Authors: Brian Herbert
Tags: #Comics & Graphic Novels, #General, #Fiction, #Religious
“I would suggest that you keep an open mind,” Appy said. “It helps in the weathering of strange seas.”
“I already know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Orbust said. “Everything that’s worth knowing is in the Babul.” He held up the book.
“Do you know what’s wrong with religion today?” Appy asked. “Too many people are practicing it and not enough people are good at it.” He guffawed like a lunatic, letting the laughter go with such uncontrolled enthusiasm that it frightened McMurtrey.
Orbust, Smith and Tully exchanged nervous glances.
McMurtrey felt out of balance. These weren’t events he could have expected or planned for, and he felt uncomfortable in unpredictable situations. Was this computer creature mentally ill? Might it close the hatches and asphyxiate everyone? It didn’t sound crazy when it spoke, and it did speak of love and tolerance. But its laughter was decidedly demented, not normal by any stretch of the imagination.
“Dear me,” Appy said. “I’m being too loquacious. I’m an ethnic unit, you know, and ethnics—Oh, why be vague—I’ll tell you. I’m supposed to be of the Middist bioethnicity, and some say that’s why I’m so talkative. Dear me, why did I say that, casting aspersions on my own kind?”
McMurtrey heard a programming whir all around, a noise that didn’t sound quite right.
After a few seconds, Appy came back: “God informs me that talkativeness is not confined to one race or culture. He informs me that my ethnicity was programmed incorrectly and irreparably in the rash and press of events. Most particularly my accent is flawed; the Boss describes it as like that of a second-rate actor. I wish He hadn’t used the phrase ‘second-rate,’ and in your hands, gentlemen, this shouldn’t be taken out of context, shouldn’t be made into something it isn’t. I perform my job well, thank you, as evidenced by numerous holy kudos in my memory banks. I speak only the truth, even about myself.” Orbust shook his head, slipped his Babul into its holster. “Above all,” Appy said, “I’m a big-deal machine—a little rough around the edges, but God tolerates me.”
“What do you mean ‘the rush and press of events’?” Smith asked. “We’ve been waiting around this paltry burg for three weeks waiting to get off the ground!”
“Three weeks is nothing. You should know Time! In the circles I travel, we spell Time with a capital T!”
“I’d like some answers myself,” McMurtrey said. “Why was I left wondering what to do next? It’s been very unpleasant.”
“You have a brain, don’t you?” Appy said. “You want God should force-feed you?” McMurtrey felt blood rush to his face. “If you want to travel with me,” Appy said, “you must get used to caustic comments. I can’t abide stupidity, and as far as reprogramming me goes, get any ideas like that out of your heads. My type of computer only gets programmed once, and then most of the rest of it is up to me. I have as much Free Will as you do. Oh, I’ve got a hot line to God; you’ve seen that, and I get a lot of orders. But I am what I am. Computers, ships, any kinda mechanism working for God has to have a personality, see? It goes with the job, and everything is always in a rush.”
“Well, rush us to your Boss,” Orbust demanded.
“Take us to your leader?” Appy asked. No laughter this time.
After a pause, Appy said: “Your definition of rush is different from ours.”
“Exactly where are you,” McMurtrey asked, “inside the walls, on the flight deck?”
“You don’t need to know. Ho hum, tweedledeedum, such an empty head!” This came in singsong.
Then, in a normal tone of voice, Appy said, “I could fill your cerebral cavities to bursting. You gotta coupla million years to listen? You want I should tell you how I dust my micro-circuitry, too? There’s no time! Now I must take my leave and check all ship’s systems! God wants you to go out and bless the other ships while I’m occupied. Leave me for a while!”
“When should we come back?” Smith asked.
“You’ll know when to return,” Appy said. “And you’ll know
who
should return.”
McMurtrey felt like a child being sent from the room. He held his temper, asked, “You’re in instantaneous communication with God?”
“I’d have to explain different time frames to fully answer that. Weeks are as nothing to God, but a second can be a very long time. When you use the word ‘instantaneous,’ understand that we are not on any spectrum you would understand. Instantaneous to you might seem very slow to God, or exceedingly fast, depending upon circumstance. I’m on a thirty-eight D’Urthsecond delay to Him now. In the past it’s been slower and quicker, and under certain circumstances I’ve actually felt like I’m Him, the thoughts are so meshed with my own.”
Appy paused, then: “Look, stop diverting me with chitchat. You know how I like to talk, but there’s a mission here and this is the primary ship, the one McMurtrey is to travel in. How intuitive of you to know that and appear here, McMurtrey. But be somewhere else for a while, okay?”
“That sounds silly, blessing all the ships,” McMurtrey said, unwisely.
“A hacking cough upon you!” Appy roared. “Do as I say!”
So McMurtrey went off in the night to bless the balance of the fleet, carrying Orbust’s flashlight. The men accompanied McMurtrey for a short distance. Presently Orbust said something to Tully, and Orbust dropped back around a corner by himself while the others went on.
With a wind from the ocean picking up, Johnny Orbust slid stealthily to one side of a ship just south of Shusher. There, in low illumination from a porch light across the street he took off his holster and belt and removed the chemstrip from a pocket inside the belt. He spoke to the chemstrip: “Something highly concentrated that will metastasize in minutes, dissolving the metal of these ships.”
Suddenly Orbust remembered Appy’s comment that Shusher had a personality of its own, and wondered if this ship had a personality and a name. Were there listening devices on the skins of every ship in God’s fleet, detecting every word? It was too late to think of that now. He waited with bated breath.
For a moment the chemstrip remained in the upturned palms of Orbust’s hands. Then without changing shape it jerked into the air, and like a flying leech it attached itself to the ship. Orbust heard a scraping sound followed by hissing, as from meat on a griddle. Presently the chemstrip metamorphosed into its butterfly form and flew off.
Within ten minutes, Orbust had a handheld pumper, and he sprayed a landing strut of the nameless ship. He leaned close to the strut, couldn’t see its surface clearly. But he heard a corrosive, hissing sound. The chemical was doing its work!
He ran to rejoin McMurtrey and the others.
Orbust saw the flashlight beam two ships ahead, and the amorphous shapes of the small group of men. Sheltering himself from the wind, he sprayed another ship while hurrying by it—just a little liquid on a strut as he had done before.
McMurtrey and his Krassian escort were on a platform above the flat roof of a private garage, where another ship happened to set down. Orbust scaled a metal staircase that came with the platform, joined the others.
McMurtrey, standing with his head bowed and hair whipping in the breeze, was nearly finished with the same blessing he had administered to Shusher.
A dog barked from the yard next door, and on the lighted rear porch of that house a man and woman stood watching.
When McMurtrey finished, Orbust shot two sprays on the ship, with this comment: “Anointing fluid.”
Thinking this strange, McMurtrey nonetheless nodded his head in assent. There seemed to be no point in arguing either with this motley bunch or with Appy. He felt pressed from all sides, and as he descended the steps he felt the sudden onslaught of a ferocious, hammering headache.
Dogs were barking all over town, in a drumlike, message-laden cacophony. House lights flashed on, and in the distance around Domingo’s Reef, Tent City was lighting up.
Orbust led the way between the rest of the vessels in the fleet. At each, McMurtrey invoked the blessing, and Orbust followed with a misting of anointing fluid.
“You still need to spray Shusher,” the long-bearded, disheveled Krassian said to Orbust. They were on the way back to town, from the tip of Domingo’s Reef where the farthest vessel had been.
“Already did,” Orbust growled.
The wind whistled, roared and surged through the streets of town, rattling fence boards and pieces of roofing metal. These noises, combined with the incessant wave action, prevented anyone except Orbust from noticing low, hissing sounds that came from ships the men passed on their way back to Shusher. Orbust smiled to himself at the surprise he had prepared for so many heathens and infidels.
He thought as well of the people who would be aboard Shusher. Only Orbust, Tully and Smith among Orbust’s cabalists had proclaimed an affinity for Shusher, that visceral feeling so many people in St. Charles Beach were experiencing for particular ships in God’s fleet. The others in his group might board other ships, or they might not go at all. Orbust didn’t care, hadn’t gotten to know any of them very well. Tully knew them best, had rounded them up for the show of force at McMurtrey’s.
This Kundo Smith with the red collar said he was a NuNu Pentecostalist, and Tully claimed to be a Found-Againer. The denominations they represented concurred with many of Orbust’s Reborn Krassee beliefs, such as one God, Immaculate Conception and Dual Resurrection. In recent weeks they had conducted daily theological sessions, some heated and some amicable. To a limited extent, Orbust concurred with what Appy had said about finding areas of agreement between belief systems. But Orbust intended to use Smith and Tully as a wedge and a source of strength against infidels who were even further from the Lord, with Orbust’s beliefs ultimately prevailing over everyone else’s.
Orbust wondered who else would be aboard Shusher, and how many Krassians there would be. McMurtrey was no Krassian, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he was to be aboard—the principal passenger, according to Appy. Was this Rooster an atheist? Whatever category he fell into, Orbust admitted grudgingly that McMurtrey’s statement of God’s location rang true. It was like the innate feeling about which ship to go on, akin to Orbust’s belief in God Himself.
But what purpose could God have in such a messenger? The man had confessed himself a fraud, and God must have known about it all along. Orbust wanted to know more about this buffoon, McMurtrey, about his real religious beliefs, if he held any. With that information, Orbust would be stronger.
Knowledge equals strength,
he thought.
Orbust contemplated the panoply of religions in the star system, and the representatives of those faiths he had seen in St. Charles Beach. These religions and their adherents were vague, shadowy shapes to him, amalgams of insipid, misdirected people. Barbarians all of them, arid any who didn’t listen to the correct way would burn forever in the fire pits of Hell.
Chapter 4
She was nubile in every exotic dimension of the word, a graceful, sensuous creature in scanty clothing, cast from the molds of sods. One day a young noble from afar came on invitation to her planetoid, and when he set eyes upon her he was drawn to her in the strongest physical sense. This angered and frightened him, for he was a cerebral young man who had always prided himself on his ability to override the urgings of his libido.
So he asked her, in the most arctic of tones: “Why can’t you rise above your sexuality?”
Her reply: “Why can’t any of us?”
And he had no answer for this.
—A Folktale of the Old Galaxies
By the time they reached the white ship Shusher, a crowd had gathered around it. Flashlight beams danced on the riveted skin of the craft, and the air was alive with many languages. To the left and right, McMurtrey noted that every other ship in sight was receiving like attention.
“Life insurance! Life insurance!” a robot salesman shouted, working the crowd. “See me before you board! Last chance for insurance!”
Disgusting scum,
McMurtrey thought. These robots were more tasteless than any human salesman had ever been, with every answer programmed into them. It was virtually impossible to say “no” to them, so only fools or the very brave engaged a life insurance broker in conversation.
‘Never look a life insurance robot in the eye,’ the saying went.
McMurtrey heard Appy’s voice, looked toward the ship’s entry hatch.
“Out!” Appy shouted. “A pox if you return! Only the names I call! No luggage or toiletries either, dunderheads! Can’t any of you read?” The computer’s voice had a metallic ring to it when heard from outside the ship, but it remained recognizable.
Dunderheads?
McMurtrey thought.
What an odd word for Appy to use. This computer has a bad temper.
McMurtrey pushed his way through to the ramp that led to the ship’s hatch, and the Krassians kept close behind.
Four men and three women rumbled hastily down the ramp, fleeing the ship. Some carried bags. The group melted into the throng, except for one woman who left her bag with a man and then returned to the ship.
Appy’s accented voice cut the cool air cleanly, calling out the names of those who were welcome on the voyage: “Pitarkin, Nathaniel R . . . Scovill, Cecilia . . . Markwell, Jason Q . . . Scanners activated to verify identities . . . No tricks, and don’t try to sneak on any more baggage. . . . “
But McMurtrey saw a few travelers board with weapons worn outside their clothing, secured by sheaths, straps and various harnessing arrangements. They weren’t rejected, so it seemed that weapons were not considered “baggage.” He wondered about the extent of personal hygiene supplies aboard. If there weren’t any, or if they were inadequate, the odors would not be pleasant.
A small electric sign on one side of the ship’s hatch became apparent, in bright purple letters:
PERSONAL PROPERTY LIMITATION
BRING ONLY WHAT YOU’RE WEARING
This sign hadn’t been there before, or it hadn’t been lit. McMurtrey thought of the pocket knife, coins and wallet in his pickpocket-proof trousers.
Pickpocket-proof trousers,
he thought.
On one hand, it struck him funny to have on such attire in the midst of religious people, many of whom rejected all material goods. Most of the voyagers appeared to be unarmed, and a number were obvious ascetics, with bare feet, shaven heads and thin robes. There were nuns, priests, rabbis, pastors, monks, lamas, and perhaps even bishops and archbishops, judging from the elegant, golden-threaded robes of some.
Then McMurtrey remembered having heard someone say that you had to watch out most for Krassians—especially the ones who “wear their religions on their sleeves.” It was a caller on a radio show, he recalled, a fellow who cited bad experiences with the type he spoke about. “They think they can be forgiven for anything,” he said, “so they’ll rob you blind.”
McMurtrey held no personal animosity toward the adherents of any faith, had known a number of Krassians who seemed quite decent, and none of the other variety. Still, the concept of a person who could be forgiven for virtually any act seemed detestable, and he wondered how prevalent this strange doctrine was.
Appy called out the names of Johnny Orbust, C.T. Tully and Kundo Smith. They filed around McMurtrey (Orbust wearing his large, holstered pistol) and boarded the ship. Seconds later when McMurtrey heard his own name, he followed.
A chrome-plated dispensing machine he hadn’t noticed before was mounted on the bulkhead just inside the main passenger compartment. After he went through an Identification scanner in the hatchway, he was instructed by Appy to take a cabin assignment ticket from the dispenser. Nothing was said about the contents of his pockets.
McMurtrey took an oversized red and yellow ticket, caught an elevator to Mezzanine Level 6. He had been assigned Cabin 66, and noticed an abbreviated map on the back of the ticket.
He stepped from the elevator with a half dozen fellow passengers, checked his map and went to the left, tramping along a softly padded walkway for a short distance. The material beneath his feet was light gray and porous, looked like weathered cork with a glossy sealer coat applied over it, and absorbed sound so efficiently he hardly heard his own passage. The walkway opened onto a wide, partitioned mezzanine that had a curved black railing on the left and curved silver-gray interior partitions directly ahead and to the right, all following the contour of the ship’s body.
People from the elevator filed around McMurtrey, into the interior spaces. He was a little confused, studied the map.
“Outside aisle,” a woman said to him, looking over his shoulder, “by the railing.”
McMurtrey had been on one of these levels before when the boys first figured out the puzzle-locks and got aboard the ships, but all levels looked much the same, and that preview hadn’t helped him much.
McMurtrey heard more people approaching from behind, talking. He felt a sudden urgency that they might think him slow-witted, and he hurried to the left, onto the walkway along the railing.
Now he could see that the mezzanine went all the way around the ship, with a circular shaft extending through the core of the ship on all mezzanine levels. The open shaft seemed like wasted space.
Cabin numbers were marked along a substantial wall to his right, and McMurtrey located a place on the wall designated “Cabin 66.” He recalled the screen he would be able to drop to make this a room.
The wall was in varying shades of silver-gray, darker at the base than at the ceiling, with tones that blended with the deck surface. His bunk was folded into the wall, and its location could only be seen upon close scrutiny that revealed fine lines on the wall in a rectangular shape, long side vertical. There were raised areas to the left of this in various geometric shapes. On his earlier visit, McMurtrey hadn’t actually opened a bunk. Now he pushed at the geometric shapes, trying to slide them open.
Appy was calling the names of people who hadn’t reported yet, announcing takeoff at 5:17 A.M., and that the ship wouldn’t wait for anyone. Appy referred to the travelers as “pilgrims,” a description that seemed apt to McMurtrey.
He felt like any other in the quest for God now, his special status having been reduced to a common mezzanine-level bunk assignment.
On one side, a tall, slender woman in a maroon jumpsuit arrived and began inspecting her bunk. She was thirty or thirty-five, with graceful movements and the golden brown skin of a mula-black. She had small breasts, but attractively proportioned, a good facial profile and dark, mysterious eyes. She glanced at him aloofly for a second, and he saw that she wasn’t nearly as pretty from the front as from the side. Her nose was very wide. Still, on balance he found her attractive.
She opened several geometric panels and pressed buttons inside, activating devices in her cabin. It disturbed McMurtrey that a woman seemed to be figuring out the controls more quickly than he could. She must have been there before, he decided, or someone had provided her with instructions.
Her bunk clicked down, and a stiff plazymer-like curtain dropped from the ceiling, concealing her from McMurtrey. The curtain provided privacy all the way around, with adequate passageway around the outside of the enclosure to get between it and the railing. Presently the curtain shot back up, revealing the woman.
Her eyes flared angrily when she saw McMurtrey staring at her, and she turned to face him full on, hands on hips.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded, voice husky.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was . . . ” He looked away, then back at her, sheepishly.
Now she was smiling, a hard smile, but the eyes had softened. “I’m Kelly Corona,” she said. “You’re the Grand Exalted Rooster, right? I saw your speech. Good stuff, baring your soul like that. I admire your guts.”
“Uh, thanks.” He caught himself staring at her chest, thinking how well her breasts were formed. He glanced up.
She was studying his face intently, must have noticed the direction of his gaze. He felt hot around the temples, with perspiration there. He couldn’t take his eyes from hers.
Her eyes were very gentle but mysteriously strong and ever so dark—he sensed layers of emotion and calculation within the darkness of those pupils. Were they brown? He couldn’t tell, but they were calming and hypnotic.
Her eyes flashed, as if fingers had been snapped, and he emerged from a trance.
“I like the way you look at me,” she said.
Krassos!
McMurtrey thought.
What does she mean by that?
He felt helpless and confused. He wanted to leap at her, drop the curtain and make wild, rampaging love. How many months had it been since he had been with a woman? Eight? Ten?
Closer to ten,
he thought.
“Uh, excuse me,” he said, feeling like a fool. “I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that . . . ”
Go ahead,
a little inner voice said to him.
Tell her you want to romp with her!
He scratched his head, looked away. He had fumbled like this before with women, either consciously mishandling signals or failing entirely to interpret them until later, when all opportunity had dissipated. Too often he looked at women incorrectly, he knew, from the sexual standpoint. Invariably they picked up on this and turned away. Oh, he had a large and clumsy cuteness to him, and some women took to that at first. But it never lasted. This one wouldn’t last.
Her gaze was angry now, starting to flicker away from his. It was happening again. Too late even to compliment her beauty. But what did he have to lose, if all was lost anyway?
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice too low. “Especially your eyes.”
“What?” she said, her tone irritated. She licked a fingertip, applied moisture to one eyebrow and smoothed the brow down.
“I said you have nice eyes.”
Her gesture with the eyebrow hadn’t bothered him, and he felt good about this.
“Listen, McMurtrey, do you know who I am? I’m supposed to be captain of this friggin’ ship. Number One Honchess. Yessirree Linda. But something is goofy here . . . mondo screwo. I passed up a cushy star freighter assignment to be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a Merchant Spacer, and I received an air wave—you know, one of those new nearly invisible Wessornian Union radio bubbles that finds you and floats in the air.”
“Yeah,” McMurtrey said. “I’ve heard about those. They burst, don’t they, and words flow out—up to what, fifteen-second messages?”
“Right.”
“If I had a suspicious mind, I’d say that someone used that technology on me to simulate God, the message about His location. But hell, I talked with Him for several minutes. Those bubbles can’t hold that much. Anyway, other things have happened, like the ships.”
She nodded. “The air wave I got wasn’t anything occult. It was from Appy, and he promised me a captaincy. I was hearing publicity about you and God at the time, and it all sounded too interesting to pass up. But I’ve yet to see the controls of the ship. I’ve never seen a ship like this before.”
“Appy drove me crazy too.”
“I confronted him a while ago, and he told me to report to my berth right out here with everyone else, I’ve—-”
“With the rabble, right?”
“I didn’t mean . . . ”
“Forget it. I feel demoted myself. You’d better keep this down . . . could panic the passengers.”
She lowered her voice, but only a little: “Panic the passengers? You’re a passenger, McMurtrey. Aren’t you worried that we’re due to take off without a captain?”
“Call me Ev, for Evander.”
She nodded, with a tense smile. “Kelly.”
“Kelly, it can’t be too bad. Somebody or some thing flew these ships here, and they should be able to take ’em off again. Maybe they’re gonna get us into outer space before your skills are needed.”
“Well, I’m damned upset about the way this is being handled, and I’m gonna give that loudmouthed computer a piece of my mind.” She stalked off.
McMurtrey explored his own cabin buttons, and when he was well on his way to figuring them out, he found he had a tiny enclosure like Corona’s. With the divider down it was about two and a half meters in length by the same width. A wide floor area was on one side of the enclosure, with one side of the bed and the bottom of the bed abutting the divider.
McMurtrey bounced on the mattress, and it felt firm despite his great weight. The headboard had an illuminated amber screen with a wide bar at the base. When he pressed the bar, a number of book-tape titles appeared in red on the screen, along with instructions on how to use the device. Beneath the wide bar was a compartment with earphones, and the instructions said that any title on the screen could be ordered for listening.
He heard voices outside his enclosure, muffled only slightly by the divider.
The selection of book-tapes was varied, from bestselling fiction to collections of poetry, religion, the occult, history and politics. Some of the titles were eyecatching and most surprising, given the setting of the ship:
Love Slaves In the Sunset
. . .
The Kinky Twins
. . .
Diary Of a Mad Hooker.