The Race for God (20 page)

My God,
McMurtrey thought, trying not to act like he was interested in the titles on the screen.
Tm actually speaking with this woman I’ve just met about her mammary glands!

“Daydreaming? About what?”

“I dunno. Stuff I can’t remember.”

“Maybe it was about sex, or about your mother, or maybe, like that guy said at the meeting, you were like Reeshna, without a thought in your head.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Why don’t we drop the screen and talk some more? We could have a cup of coffee, sit at the table, whatever.”

“I don’t think I should.”

He glanced at her, saw a flash of hot temper in her eyes and looked away.

“Obviously you’re bothered by my forwardness.”

“Well, uh . . . ”

“You don’t want to be bothered by it, though. I sense that.”

McMurtrey’s face was warm, and he felt perspiration trickling through his eyebrows. He wanted to get away and didn’t want to get away. Ultimately he craved an experience like this, but he wanted it on his terms, at his initiative.

“I’m not inviting you to a tryst, you know,” she said. “We don’t even have to talk about breast meat—a little chicken joke, if you don’t mind.”

McMurtrey pursed his lips with displeasure.

She smiled at her double-entendre. “I’m merely fascinated by the subject—women having these floppy appendages hanging on their chests where everyone can gawk at them and compare. It’s a sociological phenomenon you see, the way different cultures treat the subject. I see no point in acting self-conscious about them, and when I notice people staring at them, I sometimes bring the subject up to see what’s ticking in a person’s brain. I like to give people a hard time, I guess. It gets into psycho-cultural stuff. Men are lucky in one sense, being constructed in a less sexually conspicuous fashion.”

You don’t wanna know what’s ticking in my brain,
McMurtrey thought.

“You probably think because I’m black I’m a hooker.”

“No, I don’t, not at all. . . . “ He couldn’t look at her, felt his eyes burning. Had he thought that, given off signals? He didn’t think he had. But her tone made him feel guilty.

“A little dark meat, eh? Is that what you’re thinking?” She chuckled.

There seemed no end to these damnable chicken jokes!

“Aren’t all black women hookers?” she said. “Especially those who openly discuss sexual matters with men?”

McMurtrey shook his head. “I didn’t say or think that.”

She scrutinized his expression. “Well, Mr. Mac, I’ll . . . ”

“They call me Big Mac.”

“Very well, B.M., I’ll have you know that I’m not certain if I ever want to sleep with you. Admittedly, I find something compelling about you. No rush of womanly passion, though. Sorry I’m so direct; I don’t like to waste time.”

“Don’t worry about it.” McMurtrey was feeling a bit more comfortable, as if a crisis were passing. But she was slipping away, as others had before her.

“Any time you want, let’s sit and talk,” Corona said, patting his shoulder. “As friends. We’ll be a long time in space.”

“How about right now?” McMurtrey offered impulsively. His voice cracked, a sure giveaway.

She smiled, swung around on her bed and tapped the main control panel. The screen dropped, and McMurtrey had to jump across the foot of her bed to avoid it.

“Whew!” he exclaimed. “Does that thing have a safety?”

“Who knows? Say, that coulda ruined your whole day, getting sliced in half.” She licked a fingertip, and with that finger smoothed the hairs of one eyebrow. “Actually, I checked it. There is a safety”

They sat crosslegged on the bed, looking at one another, and he asked, “Why do you keep doing that?”

“What?”

“With your eyebrows.”

“Oh, I hardly notice it anymore. My long eyebrows are always dropping down over my eyes.”

“Why don’t you trim the damn things?”

She tilted her head back, raised her eyebrows. “Keep forgetting to. Besides, wouldn’t that just encourage growth?”

“Darned if I know. Could you at least stop doing that around me? It’s . . . quirky.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’ll try to remember, if it bothers you. Say, what right do you have to even ask? We aren’t an item.”

“Aw, forget it. It’s my problem, not yours. Before God spoke to me I had this condition where little personal mannerisms like yours distracted me real bad. So much that I’d get tongue-tied, couldn’t think my way out of . . . Anyway, I’d have to avoid certain kinds of people.”

“Like me, the quirky ones.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. Like I said, I have the problem, or I had the problem. It seems to have stopped, but I’m afraid something will set it off again and I’ll relapse.”

She smiled gently, said she would try to do as he wished.

“I have other problems too,” he said, “even more obvious ones. I’m fat, for one.”

“You’re not fat! I like the way you look!”

“I’m fat. I’ve tried every diet. I even took food-dreaming pills, the kind that are supposed to satisfy your beta-endorphin pleasure sensors while you sleep. I was supposed to wake up feeling full, and I did. But I ate anyway. My fat cells wouldn’t be denied.”

Corona smiled mischievously, said, “See that little instrument panel over there on the wall?”

“Yeah. Just like mine.”

“It drops the bed, right?”

“Yeah. You already did it.”

“It’s a berth control panel.”

“Huh?”

“Berth. B-e-r-t-h.”

“Oh.”

“Could have a bearing on b-i-r-t-h, too.”

“You’re silly! Don’t think I missed that B.M. comment, either.”

“Hey, what else is there to do out here in space? I make a few jokes here and there.”

“No more chicken jokes, okay? I’ve heard ’em all.”

“Okay, okay.”

They laughed, went to the dinette set. Corona ordered coffee from an automatic food butler mounted on the headboard wall. The butler, when activated by a button behind the main panel array, displayed a small plazymer door with a voice activation box to one side and instructions printed on a sign.

McMurtrey glanced at the black and white weight gauge on the table edge. It showed him a full kilogram heavier than the last reading in his own cabin. He shook his head sadly.

For a while, McMurtrey sipped coffee and watched Corona. She had an easy grace about her, the way she turned her head and lifted the cup to her mouth. Sometimes she held her head a little askance and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, as if she were peering at him from a secret, shadowy hiding place.

Then McMurtrey’s fortunes turned for the worse. A black fly buzzed him, like an ancient warplane reconnoitering for attack. McMurtrey swatted at it, only swished air.

The fly darted out of his reach, ascended to the ceiling. Before long it dived toward its target with the most irritating buzz-song, forcing McMurtrey to duck.

“Damn it,” McMurtrey said. “That’s no ordinary fly. It’s a St. Charles Beacher, the most obstinate, accursed species ever bred.”

He whirled around as he spoke, keeping track of the fly. It grew quiet and landed on the headboard, then crawled perfunctorily onto the screen and down onto a space behind the screen.

“Stowaway,” McMurtrey rasped, catching Corona’s mirthful expression. “I hate those damned things.”

Corona finished her coffee, reached around and slid open the door of the food butler, placing the cup inside. In a glimmer of light, the cup disappeared.

“I checked our course with my quadlite signaler,” she said. “Have you ever seen one?”

He shook his head.

She brought out a tiny round brass piece from a leather pouch, flipped the piece open like a locket. “Navigation instrument,” she said.

The inside glowed green on one face, and there were tiny holes around the perimeter. The opposite face resembled a circuit board covered with solder trails. She said she’d had the signaler repaired hurriedly before the trip, and a cover-plate had been misplaced in the process, a plate that wasn’t necessary for the operation of the device. She said she had set the signaler to match the coordinates provided by God, and that as long as they were on course it glowed green.

“It’s extremely accurate,” she insisted. “Though I am leery of it on a voyage of this magnitude. The tiniest miscalculation could hurtle us trillions of lightyears in the wrong direction. As yet I have no idea what sort of navigation instruments they have installed aboard ship, but at the first opportunity I’m going to find out.”

“You’d better stay out of their secret rooms this time.”

“Shusher and Appy don’t scare me. I’ve kicked ass in my time.” She dropped the quadlite back in the pouch, and the unit knocked heavily against something else in there. She drew the drawstring of the pouch shut, secured the string in place with a sliding plazymer retainer.

“What else you got in there?”

“Chicken bones,” she said, with a wicked smile.

He squinted one eye warily. “You some kinda witch doctor? Oh, I’m a little slow.” He shook his head. “No more chicken jokes. You promised!”

“Maybe I am a witch doctor, or a shaman.” She laughed easily, popped the pouch into her jumpsuit.

McMurtrey glanced at her bed, and saw her taking in the direction of his gaze. Didn’t she miss anything?

“We’re only here to talk,” she reminded him. “Of course conversation is a form of intercourse.” Her eyes twinkled. “Breasts are forms, too.”

He sucked air noisily across his lips. “Shall we, uh, talk about intercourse and forms?”

“Aren’t you the bold one!”

“Enough of this wordplay.” He leaned heavily across the table, pulled her head close to his and pressed their lips together.

Corona’s mouth was warm and moist, and for an instant in the unspoken language of her lips she assented.

He didn’t expect her to cuff him, but she did, and despite their size difference, McMurtrey recoiled from the blow.

Her eyes were ablaze, expression focused with such flaming ire that all the lines on her forehead poured down the bridge of her nose.

“Whatsa matter?” he asked. “Didn’t you?. . . didn’t you want? . . . ” He felt overcommitted, like a scout engaging the enemy without his forces. The enemy. Did he really feel that way about women? It seemed that he did. But this one too? Couldn’t she be different?

“Krassos O’Shaugnessy no! I thought I explained that, about why I was discussing breasts! It was purely intellectual, not what you—”

He had seen uncertainty in her eyes even before she broke off her sentence. Her mouth slipped open, out of gear.

“Maybe it was more,” she admitted. “Just a little more.” Their eyes met, and once again, their lips. She put her arms around his shoulders, pulled him toward her with surprising strength.

The table jiggled, and somewhere in the base, fastenings popped.

“It’s . . . it’s going over!” McMurtrey said. He jumped to one side, still holding onto her, and remarkably they maintained their feet in a curious dance beside the table. She pressed her body tightly against his, and he felt the softness of her breasts against his stomach. Her face was upturned, eyes closed, and their mouths were welded one against the other.

God, this woman was a fantastic kisser!

But from far away, McMurtrey thought he heard a most unpleasant noise. He tried to keep it out of his mind, but knew his lips and embrace were faltering with the worry, not performing up to the standard required of the moment.

Why now, of all times?

Corona’s eyes flicked open sensuously, and where he withdrew she pressed forward. Subtle shiftings. She was becoming the female lead in this dance, smothering his mouth with hers, massaging the muscles of his neck and shoulders with her hands.

That noise, that infernal noise. It grew louder, inundating his eardrums.

He jerked away and ducked to one side.

Three flies buzzed his face in formation, passing so close that he felt one brush his cheek.

McMurtrey flailed after them like a berserker, crashing into the room-divider screen. It flexed but did not give way.

“I’m gonna kill those little bastards!” he howled.

Suddenly the screen shot up into the ceiling, and the flies escaped.

McMurtrey looked back, saw Corona at the control panel.

“How many of those Jehovah-puked things are on this ship?” he asked.

She shrugged, was about to tap another button, the one to drop the screen.

“Wait,” he said, with a gesture of one hand. He saw the flies alight on Jin, who sat crosslegged and naked on the deck in an ascetically bare cabin area. Two flies were on one knee, one fly on the other. Jin, in apparent meditation, appeared not to notice.

“The little bastards are on Jin,” McMurtrey said. “I’ll get ’em good, probably won’t even wake Jin up. He’s in a trance.”

McMurtrey only half heard words of protest from Corona, for he was focused on a mission learned in the war zones of St. Charles Beach, a task that had to be performed efficiently and immediately before the whole ship was overrun with this tenacious breed. No one could be expected to understand the severity of the situation, for to his knowledge he was the only Beacher aboard.

With lightning strokes he would slap hands on each knee, and it would be over.

Stealthily, with hardly a sound, the big man crept a few meters along the deck, reaching Jin. He knelt by the meditator, saw Jin’s eyes closed, not a muscle moving. The flies were motionless, still on the knees.

Slowly, ever so cautiously so as not to disturb the air, McMurtrey’s hands went forth. At just the right distance from their prey the hands paused, ready to strike.

Jin’s eyes opened. For an instant they appeared feral, seeming to say, “Touch me and you die.”

McMurtrey had to do a double take, for his first reaction had been fear, causing him to look away. Then logic overrode emotion and in hardly the tick of a heartbeat he fired a look back.

Again Jin’s eyes were closed.

Someone spoke behind McMurtrey. Faint words.

The flies didn’t move, not even a twitch of their spindly legs.

Simultaneously, McMurtrey’s hands shot forward.

Skin slapped skin.

Incredibly, Jin had dropped his forearms to a point just above his knees, blocking McMurtrey’s hands, and it was against these forearms that McMurtrey’s hands slapped skin.