The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  A dark-skinned man in a floral-print sarong rose, from the back row. His chest was bare, and he wore dark beads around his neck. “I am Bluepaccan,” he announced. “I agree with the Nandu. Sneezing is bad at the beginning of an expedition. Evil follows.”

  He sat down, and for a while no one in the room said anything. All seemed deep in thought.

  Presently McMurtrey said, “Nandus and Bluepaccans say one thing, the Wessornian religions another. We’re not just talking about sneezing, you know, and maybe that’s why Appy placed us in this locked room, why God compelled us to visit Him in this manner.”

  “Get to the point if you have one,” Orbust said, scowling.

  “I was doing precisely that. Suppose that we’re all sequestered here, as the nun suggested, and it’s to have dialogues with one another, to learn about other religions.”

  “Who needs to do that?” Orbust said. “The only true faith is Reborn Krassianism, and before this trip is over everyone on this ship will know and understand.”

  “You plan to convert everyone?” McMurtrey asked. “A missionary with a gun? That’s what Krassos would have wanted? My recollection is that He preached love. I think He’d puke if He could see what’s being done in His name.”

  “What makes you think He can’t see what’s going on?” Orbust countered, without apparent shame.

  “I’ll grant you that,” McMurtrey said. “And he would be puking if he still had human form. He’d blast His cookiechocs all over you, and you’d gag in the swill.”

  Orbust scowled, looked away.

  “I’ve heard of this in dispute-resolution,” McMurtrey said, “Representatives of opposing parties sit in a room, and aren’t permitted to leave until they’ve thrashed everything out, until they’ve compromised. It’s been done in labor negotiations and in national diplomatic circles, thus avoiding strikes and wars. There was even a time three hundred and fifty odd years ago when two opposing generals were locked in a room by their commanders and told to fight without weapons until one emerged.”

  “Principles cannot be compromised,” the white-and-gold-robed KothoLu said, speaking Unglish with an accent.

  A woman on McMurtrey’s right said this was Archbishop Perrier from Notre Sorren, very high in the church hierarchy.

  A young boy commented on the brilliance of the nebula they were approaching. It was so bright that McMurtrey had difficulty looking toward the window. Three massive suns were throwing the most light, and they were getting larger with each passing second. The cluster seemed to be drawing near faster than before, so McMurtrey surmised the ship must have accelerated. He felt no heat from the suns.

  “Maybe God sees war in the offing,” McMurtrey said, staring at Perrier. “There’s been no shortage of religious wars in mankind’s sordid history, and maybe all of us are supposed to take information back to D’Urth that will make everlasting peace possible. D’Urth’s surface is at relative peace now, but the war with the Outer Planet Confederacy continues apace—on planet Saturus, I hear.”

  “That’s no religious war,” Zatima said. “It’s strictly secular.”

  “How do we know?” McMurtrey asked. “How do we know all the motivations, all the causes?”

  “That’s not a real war anyway,” Corona said. “It’s trumped up, a justification for the BOL’s very existence and probably for a similar police organization in the Confederacy.” She went to her mouth with a forefinger tip, transferred saliva to her eyebrow and smoothed down the brow.

  “Right!” the Sidic Middist said. “It’s called ‘in-group bonding,’ where a government keeps its population together artificially with fear and hatred of an outsider. You can bet the Bureau knows that trick.”

  A hush fell across the room, for it was not often that anyone spoke publicly against the government.

  In the midst of this discomfiture, McMurtrey had a private concern: he tried not to think about Corona’s odd mannerism.

  He heard a click to his right, and the light in the room diminished. The window beyond Corona had vanished, and in its place stood a seamless, pale green wall.

  “We’re protected by mirrors, but the room was getting too bright,” Corona speculated. “Appy made an adjustment.”

  “Or Shusher did,” McMurtrey said.

  Corona grunted in affirmation. They had to guess now, with the private channel gone.

  A woman coughed, and sneezed.

  Uneasy laughter carried around the room.

  “Even if there were religious factors involved in war, what could we do about it?” Zatima asked. “Everyone aboard is not a religious leader, and as far as I know, none of us are sanctioned to resolve anything.”

  “I only tossed the thought out for discussion,” McMurtrey said. “It could be that we’re supposed to return to the various religions with moving stories, with compelling reasons why certain religious and political steps should be taken.”

  Zatima’s dark eyes flashed. “Allah will lead us, one way or another.”

  “With what’s happened to me,” McMurtrey said, “I’m changing, and I think we all need to be flexible. We need to work together. How I’m changing I can’t say, but I’ve always believed in God. It’s just that . . . there’s been no structure for me, no belief system. God Himself suggested to me that religion may not be the way. I don’t know what He meant by that. He said it noncommittally, the way Appy says things. I’m real confused.”

  No one spoke. McMurtrey had noticed a phenomenon in recent days, the way people fell silent when he spoke. They hung on every word, made him feel special and more nearly on a par with the holy people around him.

  “I’m assuming God spoke with me,” McMurtrey said, “and that it wasn’t a cruel practical joke. I’ve considered that, you must know. My Interplanetary Church of Cosmic Chickenhood was a pretty good-sized practical joke on a lot of people, and I wondered if some of them decided to get even with me in a big way.”

  “With all the ships?” Zatima said. “With all that’s happened? One would have to imagine that Allah Himself was taken in by your joke, and that is inconceivable.”

  McMurtrey sighed.

  “Isammed, Prince of the Faithful, had a vision,” Zatima said, her throaty voice carrying the seasoning of the desert. “And he too had self-doubts. I believe you have been visited, but that you are not a prophet to replace Isammed, last and greatest of the prophets. What has happened to you is something different. I do not speak intellectually now. This is from the heart. An angel appeared to Isammed as he slept in the cave at Dootir. The angel passed a coverlet of brocade with writing upon it to our Beloved, and said, These are the Lord’s words. Read them!’”

  “I have heard that story,” McMurtrey said, “and the events of my visitation do not compare.”

  “But a great fleet of ships subsequently appeared for you,” Zatima countered. “Truly this is the work of Allah, and you are His courier.”

  Orbust spoke in a low tone to Tully.

  “Didn’t Hoddha receive a vision?” McMurtrey asked, looking at three Hoddhist men across the room. They had shaven heads and wore thin, plain cotton robes. Two robes were of saffron, and one, in the middle, was white. McMurtrey knew from having seen them before that they wore no shoes.

  One of the saffron-robed Hoddhists rose, and said, “Hoddha sat beneath the bodhi-tree for three nights. On the first night, his past lives went before him. On the second he witnessed the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and came to a full understanding of dharma and the universe. On the third night he attained a holy knowledge of suffering, the why of it and the removal of it. Hoddha experienced an enlightenment, which was not exactly the conversation with God others claim to have experienced. This is not to detract from any experience. It is to say that Hoddha’s experience was unique.”

  He lowered his head, spoke reverently, “‘Namo tasso Bhagvato Arahato Sammasamhoddhaassa,’ I bow my head to the Blessed One, the Enlightened One, the perfectly Enlightened One.”

  He
resumed his seat without ever having given his name.

  “Thank you,” McMurtrey said, as if he were master of ceremonies, “These visions, or visitations, are intriguing. You’ve all heard of Zillasterism, an ancient religion upon which much of Middism, Krassianism and Isammedanism are based?”

  From all around came blank expressions.

  “Are there any followers of the ancient prophet Zillaster among us?” McMurtrey asked.

  Nanak Singh rose. “I am a ParKekh,” he said, “an offshoot of Zillasterism.”

  “Yours is an important faith,” McMurtrey said.

  Singh smiled, resumed his seat.

  McMurtrey raised his voice, felt very full of himself. “Zillaster was by the bank of a river when he received a revelation from God. An angel nine times the size of a man appeared before him, told him there was only one God and that Zillaster was to serve as His prophet. Subsequently there were other visions, in which further truths were revealed to Zillaster. Similarly, Mark Krassos is said to have spoken with God, and likewise Dosek and Isammed. After Krassos died, his apostles said they saw visions of the resurrected Krassos. So many extraordinary visions, and all of them with merit.”

  “I’m not as diplomatic as Evander,” Corona said. “We’re all imperfect beings, and I’d like to know how we’re supposed to separate visions from hallucinations. The human mind plays tricks. It’s full of dreams and images. When a man is in the desert, he sees mirages. Each person experiencing a vision freely admits it’s a vision, without fleshly substance. How can we separate the real from the unreal?”

  “Be careful what you say about Krassos,” Orbust snarled. “Or—”

  “Or what?” Corona snapped. “Or you’ll blow me away in the name of Krassos?”

  “I might.” But his expression was uncertain and fearful.

  “God, what a fool,” Corona muttered.

  “As you should know,” Zatima said, glaring at Orbust, “Krassos preached love. I think you’d better reread the Old Babul, which Isammedans also consider to be holy writ, along with our Kooraq.”

  “You want me to read the Kooraq?” Orbust asked.

  “That wasn’t what I meant, but yes, if you wish. I’m sure an extra copy can be located. Understand, though, that if you deface it you die.”

  “I see,” Orbust said. He forced a smile.

  McMurtrey didn’t know whether to classify this demeanor as game-playing, or if Orbust saw what McMurtrey and Corona saw, that it was ludicrous for people to speak of killing one another in the name of God, in the name of a force of good, no matter the disagreements over interpretation of that force. Maybe Orbust was beginning to see it.

  He didn’t seem sure of himself.

  “Some things must be taken on faith,” Zatima said. “They can’t be thought about too much.”

  A source of the problem! McMurtrey thought, not speaking up for fear of inviting rancor. But actions without thought? Actions on pure, blind faith? Are the faiths who have engaged in holy wars like the blind with weapons, striking out without good, logical reasons for doing so?

  “This is true about faith,” a dark-skinned man near McMurtrey said. He wore a simple white cotton shirt, open at the collar. His eyes were very large and almost sleepy, with long lashes and heavy, dark eyebrows. “Reeshna believed this implicitly. He spoke of seeing things with the heart and not with the mind, of taking matters in fully and completely at a glance, without analysis. He used to go for long walks, during which he said that not a single thought touched his head.”

  “You are a follower of Reeshna?” McMurtrey asked.

  “He would not want me to say so, for he rejected formal religion. He believed that the problems of each person should be solved individually, for and by the person himself.” The man resumed his seat.

  Makanji the Nandu rose, nudged one of his round eyeglass lenses to adjust the perch of the glasses on his nose. “I too have taken long walks without the touch of thought.” He smiled. “But having been lost more than once doing this, I found it safer to meditate from one position. That way, when I return to the otherness of this physical realm, I know where I am.”

  Polite laughter floated around the room.

  “So you and I agree on something,” Zatima said to the Nandu. “We agree that your kind have no thoughts in your heads!”

  “You know what I mean, sand-pig” Makanji said, his face instantly livid. “And so does that ParKekh devil with you.”

  Nanak Singh leaped to his feet, eyes flaming and hand at his scabbard. But Zatima restrained him. She bade him sit down, but not before he cursed at Makanji for Nandu raids upon the Ruby Temple of the ParKekhs.

  “These Nandus professing tolerance for all religions make me want to puke,” Zatima said. “The supposedly expansive fold that can envelop all faiths into one. Ha!”

  “You started it!” Makanji exclaimed. “Twice in this room, you have made unprovoked attacks upon me, first with that ‘fool of fools’ insult simply because my view of sneezing was different from yours. Then this comment of no thoughts in our heads. You are irrational, Sivvy Isammedan, like all the fanatics of your kind!”

  The KothoLu gentleman in the white and gold robe rose, spreading his arms at his sides so that fabric draped from them like wings. “And that’s what started this childish arguing?” he asked. “A silly sneeze? Maybe McMurtrey is right, that we’re supposed to remain here until we figure out how to get along in our sandbox. I am Archbishop Perrier of Notre Sorren.”

  Makanji slipped quietly back into his seat.

  “It goes beyond today,” Zatima said. “To centuries past, when Nandu rioters murdered Isammedans in Cuttadel, and when they stormed the Ruby Temple of the ParKekhs, murdering hundreds of worshipers in cold blood. It goes back, Archbishop, to your mindless crusades against Isammedan teachings.”

  Makanji muttered something that didn’t carry.

  Perrier smiled. “So now I’m drawn into the argument too, I who was trying to be so reasonable.”

  “There’s never been anything reasonable about KothoLuism,” Zatima said. “So don’t play ‘holier than thou’ games with us: I know of the political purgings of Tignos Gospels from your Babul in the early decades after Krassos. Tell the people, sir, what your forebears did with the Gospel of Tomias, the Secret Book of Jamor, the Gospel of Purity and other texts. They ascribed words and acts to Mark Krassos that the orthodox KothoLus didn’t want to hear, for political reasons, for reasons of church coffers, for whatever their reasons were. And your Questers were a satanic inquisition squad if ever there was one, burning people who refused to accept your jewel-laden Pope. Don’t forget the compacts between Ava The Destroyer and the KothoLu Church, either.”

  Perrier had been sputtering through this, couldn’t get a word in. When Zatima paused at last, Perrier seemed too agitated and red in the face to speak. But he remained standing, like a speaker refusing to relinquish the podium.

  “One of my ancestors was Roger Landis,” Orbust said, “an Unglishman and one of the martyrs to KothoLuism.”

  “They martyred my ancestors too,” Tully said.

  “And a most curious group we are,” McMurtrey said, “knowing things about one another as we seem to, along with the intriguing heredity of some. I don’t know much about my own ancestry, beyond a few generations, but perhaps if I did it might tie in. Maybe it’s for a combination of reasons that we’re mixed together on this ship, and further mixed in this room.”

  “What are you driving at?” Perrier asked, still standing. His arms were at his sides now, not visible within the folds of his magnificent robe.

  “That we are, as I suggested, a curious group, drawn to St. Charles Beach by a higher, powerful Being, subsequently divided into ships and further divided as to mezzanines and assembly rooms. I’m certain it’s not at random, but to what purpose I do not know.”

  “You were called here to look at my chest,” Corona whispered.

  Unaware of an ancillary meaning to his words, Orbus
t said, “The question of the hour. The meaning of this moment, the meaning of life.”

  “You’re sounding almost rational,” McMurtrey said. “I apologize. I shouldn’t complain. But I am intrigued, and hope fervently that we can expect more of the same from you.”

  “That’s not all you hope for fervently,” Corona whispered.

  “Stop it!” McMurtrey husked. He felt like a person in church hearing dirty words.

  Orbust’s face stiffened, but not in an unkindly way. “I’m . . . well . . . admittedly I get excited very easily. I’m passionate in my beliefs, you might say.”

  “I see,” McMurtrey said. “We’re making some progress.” He scanned the room. “Let’s all try listening for a change, try seeing and hearing what’s around us, even if it seems strange. This is quite a pot we’ve been tossed into, and I for one am not going to barge ahead blindly, relying upon what I thought I knew before this. I want to learn from all of you, and I expect all of you could learn a little from me as well.”

  McMurtrey paused, smiled. “Yes,” he added. “You can learn even from God’s lowliest creatures, even from the Chicken Man.”

  Half expecting applause or subdued laughter, McMurtrey looked around.

  Only the faces of Tully and Orbust bore the trace of a smile. Zatima, Singh, Makanji and Perrier scowled ferociously, and many others looked either perplexed or enraptured. The three Hoddhists seemed to be in prayer or in meditation, for they had their eyes closed and weren’t moving.

  “All right you cocksuckers,” Appy rasped, over an unseen loudspeaker. “Who tried to sabotage the other ships with a corrosive? God informs me this caused an eighteen-hour delay before He could complete repairs, and that now the ships are in flight, chuggin’ right up our ass.”

  A number of people gasped. - McMurtrey felt short of breath from the surprise and shock of what he was hearing. Such language on a holy ship, from God’s mechanical servant? Sanctified air had been poisoned!