“That’s a lot of gibberish,” Yakkai said.
Corona hesitated. “Assimilating data . . . Emotion can battle itself as well, and a terrible, tumultuous confrontation this can be! Love against Fear; Love against Hatred; Hatred against Remorse. Logical battles are usually more subdued than emotional battles, for logic dispels violence. But there are no purely logical battles, just as there are no purely emotional battles. One melds smoothly into the other, often to the point of indistinction.”
“Somebody unplug the computer,” Yakkai said. “It’s out of control!”
Corona smiled. “You aren’t paying attention, are you? Consider the emotional battle raging within Harley Gutan: his lust for cadavers versus his great remorse; his fear of discovery versus his desire to be caught; his fear of death versus his longing for the serenity of it. Consider also the tremendous need of this man for a logical explanation to the meaning of his life. Everyone wonders about this. It’s a perennial, unresolved question.”
“Yeah?” Yakkai said. “So what?”
“Place all this turmoil at a critical junction in the universe, and what do you have? Impasse. Nothing can proceed until it has been resolved.”
“You got all that from Appy?” McMurtrey asked.
Corona nodded. “Most of it, and I believe it’s correct. When Gutan stepped between Yakkai and the killer, Gutan confronted his fear, dispelled his shame with valor and gave himself a reason for existing. He had saved one life, or at least permitted it to exist a bit longer. Thus he accomplished something measurable, something of significance, and he placed himself at harmony.”
Yakkai looked pensive, started to speak. But his thoughts weren’t formed clearly, and Corona’s words crowded his out.
“This type of cosmic harmony is part of a unique continuum,” Corona said, “a conveyor belt driven by opposing forces: valor makes up for shame, purpose dispels meaninglessness, etcetera. The continuum is not entirely symmetrical. More than all else it is a point-to-point or breath-to-breath sentient evaluation, similar to happiness, a sense the creature has for the balance of each specific moment. Gutan at the specific moment when he stepped in front of Yakkai became at harmony with himself. This is unrelated to the faulty KothoLu concept of absolution from a lifetime of sin through confession. Forgiveness is not the same as cosmic harmony.”
Yakkai was beginning to listen.
Corona noticed this, smiled. “Harmony is a cosmic matter not always in God’s control. It follows certain rules, but above all else it is a personal matter, a state each individual must achieve on his own.”
“Are you saying it’s independent of right or wrong?” Yakkai asked.
“I am. Death is as much a part of harmony as life. Without death there could be no life. Without ugliness there could be no beauty.”
“It almost sounds amoral,” McMurtrey said.
“Oh, it isn’t!” Corona exclaimed. “What if there were no excitement in life, no challenges, no species preying upon one another? It would be awfully dull for any life form. God set the creatures loose and told them to compete with one another. It’s infinitely better this way. You must get beyond socially imposed filters that are inhibiting your thoughts.”
“Exactly,” Feek the Afsornian said.
Orbust cleared his throat. He looked perplexed. “How can you say on one hand that Gutan reached cosmic and personal harmony by performing an heroic, moral act, while saying in the next breath that there is no right or wrong?”
“I didn’t say there was no right or wrong,” Corona said. “Realize that I’m speaking for Appy now, which consists of the computer’s original holy programming plus opinions developed independently by Appy’s experiences. Yakkai asked if harmony was independent of right or wrong, and from the information available to me I said it was. So we have harmony on the one hand, right and wrong on the other. Sometimes they overlap; often they do not. A harmonic decision can be morally neutral; it can be morally right; it can be morally wrong. Appy says the harmonic decisions God likes best are morally right-such as those favoring life and beauty.
“But God does not control all facets of the universe. There are certain factors which He must accept as ‘givens.’ One of those factors happens to be travel by whipping along the skins of two universes. God can nudge objects off or onto the whipping passageways; He can even propel objects along the passageways if conditions are right. The collision with Gutan, even though it was Shusher’s fault, released Gutan’s disharmonious energy waves and created a cosmic imbalance in both Gluons, which prevented either of them from further skinbeating. Traveling the whipping passageways, you must understand, is a very delicate maneuver. Appy believes that in fairness to all racers, God could only say that the matter of Gutan had to be resolved before other ships arrived there, or God would have to nudge Shusher and the second Gluon, Pelter, out of the way.”
“We’re supposed to cast aside the Babulical passages about God’s mighty power?” Orbust asked. “I find this nearly impossible to accept.”
“Understandable,” Corona said. “As I said, I sense that God needs our help, and Appy has made no comment on this. We know from the data banks that there are certain factors in the universe that God must accept, factors He cannot control or change. We know also that our universe is not the only one. Are there other gods in other universes? Appy suggests only that there are ‘antigods,’ without explanation. It is very frustrating! Mr. Orbust, perhaps your Babulical passages about God’s power are correct, taken down as they were by d’Urthly observers. Perhaps God could wipe out D’Urth if He chose to do so. So God is ‘all powerful’ in the context of D’Urth and even in the context of millions of other planets and suns in the universe. But does God’s power go to infinity? It seems that it doesn’t. Did God precede the universe or is He part of it? Does God have dominion over other universes? Why do I sense that He needs us? Why didn’t God impart data about Jin to Appy, and why can’t Appy detect Jin’s presence? How did Jin get a cabin?”
“Why does God allow suffering?” Yakkai demanded.
“So many questions,” Corona said. “And it looks like we may have a chance to ask them of God ourselves. We’re on our way!”
“In the right direction?” the Hoddhist priest asked.
Corona nodded. Then her features darkened, and she said, “Something changing in Appy’s program.” Her voice cracked. “Checking . . . I’m having trouble accessing data. Wait. It’s still there . . . takes longer . . . ”
“I’ll be right back,” Gutan said.
Before the judges or Yakkai could react, the prisoner slipped out the door.
Within minutes he returned, breathing heavily. “The naked one is sitting on the deck,” he announced, “Level Six. He appears to be in a trance.”
“If the whipping passageway is operational now,” McMurtrey said, looking at Gutan, “why aren’t you back on your Gluon, traveling as you did? You were going in the same direction, toward God.”
Gutan shrugged his sloping simian shoulders. .
“Gutan was on the whipping passageway,” Corona said, “but who knows if his destination was identical with ours? At a certain point, I assume we’ll leave the passageway and drop back into our universe, to God’s planet. Maybe Gutan would have gone past, or gotten off earlier than us.”
“I was going to see God,” Gutan said, with assurance.
“How do you know?” McMurtrey asked.
“I just know.”
“Everyone stay away from Level Six,” Corona ordered. “I wonder . . . Yakkai, do you really have a bomb? Personally, I never believed you for a moment, but it might be handy now.”
Yakkai shook his head, removed a wadded cloth from his pocket to show what had been bulging there. “Even if I did,” he said, “we couldn’t use it aboard ship.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Corona said, “unless it could have been modified.”
“But if you reduced the strength of it,” Gutan said, “a bomb wouldn’t sto
p that killer. No one on this ship can defeat or stop a cyberoo. Not from what I’ve heard and seen. They shot him, tried to stab him, threw things at him. He can tear through—”
“It’s all moot anyway,” Orbust interjected. “We don’t have a bomb. If only I had my chemstrip!” He lowered his head. “I suggest it’s time for us to pray.”
Everyone except Yakkai knelt or bowed in his or her own way, and from this small gathering of men and women came the murmurings of terror.
Chapter 12
A political hierarchy can force people to conceal their belief in God. But rulers cannot, in so controlling, erase the existence of God. The tendency in human events, when viewed on a Grand Scale over countless millennia, is toward Truth. In the long run, Truth will not be denied. One day man and his God will face one another, no matter how we try to delay the inevitable.
—Excerpt from Confidential Bureau of Loyalty
Memorandum: “Counter-Ecumenical Strategies”
Appy’s voice blared across the loudspeakers, startling McMurtrey out of sleep. Something about a “main exit . . . ” And: “I’m back online.”
McMurtrey hadn’t slept well on the floor of the assembly room. How long had he lain here? Light was low, and amid the rustling sounds of others as they awoke, McMurtrey emitted a solitary whistled tone, illuminating the dial of his Wriskron. Less than three hours.
Appy again: “Passengers debarking in Heaven please use the main exit.” Appy laughed wildly, then: “Just kidding. There is no Heaven.”
“Uhh,” McMurtrey said, rolling over. “That insidious laugh of Appy’s. What is wrong with him?”
“Who knows?” Orbust slurred, from across the room. “Go back tuh sleep.”
Appy: “Arriving Tananius-Ofo in twenty-two D’Urth minutes.”
“Huh?” Corona said, a shadow to McMurtrey’s immediate left. He saw her sit up, and she added, “What did he say? Twenty-two minutes? Krassos, we’re there!”
McMurtrey sat up, yawned. The window to space was screened, and low light came from no particular source. Other human shadows moved in the recesses of the room, accompanied by low voices.
They’d been afraid to walk around the ship because of the killer aboard, so Zatima had suggested that they sleep in the assembly room. When all agreed, the lights went out, automatically.
McMurtrey recalled Corona’s words, and they’d been salve on the fears induced by sudden darkness: “When you all decide to get up, the lights will go back on.”
Now McMurtrey identified the voices of Yakkai, and of each judge.
Then Gutan said, “The lights, Appy.”
“Let there be light,” Yakkai said flippantly.
But nothing cut the shadows.
The program is gone!” Corona whispered to McMurtrey. “I had it when I went to sleep—it was more difficult to access, but I thought it might have been because I was tired. Now, nothing! Nothing over the comlink, either, but that’s a separate connection. There may be no message traffic now.”
“I hope you’re totally free,” McMurtrey said.
She didn’t answer.
“The door better open,” Orbust said. He stumbled over something, muttered.
McMurtrey heard the door click open, detected no change in light.
“You goin’ out there?” Yakkai asked.
“With a killer out there?” Orbust asked. “Are you kidding?”
The door clicked shut.
“This is great,” Orbust said. “No lights, a killer aboard, and where are we?”
From Orbust’s direction came the soft and repeated slap of flesh against leather—it sounded like Orbust drawing his Babul over and over. But with his healing packs on?
“We must have been close to Tananius-Ofo when our Gluons collided,” Gutan said.
“What happened to the Gluon you were on?” McMurtrey asked. “Appy said it was called Pelter.”
“I dreamed it cartwheeled into deep space,” Gutan said. “I watched from somewhere—I couldn’t tell from where. Pelter—that was the name of the professor who created Mnemo.”
“Another question for God,” McMurtrey said. “And we may be there in a few minutes!”
McMurtrey heard Krassian, Nandaic and Middist chants and psalms, in sweet harmony. They were lilting songs and verses, threading gently through his consciousness.
The shadowy forms around him shape-shifted to dark human skeletons, silhouetted against an aura-yellow haze. One shape in the distance became an Isammedan, high in a minaret tower, calling the faithful to prayer in a bell-like voice. The emaciated foreground forms knelt in prayer, and their invocations blended like the parts of a harmony.
To McMurtrey these people, with all their apparent differences, seemed the same.
The silhouettes became powder, and disintegrated in explosions that hurled black specks into the yellow background.
These images faded to darkness, and Corona said, “What if D’Urth has been destroyed for its iniquities and those on God’s ships are the only survivors?”
“The arks of Toor,” Orbust said. “Just as it says in scripture.”
The slap of flesh on leather again-—three times. Orbust couldn’t be reading that Babul in the dark. Maybe touching it brought scriptural passages to mind.
“What do you suppose God looks like?” Gutan asked. “Are we really in his image?”
“We are ‘after His kind,’” Orbust said.
Yakkai’s voice: “I’m reminded of the minister who was preaching about man being made in God’s image, when at that very moment the village idiot walked by.” He laughed, a harsh rasp, and broke quickly into singsong:
“They seek Him here
They seek Him there;
These pilgrims seek
God everywhere.
Is He within,
Or is He afar?
Might we find Him
Upon a star?”
“Must you taint this sacred moment?” Orbust asked in an exasperated tone. He uttered a prayer.
“Rather a neat rhyme, Yakkai,” Corona said. “But I feel certain we’ll find God is on a planet.”
The ship shook violently.
“We’re descending through a storm over Tananius-Ofo,” Appy announced.
McMurtrey held Corona tightly, and in the darkness with the ship seeming to rattle apart around them, he was deathly afraid. He was angry with his God too, and felt a great onrushing disappointment. What sort of God was this, if He couldn’t provide clear weather over His own domain, if He couldn’t stop Jin from killing pilgrims on a ship in His fleet, if He couldn’t even keep lights burning on that ship?
This was the God who permitted suffering.
McMurtrey felt very vulnerable, and he longed for the ignorant security of his little niche on D’Urth.
“A sorney for your thoughts,” Corona said.
“I want my mommy,” he said.
She laughed uneasily, squeezed his hand.
The lights flashed on, and simultaneously the wall panels slid aside to reveal the window. More light poured in from the window, but probably not directly, if Corona’s early theory about mirrors and prisms inside the walls held true. McMurtrey was too enthralled with the moment to ask.
The storm seemed to have passed, or they had dropped beneath it, and McMurtrey saw a reverse image of the colors in D’Urth’s sky. This sky was white—gray-white and darker gray shades approaching black—with cerulean blue clouds floating in the air in varying shapes like majestic atmospheric ships.
Shusher was descending through blue clouds in a gentle, controlled spin, with the planet’s surface just coming into view beneath them. It was a colorless, curved surface stretching away to shades of black and gray, with large splotches and ribbons of white between.
As the planet neared, McMurtrey decided the white splotches and ribbons must be lakes and rivers, and that the darker shades were land masses.
Appy confirmed this over the P.A., and added: “Tananius-Ofo is essentiall
y a black and white planet, with a range of tones between. Only one primary color is found here: blue, in various monochromatic intensities.”
“Tell us about God,” Orbust said. His green sportscoat looked no worse from the fight with Singh, and might have been repaired by the same tailoring equipment employed on Yakkai’s Sidic clothes. The healing packs were no longer on Orbust’s arms and face, and deep purple streaks ran across his forehead and down his nose.
“I would not presume to describe our Lord and Master,” Appy said.
McMurtrey felt his terror subsiding, for now points of reference were appearing before him, tangible objects. He felt a childlike yearning to know God.
McMurtrey beheld no heavenly firmament as he neared his destination, no ethereal lights, no gates of pearl through which all entering had to pass. No winged, singing angels fluttered near to guide the ship into port. This was a nearly colorless planet, not a glorious place ‘on high’ where his senses might feast into eternity.
They were only a few thousand meters above the surface, and the terrain became visible. The land looked inhospitable, with black mountain crags that jutted through the atmosphere and fell away in cliffs to limitless depths.
“We’re dropping right into the mountains,” Makanji said.
Taam the Hoddhist stood closest to the window, his thin white robe a sharp contrast to high black mountains beyond. With an open expression on his face and his arms lowered at his sides, palms facing forward, he appeared ready to accept whatever lay in store for him.
The Race for God Page 28
