The Race for God (30 page)

The Afsornian said something, but McMurtrey didn’t hear the words.

McMurtrey had this moment of love, of limitless, trusting adoration, and it transcended his own need for life. He had lived and experienced everything worth experiencing, because he had found this wondrous private niche in the complexity of the cosmos.

“I love you, Ev,” she said.

“How do you vote, McMurtrey?” someone said. McMurtrey realized seconds later it had been Feek, and now he saw the elegantly robed Afsornian standing over him with the others.

“You must vote,” Feek said.

“I need more time,” McMurtrey said. He exchanged glances with Corona.

“I need time to consider my vote too,” Corona said. “My pain has passed.”

“We must deal with Gutan now!” Feek exclaimed.

“We must deal with Jin now!” Yakkai said, so forcefully next to Feek that his words nearly knocked the Afsornian over. “That killer could strike again, probably will. He ripped a door right out of the wall. No human weapon fazed him. He just kept coming!”

“Where is Jin now?” Zatima asked.

“I saw him go upstairs,” McMurtrey said, “to his cabin.”

“I think he’s meditating,” Corona offered.

“You can’t see him through Shusher or Appy?” McMurtrey asked.

McMurtrey couldn’t see anything like that himself, though he was touching Corona. He never had seen anything or obtained access to Appy’s program data by touching her: thus far it had only been a listening tap into the Shusher-Appy comlink. But now it was occurring to McMurtrey that when Corona picked up Appy’s program it might have placed her on a closer connection, one that could see all areas of the ship.

“No,” Corona said.

“You can’t see places inside the ship? Remember we were wondering about . . . ”

“I remember. I’m okay now. So far, nothing . . . no information on how passenger information in Appy’s data banks was obtained; it’s just there.”

“What do Shusher and Appy know of Jin?” McMurtrey asked.

“A total blank, which is inexplicable. Before the collision, Appy built a volume of data on the pilgrims—can’t tell how he did it. I have access to those records. Nothing on Jin at all, not a solitary entry. Jin doesn’t even appear on the passenger list. As Kelly Corona, I know more about him than Appy does.”

“Jin isn’t human,” Gutan said, “He’s some kind of robot, and I think I know what type. I operated a top-secret piece of equipment, the mnemonic memory machine. One day I came on shift and found a couple of men in gray suits standing by Mnemo, arguing with Commandant Wimms, the top man in my unit, Wimms lost the argument—it would be more accurate to say he backed down—and later I overheard him tell an assistant that those men in gray suits weren’t men at all. They were Bureau of Loyalty cyberoos—robots with bionic parts. Tough sons of bitches,’ Wimms called them. I think the killer upstairs is with the BOL, which explains why Appy can’t pick up information on him. The Bureau made its operative invisible to electronic surveillance. Jin is a stealth unit.”

“But Appy isn’t an ordinary computer with ordinary electronics,” McMurtrey said. “He’s God’s biocomputer. Surely God can override Bureau cloaking.”

“Further proof of your mythical God’s weakness,” Yakkai sneered. “There is no God!”

“I think this whole trip is a Bureau operation,” Gutan said. “The cyberoo has been assigned to kill every pilgrim aboard, and it’s probably after me, too. I’m a small cog, so mostly it seems like a power play to cut the hearts out of any organizations that might oppose them, that might compete for the loyalty of the citizenry.”

“If so, why such an elaborate setup?” McMurtrey asked.

“For dramatic effect,” Yakkai suggested. “With a little massaging of the facts, the BOL can make it look like God has abandoned humanity, that God isn’t worth a hunk of shit. Of course, some of us know that God doesn’t exist at all, but that’s a different subject. The BOL would rather assume He exists and ridicule Him for His inadequacies.”

“It’s not so simple as that,” Corona said. “I’m convinced that God exists and that He’s linked to Appy. But Appy can’t detect Jin, and in Appy’s data banks there is no information on Jin transmitted from God. The traditional view of God holds that He ‘sees’ everything, so presumably He could observe Jin without Appy’s intervention. I can’t tell whether this is the case, but something tells me God has certain blind spots. I’m only guessing now from the information available to me, and of course this isn’t something Appy would ever say. Maybe God’s ‘blind spot’ is just that he’s too busy to watch everyone, or that He isn’t watching everyone because He’s made a decision not to.”

“You’re crazy!” Orbust exclaimed. “God has no weaknesses!”

Zatima knelt on the deck and gazed upward lovingly while quoting verse:

“‘Allah, there is no god but He,

The Living, the Everlasting;

He is the All-high, the All-glorious,’”

“I sense that God needs our help,” Corona said, “and He needs it desperately.”

“Nonsense,” Orbust said. “We need God. He doesn’t need us!”

“Why can’t it be a two-way street?” Corona queried.

“Enough of this,” Peek said. “We must deal with the matter of Gutan.”

“No longer necessary,” Corona said. “Don’t any of you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Orbust asked.

“The ship!” McMurtrey exclaimed. “It’s on!” He looked at Corona. “Are we moving?”

“We are. The matter of Gutan has been resolved, and I think I have an explanation. Information is flowing from Appy’s program to me. Today Gutan placed his life second to that of another human. Always he had been primary in his own thoughts; he was the taker. Today for the first time in his life, he
gave
something important, or at least offered it. He offered his life.”

“And the life offered to Jin was not taken,” McMurtrey said, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

Corona: “Appy is speculating that the very cosmic act of a momentous change in Gutan may have sent out energy waves, shutting Jin down. Here Appy isn’t certain, for he doesn’t know the forces driving Jin. He may be a cyberoo BOL agent, may even be tied in with an antigod. If Jin was shut down with energy waves, they may have only a temporary effect; the odds are high that Jin could restart and resume his massacre.”

“Are you saying that Gutan’s single noble act makes up for a lifetime of sin and degradation?” Yakkai asked testily.

“I wasn’t saying anything,” Corona said. “I was quoting Appy. Apparently it isn’t a matter of ‘making up.’ This is a very misunderstood concept, and is in part the basis of the faulty KothoLu system of confession and absolution. Somewhere along the line, the KothoLu priesthood either misunderstood a statement by one of God’s prophets, Krassos, or they consciously altered it for their own purposes.”

“Right,” McMurtrey said. “Priests and nuns have a long history of making decisions that benefit themselves. Survival of the brotherhood, of the sisterhood, of the order . . . hiding twisted intentions behind holy garb, rituals and words. The perversion of sacredness.”

“Amen to that,” Yakkai said, with a steely smile. “Confession and absolution form part of a power game, a chapter in the ‘Keep ’Em In Line With Fear’ book. Tell us everything, the church says—we’ll put it in safety deposit, and the safety deposit fee is called a tithe. Since you’re a customer for our business, we’ll recommend you for membership in the Heavenly Gates Country Club. It’s a pretty exclusive club, but we can get you in if you do it our way.”

McMurtrey smiled.
This guy is priceless!

Corona appeared to be feeling better. Her words came excitedly: “Humans are driven by emotion: by love, by lust, by hatred, by remorse, by fear, by pride, by valor—but at the basis of the human experience each man seeks logic. He seeks an answer to the reason for his existence and to the reason for the ordering of the universe. Man is obsessed with logic, with the need to prove, to find out. Even the religious man who denies this need would like to
know.
Though he rages denial, he too would like to
see
or
experience
something tangible, something logical that confirms what he ‘knows’ in his heart. He would like to see God, to touch him.”

“Fat chance,” Yakkai said.

“Inevitably in this search for logic,” Corona said, ignoring Yakkai, “man confronts his emotions. Life is a series of choices, one right after another. To speak or not to speak; to go or not to go; to do or not to do. Logic and emotion enter into each choice that a man makes. These are natural enemies, occupying their own specific realms of the brain, left and right. Human experience is a balancing act between these enemies. Like a house divided, logic can battle itself, disputing the criteria employed in arriving at ‘facts.’ Ultimately when all is reasoned out and torn to its logical foundation of foundations, there are no facts and no answers. There are only more questions.”

“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?”