The Race for God (7 page)

Chapter 3

All is never as it seems.

—Ancient Saying

It wasn’t quite the way McMurtrey had envisioned it. He thought that only those who had mentally projected these ships could enter them. But several days later, when two local boys figured out the complex puzzle-lock latch systems on every vessel and the townspeople got aboard, McMurtrey had to rethink the situation.

Not only were the vessels accessible to everyone, they were extraordinary inside. Most of them had what appeared to be flight decks, and these ships had been fitted with compact fold-down beds that came out of the walls, something like old-style Murphy sleepers. The beds were operated by control panels that seemed to have identity scanners in them, so only certain people could operate them. Screens could be dropped around each bed, thus forming individual cabins. Only a few people on McMurtrey’s ship had located their cabins; McMurtrey hadn’t taken the time to find his, for he was vexed that God hadn’t given him much information—just that initial, somewhat cryptic communication, the appearance of the fleet and the brief perception of auras. He wished God would clarify matters.

None of the “flight decks” contained instrumentation, and no control surfaces were apparent on the exteriors of the ships. An engineer that McMurtrey spoke with thought the vessels appeared spaceworthy from their components and shapes; but this man and a number of other experts were baffled for the most part.

It seemed particularly bizarre to these engineers and to most everyone else that some of the vessels appeared more appropriately to be vessels of a different definition—that is to say, they had the look of massive containers for holding things. These had no flight decks or sleeping facilities. Inside the one straddling the main road to Domingo’s Reef there was a small, living conifer forest on fifteen deck levels, with a remarkable mirror-activated moisture-transfer mechanism that fed sunlight and rainwater to the ecosystem. Another vessel contained deck after deck of simple prayer rugs and bare praying platforms—with here and there religious statues and sacramental articles. Hoddhists, Nandus, Plarnjarns, and others of the Eassornian philosophies congregated in these structures soon after they were opened, but they didn’t pray in them. An air of hesitancy predominated, as people were afraid to assert themselves, afraid to proceed without clear-cut approval and instruction.

Three weeks passed with little occurring. Many visitors grew impatient and left town. Property owners began to speak of having everything demolished and hauled off, and one of the Domingos told the St. Charles Beach Crier that he could secure heavy cables to the vessels and topple them onto flatbed trailers, by which they could be hauled off.

The biggest problem seemed to be the ships that straddled houses and roads. It wasn’t known how heavy the vessels were, because no one could figure out what they were made of. An alloy, it was believed, and the town council sent for experts to figure that out and to determine if big helicopters could lift everything away. Some people talked about using cutting torches. Insurance companies were going nuts, and their agents were getting in the way of the plans of the property owners, citing exclusions that would or could apply if anyone caused damage by bumping things around.

The more that occurred along these lines, the more McMurtrey faded into the background. Increasingly, people said unkind things to him on the streets, or pixtelled him, or pounded upon his door, and he couldn’t come up with much to say in return. He stopped answering his pixtel or the door, and began sending a neighbor boy to the store for supplies. Letters piled up for him at the mail station.

Isolation wasn’t new to Evander McMurtrey. He hadn’t ever cared much for socializing anyway.

One evening when he was sitting in his darkened living room mulling events over, he heard clunking footsteps on the porch and a sharp series of raps at the door. He didn’t move, heard No Name rustle around in a specially built birdcage.

There were more raps upon the door, louder.

A man called out: “Open up, Rooster! We know you’re in there!” Something familiar and unpleasant in that voice.

McMurtrey didn’t move. Why should he? Undoubtedly they wanted answers, and he had run out.

The door handle rattled, followed by voices, low and urgent.

A splintering crash shook the house, and McMurtrey jumped to his feet. The front door was kicked in, with the doorway full of silhouetted figures, their shapes outlined by backlight from the street.

“There he is,” one of the intruders said, the same one who had called from outside.

McMurtrey choked out a response: “Get off my property!”

Someone heat-activated the light switch by the door, and half a dozen men filed in. They were led by a man in a sports jacket who toted a big pistol on his hip, and as this one moved into the light, McMurtrey recognized Johnny Orbust. The familiar voice.

Orbust’s coat was green, with a lump under one arm that might have been another gun. And McMurtrey recalled the sheath strapped to one calf under the trousers. The visible firearm was in its holster, flap unsnapped. Orbust glanced around nervously, like a cat on unfamiliar ground.

His companions were a mixed lot: a priest in black, but with an unusual red collar; just behind the priest a disheveled man long of beard and hair whom McMurtrey had noticed panhandling in town; then two very tall, thin men who looked enough alike to be brothers, both with angular birdlike features; and off to one side a fat little man with a stubble of beard and a girth that nearly equaled his height. All looked tough and hard.

“Let’s go!” Orbust barked. His eyelid twitched nervously, and he gestured with one hand, beckoning McMurtrey.

McMurtrey felt no fogging of his brain induced by nervous tics, hadn’t suffered that debility since God spoke to him.

“Go where?” McMurtrey asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Those ships, Rooster,” the fat man snarled. He wore a long peacoat.

“Ships in a row and nowhere to go?” one of the tall men said. Then he said something in a low tone to the fat man, calling him “Tully.”

“Don’t bug me about the ships,” McMurtrey said. “I’ve told everything I know about them.”

“The power that brought those ships is able to get ’em off the ground,” Orbust said. “Just one’s all we need. The white one you’ve been admiring yourself.”

Orbust was directly in front of McMurtrey now. Orbust’s pale blue gaze followed McMurtrey’s line of sight to the pistol. Then their gazes met, and Orbust’s expression seemed to say, “Go ahead and try for it, if you dare.’’

McMurtrey tried to relax, took a deep breath. He looked everywhere except at the gun.

With a soft, rapid slap of sound, Orbust drew a Babul from inside his coat, and began reading scripture aloud. McMurtrey didn’t pay attention to the words, so surprised and intrigued had he been by the maneuver. When Orbust replaced the Babul, McMurtrey saw that it went into a shoulder holster.

Then Orbust grabbed McMurtrey by an arm, and Tully took the other. They jerked him toward the door. The disheveled man was quoting more scripture and making commentary, something about the prophesies of Divan.

“I can’t do what you want,” McMurtrey said. “Whatever power I had is gone.”

“We’re gonna wind your little battery up,” Tully said.

The chicken rustled in its cage, hopped through the open cage door and fluttered ungracefully to the floor. It hopped toward Tully.

“Keep that thing away from me,” Tully rasped, “or I’ll—” The chicken squawked.

McMurtrey stepped toward the bird, felt the men release their grasps on him. With a wave of his hand, McMurtrey ordered No Name back to its cage.

With a tremendous commotion of wings, it complied.

“What kinda stinkin’ chicken izzat?” Tully asked, scowling.

“There’s no need for language like that,” Orbust said.

A pen and a small notebook fell from one of Tully’s pockets. The notebook lay open on the floor, revealing Babulical passages written in calligraphy. This rough little man appeared to have a talent.

“I say what I want when I want,” Tully retorted. He leaned over and retrieved his belongings. They went into a pocket of his peacoat.

Angrily, Orbust turned toward his associate, and the fingers of his gun hand twitched near the holstered weapon. Then he took a deep breath and looked away.

“Izzat a rooster or a hen?” Tully asked.

“Hen,” McMurtrey said.

“What are you, some kinda chicken-hugger?”

“Enough of this,” Orbust said. He pulled McMurtrey through the doorway and outside.

Tully again took hold of one of McMurtrey’s arms when they reached the street, and McMurtrey held back a little, exerting just enough reverse inertia to provide him with precious additional seconds to think. The night air was cool, with a breeze blowing in from the ocean,

Orbust had a flashlight, and he played its powerful beam ahead of them, illuminating hazardous areas of broken sidewalk that the town’s antiquated street lamps failed to reveal.

They were going toward the nearest white ship, the one McMurtrey favored. It stood as a plump monolith in lights from the town, and beyond it were the stars of God’s firmament. One star that might have been a bright planet caught McMurtrey’s attention. It was high in the eastern sky, clean and sharp against an inky background. McMurtrey wondered if a force could be riveting his attention to it, and if so to what purpose.

It struck him that everything, even the tiniest, seemingly insignificant incident or object, had a purpose. They were threads in a heavenly tapestry.

He felt a sharp pain in the arm that Tully held, and someone pushed him rudely from behind with the admonition, “Quit dragging your heels.” It was one of the tall men. McMurtrey couldn’t tell which, and didn’t look back. A street light popped and fizzled with static electricity, went dark and then came back on slowly, producing a sickly yellow glow.

When they reached the ship, Orbust played the flashlight beam on it. A coarse-surfaced metal ramp led to the entrance hatch, and it was open, its puzzle-lock having been released. The men boarded.

Inside it smelted pungently of urine and feces, and McMurtrey began breathing through his mouth. When the flashlight played against the walls he noted graffiti that hadn’t been there several weeks before.

Orbust and Tully let go of him. The arm on Tully’s side throbbed.

“Yeesh what a stench,” the priest said. He flipped on a powerful little incandescent lamp that McMurtrey hadn’t noticed he had, kicked several beer cans aside and set the lamp down in the middle of the cabin. This was the principal compartment of the ship, a tubular-shaped room, and overhead were a dozen or more mezzanines, stacked atop one another in circling, doughnut-shaped tiers. Hundreds of compact fold-down beds lined the walls of the mezzanines, some open and some concealed inside the walls.

“Kids have been partying in here,” Orbust said. “This fleet has no management, no guards, and it’s deteriorating.” He turned off his flashlight, set it on the deck beside the lamp.

“Don’t blame me,” McMurtrey said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Hocus-pocus,” the disheveled man said. “Do a little magic.”

“We Krassians have to get to God first,” Tully said. “So get with it.”

“Get with what?”

“I don’t know,” said Tully. “Talk to the ship, plead with it, whatever it takes. It don’t listen to us. Hell, bless it. Try everything. You’re the mover and shaker here, and nothing’s been happening with you hiding at your place.”

“I think a blessing would be a capital idea,” the priest said, stroking the front of his red collar. The way light was hitting him, he looked like a man whose throat had been slashed. His nose hooked downward. “I’m Kundo Smith, Mr. McMurtrey. I live in this shire, so you might have heard of me.”

McMurtrey shook his head.

Smith appeared displeased at this.

I’d rather refer to you as Redneck,
McMurtrey thought.

Someone nudged McMurtrey from behind, hissed: “The blessing!”

“I know one that seems appropriate,” McMurtrey said. “A cousin taught it to me when I was young.”

“Is it Krassian?” Orbust asked.

“I’m not sure, but it isn’t offensive.”

“Go ahead,” Orbust said hesitantly.

McMurtrey cleared his throat, and his voice echoed through the high mezzanines:

“‘When we hoist the silver goblets

To toast the men who’ve dared

May the goblets all be filled

And the good times they be shared.

For the empty cup it’s known

Is the one who ne’er came back

From a far off distant land

Where he’s a lyin’ on his back.

To avert that from occurrin’,

In the lives of those we love

A blessing do we offer

With some guidance from above:

‘May the men who go to space

Toward a far-off distant land.

Be a circlin’ in the palm

Of the Lord’s magnif’cent hand.’”

McMurtrey paused, and the ship was silent, without a creak or a whir. His nostrils were more comfortable, and the odor was either diminishing or he had become accustomed to it.

“Nothing,” Orbust said presently. He didn’t seem to notice what McMurtrey’s nose had detected.

Then McMurtrey saw the graffiti fade from the walls, so that they were again creamy white, and the beer cans disappeared into the deck, all soundlessly.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Smith said. “You only know one, Rooster?”

McMurtrey grunted. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he said.

“Whatever you say, Big Mac,” came the response.

The Krassians guffawed.

McMurtrey showed no reaction.

“You expected maybe a takeoff?” a voice said in an odd, clipped accent. It came from no particular direction.

The incandescent lamp flicked off with a little pop, leaving them in blackness. The men cursed and stumbled
around.
Smith fumbled with the lamp, couldn’t get it to work. He said the flashlight wouldn’t go on either.

A hand slapped into something, and against the open hatchway McMurtrey saw Orbust silhouetted against town lights, his Babul drawn. Orbust moved out of the doorway, became a dark and amorphous shape against one wall.