The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  “I checked our course with my quadlite signaler,” she said. “Have you ever seen one?”

  He shook his head.

  She brought out a tiny round brass piece from a leather pouch, flipped the piece open like a locket. “Navigation instrument,” she said.

  The inside glowed green on one face, and there were tiny holes around the perimeter. The opposite face resembled a circuit board covered with solder trails. She said she’d had the signaler repaired hurriedly before the trip, and a cover-plate had been misplaced in the process, a plate that wasn’t necessary for the operation of the device. She said she had set the signaler to match the coordinates provided by God, and that as long as they were on course it glowed green.

  “It’s extremely accurate,” she insisted. “Though I am leery of it on a voyage of this magnitude. The tiniest miscalculation could hurtle us trillions of lightyears in the wrong direction. As yet I have no idea what sort of navigation instruments they have installed aboard ship, but at the first opportunity I’m going to find out.”

  “You’d better stay out of their secret rooms this time.”

  “Shusher and Appy don’t scare me. I’ve kicked ass in my time.” She dropped the quadlite back in the pouch, and the unit knocked heavily against something else in there. She drew the drawstring of the pouch shut, secured the string in place with a sliding plazymer retainer.

  “What else you got in there?”

  “Chicken bones,” she said, with a wicked smile.

  He squinted one eye warily. “You some kinda witch doctor? Oh, I’m a little slow.” He shook his head. “No more chicken jokes. You promised!”

  “Maybe I am a witch doctor, or a shaman.” She laughed easily, popped the pouch into her jumpsuit.

  McMurtrey glanced at her bed, and saw her taking in the direction of his gaze. Didn’t she miss anything?

  “We’re only here to talk,” she reminded him. “Of course conversation is a form of intercourse.” Her eyes twinkled. “Breasts are forms, too.”

  He sucked air noisily across his lips. “Shall we, uh, talk about intercourse and forms?”

  “Aren’t you the bold one!”

  “Enough of this wordplay.” He leaned heavily across the table, pulled her head close to his and pressed their lips together.

  Corona’s mouth was warm and moist, and for an instant in the unspoken language of her lips she assented.

  He didn’t expect her to cuff him, but she did, and despite their size difference, McMurtrey recoiled from the blow.

  Her eyes were ablaze, expression focused with such flaming ire that all the lines on her forehead poured down the bridge of her nose.

  “Whatsa matter?” he asked. “Didn’t you?. . . didn’t you want? . . . ” He felt overcommitted, like a scout engaging the enemy without his forces. The enemy. Did he really feel that way about women? It seemed that he did. But this one too? Couldn’t she be different?

  “Krassos O’Shaugnessy no! I thought I explained that, about why I was discussing breasts! It was purely intellectual, not what you—”

  He had seen uncertainty in her eyes even before she broke off her sentence. Her mouth slipped open, out of gear.

  “Maybe it was more,” she admitted. “Just a little more.” Their eyes met, and once again, their lips. She put her arms around his shoulders, pulled him toward her with surprising strength.

  The table jiggled, and somewhere in the base, fastenings popped.

  “It’s . . . it’s going over!” McMurtrey said. He jumped to one side, still holding onto her, and remarkably they maintained their feet in a curious dance beside the table. She pressed her body tightly against his, and he felt the softness of her breasts against his stomach. Her face was upturned, eyes closed, and their mouths were welded one against the other.

  God, this woman was a fantastic kisser!

  But from far away, McMurtrey thought he heard a most unpleasant noise. He tried to keep it out of his mind, but knew his lips and embrace were faltering with the worry, not performing up to the standard required of the moment.

  Why now, of all times?

  Corona’s eyes flicked open sensuously, and where he withdrew she pressed forward. Subtle shiftings. She was becoming the female lead in this dance, smothering his mouth with hers, massaging the muscles of his neck and shoulders with her hands.

  That noise, that infernal noise. It grew louder, inundating his eardrums.

  He jerked away and ducked to one side.

  Three flies buzzed his face in formation, passing so close that he felt one brush his cheek.

  McMurtrey flailed after them like a berserker, crashing into the room-divider screen. It flexed but did not give way.

  “I’m gonna kill those little bastards!” he howled.

  Suddenly the screen shot up into the ceiling, and the flies escaped.

  McMurtrey looked back, saw Corona at the control panel.

  “How many of those Jehovah-puked things are on this ship?” he asked.

  She shrugged, was about to tap another button, the one to drop the screen.

  “Wait,” he said, with a gesture of one hand. He saw the flies alight on Jin, who sat crosslegged and naked on the deck in an ascetically bare cabin area. Two flies were on one knee, one fly on the other. Jin, in apparent meditation, appeared not to notice.

  “The little bastards are on Jin,” McMurtrey said. “I’ll get ’em good, probably won’t even wake Jin up. He’s in a trance.”

  McMurtrey only half heard words of protest from Corona, for he was focused on a mission learned in the war zones of St. Charles Beach, a task that had to be performed efficiently and immediately before the whole ship was overrun with this tenacious breed. No one could be expected to understand the severity of the situation, for to his knowledge he was the only Beacher aboard.

  With lightning strokes he would slap hands on each knee, and it would be over.

  Stealthily, with hardly a sound, the big man crept a few meters along the deck, reaching Jin. He knelt by the meditator, saw Jin’s eyes closed, not a muscle moving. The flies were motionless, still on the knees.

  Slowly, ever so cautiously so as not to disturb the air, McMurtrey’s hands went forth. At just the right distance from their prey the hands paused, ready to strike.

  Jin’s eyes opened. For an instant they appeared feral, seeming to say, “Touch me and you die.”

  McMurtrey had to do a double take, for his first reaction had been fear, causing him to look away. Then logic overrode emotion and in hardly the tick of a heartbeat he fired a look back.

  Again Jin’s eyes were closed.

  Someone spoke behind McMurtrey. Faint words.

  The flies didn’t move, not even a twitch of their spindly legs.

  Simultaneously, McMurtrey’s hands shot forward.

  Skin slapped skin.

  Incredibly, Jin had dropped his forearms to a point just above his knees, blocking McMurtrey’s hands, and it was against these forearms that McMurtrey’s hands slapped skin.

  The flies didn’t flinch, and Jin’s eyes remained closed. Not a muscle on the Plarnjarn moved, not even on his arms, which he held in place like shields.

  McMurtrey pulled back a little.

  Jin’s forearms remained in midair above the flies, and the protected ones must have been laughing in their black little hearts.

  Soon McMurtrey heard the words from behind clearly. “Plarnjarns oppose violence,” Corona said. “Did you forget? His broom . . . not even an insect?”

  “Aw, priest piss! These ain’t yer ordinary garden variety insects. They don’t deserve to be life forms!”

  “The decision is not yours.”

  Angrily, McMurtrey rose to his feet. His eyes smoldered.

  No further motion from Jin or the flies.

  “Sanctuary,” she said. “They must sense it, must know the safety of his presence.”

  McMurtrey shook his head in utter disgust, stalked past Corona toward his own berth.

  �
�Shall we resume?” she asked.

  “I’m out of the mood,” he said, A deep breath, then without looking at her: “Sorry. Look. I’m pretty tired, didn’t sleep last night. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  She nodded.

  He had been going on adrenalin, pumped by the excitement of events. The night he blessed all the ships with Orbust’s men seemed long ago, but it had been only that morning, in predawn hours. He felt the heaviness of his body as it sought rest, and his corneas grated against his eyelids.

  McMurtrey entered his area, dropped the screen and plopped on the bed. He sighed. He had been remarkably bold, with some success. This mula-black actually liked him, despite his fat and despite his tantrum over the flies. But like the screen around him now, he had thrown up a barrier, a shield to keep them from making love. If not for the flies it would have been something else, something less convenient. A headache, or sudden fatigue.

  But he hadn’t felt fatigued at all, until afterward. Would he have gone through with it? He had made love with women before, but this one—despite his burst of elan—this one frightened him. She was stronger than he in innumerable ways. He’d initiated the kissing, but she’d teased him into it… and she grabbed the lead afterward. She was probably like that in bed. This woman had performed men’s jobs, had been the captain of star freighters.

  Was she a woman?

  McMurtrey’s gut reaction told him yes. Any doubts he harbored were easily dispelled. But she was a lot of woman, more than he could handle. She didn’t keep her promise about chicken jokes, either, and with that witty, jocular streak in her nature, McMurtrey foresaw a relationship in which he would be eternally on the defensive. He didn’t particularly relish that, but realized the Grand Exalted Rooster deserved whatever came to pass. He had brought it all on himself.

  Jin’s screen dropped only seconds after McMurtrey’s. When he was secure from prying eyes, the blue bone blades in Jin’s fingertips darted forth, and in two precision thrusts he decapitated three flies. Tiny body parts tumbled soundlessly to the deck. Jin smiled cruelly, flicked them aside with his broom. These pilgrims have no idea who I am, he thought. Cool, smooth currents of electricity traversed the superconductors of his artificial brain. He felt safe in his little niche, for he had been programmed to feel this way.

  He touched his nose, and mini-cannon gunports opened around his body. His penis, with a baby howitzer in it, rose to firing position.

  With silencers and what he thought were blank cartridges, he tested the guns. All fired, but one live mini-cannon shell ripped a hole in the headboard wall.

  He cursed to himself, and at a thought-impulse a lance of violet light emerged from his right eye, entering the bulkhead hole. This enabled him to see inside the wall, and he was surprised to encounter no electrical wires, pipes or parts. Only a spacer between walls. He detected no change in the ship’s course, heard no emergency Klaxons or flurry of activity.

  His sensors told him it was substantially warmer inside the hole than in the passenger areas of the ship.

  He withdrew the lance of light, and disjointed thoughts fired through his cyberoo circuits. This ship was strange, an unknown, but the Bureau hadn’t programmed him to investigate it. Could that mean his superiors had overlooked the ship itself, or that some other operative had been assigned to the matter? He didn’t know of any other agents aboard, but that meant nothing.

  Confine yourself to your assignment.

  Thick yellow fluid oozed from the top of the wall hole, filling it. In an instant the hole could no longer be seen, and where it had been was the silver-gray of the wall.

  Jin’s circuits heated up.

  At a thermally programmed thought-impulse these troubling thoughts were erased. But others took their place.

  Among other things, the Bureau of Loyalty had programmed him to watch for disloyal pilgrims, reporting on their activities via scrambled radio transmission to the Pentadox. The ship was out of transmitting range now, and it seemed obvious that the Bureau had not expected a journey of this distance.

  What if they actually encountered God?

  Jin had no specific instructions to kill God or humans. But under certain conditions he was permitted, even encouraged, to erase life. Via his Possibilities Scanner he envisioned circumstances under which he might be forced to kill God, particularly if he discovered that God was a threat to the continuance of the Bureau.

  Chapter 8

  Institutions always lie, and the bigger the institution, the bigger the lie.

  —Guiding Principles,

  The Cult of Anarchy

  In Johnny Orbust’s cabin with the screen down, he sat against a pillow on the bed, with C.T. Tully and the priest Kundo Smith at the table. It was a full D’Urth day after the confrontation with Singh, and Orbust wore bulbous quick-healing packs on his arms and legs. The grayish-white packs were not that cumbersome to wear, and already he was getting some movement back in areas that a short while before had been flaming centers of pain. He had another pack over his face, and it was sealed tightly to the skin around his eyes so that he peered through little bank-robber slits.

  His quick-draw Babul lay beside its holster, on a wall shelf.

  “It would be nice if we could beat everyone else to God,” Orbust said. He draped one leg over the bed, tapped a foot on the deck. In his mind’s eye he envisioned himself reaching God first, alone. If only there were a way.

  “Well, we can’t kill everyone on this ship to do it,” Smith said. He picked at a small red spot under his chin, probably an ingrown hair.

  “We can’t?” Tully said. “Why not?” He had his notebook open on the table, and was doodling with calligraphy as he spoke.

  “God wouldn’t like that,” Orbust said. “It wouldn’t be right. Besides, Appy told us the other ships are in-flight, right behind us.”

  “I say we blast the infidels out of space,” Tully said. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  “With what?” Orbust asked. “My chemstrip wouldn’t handle that, even if I could get it back from those fanatics.” He hadn’t said what he felt, that he wouldn’t consciously do violence to anyone. Disabling ships before takeoff had been one thing; blasting them out of space with people aboard was altogether different.

  Smith looked like a strange red-necked blackbird. His nose hooked downward into a beak facsimile, and his eyes were small but alert to danger, constantly flitting about in their sockets. “I dunno,” he said. “Prayer?”

  Orbust nodded. “And more. We need to spread our faith in every corner of the universe, propagating Krassianism like—”

  “Like jack rabbits screwing?” Smith asked.

  “Both of you have foul mouths,” Orbust said. “No, I was going to say like seeds on the wind.”

  “Aw, don’t give us that shit,” Tully said. “You’re the one who packed a heater and a demolitions kit aboard. We didn’t do anything like that.”

  “That gun was for intimidation only. I’ve never used it, never would. The chemstrip . . . well, that’s just a gadget. I’ve always been a sucker for gadgets. My wife used to call me a gadget freak.”

  Orbust thought of his wife, Karin, and of the note he had left for her. He didn’t miss her, didn’t think of her much. Their marriage hadn’t worked, had been over long before he made his break.

  Tully made the cheeks of his face concave, rubbed them thoughtfully with a thumb and forefinger.

  Orbust had been increasingly frightened by his own wild behavior, especially as it concerned his gun. What if he had gotten into a situation where he had to use the weapon or die? Could he have done it?

  If he had been angry enough, if someone insulted his beliefs deeply enough, maybe he could have. He’d considered this briefly before, but not enough. He felt relieved at the loss of the gun, wished he’d had the foresight to have disposed of it himself, without the embarrassment that resulted.

  What a fool I was, lunging for the Snapcard. But that heathen
made me mad, putting his foot on it.

  Orbust refocused, said, “We’ve already compared faiths, and the essential elements of our beliefs track pretty well. I’d like to begin my own propagation by cleaning up your mouths.”

  “Mommy wants us to suck soap,” Smith said.

  “You wanna convert somebody,” Orbust said, “you aren’t going to do it by telling them to get the hell with it.”

  The men laughed.

  Orbust grimaced, for his rib cage hurt when he laughed. He hadn’t sworn in many years, vowed he wouldn’t again. He had used the word instructively, to teach these fools.

  “All right,” Smith said. “I can handle what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah,” Tully said. “I can too. And beyond that?”

  “We hit the Krassians who are closest to our beliefs,” Orbust said, “consolidate that as much as we can in our direction and fan out from there.”

  That’s kind of what I have in mind, Orbust thought. Except I’ll refine it a bit further when these guys aren’t paying attention.

  “The trouble is,” Orbust continued aloud, “we don’t know how much time we have before we get to God’s galaxy. So we’ll have to move quickly.”

  “We need your chemstrip and Snapcard back,” Smith said. “With that Snapcard you could outdebate anyone. That would speed conversions up.”

  “I know” Orbust said, glowering. “The sooner the better, but we don’t need to wait for that stuff. I assume Zatima has all of it?”

  Smith and Tully shrugged.

  “I only saw ’em get the gun,” Tully said.

  The calf of one leg itched, and Orbust rubbed it against the other leg. This effort shot pain up the leg that he moved, and he closed his eyes momentarily until the pain subsided. If only he had the Snapcard back. It strengthened him, gave him confidence. Ideas were essential, along with the ability to phrase them succinctly. What would he do now?

  Smith: “Johnny, who were those weirdoes I saw you talking with in the infirmary?”

  “You were there? I didn’t see you.”

  “Yeah. I peeked in from the corridor, but you looked busy.”