The Race for God (24 page)

“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 existence, 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.

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!”