The Race for God

by Brian Herbert

  McMurtrey longed to tell Corona he loved her, but was hesitant to do so with Appy linked to her. It was silly to feel this way, he told himself, since Appy was linked to God, and God heard all anyway. But Appy’s proximity made McMurtrey ill at ease. He didn’t know who or what controlled Corona anymore.

  “What if our ship can’t move out of the way?” McMurtrey asked.

  “Then God will bump us aside. He has to, or there’ll be a huge collision here, with long-term destruction of the ecology. Appy’s damned mad about the situation, thought he had the race locked up.”

  “And behind us, where Shusher started trying to pass the white lines? What kind of shape are the skins in back there?”

  “Again, damaged but passable. Competing ships won’t be slowed appreciably . . . only a few extra minutes will be required.”

  “Why can’t entities traveling the skins pass one another?”

  “Because all the matter, antimatter and other contents of the skins of two universes have been compressed into a micro-thin electromagnetic wire known as a kra or whipping passageway, a kra that is for the moment the only one available to the skinbeaters of two universes. It’s like a one-lane road, and the only way one skinbeater can pass another is if the skinbeater in front drops off the kra into one universe or another.”

  “The white line Gluon refused to yield.”

  “Right,” Corona said. “Those spaces previously occupied by the skins of engaged universes have been replaced by electromagnetic voids. At a certain point a skinbeater must leave the whipping passageway and drop into position in the destination universe. Entities utilizing this mode of transport can go in either direction upon it, but only one direction of flow can be utilized at once.”

  “Pretty tricky. There must be long waiting lists.”

  “It’s first come, first served, with no preference to the high and mighty, not even to God. This system preceded God; it’s one of the elemental forces He can’t control. One of the skins we needed was hogged for a while by inconsiderate Gluons, the reason we were delayed three weeks in St. Charles Beach. Gluons are inveterate travelers, irritatingly so, and it made God mighty agitated, I can tell you! The Gluons weren’t even from one of our adjacent universes. They were from a universe on another side of a universe adjacent to us, if you follow me. And they had the adjacent universe’s skin that we needed.”

  “We have several universes adjacent to us? If so, couldn’t we just combine one of the other skins with our own to make a whipping passageway?”

  “Ordinarily, yes, but their skins were damaged in a natural catastrophe, making them unavailable for skinbeating. The skins are healing, but it will take time.”

  “What about Shusher and the white-line Gluon? They’re damaged?”

  “Being determined. The second Gluon crowded onto our whipping passageway just seconds before Shusher took off, and for a time the interloper was taking the exact D’Urth-to-Tananius-Ofo route we were on.”

  McMurtrey scratched his head. “Only one direction of flow at a time, I believe you said, so it was fortunate—for a while anyway—that the second Gluon wanted to go in the same direction as we did.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What has the merging with Appy done to you? I mean, are you injured in any way?”

  “I think I’m fine. A human is like a computer in many ways, and Appy is on a biodisk that’s been booted into my body. I . . . have two ‘programs’ now, one for Appy and one for Kelly Corona. They network rather nicely. In thoughts I can switch between them or activate both simultaneously. Let me try something—”

  Corona’s voice changed, to an eery, blended tone: “This is the composite of Appy and Corona, in two-part harmony.” She smiled.

  “Can Appy still speak through the ship’s speakers?” McMurtrey asked.

  Corona hesitated, spoke as Appy: “No. I still have my private comlinks though, including the one to Shusher. They’re internal . . . and on the Shusher link I can speak or even beam thoughts to Shusher. He’s whining now, whimpering that this wasn’t his fault. The other Gluon—an entity called Pelter—is giving him hell. He just called Shusher the equivalent of a nincompoop!”

  Appy laughed crazily across Corona’s lips, and she appeared irritated by this.

  Corona’s voice, in seeming interjection: “There’s more to explain, from this infernal Appy’s data banks: Every universe abuts some other universe at every point of skin . . . the skin of every universe is in effect a double skin therefore, because of the adjacent universe’s skin. There are many, many universes.”

  “I’m having trouble visualizing all that,” McMurtrey said. “Wouldn’t there have to be sides to everything, places where there are only single thicknesses of skin? I mean, I can see universes in the middle of the cosmos all touching one another, but wouldn’t there have to be some universes on the outside?”

  “You’re limited by your own experience,” Corona said. “Accept what I’m saying.”

  “Shit, I’ll try.”

  “Skinbeating isn’t restricted to Gluons. Other entities travel the whipping passageways, and some of them are pretty bizarre. All skinbeaters achieve a whipping effect between universes, employing electromagnetics, concentrated gravity waves and other forces, and these forces literally slap the entity across the cosmos. Gluons are among the smoothest travelers, and their skinbeating action is so rapid and smooth in normal operation that life forms traveling with the Gluons don’t feel it.”

  “Is this a matter/antimatter interaction with one universe of matter and the adjacent of antimatter?”

  “God isn’t certain how it works exactly, but He doesn’t think that has much to do with it. There are antimatter universes, matter universes, and there are universes such as our own containing combinations of each. There are even universes containing other things, which I won’t go into here. Each universe, no matter its makeup, has an invisible electromagnetic skin around its perimeter . . . and these perimeters are as varied in shape as the configurations of stones in the cosmos. Each skin is electromagnetically identical, and thus readily available to any skinbeating entity.”

  “I never imagined,” McMurtrey said.

  “Come with me,” Corona said, motioning for McMurtrey to accompany her. “We have an intruder to meet, an intruder Appy saw before downloading into me. This intruder is at the heart of the mess we’re in now, and it is only through the intruder that our Gluon can extricate itself from Pelter.”

  McMurtrey moved to her side, and they negotiated the carpeted mezzanine walkway toward the elevator bank. “I don’t understand again,” he said. “Isn’t Pelter the intruder?”

  Corona shook her head. “It’s a human,” she said. “A peculiar little man carrying a dead child.”

  “Clear the way,” Corona ordered, in Appy’s voice. She pressed through a crowd of pilgrims thronging the main passenger compartment. They moved aside for her sluggishly.

  McMurtrey followed her, through startled whispers.

  When the last layer of humanity fell away, McMurtrey got his initial glimpse of the intruder.

  Indeed this was a peculiar little man seated in the center of the deck. He cried silently, bore a pained expression, and in his arms he held the limp and lifeless form of a dead girl-child. The man appeared to be in late middle years, with thinning curls of black hair, dark little eyes and a short but crudely trimmed gray-flecked beard. He held the dead child tightly, with white-knuckled fingers that were the length of digits more suited to a much taller person. Or to an ape.

  The little finger of one hand was missing.

  The man pulled his hands free gently, letting the body rest on his lap. Briskly with one hand, he rubbed the knuckle above the missing finger. Afterward he put the four-fingered hand under one of his legs, apparently to keep the hand warm.

  Yes, McMurtrey thought. He resembles an ape, with that protruding forehead, those high cheekbones, those hands . . . and look at his arms—they’re extraordinarily long
. . .

  Of the child’s death there could be no doubt. Her eyes were open and empty, with a grievous wound on the side of her head. The man holding her wore a short-sleeved denolyon shirt that was brown with a broad magenta stripe across the chest. The trousers matched, with a magenta stripe down each side. He had blood on his clothes.

  A pungent, acrid odor irritated McMurtrey’s nostrils, forced him to mouth-breathe. It wasn’t the stench of death, at least McMurtrey didn’t think it was, from the impossible-to-forget odors of dead animals he had been near a few times.

  “That smell,” McMurtrey said, wrinkling his nose. “What is it?”

  “Opium,” Corona said, glancing at McMurtrey. “He’s an addict.”

  The apeman looked up at the crowd, and down at the lifeless form. Then he pressed a loose flap of skin over the open wound, and with tender fingers pressed it in place. It held.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said, with the gaze of his tearful dark eyes darting from face to face in the throng.

  Corona positioned herself by the man, and with remarkable efficiency she explained to everyone what she had already related to McMurtrey, beginning with the saved Appy program she carried within her body. She told of multiple universes, skinbeating and Gluons, and of her comlinks via Appy with God and Shusher. Finally she glanced down at the intruder.

  “This is Harley Gutan,” she said. “God informs me that he is one of the most disgusting, depraved and despicable creatures in any universe, and that we must resolve the matter of Gutan before our journey can continue.”

  “Why do we have to resolve anything like that?” a woman shouted. “We need to repair the ship! Let’s get busy with that!”

  “The matter of Gutan and the repair of this ship are intertwined,” Corona said. “God contributed the channeling environment necessary to create this ship, and for reasons unexplained to me, He can provide no further information or assistance to us.”

  This information Kelly’s getting, McMurtrey thought. What has she become?

  “Gutan was on the Gluon we hit?” the nun Sister Mary asked.

  “He and the unfortunate child were matter-impregnated on the antimatter of the Gluon known as Pelter. Like us they may have been on their way to see God, but their destination is not known at this time. It is known that they were joined through the arcane activity of a machine constructed on D’Urth. There are many troublesome devices on D’Urth. . . . “

  “You’re suggesting God doesn’t control Gutan?” Sister Mary inquired, her voice shrill and agitated.

  A moment’s hesitation, then Appy replied, through Corona: “Some things are easier to explain than others, even for a god of great power. God does not control the whipping passageways between universes. God in the context we’ve used the name is the god of but one universe, the one containing D’Urth’s solar system. . . . There are many universes, with different types of authority.”

  “Blasphemy!” Sister Mary exclaimed. “God has infinite power!” Nervously, she smoothed her white habit with one hand.

  “I beg to differ,” Appy said. “The Lord only seems omnipotent to humans because of your limited vantage. God’s jurisdiction is restricted to His own universe, this one, and He doesn’t own or control everything in the universe. Some Gluons, for example, are amenable to God-induced matter impregnation and guidance; others are not.”

  “Does God control more than Satan?” McMurtrey asked.

  “In this universe, more than any other entity,” Appy confirmed.

  Corona looked at Sister Mary, but the alter ego Appy spoke: “While the machine used by Gutan is beyond the impetus or knowledge of God, the Lord feels He might have blocked its way by thrusting something in its path, across the whipping passageway. That’s not what happened here, where Shusher of his own foolish volition tried, impossibly, to pass Pelter.”

  “Could Shusher have been following God’s instructions?” McMurtrey asked. A long silence, then Appy: “It’s possible.” Yakkai stepped into view, shouted: “I think it’s possible that Appy’s an asshole through and through.”

  “I defy definition,” came a haughty response. “Particularly by the likes of you. May your heart be removed and stuffed like an olive!”

  Yakkai was livid. “Well, eat shit, chase rabbits and bark at the moon! How do we know anything you’ve said is true? I’m sick of your blabbering! I’m sick of everything about you! You defy definition, all right. One of a kind, that’s what you are. A special breed of computerized asshole. You don’t work for God. There is no God! Admit it!”

  “Maybe this atheist has a point,” a woman said. “Appy is quite vague sometimes, irritatingly secretive . . . as if certain information is on a need-to-know basis, and we aren’t capable of digesting it.”

  “Bullshit!” a man shouted. “Appy’s been spilling his guts, telling us everything he knows!”

  The woman: “What if God has more to do with this situation than his apprentice knows or is letting on? What if God is keeping the Gluons inoperable by refusing to separate one He controls-^Shusher—from one He doesn’t control—Pelter?”

  “God does not tell me everything,” Appy said, “so it’s possible He could be capable of separating the Gluons. But why would God do that?”

  “To keep you from winning the race?” Corona asked.

  Appy: “But God said I could have another chance, that the sabotage of other ships wasn’t my fault.”

  “Maybe He changed His mind when He decided you were an asshole,” Yakkai said.

  “Enough from you, Yakkai,” McMurtrey snapped. “Appy’s trying to help us through this mess, and the more we learn, the better equipped we’ll be to handle it. So pipe down, okay?”

  Yakkai grumbled, pushed his way back into the crowd.

  “There is an imbalance on this ship with Gutan aboard,” Appy said.

  “Then chuck him out!” Yakkai shouted, from a position McMurtrey couldn’t see.

  A long pause, and Appy said, “That can’t be done. God informs me now that it violates holy rules. You must hurry, for there is not much time, but it must be done right.”

  “What’s right?” Yakkai shouted. “I’ve heard enough of this!”

  “God determines what is right,” Appy countered. “But it is not so simple. You humans aboard this ship must determine how best to proceed, employing the Free Will that God has granted.”

  “More of Appy’s games,” a familiar voice grumbled.

  McMurtrey turned his head, saw Johnny Orbust. The fiery Reborn Krassee stood unevenly, wore healing packs on his arms and face.

  “Come on, Corona,” Orbust said. “You’re plugged into Appy, and via that to God. With all the knowledge you have, tell us how to proceed.” One eyelid twitched.

  She shook her head.

  “At least suggest something!”

  “I. . . can’t. . . . There is no such information. At least it hasn’t been provided to Appy. I—I can suggest that I don’t think there is a single way to resolve this enigma, no solitary path. Look at it from the positive side. If I’m right about this, it improves our odds. It’s an extrapolation of Great Truth, it seems to me. No problem in the universe is limited to one solution.”

  “Oh, great,” Orbust muttered. “Riddles.”

  “Actually, I did kill her,” Gutan said. “Not this particular girl, but others. Oh, my killings were state-sanctioned, authorized by the job chip implanted in my brain. But they were wrong just the same, wrong because of the use I put to the corpses.”

  Fearfully, he looked up and around at the people standing over him, at the robes and other religious garb, at the amulets, crosses and stars . . . at the weapons on the hips of some. And for an instant his eyes lost focus.

  He felt an elusive sensation of Otherness tickling the edges of his brain, refusing to be drawn in for analysis and dissection. So it hung beyond but touching, as oil to water, with bits of it floating inward enticingly toward the interpretive core of his brain.

  His ex
istence, every breath of his being, seemed linked, and this Otherness pumped through his veins, gazed through his eyes. The moisture of his body trailed away to a horizon of stars, to a screaming, crying soul.

  Gutan felt dirty, that he had been watched during all of his despicable acts, that the Otherness had shared his thoughts. He wanted forgiveness. God, he craved forgiveness! These people around him looked as if they knew every detail, as if they had watched Gutan’s life each day on Mnemo’s screen.

  Gutan could not lie to them. If he expected to salvage any remnants of dignity, he could not lie. Not now and not ever again. If provided the opportunity, he would do penance.

  He wiped tears from his eyes.

  Gutan confessed to the crimes of the mortuary and of the prison system, to drug addiction, and even to the crimes of principal ancestors in his lineage.

  “I wish I could make up for everything,” Gutan said. “I wish my life had been different!”

  Gutan told of Mnemo, of the ancient lives he relived and of the dead girl-child he took in his arms as the world burned in war. He hadn’t been directly responsible for that war, he said, but in a larger, more important sense he confessed that he had been. He overconfessed, it seemed to him, but he felt cleaner for having done so. It was cathartic.

  “I am responsible for more than myself,” Gutan said. With that he fell silent.

  Someone coughed.

  Sister Mary waddled forward, with the other fat nun.

  “As infirmary orderlies,” Sister Mary said to Corona, “we should take the child’s body and prepare it for eternal rest.”

  Corona nodded. “Wrap it and say your words. I’ll be along later to jettison.”

  Sister Mary bowed her head slightly and lowered her eyelids in acquiescence.

  As McMurtrey watched the nuns take the girl from Gutan, he thought over the extraordinary events leading to this moment. Corona was de facto captain now, by virtue of the organic computer program within her and by virtue of her space travel experience. No one would question her authority.