The Race for God (31 page)

Chapter 12

A political hierarchy can force people to conceal their belief in God. But rulers cannot, in so controlling, erase the existence of God. The tendency in human events, when viewed on a Grand Scale over countless millennia, is toward Truth. In the long run, Truth will not be denied. One day man and his God will face one another, no matter how we try to delay the inevitable.

—Excerpt from Confidential Bureau of Loyalty

Memorandum: “Counter-Ecumenical Strategies”

Appy’s voice blared across the loudspeakers, startling McMurtrey out of sleep. Something about a “main exit . . . ” And: “I’m back online.”

McMurtrey hadn’t slept well on the floor of the assembly room. How long had he lain here? Light was low, and amid the rustling sounds of others as they awoke, McMurtrey emitted a solitary whistled tone, illuminating the dial of his Wriskron. Less than three hours.

Appy again: “Passengers debarking in Heaven please use the main exit.” Appy laughed wildly, then: “Just kidding. There is no Heaven.”

“Uhh,” McMurtrey said, rolling over. “That insidious laugh of Appy’s. What is
wrong
with him?”

“Who knows?” Orbust slurred, from across the room. “Go back tuh sleep.”

Appy: “Arriving Tananius-Ofo in twenty-two D’Urth minutes.”

“Huh?” Corona said, a shadow to McMurtrey’s immediate left. He saw her sit up, and she added, “What did he say? Twenty-two minutes? Krassos, we’re there!”

McMurtrey sat up, yawned. The window to space was screened, and low light came from no particular source. Other human shadows moved in the recesses of the room, accompanied by low voices.

They’d been afraid to walk around the ship because of the killer aboard, so Zatima had suggested that they sleep in the assembly room. When all agreed, the lights went out, automatically.

McMurtrey recalled Corona’s words, and they’d been salve on the fears induced by sudden darkness: “When you all decide to get up, the lights will go back on.”

Now McMurtrey identified the voices of Yakkai, and of each judge.

Then Gutan said, “The lights, Appy.”

“Let there be light,” Yakkai said flippantly.

But nothing cut the shadows.

The program is gone!” Corona whispered to McMurtrey. “I had it when I went to sleep—it was more difficult to access, but I thought it might have been because I was tired. Now, nothing! Nothing over the comlink, either, but that’s a separate connection. There may be no message traffic now.”

“I hope you’re totally free,” McMurtrey said.

She didn’t answer.

“The door better open,” Orbust said. He stumbled over something, muttered.

McMurtrey heard the door click open, detected no change in light.

“You goin’ out there?” Yakkai asked.

“With a killer out there?” Orbust asked. “Are you kidding?”

The door clicked shut.

“This is great,” Orbust said. “No lights, a killer aboard, and where are we?”

From Orbust’s direction came the soft and repeated slap of flesh against leather—it sounded like Orbust drawing his Babul over and over. But with his healing packs on?

“We must have been close to Tananius-Ofo when our Gluons collided,” Gutan said.

“What happened to the Gluon you were on?” McMurtrey asked. “Appy said it was called Pelter.”

“I dreamed it cartwheeled into deep space,” Gutan said. “I watched from somewhere—I couldn’t tell from where. Pelter—that was the name of the professor who created Mnemo.”

“Another question for God,” McMurtrey said. “And we may be there in a few minutes!”

McMurtrey heard Krassian, Nandaic and Middist chants and psalms, in sweet harmony. They were lilting songs and verses, threading gently through his consciousness.

The shadowy forms around him shape-shifted to dark human skeletons, silhouetted against an aura-yellow haze. One shape in the distance became an Isammedan, high in a minaret tower, calling the faithful to prayer in a bell-like voice. The emaciated foreground forms knelt in prayer, and their invocations blended like the parts of a harmony.

To McMurtrey these people, with all their apparent differences, seemed the same.

The silhouettes became powder, and disintegrated in explosions that hurled black specks into the yellow background.

These images faded to darkness, and Corona said, “What if D’Urth has been destroyed for its iniquities and those on God’s ships are the only survivors?”

“The arks of Toor,” Orbust said. “Just as it says in scripture.”

The slap of flesh on leather again-—three times. Orbust couldn’t be reading that Babul in the dark. Maybe touching it brought scriptural passages to mind.

“What do you suppose God looks like?” Gutan asked. “Are we really in his image?”

“We are ‘after His kind,’” Orbust said.

Yakkai’s voice: “I’m reminded of the minister who was preaching about man being made in God’s image, when at that very moment the village idiot walked by.” He laughed, a harsh rasp, and broke quickly into singsong:

“They seek Him here

They seek Him there;

These pilgrims seek

God everywhere.

Is He within,

Or is He afar?

Might we find Him

Upon a star?”

“Must you taint this sacred moment?” Orbust asked in an exasperated tone. He uttered a prayer.

“Rather a neat rhyme, Yakkai,” Corona said. “But I feel certain we’ll find God is on a planet.”

The ship shook violently.

“We’re descending through a storm over Tananius-Ofo,” Appy announced.

McMurtrey held Corona tightly, and in the darkness with the ship seeming to rattle apart around them, he was deathly afraid. He was angry with his God too, and felt a great onrushing disappointment. What sort of God was this, if He couldn’t provide clear weather over His own domain, if He couldn’t stop Jin from killing pilgrims on a ship in His fleet, if He couldn’t even keep lights burning on that ship?

This was the God who permitted suffering.

McMurtrey felt very vulnerable, and he longed for the ignorant security of his little niche on D’Urth.

“A sorney for your thoughts,” Corona said.

“I want my mommy,” he said.

She laughed uneasily, squeezed his hand.

The lights flashed on, and simultaneously the wall panels slid aside to reveal the window. More light poured in from the window, but probably not directly, if Corona’s early theory about mirrors and prisms inside the walls held true. McMurtrey was too enthralled with the moment to ask.

The storm seemed to have passed, or they had dropped beneath it, and McMurtrey saw a reverse image of the colors in D’Urth’s sky. This sky was white—gray-white and darker gray shades approaching black—with cerulean blue clouds floating in the air in varying shapes like majestic atmospheric ships.

Shusher was descending through blue clouds in a gentle, controlled spin, with the planet’s surface just coming into view beneath them. It was a colorless, curved surface stretching away to shades of black and gray, with large splotches and ribbons of white between.

As the planet neared, McMurtrey decided the white splotches and ribbons must be lakes and rivers, and that the darker shades were land masses.

Appy confirmed this over the P.A., and added: “Tananius-Ofo is essentially a black and white planet, with a range of tones between. Only one primary color is found here: blue, in various monochromatic intensities.”

“Tell us about God,” Orbust said. His green sportscoat looked no worse from the fight with Singh, and might have been repaired by the same tailoring equipment employed on Yakkai’s Sidic clothes. The healing packs were no longer on Orbust’s arms and face, and deep purple streaks ran across his forehead and down his nose.

“I would not presume to describe our Lord and Master,” Appy said.

McMurtrey felt his terror subsiding, for now points of reference were appearing before him, tangible objects. He felt a childlike yearning to know God.

McMurtrey beheld no heavenly firmament as he neared his destination, no ethereal lights, no gates of pearl through which all entering had to pass. No winged, singing angels fluttered near to guide the ship into port. This was a nearly colorless planet, not a glorious place ‘on high’ where his senses might feast into eternity.

They were only a few thousand meters above the surface, and the terrain became visible. The land looked inhospitable, with black mountain crags that jutted through the atmosphere and fell away in cliffs to limitless depths.

“We’re dropping right into the mountains,” Makanji said.

Taam the Hoddhist stood closest to the window, his thin white robe a sharp contrast to high black mountains beyond. With an open expression on his face and his arms lowered at his sides, palms facing forward, he appeared ready to accept whatever lay in store for him.

Makanji moved to the Hoddhist’s side, and Makanji’s body spoke the same language.

Of course they have to accept it,
McMurtrey thought.
We all do. But they look so calm, so trusting. I suppose God
—
Tananius-Ofo—would want that. He would want Faith.

Did God bring us here to tell us something? Why couldn’t He tell us by message to D’Urth? Why such a dramatic-Dramatic. That might explain a lot, with so many people claiming to have spoken with God. Which of them lied and which told the truth? Which misunderstood, or lied? Will we take back a group photo of ourselves with God or something more conclusive, and messages direct from His mouth? Are these to be the ultimate, undebatable messages from God?

What messages could God have? Be peaceful and eliminate sin or you’ll all be wiped out? Is this the angry, fear-inspiring God of Wessornian scripture?

With the ship very close to the tops of the highest peaks, McMurtrey realized he hadn’t seen a sun. He speculated it must have recently set, or it was about to rise.

“What time of the day is it, Appy?” McMurtrey asked.

“Midday,” came the response, over the P.A.

“Where’s the sun?” McMurtrey asked. “Behind a cloud-cover that looks like white sky?”

“All clouds are blue here; all sky is white; there is no sun.”

“Then how can it be light here?” McMurtrey asked. “Is the planet’s surface frozen?”

Appy chuckled.

“I get it,” McMurtrey said. “This is Heaven, right? No standard laws of nature out here, eh?”

“There is no Heaven,” Appy said. “There is only Tananius-Ofo.”

It occurred to McMurtrey that this might be the domain of Satan. A chill ran through his spine, and he shivered.

“We’re beneath the highest peaks,” Corona said. “It doesn’t look cold out there. I don’t see ice or snow—of course they might look different here—but the mountains don’t have an icy sheen to them. This place is weird.”

“Cliffs all around,” Orbust said. He sounded worried.

“We’re having a smooth landing,” Appy reported. “No need for tethers or cushy stuff this time!”

“Where are we landing?” Corona asked.

The ship jerked slightly, came to a stop with a silver-gray cliff face visible through the window. It was a sheer rock wall not far from the ship, and at McMurtrey’s vantage across the room from the window he couldn’t see the ground. An uncomfortable, empty feeling filled his groin.

“Where the hell did we land?” Corona asked.

“Inappropriate choice of words,” Gutan said. Is
it?
McMurtrey thought.

“Watch your language, Ms. Corona,” Orbust said, his tone imploring. “Of all places, of all times, please!” Harley Gutan was first out the door into the corridor.

McMurtrey followed the others upstairs to the main passenger compartment, a route they had to follow to exit the ship.

The door that Jin had ripped away was in place and like new, and when it had been opened and McMurtrey passed through, he beheld a strange sight. The main passenger compartment was spotless, entirely devoid of bodies. It smelled of antiseptic, a lemon scent, and there were no bullet holes in the deck, in the ceiling or in the walls.

Gutan’s chair sat where it had been, appeared undamaged.

The travelers stepped quietly and kept close to one wall of the compartment as they passed through, whispering to one another that Appy or Shusher must have disposed of the bodies.

McMurtrey smelled the acrid odor of Gutan, even with Corona between them.

Nervously, McMurtrey glanced up to his right, to the sixth-level railing high over the compartment. No sign of Jin there, or anywhere else.

The main exit was open, with the metal ramp in place against a black rock wall. Gutan and Yakkai were leading the way across, with the other travelers pressing close behind. McMurtrey was last onto the ramp, and when he looked over the ledge his stomach tightened.

The ramp traversed a chasm, the bottom of which couldn’t be seen, and the other end of the ramp rested on a narrow ledge on a black cliff face. To McMurtrey’s left he saw the silver-gray cliff he had seen through the window, and high overhead a patch of white marked the sky. Curiously, although they were deep in a forest of spires on a sunless world, the light seemed adequate and the temperature was comfortable.

Like a fat fly on a wall, their ship clung to the nearest cliff face with four stiff legs or brackets that revealed no means of attachment.

Something ultra-sticky and strong on the ends of the legs,
McMurtrey thought.
Or we’ve bored into the cliff.

Corona pushed by Gutan and Yakkai to the front, followed by McMurtrey, who thought he would feel safer on the ledge than hanging from it.

“Welcome!” a mellifluous voice said. “Nice to see you!”

As McMurtrey reached the ledge he saw to his left a man’s chubby face peeking from an opening in the cliff. It was a cherubic and unbearded countenance, beaming with delight and good will. The man was elfin and aged, with deeply creased gray skin, thick, dark eyebrows, a large nose and very short, dark hair cut flat on top. Dark circles underscored albino white eyes. He was smiling, but did not look well.

“Right this way, ladies and gentlemen! Step lively, before the ledge gives way! I may be too tired to save all of you!”

Strange comment,
McMurtrey thought.
Who is this?