Most wore robes, in a variety of colors and patterns.

  Kelly Corona stood impassively beside her open bed, arms folded in front of her, staring at McMurtrey and his visitor.

  McMurtrey looked back at the Plarnjarn, who was visible right down to a shamrock-shaped birthmark on his lower abdomen.

  Behind McMurtrey, a child giggled. “I don’t think I want to take this chicken on such a long journey,” McMurtrey said.

  “You may be wise in saying that,” the Plarnjarn said.

  “Appy suggested you might want it for religious purposes, and I was asked to bring it to you.”

  “Were you commanded to do so?”

  “Quite the opposite. I was entering the ship, when through a speaker I heard the computer conversing with itself, trying to decide whether or not the chicken should go, I said nothing and was about to pass by when Appy called my name, saying, ‘Jin, what is your opinion on this matter?’”

  McMurtrey shifted uneasily on his feet, tried not to stare in the wrong direction.

  “Well,” Jin continued, “I know enough from what I overheard and from the talk about town to realize that Appy meant your chicken. But in reply I said I didn’t know. I asked him if I should fetch it.”

  The vision of a naked man running after a rather rough-and-tumble chicken struck McMurtrey as funny, and he smiled.

  “Appy asked me to fetch it straightaway. He gave me your berth number, and here I am.”

  “Can you take the bird back?” McMurtrey asked, feeling a little weary. “Is there time before takeoff?”

  “Expecting you might say this, I asked a townsman to wait outside the ship. He has promised to care for your mascot if you desire, and promises to give it back when you return. I see concern in your face. You’ve had the bird a long time?”

  “Around nineteen years, I think. It’s extraordinary, an unknown breed.”

  McMurtrey turned No Name over to Jin, and watched the naked man walk away, brushing his path with the broom before taking each step.

  “The name Jin means ‘defeater of passions,’” Corona said, her voice husky and sensual. “As a Plarnjarn monk, he brushes his path to avoid stepping on an insect or any other life form. His nudism is an ascetic statement. To him the perfect saint possesses nothing, not even a rag of cloth for his body.”

  McMurtrey faced Corona. She was staring at him, her eyes dark and inquisitive. They bore a message different from her words.

  “What about the broom?” McMurtrey asked. “Does he own that?” He smiled impishly, noticed the onlookers were departing.

  Corona laughed. “You and I will get along famously” she said.

  “How do you know those things about Jin?” McMurtrey wondered.

  “Simple. I asked him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know what Appy did? The bastard set up an electronic barrier so I can’t get off the ship. I can’t get past the I.D. scanner.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  Corona shrugged. “The twerp said I was on my way to meet my Maker now, whether I wanted to or not. It almost sounded scary the way he put it, but I guess it wasn’t intended that way.”

  “No. Of course not. Say, you don’t sound real upset about being shanghaied. I mean, you’re kinda upset, but . . . ”

  Don’t pussyfoot around, fool! McMurtrey’s inner voice demanded.

  “Uh, I sense you could get a lot angrier,” he said. “You’re obviously a strong woman.” A lot of woman, he thought.

  She smiled. “Yeah—well, that star freighter took off anyway, so I’d have to hang around the hiring hall. I hate hiring halls, being with all those losers.” McMurtrey nodded.

  “Appy tried to explain, but seemed rushed and didn’t tell me much. He said his circuits were giving him trouble. Kinda like bursitis, I guess. Anyway, he says this ship is run by committee, that after Appy invited me aboard on their behalf, they—whoever they are—decided I shouldn’t be captain after all, that I should just be a passenger.”

  “Appy told me the ship has a separate, rather stupid personality named Shusher, that God, Appy and Shusher are running the show in a kind of skewed triumvirate in which Appy and God compensate for Shusher’s occasional blunders. That must be the committee he was describing to you, and they’re the captains.”

  Corona considered this. “Shusher and Appy must be hardware, bionics and living tissue. My guess is we can’t imagine all the possibilities. I’m sure as shit not privy to what’s going on, and you don’t seem to be, either. Between us maybe we can piece it together.”

  “With the other passengers. We should talk to as many of them as we can.”

  “Good idea. Anyway, when Appy was laying that change of captaincy routine on me, I was too wiped out, on-my-ass shocked to ask the right questions. When Appy sealed me aboard ship, I just sorta caved in. Maybe I didn’t mind so much because you’re gonna be here with me.”

  Krassos! McMurtrey thought. He smiled, but not easily.

  “You and I are alike, Ev—used and scrapped. You performed your task, and now you’re just one of the flock. Me, I’ll probably never be eligible for another star freighter assignment after my brain gets burned out by this mess. There’s gonna be people preaching to us, trying to convert us all the way” She shook her head in exasperation.

  Corona departed with that, saying she wanted to wander around the ship.

  McMurtrey thought about her odd predicament, and about his own apparent fall from status. He was now as he had been before God’s visitation and as he deserved to be: common. Kelly had been humbled herself, brought down from haughtiness. Maybe that explained why she was aboard, a lesson to her.

  It seemed to McMurtrey that he had been haughty too, in his own way. There had been subtle changes in his behavior, little changes in the usual ways he dealt with people.

  Lessons.

  Did any human have a right to think he was more than the rest? Wasn’t every human a mere passenger in the universe? D’Urth itself was a ship of God.

  Was this journey to be a lesson for every pilgrim? It had to be, McMurtrey realized, for every experience in life was a lesson, in one degree or another.

  Krassos walked most comfortably among common people, after all, and so did many of the other great prophets. Conceivably McMurtrey was supposed to follow this path himself, wandering among the people, spouting pearls of wisdom that one day would become scripture.

  McMurtrey starting his own religion? For real this time?

  He didn’t feel very wise at the moment, with more questions than answers, and chastised himself. Whatever he did from this moment on shouldn’t be for himself. He, Evander Harold McMurtrey, had been plucked from the humdrum, everyday flow of such considerations. His life, the fragile remains of it, was forfeit to The Cause, largely an unknown. He felt anger at such submissiveness, but something was compelling him to consider matters he had never thought of before. He would wait and see, moving carefully in this strange place, in this unprecedented, historic time.

  Jin returned soon, carrying only his broom, which he employed as before. Maybe the broom was borrowed, McMurtrey thought. That would make it all right for a nonmaterialist. Jin sat crosslegged on the deck where his fold-down bed would have been had he lowered it, four spaces away from McMurtrey. This, apparently, was his cabin assignment. Jin did not seem interested in the consoles on the bulkhead, and soon he was rigid, in an apparent trance. He stared straight ahead, at the railing.

  The cabin assignments on Mezzanine 6 began to fill in, but no one took those between McMurtrey and Jin. Some pilgrims dropped their screens for immediate privacy, while others sat on b
eds or chairs in undivided areas. Still others, like Jin, sat ascetically on the bare deck.

  Jin was the only one who appeared nude thus far, but there were several young and old men in white, saffron, or lavender robes, some with shaven heads like Jin’s, others with hair below their shoulders. Few were in between when it came to this matter of hair length, and McMurtrey mused over this, wondering how it might tie in with the politics, religious doctrines and philosophies of these people.

  Such a panoply of robes, in infinite colors, cuts and folds: the thin and sheetlike flowing robes of Hoddhist monks beside Isammedan galabias, caftans, and burnooses. There were dhotis and bright calicos from Nandia, the heavy, tailored robes of Middists and Krassians, and more. Their garb seemed to reflect degrees of ascetism, with Jin at one extreme, then the barefoot but clothed Hoddhist monks and the Nandus in their white dhotis. The most elaborately dressed person was a dark-skinned, princely Afsornian across the mezzanine who stood by his bunk in jeweled robe and turban. McMurtrey didn’t like the look of this man, the way he seemed to be awaiting an attendant. But it was early, and McMurtrey wanted to avoid passing judgment.

  McMurtrey activated his dinette set, sat at the table and watched the others as they busied themselves in various pursuits, from the rituals of prayer to conversation and the opening and closing of their bunks and screens.

  God had selected the diverse mix of participants in this event, undoubtedly with meticulous care. McMurtrey envisioned each of them on a great voyage of discovery, more important than any that mankind had ever attempted. He realized this was a race, whether by design or de facto, with the ships lined up as they were and pilgrims clamoring to get to God first. Even those aboard Shusher were in a race with one another. Who among them would be first to debark and face the ethereal holy light? These voyages were different from anything in history and yet they were the same, for McMurtrey realized that the race for God had long been on, ever since man organized himself into competing belief systems.

  Was this caused by Free Will? Might there be a better way? But a “better way” seemed to require altering the nature of man—a potentially dangerous and troubling thought, the sort of thought a mere human shouldn’t trouble himself about.