The Race for God (35 page)

“Some of the best things are dull,” Tananius-Ofo said.

Gutan spoke briskly, nervously: “Is it possible for me, with all the terrible things I’ve done in my life, to find God?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” God said.

“What do you mean? Oh! But can’t you—”

“Only one question per person,” God said. “Next!”

“That’s everyone,” McMurtrey said.

“When you asked your question about the meaning of life,” Tananius-Ofo said, looking at McMurtrey, “you didn’t know I would only allow one more question per person. Had you known, I sense you might have asked another. I’m not checking your thoughts now, just using rather normal senses. If this is the case, I should allow you another question. I mention this because I don’t want it said that in the end I wasn’t fair.”

Surprised at this, McMurtrey thought for a moment. “I have many questions,” he said after a time. “I don’t know if I would have asked another first. I too wish to be fair. If I’m the one who becomes God, I don’t want it said about me that in the beginning I wasn’t fair.”

Tananius-Ofo laughed.

“It is laudable of you to say that,” God said. “But I insist, and I’m still the boss. Go ahead with one more, and that will be the last.”

McMurtrey glanced at Corona, as if to ask her permission for this holy favor. Her expression urged him on.

“What are the duties and obligations of God?” McMurtrey asked.

Tananius-Ofo smiled. “Gods should behave in certain predictable ways, to avoid chaos. Periods of chaos occur when the wrong God or gods take power, or when humans do not understand the nature of these deities. I must reveal to you that my illness has been causing me to lose more and more ground in this universe. As I said, there is no Satan throwing his weight around, leading the forces of darkness. I wasn’t entirely candid, however. Other gods, good and bad—entities from within this universe and outside it—have been trying to extend their domains. Power is never a static thing. It increases, decreases and changes in scope all the time. This is an unchanging rule of the universe.

“Each universe can have one or several gods. All of you or only one of you could do it. At various times in history there have been single gods and multiple gods. Look at ancient D’Urthian mythology and the multiple gods of some of your religions—most of those recorded events never occurred. But some of them did. The whole history has been confused pretty badly.”

From a reservoir of McMurtrey’s soul, Tananius-Ofo’s words echoed through his brain.

“Some of the god entities still live in varying degrees,” God said, “and a number of them want their old jobs back. I took power from a pantheon of gods. They asked me to take charge, transferred their powers to me. But not all of the gods agreed with this majority opinion. Some were tossed out.”

“Fired?” Yakkai asked.

God nodded. “Power, once achieved, is difficult to relinquish. I’ve wrestled with the subject for millennia, since realizing I wanted out. The gods who were forced out have been discovering methods of restoring their powers. Even now they are mounting an assault against me.”

“A physical assault?” Corona asked.

“I’ll put it this way. They would if they could.”

“You haven’t made this sound very attractive,” Zatima said.

“The truth rarely is,” God said. “Reality is a splash of cold water, a harsh awakening. Well, ladies and gentlemen, who’s it going to be?”

A very long period of silence followed, lasting at least five D’Urth minutes.

“What about your famous prophets?” Orbust asked. “Wouldn’t one of them have been a better choice?”

“You’ve run out of questions,” Tananius-Ofo answered. “We really must move along. I’m sorry.”

“You asked for volunteers,” McMurtrey said. “I’d like to volunteer.”

“Are you sure?” Corona whispered to him.

McMurtrey didn’t look at her, felt sad for not doing so. But he had made his decision, didn’t want to look back. There would be no temptations. But God spoke of women. Did that mean . . .

God can set up anything,
McMurtrey thought. I
could have a harem here. Or just Kelly. But Kelly is strong, maybe too strong. It wouldn’t work out. . . .

God smiled upon McMurtrey, asked, “Are there any others?”

None spoke up.

“Then it’s settled,” Tananius-Ofo said, looking at Corona. “You folks can drop me off at my party and that’ll be it.”

“I’m—I’m God now?” McMurtrey asked. “I don’t feel any different.”

“There are a few formalities,” Tananius-Ofo said. “And you won’t simply be ‘God.’ I’ll dub thee ‘McGod.’”

McMurtrey smiled, stiffly. He still didn’t feel any different.

“I’m glad you’re the one, McMurtrey. You’ve been my first choice since I decided to transfer power.”

“Could I still back out?” McMurtrey felt railroaded, as if the people in the room with him had been conscripted by God to deceive him. Were they all conspirators? Kelly too? At least one or two others should have wanted to become God! But no matter the answer to any of this, McMurtrey had no real thought of reversing his decision. He needed a challenge like this, felt he could handle it as well as anyone else.

“No way out now,” God said tersely. “That’s it. You have to do it. Just kidding. Sure, you can change your mind any time you feel like it. But I don’t think you will. If I thought you would, if I thought you weren’t qualified for the position, I wouldn’t tell you the trade secrets I’m about to reveal to you. After I take a little rest, for this has been most wearisome, you and I will enter the Crystal Library for the Power Transfer Ceremony.”

When God awoke from a brief nap, he took McMurtrey aside, into a very large side-chamber. Behind them, the way they had entered closed noiselessly, into apparently solid rock. This left no visible way out, which McMurtrey found unsettling.

“You’ll have to reopen it yourself,” God said. “You’d better hope I show you how before I drop dead!” He chuckled.

The chamber was lined floor to ceiling with shelved books, of a most unusual variety. They appeared to be of clear prismatic glass and were very large, with pages of black print visible through crystal covers that threw lovely spectrums of blue light around the room. The spine of each book was at least the height of McMurtrey, and he struggled to read the titles. They appeared to be in Unglish, but he was too flustered to focus. One volume lay open on a white-rock table at the center of the room.

“You’ve come a long way for a guy who used to run around with a chicken on your shoulder,” God said.

McMurtrey smiled.

“These are the greatest books in the universe,” God explained, “culled from the minds of men and gods to form my incomparable Crystal Library. These are composite God- and human-channeled editions, created in much the same way that I assisted you to create the fleet of ships. Throughout my career I channeled the thoughts of the greatest minds, bringing their words to these volumes—as ideas change, words and pages change. Sometimes I do it with the consent of the contributor and sometimes I just do it. Whatever it takes to get the information.”

“Are Gluons involved here?” McMurtrey asked. “I mean, didn’t we channel images onto the Gluon Shusher, impregnating the Gluon with matter?”

“The book materials are impregnated onto cousins of the Gluons,” God said, “known as Sools. Unfortunately, Gluons like to travel too much, and that would never do here. They’re inveterate tourists, so library books would forever be missing, off in some distant quadrant of the universe!”

“I can understand how you’d feel that way.”

“I know you’re afraid of what’s about to happen, Evander, but wash away your fear and accept this. It is said that we fear most what we least understand. Come forth, understand and fear no more.”

McMurtrey was told to stand over the table and read the first chapter of the book there. He did this, while Tananius-Ofo climbed a librarian’s ladder slowly, sat at the top and looked on. The black-etched words on each page should have been difficult to read, since the pages were clear and vitreous, but a foggy haze appeared beneath the top page’s words the moment McMurtrey began reading, a haziness that made the proper words stand out in clear relief.

He felt like a trainee assigned to read a training manual, but did not complain.

As he reached the end of each right-hand page, the page turned automatically, and as he became immersed in the contents of the volume, the pages turned faster and faster.

“This is incredible,” McMurtrey kept saying. “Absolutely incredible. I can’t believe this! Wow!”

In a very short time he completed the chapter and gazed up at Tananius-Ofo.

The old man sitting atop the ladder had his chin resting on his hands, and looked impish. He beamed at McMurtrey. “Now you understand the basics of godmanship,” he said. “The way of miracles, transmitting voice across the universe, how to defend against attack, how to attack if necessary, how to shape-shift planetary materials. None of it is that complicated, and I believe you are a quick study. Of course you’ll need to practice the techniques, for every god soon learns that ‘practice makes better.’”

“I’d like to try something simple to begin with,” McMurtrey said, “but I didn’t see how to do it. If I wanted to bring something here from across the universe—nothing large or complex—uhh, say my pet chicken from D’Urth—how would I do that?”

“Chapter Three,” God said. “For a cargo that small, may I recommend a tiny oxygen-saturated bubble impregnated on a baby Gluon?”

“There are other ways of doing it?”

“Countless ways! Permit me to demonstrate this one?”

“Please do,” McMurtrey said.

“I only wish I had the time or energy to demonstrate every technique for you, but I’m not up to it. Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up anyway.”

Tananius-Ofo climbed down the ladder arthritically, and when he reached the floor he began turning his body around and around. Faster and faster he went, spinning until his features could no longer be seen and he was a beautiful, whirling blue groundflower, flashing white and silver.

Like a spinning top, he spun around the room, circled McMurtrey and then zeroed in on McMurtrey and spun wildly toward him. McMurtrey tried to get out of the way, but God’s mellifluous voice called to Him, “Fear not, McGod! Come forth, understand and fear no more!”

Now McMurtrey went awhirling in the blue ball, and he learned the arcane way of transporting No Name across the universe. For an instant McMurtrey expanded in a brilliant supernova and became all living things that had ever existed or ever would exist. One cell from the Organism of Mankind—a boy living in St. Charles Beach—took No Name to the bubble and placed the chicken inside.

“Life is not composed of segments, as seen by the parochial observer,” McGod said, his first pronouncement: “All life, all time and all events comprise a single unfolding day.”

“It is so,” Tananius-Ofo said.

“I see that life forms are not what they appear to be,” McGod said, to God emeritus. “They are not sacks of skin. The multidimensional sensory images transmitted from one to another are false, and this is a problem I must face one day.”

“High energy,” Tananius-Ofo said, “that is the key to survival and is, as well, the means of destruction. High energy created the first elements of life, the inchoate god-forms.”

“And that first spark, was it caused by an excess of matter over antimatter?” McGod asked.

“Perhaps you will discover the secret one day. I never did. Funny, it’s like the war-mobilized nations of old D’Urth. No matter how technologically advanced a nation became, there always seemed to emerge a nation with something new, something more deadly. So it is in the cosmos. No matter how much a god knows, there is always the unknown, inevitably a god or other life form out there that knows more. Thus you must remain on constant vigil, never letting your defenses down, always searching for the newest, latest piece of knowledge. Nothing is final.”

“Continuing education?”

“You expected easy?”

“No, but it makes me tired just thinking about it,” McGod said.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Tananius-Ofo replied. His voice betrayed great relief .

When Tananius-Ofo and McGod emerged from the spinning groundflower, McGod smelled sweetness, as though a spring D’Urth breeze were blowing across flower blossoms. He breathed deeply, felt the calmness of eternity.

McGod felt perfect. Ahead lay a long, long lifetime of work, of learning, of teaching, and he felt equal to the challenge.

Just imagine how good this job will look on my resume,
he thought.
Prior employment: God of the Universe, Yeah!

“I don’t know how to read your mind yet,” McGod said. “Even if I did, I don’t know that I’d presume to do so. Tell me, please, did you put the idea of a Cosmic Chicken in my mind? Did you pull a little prank on me with that?” One edge of his mouth curled up, the precursor of a smile.

“With all due respect, I’ve answered all the questions I agreed to. Life is the sorting of priorities and acting upon those decisions. I have something to say that is more important than the answer to your question. Forgive the impertinence of an old man. It is this: Even in the midst of contentious gods and other life forms that you will learn about, beware most the D’Urthian Bureau of Loyalty. One day you may have to do something about them.”

“I will study the matter.”

“As my successor, McGod, I hope you’ll keep what I started essentially in place, that you’ll promote my programs.”

“I assume I’ll develop plenty of my own programs too.”

Tananius-Ofo appeared dismayed. “Yes, such is your right. But before you toss out anything I’ve done, study it in detail. All my reasons are documented in the crystal volumes. My thoughts are here beside those of the greatest minds who ever lived, for I was one of the great thinkers. Don’t listen to my enemies, for their motives are impure! Even the form of man and the modified net-tongue form I selected were carefully thought-out decisions.”

“I won’t do anything hastily,” McGod assured him.

“An associated caveat: The longer you remain in the first godform chosen after assuming the mantle of godship, the more difficult it will be for you to change to anything else. So if you select a nonhuman form for yourself, or even a modified human form, be prepared to stick with that decision. It is called the Persistence of Godform, and is one of the Lost Secrets held by rival gods. They may try to use it against you as they tried against me, offering to allow you to change form in exchange for some or all of your god powers.”