The Race for God (12 page)

Appy: “I’m ordering GravSense now,
if that’s
all right with you.”

A short monotone whine ensued.

The compression changed in Corona’s ears, and once more she heard the hysterical man.

Static followed over the ship’s P. A. system, and Appy spoke through it: “GravSense in activation.”

Corona dropped fast, but grabbed the railing neatly to break her fall.

The little man screamed, and seconds later Corona saw him pulling himself up by his tether to get back on the nearest mezzanine.

In two rude, bruising thumps, McMurtrey tumbled to the deck, bumping his elbow on the railing.

This ship has kinks to be worked out,
he thought, rubbing his arm.

Jin was crawling back over the railing to the safety of the mezzanine, his tether still in place. He stood on the deck with his nose in technologically simulated pain, caught McMurtrey’s gaze briefly before looking away.

Damage,
Jin thought.
Nose aching and cosmetic repairs necessary . . . something else
. . .
Central Command melt-weld
. . .
field-irreparable merging of Duplication and Repair functions.

What’s the matter with that cabin control panel? Damn!

When circumstance required one or more functions, Jin’s interpretive core accessed the CC module for instructions, flashing data in a nanosecond from there to bodily points of absorption and action. A field-irreparable melt-weld was one that could only be repaired back on D’Urth in a Bureau of Loyalty shop. It was a rare glitch, shouldn’t have happened so easily.

A problem with the ship caused this!

Jin had never been hit in the nose before, and the numbing, unpleasant feeling of it angered him.

Discreetly, Jin tested himself, sending electrical probes through the fiberoptic passageways of his body, tingling his synthetic nerves. He received a report of nose and undereye discoloration, felt “red sound” automatic functions repairing this, at the same healing speed as a human wearing a healing pack. In a few hours it would be as before, and he could say he wore a pack when no one was looking.

While Repair and Duplication wouldn’t separate themselves, and Duplication wasn’t responding to test probes, the Repair function appeared to be basically intact. It was one of the most important functions he had, for it contained backups on top of backups, allowing self-repair of virtually every damageable or perishable part and function. When operating as it was now for Jin’s nose and under his eyes, it transmitted “red sound,” which the cyberoo saw and felt in internal coloration.

Duplication wasn’t nearly so critical. It was a “green sound” training program left in Jin’s circuits, with which the cyberoo had observed human actions and copied them. With this program the cyberoo’s movements, speech and certain nuances had been made to approximate those of seventy-eight humans it had observed firsthand, including half a dozen Plarnjarn monks. It even copied physical pain those humans felt, via a parabolic sensing mechanism.

From all Jin could determine, his humanlike functions continued unabated.

To a cyberoo, the Duplication program was like a human appendix, no longer needed. If Repair continued to work, it would bypass Duplication to restore humanlike actions and features as needed, accessing memory banks.

Jin knew that all the tests he ran fell short of the most important one—the stresses of an actual field emergency. This particular meltweld could be paralyzing, or might amount to nothing of consequence.

Screens went up all around, and a short woman in a polychromatic chador became visible in a freshly exposed cubicle just beyond Jin’s. Although the chador was designed to cover her from head to toe, she had left her face uncovered, wrapping the extra folds of cloth around her neck. She was black-haired and olive-skinned, with a compact thickness of build that imparted strength to her voice. McMurtrey guessed Isammedan or Nandu, perhaps even a Middistess. In one hand she carried a woven straw prayer mat, rolled.

“Did you see those ships?” she asked, looking at Jin. “I think we’re the only one that took off! In the moments before we increased acceleration I saw dozens of other ships topple over and kind of sputter with little wisps of smoke. There were BOL choppers rocketing into town from all directions. What do you suppose . . . ? Oh, you’re hurt.”

She started toward Jin, but he waved her away, said he was all right.

The woman caught McMurtrey’s gaze, became agitated and turned away. Immediately, she launched into her form of boisterous conversation with an orange-robed man on the other side. The man had a square-cut black beard, wore a sword in a scabbard that was secured to a wide, redstone-encrusted belt.

McMurtrey looked at the hard plazymer tether clasps on his own waist, tried to figure out how the apparatus got there and how it might be disengaged. His elbow ached.

The big-voiced woman was talking about an incredible dawn she had seen as the ship rose from D’Urth. McMurtrey hadn’t seen any of that.

Then Johnny Orbust began shouting through an electronic bullhorn, from the railing on the other side of the mezzanine, not very far away. He had Smith and Tully with him, and God only knew how they had gotten that bullhorn past Appy’s inspection apparatus.

“One of those ships that didn’t make it had that New Timer Madame Theo aboard, some false prophet Florientals and a bunch of atheist swine disciples of Kevin Wateo. Glory be to God, for He stopped them in their tracks!”

Many people laughed and made open displays of support for this, and McMurtrey was struck with the strangeness of such behavior in a group professing piety.

The loud woman near Jin wondered if anyone had been injured on the ill-fated ships, and this comment restored to McMurtrey some modicum of faith in humanity. A number of people shared her concern, and soon people were calling for Orbust to keep quiet.

But Orbust kept on with his deluge of Krassian noise.

The loud woman complained of bumps and bruises, and she told the orange-robed man near her that she’d had to hold onto the deck-secured furnishings in her cabin. She didn’t mention any tethers, and none remained in view with the exception of those still secured to McMurtrey and Jin.

McMurtrey was beginning to get angry with the intransigence of his tether clasp when it burst open, made a little twist and snap in the air, and melted neatly into the floor, so quickly the eye could not discern the manner in which it vanished. Jin’s tether performed a like maneuver, making McMurtrey believe the whole thing had been automatic, with the tethers going the way they had come. This gave him further hope that Corona was safe.

Presently the woman with the big voice went to the railing and began berating Orbust for his attitude. From where McMurtrey stood she was louder than the man with the bullhorn. More and more people shouted for Orbust to cease, and some of them were becoming openly angry.

Orbust paused in his diatribe, said something to the rednecked Kundo Smith. They nodded in unison, glared at the woman.

McMurtrey’s sore elbow was feeling better, and he rubbed it gently.

He saw Jin rubbing his nose.

Opposition was growing rapidly, making Orbust increasingly uneasy. His collection of nervous tics, which came and went, were apparent now: the twitching eyelid and tapping foot, the fingers of his free hand rubbing together atop the railing.

Abruptly he lowered the bullhorn, fell silent and slipped around the nearest partition, into a corridor. Smith and Tully followed.

McMurtrey told the woman he admired her outspokenness, and she thanked him graciously. She introduced herself as Zatima, and her companion as Nanak Singh.

“That same awful man gave you a difficult time, too,” she said, obviously referring to McMurtrey’s speech before the crowd in St. Charles Beach. “You handled the Krassian fanatic well.”

“Did you see his gun?” McMurtrey asked. “Why was he allowed to bring it aboard?”

Her orange-robed companion stood near her to one side, looking at the spot Orbust had vacated. One of Singh’s hands rested against his scabbard.

“I guess because he was wearing it,” Zatima offered, “and Appy said we could bring aboard what we were wearing.”

Singh didn’t appear to be paying attention to the conversation.

“Orbust must wear a bullhorn,” McMurtrey said.

She shrugged, said, “Many strange occurrences.” Then, with a flowing, heavily accented throatiness: “In answer to your inquisitive gaze, I am a follower of the Prophet Isammed, Prince of the Faithful, last and greatest of the prophets. No offense to you, of course.”

“No offense taken,” McMurtrey said. “Despite what’s been said, I don’t consider myself a prophet. I simply carried a single message, one I can’t say I understand. I know something of your fine religion.”

She smiled, didn’t ask him how he knew.

“I have seen photographs of paintings depicting the life of Isammed,” McMurtrey said. “And the Prophet’s face is never shown; it always has a veil over it. How is it that you dare to go and look upon the face of Allah?”

“That painting style came about because artists were fearful of showing inaccuracies in either Isammed or His family, and because they did not wish to be sacrilegious. I journey to see Allah because I received a calling to do so. If Allah’s prophet, Isammed, were on this very ship I could look upon Him, and a glorious sight it would be! So too do I expect to gaze upon the beloved countenance of Allah Himself.”

McMurtrey furrowed his brows, wondered how a woman could occupy an important position in Isammedanism, as seemed to be the case here. Weren’t women forced to occupy lowly positions in that faith, hiding behind veiled chadors in public? He wanted to ask her about this, hesitated.

It was apparent that Zatima had fielded such questions before, and she took this one before it crossed McMurtrey’s lips: “I see you are puzzled,” she said. “I am a rarity, it is true. American-born, I have lived in desert lands. I am directly descended from the first Zatima of note, the one who was daughter of Isammed and ancestress of the Isammed imams and Sivvy caliphs. Through this ancestry and my rather assertive personality, I gained the respect of the leaders of my faith. I am one of the only female imams.”

“Very impressive.” McMurtrey tried not to sound patronizing.

“When you made Allah’s announcement, I recognized the truth and caught the nearest camel.” Her eyes twinkled. “A car, actually. It took me to the hypersonic airport, and here I am. I joke only a little about the camel, for I ride on occasion. My people are not technologically advanced. There is much poverty and sickness, much hope that I might bring help to them from Allah.”

“You are Sivvy?”

Her eyes flashed proudly. “I am. And my direct descent from He Who Walks in Grace is integral to the legitimacy of all Sivvy imams. Sadly, millions who profess Isammedanism are misguided—Unnis, Ahhabis, Noddiyyas and even Tufer mystics. Allah will straighten them out.”

“Some Unni sharifs of the Al Khalil family are descended from Isammed as well,” McMurtrey said, to impress her.

“And they are traitors,” she snapped. “I follow the only true way.” She spun and went to her bunk, followed closely by the orange-robed Nanat Singh, who subsequently continued on past her to his own adjacent bunk.

Hit a nerve there,
McMurtrey thought.
Peculiar alliance between those two. What religion is that guy, Nandu?

McMurtrey recalled certain facts about the Sivvies. They had been followers of fanatical leaders over the centuries, including Isammed Rashid (1st Century), Ayatollah Rafakhom (2nd Century), and Ismail al-Muntazar (late 2nd Century, exiled to Ranus.) Sivvies rioted wildly against Wessornians before formation of the Inner Planet League. They even whipped themselves in public, bizarre displays purportedly designed to diminish themselves before Allah.

But this woman did not seem fanatical, and thus far McMurtrey rather liked her.

Punctuated computer tones filled the P. A. system, followed by Appy’s accented voice: “Assembly in one hour. There are separate meeting rooms, and you have been divided into cells: Sublevels A, B, and C. Room assignments are on display now.”

Without thinking, McMurtrey glanced at the wall screen on his headboard, where he had seen book-tape tides listed. In red-on-amber he saw this:

Assembly Room B-2 Report in 59m, 42s

The last number represented seconds, and these clicked away silently on the screen.

In the three weeks since the “dispatchings”of prisoners from Santa Guininas, Gutan had labored long hours, traversing many miles of Wessornia. Very early one morning he lay awake staring into the darkness of his sleeping compartment. The track-trailer sped along on autopilot, with occasional fragments of light finding their way into his room. He was somewhere on Coast Route 990 heading north.

There had been stops at penitentiaries in Sohigh, Port Landis, and Lava Bend. This last was a complete bust, as all eleven Death Row prisoners there obtained cyanide and administered it to themselves in a suicide pact only hours before Gutan’s arrival.

According to a Federal penitentiary system rule, this removed the fresh cadavers from Gutan’s jurisdiction, which normally would not have made him happy. In this case, however, all were men, so he hadn’t been deprived of an icy bed partner. He had his standards, he told himself, and only mature female cadavers would do.

He preferred 5.7 minutes of quick chill in the truck’s cooler, a setting he had arrived at through extensive experimentation. Fresh cadavers were like fine wine, to be handled in precisely the right way.

He hadn’t made this up himself. There was an underground morticians’ society known as Nouveau Silencius, connoisseurs of the freshly dead. They held regular clandestine meetings attended by expert speakers, at which members learned the ancient ways and rituals of the society. Gutan first become acquainted with the organization when he worked at his family’s funeral parlor, through a young man who drove a hearse for them. It wasn’t anything Gutan ever discussed with family members, and the only ritual of the society he ever adopted was the sex act. He had lost touch with the society but still liked to consider himself a member.