The Race for God (29 page)

Chapter 11

All things can be accomplished; it is the time limit imposed from within and without that presents the major obstacle.

—Ancient Saying

Corona had the floor.

“As our Afsornian friend pointed out, and as I was unaware, among his people it is only murder to kill kin. Some societies even condone cannibalism, infanticide, the sale of dangerous products, theft and the killing of witches. In other societies a criminal must have
mens rea,
a “guilty mind,” in order to be convicted: This means he must be sane, must have intent and must understand the difference between right and wrong. Other societies don’t care about intent. They care only about consequence.

“Assuming Appy hasn’t tampered with the data, this gives us a broader picture, which I feel the situation demands. We have an obligation not to restrict our decision to parochial views, for God did invite representatives from thousands of belief systems to his deep-space tea party.”

The other judges agreed that this was useful information.

Corona continued: “Politics and religion often come into play in the judgment of guilt or innocence and in the punishment meted out. Some societies have no terminology for crime. Sometimes alcohol or drugs legally diminish the culpability of a person, and it is known that Gutan took opium.”

“Irrelevant,” Orbust said. “Gutan dispatched people and raped corpses both
before
and after he became addicted to opium. He took no drugs as a young funeral-home employee when he stole personal valuables from the dead. So he can’t blame his crimes on addiction.”

“You’re right,” Corona said. She trembled slightly. “I’m hearing something. Gunfire? Do any of you hear it?”

No one did.

“Must be on comlink,” Corona said. “Usually I can tell, but somehow I couldn’t this time.”

“What are you talking about?” Orbust asked.

“The comlink between Appy and Shusher!” Corona snapped. “Something’s wrong!”

“We weren’t going to talk about that,” McMurtrey said. “Kelly, you’re hearing gunfire?”

“Yes!”

McMurtrey: “It happened before Appy downloaded his program into Kelly. The way she got the comlink I won’t go into, but the fact she has it probably made her the best candidate for Appy’s ‘save’ maneuver.”

“Shusher is whining,” Corona said. “Popping in the background. Maybe it isn’t gunfire.”

“We don’t hear it,” Zatima said. “Should I go and get Singh?”

“I don’t know,” Corona said.

McMurtrey wanted to touch her, decided not to because of the others present.

“We must continue,” Corona said. “We must not leave this room until we have arrived at our decision. I’m all right.”

To McMurtrey she didn’t look all right. She was still trembling, looked tense and fatigued.

“The options are not simply life or death,” Taam the Hoddhist priest said, “or even the means of life, the means of death. There is nothing we can do with him, nothing we should do with him, nothing we have a right to do with him. Karmic law will deal with Gutan in subsequent incarnations. I sought this council position not to render a decision but to insist that we take no action.”

“I agree,” Makanji said.

“Hogwash,” Zatima snarled.

The Hoddhist shook his head and said, in a low tone, “We will produce more reform with gentle words than with all the punishments conceived by men. Release him gently, as a newborn, and all mankind will benefit.”

“Three for death and three for life,” Corona said in a tremulous voice, “unless any of you wish to change your votes.”

No one spoke up.

She grimaced, said, “Makanji, in ancient Nandaic law, the Code specified that a judge should probe the heart of the accused, studying the eyes, the posture, the voice. . . . It was an ancient method of lie detection.”

“My people no longer follow that code,” Makanji said. “They had capital punishment in those days, too. Much has changed since then.”

“I must make a tie-breaking decision,” Corona said. “I have been observing Gutan’s every movement, every intonation, every drop of perspiration, and with the assistance of Appy I have been able to organize this information so that all of it is available to me. I couldn’t forget the tiniest detail if I wanted to, and in the absence of witnesses other than Gutan himself this is essential information indeed.”

Zatima grumbled, kept her words to herself.

With a pained expression Corona glanced from face to face, avoiding McMurtrey’s.

The room became exceedingly silent, awaiting her deciding vote.

But Corona fidgeted and wrinkled her face in discomfort. She went to one ear with her hand.

“The noise again?” McMurtrey asked. He realized now that he was afraid to touch her, rationalized that he didn’t know what good he could do for her. He wasn’t even sure who she was, if the Corona he loved was still alive.

“The comlink is locked open!” Corona shouted. “Ow! Shusher is wailing through it. . . . Those are gunshots! He’s saying so!”

“Somebody shooting at Shusher?” McMurtrey asked.

“I can’t tell!”

McMurtrey gathered his courage, went to her chair and ran his fingers through her hair. He heard nothing over the comlink. “You okay?” he asked.

She bumped his hand aside, looked at him without saying anything, her eyes screaming pain.

“Kelly!” He extended his hand toward her face.

She pulled away.

“Son of a whore!” McMurtrey cursed. He caught Orbust’s glare.

“We have a three-three deadlock,” McMurtrey said. “Gutan is guilty, but we can’t go further unless one of us shifts our vote, or unless Kelly comes out of this. To hell with the trial! I say we hold Gutan for the authorities on D’Urth. Or hold him for God’s judgment. Maybe we’ve done enough to get this ship going. Anyway, I’ve had it and I’m going to get medical help for Kelly.”

With that, McMurtrey walked briskly from the room, thinking of the infirmary nuns. He’d seen them in the main passenger compartment, with the others.

* * *

Minutes before, the main passenger compartment echoed with the staccato rhythm of automatic-weapons fire, and every fiber of Gutan’s body screeched:
Flee!

But from his hiding place behind the chair, Gutan had seen others try for stairways and corridors, and thus far none had made it. The bodies of pilgrims lay blocking all egress, to the point where anyone attempting those paths would have to climb or leap over the dead and injured.

It had been only a brief time since the cyberoo killer opened fire from gunports all over its body, moments that seemed like much longer. Some of the pilgrims fought ferociously, screaming battle cries as they leaped into the fray. They hurled knives at the attacker, slashed at him with swords, fired guns, pulverizers and stunbows.

But nothing damaged the cyberoo, and it advanced interminably, stepped over and around bodies, peppering gunfire at anything that moved. Blood and body parts were everywhere. Terrible, chilling screams filled the room, then fell off to a pall of deathly silence that left Gutan feeling ill.

Something moved to his left. He glanced sideways, shifting his head only slightly.

It was the Middist atheist Shalom ben Yakkai, crawling toward a gruesome heap of bodies, trying to get behind them.

The killer cyberoo dispatched three pilgrims in a flurry of gunfire, then used its crotch-mounted howitzer to blow Sister Mary’s head off.

The black-robed Greek Hetox priest burst forth with his Blik Pulverizer rifle blazing, and he died in a volley that overkilled him. Four shots removed his arms and legs simultaneously, and the howitzer disintegrated what was left.

Yakkai froze in terror.

The cyberoo had seen Yakkai, fixing its human-simulated gaze on the pitiful, crouching man. Dispassionately, it stepped over two bodies, one of which was a boy, and skirted three others, approaching Yakkai.

“Take me first!” Gutan shouted, impulsively.

The cyberoo didn’t look in his direction. It was as if it knew all along where Gutan was hiding, as if it had a computerized roll call of those who had been and would be dispatched—as if it intended to deal with Gutan separately, in a more horrible way than any of the others.

It occurred to Gutan now that those who died first were luckiest

He realized he’d been thinking of the dead as dispatchees, as if the cyberoo were an executioner. It had to be so, Gutan decided, for cyberoos only did what they were programmed to do. But why? If this was a BOL operative, why hadn’t it killed the pilgrims sooner?

It waited for me to join the ship’s company,
Gutan thought, with a sickening rush.
It’s after me and the others—all in one neat package
. . . .

Gutan felt like a steer being slaughtered the wrong way, its meat tainted by adrenal chemicals from the fear of watching its brethren die, from the screams and smells of death.

The faces of everyone that Gutan had dispatched raced across his mind, followed by the faces of all he had embalmed before that. The grim parade ceased.

“Over here!” Gutan shouted, as loudly as he could.

The cyberoo was motionless now.

Gutan leaped from behind the chair, and with fluid movements placed himself between the cowering Yakkai and the killer.

Yakkai was whimpering, face buried in his hands. His fingers were wet with tears.

The cyberoo looked at Gutan with a quizzical expression. Then its gaze moved to Yakkai, and back to Gutan.

The gunports all over its body receded into flesh, eluding the penis howitzer. The penis went limp, and in front of Gutan stood what looked like an entirely nude man, looking more bewildered than guilty.

“I am Jin,” the man said simply. “A Plarnjarit. Excuse me, but I must find my broom. We’re required to whisk away any bugs in our path, you know, lest we step on one. It would never do to step on a bug.”

Jin turned toward the doorway through which he had entered, and as he walked in that direction a pile of bodies in the doorway shifted, creating a path.

A big man stood in the doorway, looking in. It was McMurtrey, one of the judges.

Jin passed between the bodies and nudged past McMurtrey, disappearing from view.

“What in the name of God happened in there?” McMurtrey asked, as Jin passed.

But Jin’s eyes appeared entranced, and he didn’t look at McMurtrey. Instead Jin climbed the stairs, slowly.

McMurtrey couldn’t believe the carnage before him, nearly gagged. His breathing was erratic. He slipped to one side of the shredded doorway, fearful of entering the room, and remained there several minutes.

Finally he took two deep breaths, exhaled slowly and peeked around the doorway into the main passenger compartment. High above the carnage, on the sixth-level mezzanine, Jin padded along by the railing. Soon Jin disappeared from view, in the vicinity of his cabin.

An eery silence penetrated McMurtrey’s awareness, and he became aware of movement across the room. Two figures—Gutan and Yakkai. Gutan was helping Yakkai to his feet.

At first McMurtrey thought the armed pilgrims had annihilated one other. Then Gutan went to him and related a startlingly different story. Yakkai was with Gutan, confirmed the details.

Yakkai told more, of Gutan’s heroism.

Gutan looked away with misty eyes while this was being related.

McMurtrey felt a tightening in his stomach, said, “I’ve noticed Jin’s weird ways for a while now. I think he took Orbust’s Snapcard and chemstrip, and maybe other things. He wasn’t adhering to the nonattachment doctrine of his religion, seemed to favor material objects . . . but not this, dammit!”

The acrid opium odor of Gutan touched McMurtrey’s nostrils.

“Let’s get away from here,” Yakkai said. “I can’t bear it any longer.”

They retreated to Assembly Room B-2.

Corona was in her chair, and McMurtrey sat by her. Her eyes no longer bore evidence of the pain that had sent McMurtrey for medical aid, but she said nothing. Cautiously, McMurtrey extended a hand and grasped one of hers.

She squeezed his hand.

In one ear, McMurtrey heard the low sonar whine of Shusher, a gentle noise unlike the cacophony Corona had described. One crisis seemed to be passing: Corona was better. But a larger one had taken its place.

Gutan retold the startling tale, but again said nothing of his heroism.

Feek the Afsornian fidgeted while Gutan spoke, and finally Feek seemed unable to endure any more.

“Sorcery!” he exclaimed. “Gutan is a sorcerer! I change my vote to death!” With a wavering voice he added, “Among my people, sorcery is always punishable by death. The vote is four to two for execution now, so it doesn’t matter how Corona votes. This evil must be erased!”

“Jin’s the killer, not Gutan!” Yakkai shouted.

Then Yakkai told of Gutan’s noble act, and this astounded most of the judges.

But Feek believed none of this, and howled loudly, “The sorcerer’s spell has been cast over Shalom ben Yakkai! He knows not what he says! We must act quickly, or all of us will be captured by the spell!”

McMurtrey felt Corona’s grip on him tighten, and when he leaned across her and looked into her eyes, he saw the softness that he remembered so fondly. His spirits bounded, for he had been longing for this indication, this sign that Corona was once more the Corona of old.

Impulsively, he whispered to her, “Kelly, I . . . ”

But McMurtrey hesitated, afraid Appy or others connected to the computer might overhear what he had to say.

Corona’s grip weakened, and he detected fear in her eyes. Eavesdroppers no longer mattered to McMurtrey, for now his words had nothing to do with anything he wanted or needed. They were for Corona, to bring her back.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Do you remember saying that to me, Kelly? ‘I love you, Ev’?”

Someone called for a vote recount.

She turned her head slowly, and now her gaze was a dark-eyed, unbespectacled version of the Nandu, Makanji, that he had seen in the vision. It was a timeless gaze again, this one of love. McMurtrey and Corona might have been here or anywhere else, in this age or another. They might have been themselves or others.