The Race for God (15 page)

I haven’t answered her yet. I’ve got to answer!

“I’m sorry,” McMurtrey whispered.

No response came, and a sidelong glance revealed to McMurtrey that Kelly Corona was smiling gently.

Then she said, a little too loudly: “If I didn’t want you to stare at them, I’d wear a barrel.”

Beyond Corona the stars of the nebula were larger and much brighter than before, evidence of the ship’s motion. They were fiery purple and blue suns, of indeterminate size.

Suddenly the view dimmed, and McMurtrey saw parallel white lines between the ship and the nebula, lines that covered the entire field of vision and permitted a view through the spaces between them. McMurtrey squinted, detected a yellow glow in the darkness between the lines. It was an odd, humanlike shape of light, and cloudlike in its lambency . . . a flickering image, harder and harder to perceive.

McMurtrey had seen D’Urth clouds in unusual shapes, reminiscent of humans and animals. The tendency of the mind to anthropomorphize.

“They’re back!” Corona exclaimed. She shuddered. “Appy’s really ticked now, telling Shusher to stay away from the speed controls. Shusher says the speed and takeoff controls are part of the ship, part of himself. How can he stay away from himself, he’s asking!”

McMurtrey held her hand, and as he touched her he felt a shudder course through his body, followed by a compression shift in his ears. Then his ears popped, and a voice filled one ear—-Appy! McMurtrey’s eyes opened wide and he saw Corona staring at him quizzically.

“I hear Appy!” McMurtrey whispered. He glanced around. No one was paying attention to them.

The ship rocked, and several people grabbed hold of chair backs to keep from falling.

“What was that?” a man asked.

The white lines in the window became smaller and apparently more distant.

“Slow down, dammit!” Appy roared, across the private channel, “That thing’s a skinbeater like us! Stay away from it and don’t tailgate! You can’t pass! You’ll rip the skins apart!”

McMurtrey released his grip on Corona’s hand, and Appy’s voice went away, with a pop in McMurtrey’s ears. He touched Corona again, and this time heard a peculiar sonar squeal in his other ear. That would be Shusher, if Corona’s theory held true.

McMurtrey couldn’t make any sense from the squeals.

“Skinbeater?” McMurtrey said. “What the hell is that?”

Corona shrugged. “I told you there were problems.”

A horn brayed distantly, heard by McMurtrey across the private channel, in the background. It was an angry sound, like one motorist trying to pass another.

Appy said not to pass, and it sounded dangerous. McMurtrey felt a shortness of breath.

Screams in his left ear: “Don’t try it, Shusher! Dammit, you’ll destroy everything!”

McMurtrey’s back pressed against the chair.

Those who hadn’t yet found seats scrambled for them.

“Acceleration,” Corona said, uneasily. “Feels odd in GravSense, but, baby, we are movin’ out!”

“Look outside!” one of the nuns exclaimed.

Corona was looking toward the window, and McMurtrey saw her profiled against it, with the white lines flashing bright yellow around the humanlike cloud shapes behind her. The lines and shapes lost definition, became a blur of yellow. The blur streaked into the distance, became tiny and disappeared.

The ship was flying smoothly, with the striking blue and purple nebula ahead.

“It outran you,” Appy said, across the private channel. “I just hope you haven’t screwed up the skins. They’re fragile, you fool.”

Almost involuntarily, McMurtrey’s gaze rested on Corona’s breasts. They were lovely, with a youthful uplift to them. This woman wasn’t so young, though . . . thirty-five if you squinted. He looked away, lest she nab him again.

McMurtrey felt a pressure shift in his ears, followed by silence from Appy and Shusher. He noted he was still touching Corona’s hand.

“They’re gone,” she said.

No sign of “Redneck” Smith or Jin in this group. Some of the others looked vaguely familiar to McMurtrey, such as the tall and bearded Middist man across from him in the second row, whom he categorized as Sidic by his large fur hat, long black coat, and sidelocks that curled on each side of his head. In that same row, the broad-bearded Greek Hetox priest was familiar too, with his heavy necklace and large silver cross hanging outside a black robe. He carried a Blik Pulverizer rifle sheathed across his back, and he shifted the weapon to his side when he sat down. Just behind him was a white-robed man who wore a small gold cross on his chest. From the gold embroidery of the robe he appeared to be a KothoLu of rather high office, or a priest in ceremonial clothing. McMurtrey didn’t know how to tell the difference.

The participants sat in uneasy expectation, their eyes shooting nervous, piercing glances around the room. Some conversed with those nearby in low tones. McMurtrey wondered if a person would enter and call the meeting to order, or if Appy would conduct it from his usual vantage. But for a long time no one came, and Appy didn’t speak after concluding his roll call.

Finally Orbust raised his voice to ask, “What’s going on here? We’re supposed to just sit around staring at each other?”

When no one answered him and no voice of support arose from the assemblage, he locked gazes with Zatima. For several uncomfortable seconds they engaged in an angry stare-down.

With a thrust to his feet, Orbust gave up the effort and stomped to the door. Tully followed.

They took turns tugging at the door handle, even pulled together. The door wouldn’t budge.

Tully cut loose a string of oaths, which Orbust chastised him for.

“You may leave when the meeting is concluded,” Appy said, across the P.A. system.

“What meeting?” Orbust demanded. He faced those in the room, and he appeared to be not only agitated but frightened. His hand went to his holster, touching the handle of the gun.

There was no reply.

“What’s the itinerary?” Orbust asked.

“Yeah!” Tully shouted. “Tell us or we’re bustin’ out!” He eyed Orbust’s gun.

“I’ve got an explosives kit in this holster,” Orbust said. “You talk, Appy, or I’m—”

“Sit and shut,” Zatima said, economically.

“You gonna make me?” Orbust said, glaring at her.

“If necessary.”

Orbust laughed, but returned to his seat. He plunked himself down, folded his arms across his chest.

Tully remained standing by the door.

The fat little nun in white spoke, in a struggling, tiny voice that squeaked. “I wonder if we’re being sequestered like a jury, assigned to remain here until we determine something. The computer has indicated we should think for ourselves.”

A man in the group addressed this, but the comment was inconclusive and McMurtrey blocked much of it out, along with the ensuing discussion.

“What’s going on, Kelly?” McMurtrey asked, not loudly enough for others to hear. He looked to his right, at her.

Corona shook her head. “You got us into this, Ev. We should be asking you.” From her expression she seemed to be thinking of something else.

McMurtrey was annoyed, and said, “I see.” He felt an irritation in one nostril, sniffed and felt a sneeze coming through his sinuses like twin freight trains.

He let go a megablast that caused people nearby to pull away and those farther off to turn their heads toward him.

“Bless you,” said the nun in white.

“Gesundheit,” said the nun in black.

“A most favorable omen,” the Greek Hetox said. “A good spirit has sneezed out on thee a blessing.”

“Great,” McMurtrey said, with a sniff. “Shall I try for another?”

Several people giggled, and McMurtrey noticed people looking at him with rapt expressions.

Peripherally, he saw Corona gazing at him differently, a hard stare.

He looked away from her.

“Not so fast, McMurtrey,” a little man in a white dhoti said. He was bespectacled and toothless, quite old, and his head had been shaven, with stubbles of dark hair showing. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Kumara Makanji, a Rahmanic Nandu. To us the sneeze is connected with demoniacal influence. A malevolent spirit just entered or left your nose.”

“Fool of fools!” Zatima exclaimed. “This feeble Nandu knows nothing, like all of his wretched, brain-starved kind! Allah favors sneezing, and that is why I say to the sneezer, ‘Praise Allah and Allah bless you!’”

“I know nothing, eh?” the Nandu snarled, in a tone that surprised McMurtrey because of the reputed peaceful nature of Nandus, “Sneezing at the beginning of something is unlucky. Many times in history has this been proven. We are at the beginning of a voyage, at the beginning of a meeting. May Rahma have mercy on us. We should return to D’Urth immediately and begin again.”

“Nonsense,” Zatima said. “If you want to go back, cow-lover, leap from the ship!”

“I will not!” Makanji said.

“Tell your precious Rahma to aid you, and if Rahma is worth so much as a pittance, you’ll be carried to safety.”

“You try it first, Isammedan dog, and if you make it I’ll follow.”

They glared at one another, and both fell silent.

This is crazy,
McMurtrey thought.
A room full of holy apes, fighting about THIS? And me, worried Corona will catch me looking again!
He wanted to look and savor, but resisted the urge. His mouth watered.

“Among my faith,” a little black-coated Middist rabbi said, “as in Krassianism and Isammedanism, a sneeze is followed by a blessing. We speak of
asusa,
or health, exclaiming, Your health!—God bless you—for a happy life!’ The sneezer then speaks from the Canrah, and is blessed by those present, to which he replies, ‘Be thou blessed!’”

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.”