Corona stood erect as the nuns left, caught McMurtrey’s gaze.
Who looks at me through your eyes? McMurtrey wondered. Is that you, Kelly, or Appy? Might it even be God or the Gluon Shusher, through a comlink?
Her eyes were not the same, though they remained mysteriously strong and dark, with as yet untapped layers beneath the surface. They had lost their gentleness, McMurtrey decided.
I can’t tell her how I feel until I see the gentleness return, until I know she is no more than a woman. I must become stronger than she, or she must weaken.
These were curious thoughts to McMurtrey, caring deeply as he did for Corona but wishing a limited degree of ill luck upon her. He wished she weren’t in charge of the ship. Women shouldn’t be in such positions. He’d always had trouble with women, didn’t understand them, and inevitably they slipped away. If it happened this time it would be the worst experience of his life.
He detected the glimmerings of a smile on her face, and the briefest, soft glistening of her eyes before she looked away. The smile had been for him, he decided; the moist eyes for the death of the child.
Nothing was worse than the death of a child.
Did this pitiful little man murder the girl, or were his crimes “confined” to those he listed? McMurtrey couldn’t get a reading on the man, realized how essential perceptions were. People acted upon perceptions, based important decisions upon them. But who was an expert in such matters? Certainly no human carried with him an instruction manual from birth about the things to look for in the demeanor of another person. McMurtrey was hesitant to look too hard anyway, fearing a relapse of his old idiosyncrasy-induced paralyses of thought.
He thought back to his “visitation” from God, to his brief periods of exultation over the “pipeline” to God, and to the subsequent removal of that pedestal, when McMurtrey became no more than a ship’s passenger. Corona had been humbled herself . . . the captaincy offered to her, withdrawn and then given back. Now she had a pipeline to God and McMurtrey didn’t. Now she was the most important human being on the ship. A woman.
‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ McMurtrey thought. These were ways beyond the comprehension of any human being. Would they remain a mystery?
“We must deal with the matter of Gutan,” Corona said, raising her voice so that all could hear. “Are there suggestions?”
“Chuck him overboard!” Yakkai repeated.
“That cannot be done!”
Now, Orbust’s compatriot Tully stepped to the forefront, and he said, “Kill Mr. Gutan first, and he’ll have to be jettisoned.”
“No!” a man said. “Deal with him in a way God would sanction.” It sounded like Archbishop Perrier.
“God’s killed plenty,” Tully said. “Evil deserves no mercy, and mark my words, we’re looking at evil here.”
It had been Perrier who protested, and now he pressed his way forward to stand near Tully. “That’s not exactly true,” Perrier said. “And it is not our place to take a life. ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’”
“What are we supposed to do to get this ship going?” Tully asked. “Get out and push?”
Corona shook her head, thrust out her underlip.
“Kelly, you’re pretty handy mechanically,” McMurtrey said. “Isn’t there something you can have a look at? Maybe a loose wire or an assembly that needs to be rebuilt.”
“This isn’t just mechanical,” Corona replied. “I can’t peek at Shusher’s innards, make a few adjustments and push the ‘GO’ button. It’s clear to me that this ship operates under a delicate arrangement of factors that no one with us—Appy, Shusher or human—fully understands. We’ve been skinbeating on an infinitesimally thin wire between universes!”
“What are we to do?” Perrier queried.
Corona shrugged. “Appy has been instructed to await further developments.”
Prayers and holy mantras began, and soon the air was murmurous. A boyish tenor rose above in Babulical refrain:
“From the peak, o-old Toor
Set his doves to the breeze;
They flew on a-and on
With no-where to set down . . . ”
We’re stranded, McMurtrey thought. With no way to send for assistance. It’s all up to us, but we don’t have enough information. We’ll he passed, may die out here. We won’t arrive first.
Arrive first . . . FIRST . . . Does it really matter if we get there first?
It mattered to Appy, and God had set the whole race up in the first place, so it seemed to matter to Him. But why did it matter? Why did everyone have to be first? Of course everyone didn’t have to be first, McMurtrey realized. Everyone couldn’t possibly be first. But the way the game was played, the way almost every game was played, someone had to win and someone had to lose. But even when it came to understanding God? It seemed to McMurtrey that the love and understanding of God should be a sharing experience, not a race.
No single way to resolve this enigma, no solitary path. . . .
The compartment grew increasingly quiet, and all around McMurtrey the pilgrims kneeled and prostrated themselves before their gods.
“Not enough,” Appy said, through Corona. “God informs me you’re praying for yourselves. Such an ugly, scabby practice! Shame!”
Startled whispers carried around the room.
“Self-serving prayer is a wart fed by religious fear tactics!” Yakkai shouted, still from his sheltered place in the crowd. “Priests keep their flocks in line by scaring them to death. You hypocrites only do nice things because somewhere in your mind you have an idea it will benefit yourselves! You Krassians, Middists and other wackos fear a great Santa Claus in the sky who knows when you’ve been bad or good. Santa Claus doesn’t bring things to bad little boys and girls, you see. That’s the myth structure underlying your acts, and now the rug is being pulled. The rude awakening begins!”
A scuffle and angry words ensued, but McMurtrey only saw the shifting of persons near Yakkai. McMurtrey heard the word, “Antikrassos.”
Presently the commotion subsided.
“Yakkai may not be that far off,” Appy said.
More whisperings among the pilgrims.
“What about worship?” McMurtrey asked.
“You have the necessary information,” Appy said.
Corona’s eyes were unemotional above the mouth that spoke.
“It’s the same, isn’t it?” McMurtrey pressed. “Aren’t people worshiping their gods for selfish reasons?”
“That is for you to determine,” Appy said.
“I’m going to assume it’s similar to prayer,” McMurtrey said, “and that we aren’t getting anywhere with selfish acts. Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”
Appy did not reply.
“Just for protocol we need to know about the merits of worship,” McMurtrey said. “We’re going to visit God and must understand the amount of reverence He requires. Are we to sit around exchanging anecdotes with Him, or are we to prostrate ourselves?”
“How interesting for you to guess,” Appy said, in his most irritating tone.
“It’s all moot anyway,” Corona observed, her voice. “The ship ain’t movin’.”
“But no single way to solve the matter of Gutan, as you said. And you did ask for suggestions. Prayer . . .worship . . . the unknown . . . fear . . . I think we need to understand these concepts if we’re going to figure our way out of this mess.”
“Why do you say that?” Corona asked, almost indifferently.
“Call it a hunch,” McMurtrey replied. “There is a certain order to events—from the planets in motion to the tiniest speck of nature—to the patterns of human lives. When something interferes with the normal course of affairs, men are forced to face the unknown. The unknown lies ahead and apart, and can be wondrous indeed, holding the imagined treasures of a thousand dreams. It can be equally terrifying, bearing the torturous deaths of a thousand nightmares. The unknown is at once a golden road and a deep abyss, rarely reaching the wild e
xtremes of imagined hope and fear. The first thing we need to do, we need to accept what’s happening to us without terror, without recriminations, without preconceptions. We need to identify the barriers that have fallen and the barriers that remain.”
“Yeah, so?” Corona said. Her voice was tinged with fatigue.
“What are those remaining barriers, and in what order of priority must they be surmounted? Our ship will not continue. Why not? How was it created and how did it get here? The ship is an object of our minds, the materialization of a collective, averaged-out image. The ship is us and we are the ship. It means we need to cooperate and . . . ”
“You’re talking in circles,” Tully said. “Why don’t you shut up?”
Then the boy who sang of Toor raised his voice to exclaim, “Let’s put Gutan on trial! Right here, right now! We’ll decide what to do with him!”
McMurtrey: “But I think—”
“What if the verdict is death?” Tully interjected. “Corona said we can’t chuck him overboard.”
“Aren’t there other methods of execution?” a man said. “Gutan himself proved that, in his story of the League Penitentiary System and Mnemo. Maybe we can chuck him anyway, after the trial, after our court has heard his case.”
“I don’t think this is . . . ” McMurtrey said. But his voice was too low for authority, and washed out in conversation around him.
Tully asked, “Is that what you meant, Corona, when you said Gutan couldn’t be thrown overboard?” He stared at her intently.
Corona shuffled her feet. “I have told you all I can, all I know. Honestly, I’m not trying to be evasive and I can’t see that Appy was, either. I said, ‘That cannot be done,’ because those words came to me from one of the comlink connections in my brain.”
A pained expression came over Corona, and she said, “I was no more than a mouthpiece. To be perfectly honest with you, I am not . . . so important . . . not so important as . . . I wish I were.”
McMurtrey suspected that God was humbling her, knocking her from her pedestal again. But a trial for Gutan made no sense to McMurtrey. He’d tried to explain to them what he thought the answer was, but they wouldn’t listen.
From all around came a clamoring for trial.
Can’t they see that this ship is powered by the minds of the pilgrims? McMurtrey thought. That if only through cooperation between all the believers and nonbelievers aboard that we can make it move? That’s the answer, and I’ll scream it out if I have to. But first the trial. They’ll analyze the confession five hundred ways to Sunday. At least they’ll cooperate in that.
Corona was agreeing with the others. No one spoke against a trial.
McMurtrey: Can my mental impetus alone, my disagreement, delay this craft?
He sensed a familiar trap, the one God had just humbled Corona out of: pride in oneself above all others, the desire to be eminent, to be first . . . and those comments about self-serving prayer . . .
Can it be that man will only be first if he doesn’t try to be? Would it just happen then? A natural occurrence? Should one try not to be first?
He smiled to himself at the multifaceted quandary God had put the ship’s company in. This matter of Gutan would be resolved through selflessness. The antithesis brought Gutan here, and the pilgrims with him.
McMurtrey would wait, watch and participate in the trial. He would try to be patient with them.
It was agreed that the trial would be held in the main passenger compartment, for this was the largest room on the ship. Since the ship was no longer in flight and heavy objects didn’t need to be secured for the time being, Appy suggested that they disconnect all assembly room chairs and set them up in the courtroom. He told the pilgrims how to accomplish this.
This seemed an unnecessary complexity to most of those present, however, and considering the time available, it was decided that only the defendant, Gutan, would be placed upon a chair, while everyone else would stand in the wings or sit upon the deck. Many of these people were, after all, ascetics unaccustomed to folding their bodies into chairs.
In short order a trial council of seven members was appointed by voice vote, with Appy employing bioelectronic techniques to analyze and count votes quickly. The appointees were McMurtrey, Corona, Zatima, Makanji, a white-robed Hoddhist priest, the ornately robed Afsornian holy man, and, surprisingly to McMurtrey, Johnny Orbust. This was not to be a judicial council; it was instead to be a planning group assigned to determine how best the defendant should be tried.
Orbust, who still wore healing packs on his arms and face, was a pitiful sight and much quieter than he had been when he first boarded the ship. He kept in constant communication with C. T. Tully and Kundo Smith just before the voting, with Tully and Smith traveling between the crowd and Orbust, exchanging whispered information with the latter. It appeared obvious to McMurtrey that they were working for votes and possibly more, and there might have been an outpouring of sympathy votes for Orbust. Still, Zatima held her own against her archenemy in the voting, evidence of strong feelings on both sides.
Standing off to one side, the council began deliberations while interested nonmembers gathered nearby to listen.
Appy said through Corona that he knew various trial methods, from his experiences and from his programming. He had this information, he said, because of the different jurisdictions he might operate in, so that he would not violate local laws or customs.
Very politely, Orbust requested permission to speak, and he began a question for Appy.
But one who stood nearby, Shalom ben Yakkai, seemed to have taken the ill-starred position vacated by Orbust, and he interrupted the proceedings with this, in a haunting tone:
“Some say I’m in Heaven,
Some say there’s no trace;
Some say take a trip
Far off to deep space.
Go east, go north
Go up and go down;
Spin till you’re dizzy
Blast off from downtown.
Am I in Heaven?
Or dreamed of in Nod?
That damned and elusive
Guy you call God!”
With that, Yakkai made a zipping sign across his mouth and folded his arms across his chest. He spun around in a circle and stared unrepentantly at McMurtrey.
“Atheist pig,” a man said.
People moved away from Yakkai.
As Orbust resumed his question for Appy, McMurtrey was struck with the irony of the moment: Now Orbust was the interrupted, not the interrupter. What a dramatic change in this man!
“What do you care of local laws?” Orbust asked, looking quizzically at Appy’s host, Corona. “Don’t God and His representatives make their own laws?”
“To some extent,” Appy replied. “But you must understand Free Will, which God does not wish to stifle. If my Lord were to make all the laws of men, what would be left for men to decide? If a man’s brain is to grow and prosper, it must be used. Otherwise it atrophies.”
“There is no God!” Yakkai shouted. “Or He would make waves. He would plow through all opposition, all that is wrong with this universe. If God existed He would not pussyfoot around. He would kick ass!”
“God never makes unnecessary waves,” Appy countered. “The easiest way is often best.”
“For weak humans and weak mythical Gods,” Yakkai said.
Corona’s voice barked: “Silence, or you will be removed!”
Nanak Singh became visible, a menacing figure, and he had Yakkai by the arm. Zatima stood nearby.
A small boy ran to Yakkai, kicked him in the shin, and ran away.
Yakkai winced, said nothing. He was the embodiment of discontent, it seemed to McMurtrey, an iconoclastic pimple in any public situation, threatening to erupt and spatter all that men had created. It was reasoned discontent with an emotional face, and in this state it could no longer be reasoned with. It could only be suppressed.
Yakkai had the boundless outrage that Orbust once exhibited,
and by contrast, Orbust now appeared sedate, even rational. It was as if the Energy of Discontent, a raw and combative state, moved naturally between bodies and minds, inhabiting first one and then another.
Yakkai seemed destined to be beaten by the same enforcer that had dealt with Orbust.
Appy was speaking again, an institutional voice. He spoke of legal systems on D’Urth and on distant galaxies, of alien systems and methods that might be applied to the present imbroglio. All the while McMurtrey stared sidelong at Makanji, the dhoti-swathed Nandu, a man who looked back at McMurtrey through round eyeglass lenses, with an ancient, pale-eyed gaze. McMurtrey and the Nandu might have been here or anywhere else, in this age or another. A vision appeared to McMurtrey in which he and the holy man were alone in a featureless place, looking into one another’s soul-eyes.
“This journey across space is illusion,” the Nandu vision said. “Mankind is fighting Truth, in yet another pointless and time-consuming fashion.”
“But how could we be fighting Truth if we’re following God’s instructions, traveling in His ship?”
“His message was distorted by mutant connections and false biochemical reactions in the receiving brain of you, Evander Harold McMurtrey.”
“That doesn’t explain the ships!”
“Yes, it does. Every mind, with God’s assistance, can channel-create anything. You had God’s assistance, but misunderstood the message, as others have done before you. Errant impulses from your mind allowed the entry of like and equally mutant thoughts from other humans, and you impregnated the Gluons with these abominations, these ships. God was a power booster, and you let your own prejudices influence what was created. There is no God in the sky, no bearded Santa Claus out there, as the atheist so aptly said.”
McMurtrey, angrily: “If the ships are wrong, what are you doing aboard?”
“To guide every pilgrim along myriad spiritways. You are misguided, and you have caused the confusion of others, a great waste.”
“Hogwash! This conversation is illusion. You Nandu mystics are known for your sleights of hand, your snake-charming. . . . “
The Race for God Page 23
