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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614754282 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | WordFire Press LLC |
| Publication date: | 08/06/2016 |
| Pages: | 318 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.71(d) |
About the Author
He also wrote the Hellhole Trilogy (Hellhole, Hellhole Awakening, and Hellhole Inferno) and many international-bestselling Dune-series novels with Kevin J. Anderson. Recently, Brian published Ocean, an epic fantasy novel about environmental issues (based upon a concept by his wife, Jan). The premise of Ocean is highly original and revolutionary-the ocean and its dangerous sea creatures declare war against our civilization, in retaliation for human-caused pollution and other abuses to those waters. Like many of Brian's novels, it exposes an important social issue in a thought-provoking way.
Brian's highly original SF novel, The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma, came out in 2014-the imaginative story of a green utopia that is not a utopia for those living in it-the ecologically oriented government enforces its edicts with deadly police state methods. Publishers Weekly referred to this work as "a fresh and forbidding near-future world." That was just one of many excellent reviews that Brian's works have received, going all the way back to his first SF novel, Sidney's Comet, which Publishers Weekly described as "unusually inventive and original."
He recently completed a new SF novel, The Assassination of Billy Jeeling, and is working on another one. He and Kevin are also polishing up their 14th Dune series novel, Navigators of Dune.
Many of Brian's novels are highly original, and involve not only environmental issues, but issues involving politics, religion, and the history of human civilization. His new short story collection, Dangerous Worlds, includes many of his original ideas, including the startling premise for the collaborative story he wrote with Bruce Taylor, "Death of the Internet."
Read an Excerpt
As I described in Dreamer of Dune, the biography of my father, I had lunch with him at a Seattle restaurant in April, 1984. The two of us spoke of religion, and we agreed that it seemed ridiculous for so many belief systems to assert that they had the "one and only" path to God. Frank Herbert wrote of this in his classic novel Dune, where the C.E.T. (Commission of Ecumenical Translators) was said to have held a meeting among the representatives of major religions, and they set a common goal: "We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon--the claim to possession of the one and only revelation."
Without a title yet, I had in mind a new novel about the terrible things people do to one another under the banner of religion. In the beginning of the tale God would announce his location on a planet far across the universe and would invite people to come and visit him--for an unexplained purpose. The competing faiths would then race for God, stopping at nothing, including murder, to get there first.
"There's your title!" Frank Herbert exclaimed to me, across the small table. "The Race for God!" My illustrious father was right, and I went on to complete the novel under that title. Afteward I wrote another book about biblical history, and I have continued to deal with religious themes in the new Dune series novels, which I write with Kevin J. Anderson.
In The Race for God, I place the followers of several religions in a pressure situation where they must get along, must understand one another, in order to survive. This is obvious extrapolation of the way itis on Earth today, where there is a simmering, highly volatile conflict between western cultures and fundamentalist terrorists. The end-result is painfully obvious: if religious strife continues to escalate, with all of the emotionalism inherent in such disputes (and the access of each side to doomsday technology), the world will not last much longer. Along with the obvious perils of such a conflagration, there are serious ecological implications, since a large-scale modern war would be a horrendous polluter, ravaging much (or all) of the planet.
Science-fiction authors such as myself sometimes look at large issues like this and make dire warnings, hoping our stories will be read widely enough to make a real difference to humankind--the people in decision-making positions will take our words to heart. This book, despite the veil of humor, constitutes one of those warnings.
When I was researching The Race for God, I discovered that the various competing religions have more in common than they realized. Five of the major faiths--Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism--have variations of "The Ten Commandments" in their dogma. The admonitions weren't always presented in the same manner, but they are still very much alike. I also found similarities in methods of prayer and ceremony, in a belief in life eternal, in creation stories, in dietary restrictions, in a reverence for sacred places, and in the nature of God (or godlike figures).
It is easy to find differences between belief systems and cultures, but they are often only surface distinctions. Religious zealots and bigots play on these things all the time, trying to enlarge their own power structures. Think of the opposite: If they didn't foster revulsion toward outsiders, such hate-mongers would quickly lose their niches and vanish. This is a startling revelation, when put into the context of modern sectarian strife. And consider this as well: If one faith prays toward Jerusalem, another toward Mecca, and another toward True North, this can be viewed as more of a similarity than a difference. It can be the basis of interesting conversation, of learning about the beliefs of another faith, and of asking why they adhere to certain rituals.
While studying the various belief systems, it occurred to me that the major religions should focus on points where they agreed, instead of bickering over details. Not always an easy task, because it would require respecting the views of others instead of ridiculing them or trying to change them. But what a better world it would be if this policy became a new rule of behavior in all relationships--personal, social, religious, economic, and political. Ultimately, it's about respect, isn't it? Young people in tough neighborhoods understand this. For their own survival, they learn not to "diss" (disrespect) others. As societies we need to become skilled at that concept as well and apply it to everything we do.
I hope you enjoy the reissued edition of The Race for God. Following my father's advice, I have written it to be as entertaining as possible, but it is one of the most serious subjects any of us can ever imagine.
--Brian Herbert
Seattle, Washington
July 7, 2006
Many questions arose after Tananius-Ofo, God of the Universe, selected Evander Harold McMurtrey to deliver a startling celestial message. Certainly McMurtrey, of the small planet D'Urth, was no religious leader to rival Hoddha, Zillaster, Krassos or Isammed. He was merely the self-proclaimed Grand Exalted Rooster of "ICCC," the Interplanetary Church of Cosmic Chickenhood.
Never before in history had God spoken through such a droll personage.
It was a crazy time anyway, even before the Holy Event. One escaped Tenusian dissident termed it "an age of peculiar turmoil, of war mania without evidence of war." According to government propaganda, the terraformed planets Tenusia, Maros, and Ercu were allied with D'Urth in the "Inner Planet League," opposing a like "Outer Planet Confederacy" comprising the rest of the solar system. Inner Planet dissidents were hunted down routinely by Bureau of Loyalty agents and executed without trial. Often the executions became public spectacles with bizarre means of death, scenes that had chilling and predictable effects upon the populace.
No one acquainted with McMurtrey knew where the war zones were, if they existed at all, and he didn't pursue the topic. Rumors favored Saturus or the larger moons of Ranus.
McMurtrey, like every other Inner Planet citizen, had to take annual loyalty oaths, and the Bureau assigned him a "Loyalty Quotient." It was like the old IQ number except it was called "LQ" and had other connotations beyond being smart enough not to oppose the system. McMurtrey didn't have any idea what his own LQ number was, but he knew braggarts who professed to have high numbers.
He didn't care much about any of that, except to the extent that he tried to stay out of trouble.
He had been fairly successful in that regard for a number of years, but he sensed the old ways would never work for him again....
In the vast majority of religions, the really nasty practices and beliefs aren't documented in sacred texts. These have become matters of practice, of oral tradition or simply of interpretation. Nowhere is it written, for example, that women, blacks and physically handicapped persons cannot be priests in the Church of Modern Day Believers. But this is the way of the organization. For this and allied reasons I say to you: Dismantle every religion.
--General Commentary,
Autobiography of Tananius-Ofo
"Don't waste my time," the little man at the cluttered desk said. "We don't print rubbish in the Crier."
With two thick pillows on his chair, he still sat lower than McMurtrey. This was James Robbins, the cantankerous managing editor of the St. Charles Beach Crier, a man whose reputation held he never smiled. He was young, with pale gray eyes.
"Every word is the truth!" McMurtrey heard his voice crack, looked away. I can't sound anxious, he thought. But I've got to get the message out.
It was a musty, paper-cluttered postage stamp of an office, with only one other desk and no one at it. Muffled voices and sounds of machinery came from the other side of a wall to the rear.
"I know about you," Robbins said. "The Grand Exalted Rooster ... the wacko who goes around with a chicken on his shoulder." His tone became smooth, an irritating whine: "Where is your little pet this morning?"
"I didn't have to come to your flea-bitten office. Any big city press would--"
The editor sneered, motioned toward a computer terminal by his desk. "We're all on NewsData. They could find out about you in seconds--unless you used a phony name. But you wouldn't dare do that, would you?"
Against Bureau rules, McMurtrey thought. Presumption of disloyalty.
"It happens that I've known about you for quite a while, McMurtrey--everyone in these parts does. Is that rumor true? Did your feisty chicken really peck a man's eyes out in the last town you lived in?"
McMurtrey didn't know where the rumor of his pet's ferocity came from, had never protested it.
"And that mantra of yours, how does it go?"
"Listen, you--"
"It's coming back to me. 'O Chubby Mother, let me rubba your belly ... let me rubba your belly.'" He waggled the thumb and forefinger of one hand in the beaklike ritual of McMurtrey's organization.
"You're a rude little twerp."
The editor's eyes flashed. "You wanna start calling names, fella? I could burn your ears, but lucky for you I'm in a good mood today. Speaking of names, what is it you call that chicken? No Name, right?"
McMurtrey sighed, didn't recall telling anyone about that. Nervously, he rubbed one finger against a broken wooden edge on his chair.
"Your chicken has green plumes and you can walk around with it on one of your big wide shoulders. What is it, a mutant parrot?"
"I had it checked by an expert once," McMurtrey replied. "He said it was a light Rahma, but a most unusual one, with unique plumage."
"I see."
"Aren't you going to enter that in the data base?"
"Later, maybe. Does it ever defecate on your shoulder?"
McMurtrey shook his head, felt a vein throbbing in his temple. "We get along fine. Look, I don't have to defend myself. This is the biggest scoop of your squalid little life. It's exactly like I told you. I was lying in bed this morning, just waking up, and God spoke to me. He told me where He is, gave me the exact astronomical coordinates!"
"Yeah, yeah. At the break of dawn. You said His first words were 'Seeker, who says religion is the way to God?' What the hell is that supposed to be--some kind of trumped-up justification for your offbeat society? Is this a publicity stunt?"
"No! The ICCC is a religion, too!"
"Don't try to kid me. I think you're up to something."
"You're impossible!"
"Why were you chosen, of all people?"
"I don't know!"
"How did you say it went? Words were floating in the airspace above you ... little flashes of voice accompanied white light on glimmering wavetops--as if the bedroom air were ocean water and you were above the surface looking down on it--a surface that hung over you, defying gravity."
"That's close."
"You're damn right it's close. That's my business. I don't misquote. And I don't print lies."
McMurtrey sighed, stared at the ceiling. It was a sprayed-on rough texture, off-white with a brown scrape mark near one wall.
When God's voice had come to him, it made him feel insignificant and dominated, but in retrospect he didn't think it had been a complete, all-consuming domination. The voice had been urgent and curiously plaintive, not the expected commanding tone. It gave McMurtrey the feeling he could have refused to deliver God's message.
How could he feel this way, that a request from on high was not an edict?
Of course he didn't oppose it, for God had selected him from all others for a momentous occasion, an unheard-of occasion. McMurtrey couldn't wait to discover more. Since childhood, he'd felt a deep longing to know God, a longing that hadn't waned with the formation of his farcical Interplanetary Church of Cosmic Chickenhood. Now he had the opportunity to fulfill the penultimate dream of anyone's life, from a package of information thrust conveniently on his lap. But first he had to get past fools like this.
McMurtrey lowered his gaze. The editor was bent over the computer screen, an amber-lit unit, reading McMurtrey's dossier.
"I've never printed a word about you," Robbins said, without turning his head. "People know you're a fraud, and I have my own reputation to consider."
"So you refuse to run the story?"
"I haven't decided."
"Well, I have." McMurtrey lunged his big frame up and made for the door to the street. He was ready to slam the door through the jamb, when the editor spoke.
"Come back and sit down. I'll see what we can use."
McMurtrey looked over his shoulder, and they locked gazes.
Robbins shook his head. "Credibility you ain't got. I don't know why I'm doing this." He turned back to the computer, began tapping keys.
McMurtrey resumed his seat, watched black letters appear on the screen as the managing editor wrote about the visitation.
Robbins paused. "NewsData says there are around nine thousand church members in your I Triple C. Do those members know it's a scam? Are they in for the fun of it? With an acronym pronounced CICK' they'd have to suspect something. I'm sorry, but a lot of details keep bothering me."
"I'm not here to discuss that," McMurtrey said. "There is a more important matter." From the correspondence he received, it was clear that most of his members believed the drivel he'd made up about D'Urth being "an egg of the Great Mother Chicken, the originator of all life in the universe." A few recognized the ICCC as a spoof, to their great amusement.
"Just a couple of details before we proceed," the editor insisted. "I've got to make you sound credible. With a message from God, that's critical, I'd say."
McMurtrey sighed. "All right."
"You started this organization out with ads--almost twenty years ago, after you dropped out of college. Rumor has it you didn't expect any response, that you'd been freebasing sparkle. And voilà! Checks started pouring in!"
"I wasn't on drugs!" Not when I ran the ads, anyway.
McMurtrey stared at his hands, recalled crawling around on the floor of his college dormitory room several months before he ran the ads, looking for spilled bits of Anian sparkle. He and three buddies came up with the chicken church that uproarious night, and before the evening was over they carried the concept to preposterous extremes. Afterward, his buddies promptly forgot about it.
But McMurtrey didn't forget.
"You're not making this easy," Robbins said. "Your grandmother invented pickpocket-proof trousers, and I see you're wearing a pair. She made a bundle, left you with a trust fund. Are you still living off it or do you need publicity?"
"What's the matter?" McMurtrey asked. "Don't you have all the answers in your precious NewsData?"
An uncomfortable pause. Then: "Okay, we'll stick to the visitation, and I'll try to make it sound plausible."
McMurtrey repeated his tale, and presently he was outside with an unseasonably warm winter breeze on his face. The air was clean, a contrast to the mustiness of the office. He walked home through the hilly seaside town, thinking about one of God's more curious comments.
"Seeker, who says religion is the way to God?"
This had rattled McMurtrey to the core when he heard it--so much so that for agonizing moments as God continued to speak, McMurtrey couldn't think of a thing to say. He was turned sideways in bed, staring at a pearly, many-chambered nautilus shell that had fallen from the dresser to the carpeted floor months before. He hadn't bothered to pick it up, had hardly noticed it before the "visitation." Frequently he didn't get around to housekeeping anyway.
But as the Leader of the Universe spoke, McMurtrey found himself staring at the shell as if he had never seen it before. The chambers displayed were so exquisitely detailed, coiling to the core where the tiny animal once lived. In its utter perfection, the design brought to mind leaf patterns, spider webs, honeycombs and the flawless rippling wavelets caused by a stone dropped in a pond.
Recalling this, McMurtrey crossed a sandy field of ice plants, heading toward his modest bungalow on the other side, a tiny driftwood gray structure several houses up from the beach.
There had been something else too, something he hadn't told the editor. One statement of God's, in a voice that pulsed weak and strong, was especially provocative: "Cosmic Chickenhood is not everything. It might amount to nothing, along with everything else."
McMurtrey chewed at one side of his upper lip.
What did that mean? "might amount to nothing..." Might. The Interplanetary Church of Cosmic Chickenhood might amount to something then, something important if it deserved God's special attention.
And the voice--mellifluous at times, barely audible at others--like a distant, struggling radio signal. It was not as McMurtrey imagined the God soundtrack should be, but in the marrow of his bones he sensed authenticity.
It scared the hell out of him.
Beyond the rooftops of town, along the horizon between the broad Bluepac Ocean and the cerulean sky, dark clouds were forming. McMurtrey picked up his pace.
Late that afternoon, McMurtrey touched his Wriskron to deactivate the alarm system on his pickpocket-proof trousers, opened three sequential pocket zippers that were keyed to his metabolism so that they could be undone only by him. He removed two sorneys, dropped the coins into the newspaper vending machine, and they clicked into place. The glass front of the machine slid open, and a scoop on a mechanical arm thrust a newspaper into McMurtrey's hands.
He rezipped his pockets, set the alarm system on his trousers.
It was late afternoon, overcast, and as McMurtrey opened the newspaper a few raindrops spattered dark little splotches on the pages. He located the article on a back page, and it was headed: "STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT BY CHICKEN MAN."
He flew into an instant rage.
Chicken man! How he hated that appellation! The implications were obvious.
He read on:
"ST. CHARLES BEACH, Wessornia of D'Urth--Some of you who are familiar with Evander Harold McMurtrey have never taken his words seriously. How does one take this man seriously? After all, his religious ritual involves waggling a thumb and forefinger together as if they were upper and lower beaks, while uttering this mantra:
'O Chubby Mother,
Let me rubba your belly...
Let me rubba your belly.'
"There is more which good taste prohibits describing, and for manifest reasons we in his home town have never before published anything by him or about him. But this unbearded holy man told our managing editor today in an eerie, strangely convincing fashion that God revealed His location to him at dawn in some sort of an oral visitation, that God is domiciled on the planet Tananius-Ofo in the barely discernible galaxy 722C12009. This planet, according to Mr. McMurtrey, is at the origin of the universe, and is stationary. You-Know-Who lives there, and He's waiting to be visited by man. The Big Guy has, it seems, invited us to tea.
"There is the slight problem of several trillion parsecs between us and 722C12009, but Mr. McMurtrey indicates that this poses no obstacle, for God is at this moment preparing the means by which we can narrow the gap. 'Devices' (unexplained term) will be made available soon. Tomorrow or the day after,' McMurtrey said. 'I didn't hear that part clearly.'
"As to how his own pseudoreligion of Cosmic Chickenhood ties in, the Grand Exalted Rooster did not seem to know. Tune in tomorrow, or the next day."
A heavy vehicle rattled across a speed bump, and McMurtrey looked up from where he stood by the vending machine. The county bookmobile pulled into its usual spot in the parking lot.
He rolled the newspaper in one hand, and when the bookmobile door swung open, he boarded behind an elderly man who was carrying an armload of book-tapes.
The vehicle shook with each step that McMurtrey took, for his corpulence registered in excess of 150 kilos.
The librarian, an effeminate young man with closely cropped blond hair, stood behind a desk at the rear. He was new, and had a trembling lower lip that McMurtrey tried not to look at.
A short while after his period of drug abuse, McMurtrey developed a severe problem in which he couldn't help noticing a person's mannerisms: He became distracted to the point of speechlessness by little tics. He'd been to innumerable doctors during his life, but none of them, not even the most expensive psychoformers, had been of any assistance.
McMurtrey's gaze flitted involuntarily back to the librarian, to the still-quivering lip. The librarian removed foil from a plate of cookies and placed the plate to one side of the counter, apparently for patrons.
McMurtrey cleared his throat, spoke with an absence of difficulty that surprised him. He asked for a readalong cassette of Savnoy's Critique of Scholastic Theology, requested the week before.
This guy has a bad tic, McMurtrey thought. He stared at the quivering lip, felt unaffected, and breathed a tentative sigh of relief. It had been a most disquieting problem, and he wondered now if God's visitation that very morning might have something to do with the improvement. Maybe it was intended as proof, a small-scale miracle. In any event, McMurtrey hoped it would last.
The librarian searched through two stacks of book-tapes behind him.
A black fly buzzed irritatingly in McMurtrey's face and landed on his nose. McMurtrey shook his head, swatted at the insect, and it circled his head, relanded on an ear. McMurtrey swatted the insect away, but within moments it was back once more upon his nose, as if it had landing rights there.
McMurtrey had been through this before. St. Charles Beach flies were tenacious, worse than he had seen in any other climate or locale. The creatures weren't content to crawl along windows or counter tops. They didn't look for ways out of rooms, didn't even seem to care much about morsels of unattended food. They hovered in people's faces.
McMurtrey shook his head briskly and used the rolled newspaper this time, making wild passes through the air. The fly disappeared from view, may have lodged itself in his hair. He didn't feel it, gave up the effort.
"Oh, there you are, Savnoy," the librarian said, locating a cassette that had been lying on its edge behind one pile. He held the book-tape up so that McMurtrey could read the title on its spine. It looked like one of the old-fashioned books still sold in specialty shops, but this was thinner than most of them, with a single cassette inside the cover.
For as long as he could remember, McMurtrey had been intrigued by the different facets of religion, all the major faiths. But the more he learned, the more utterly confused about God he became. He had always been convinced of God's existence and longed to know God, but none of the doctrinal categories formed by other men seemed acceptable to him.
When the checkout procedure was completed, the librarian chirped, "Have a nice day, sir." His lip stopped quivering, and he presented a warmed-over, unimpassioned smile, the sort everyone who stepped up to this counter probably received.
"Do something about the flies in this place," McMurtrey said. "And don't give me any of that 'nice day' crap, you phony functionary!"
"All right," came the response, with hardly a missed beat. Then, he uttered a common and vile insult ... words were in the identical "Have a nice day" tone, with the same smile.
McMurtrey felt his jaw drop, and his eyes opened so wide in surprise that they ached.
The irritating fellow held his expression and gazed off insipidly into the distance, civil-servant fashion. He showed no appearance of hostility.
McMurtrey whirled and left without another word, carrying the newspaper and book-tape.
Someday I'll use my God pipeline to take care of guys like that, McMurtrey thought.
He cast an anxious gaze at the gray sky over the Bluepac Ocean, half expecting fiery thunder to lash him for the impropriety of what he'd been thinking. It did begin to rain harder, but maybe it would have done so anyway. Nervously, McMurtrey hurried home.
Two evenings later, in Rimil, Wessornia of D'Urth...
Johnny Orbust let the fingers of his left hand dangle at his side and stared into the big red electronic eye mounted on one wall of his apartment. A digital counter beneath the eye ticked off thousandths of a second in reverse, and beneath that, a computer-selected scriptural reference was displayed, in black on amber letters: "Omanus 5:12."
When the counter reached zero, the eye turned green.
Orbust's hand darted across his body to a shoulder holster concealed beneath his sportscoat, making a soft, rapid slap of leather. Almost instantly he had a black Babul open in both hands, and Omanus 5:12 was beneath one forefinger.
The counter showed his time: 3.414 seconds. Not his best performance, but not bad, either. Orbust practiced constantly, keeping himself in shape for the religious arguments he had a habit of getting into.
He patted an .85 caliber elephant pistol on his hip, smiled at the thought of adversaries who stammered and perspired whenever he unclipped the holster flap. He could never shoot a human, and only once, with an obstinate MDB missionary, had he even drawn the piece. Orbust had toyed with the ammo clip while the terrified missionary glanced around for avenues of escape.
Supposedly military-issue, the gun was part of a miniaturized weapons and demolition kit he picked up cheap from a door-to-door Bureau of Loyalty-sanctioned armaments salesman. It was a 100 percent prepayment deal, where Orbust received part of the kit on the spot and the rest was supposed to be shipped to him. Secreted cleverly in the holster and the belt were a chemstrip and an array of kill-stun-disable-destroy devices, not all of which worked as represented. Orbust never did receive the additional items in the mail. He had tested what he had on a bunch of old factory-closeout androids and mechanized taxidermy animals that another salesman had unloaded on him earlier, and only half of the devices in the kit worked at all. Some, like the GI Randy Handy Dandy Automatic Lasso, were out and out duds. But the salesman had left him with no address or telephone number, and there were no brand names on anything to contact manufacturers.
Despite all this, the kit was easily worth its price. The pistol worked admirably, blowing a running droidman in half with surprisingly little recoil. Also, the chemstrip was, in Orbust's words: "neat." A long white strip of plazymerlike material with a built-in microprocessor, it was activated when a user spoke into it, explaining a particular chemical need. The strip then metamorphosed into what looked like a butterfly, and flew off.
Within a few minutes it would return, carrying a white plazymer bag suspended from a harness arrangement under its "body." After setting down, the strip would again become a strip, absorbing the butterfly and the bag and revealing the bag's contents--sometimes pellets, sometimes Plexiglaslike pump sprayers, sometimes vials of liquid or powder. Orbust had employed the device for rat killer, spot remover, and even a miraculous concoction that when sprayed over the fence onto a next door neighbor's unruly pet harbor seal prevented the animal from barking for four weeks, without apparent permanent harm.
Orbust hadn't yet ordered food with the chemstrip, fearing it might malfunction and poison him. He wondered where it obtained raw materials, hoped it was from the natural environment and not from a private party. But the device was BOL-sanctioned, so he didn't have to worry about that. The chemstrip became like a light switch to him, activated when needed without too much thought about its workings.
The weapons kit and quick-draw Babul weren't all Johnny Orbust had in his arsenal-for-God.
In a sheath strapped to one calf he kept his Snapcard, the ultimate verbal combat weapon, the photon bomb of debating.
He didn't use it all the time, because he feared atrophy of the brain, worried about over-reliance on the card. Something could happen to it, and if he lost it where would he be? Nonetheless he had grown more dependent on it than he would have liked.
The Snapcard was, for all intents and purposes, irreplaceable.
Orbust was, according to his wife Karin, a "money-squandering gadget freak," and the devices he had all over the house were a constant source of arguments.
He hadn't made his high-school debating team. Then in college he vaulted onto the first team, with the help of this card, a crib card, really. Another salesman had been his salvation with this baby, an elderly Floriental gentleman who showed up early one Monday morning and spoke of recent cataract and back surgery as much as he did of his wares, apparently to elicit sympathy.
But Orbust hadn't liked anything the man showed him on the first go-around. A perennial sucker for sales pitches, Orbust had been a solicitor himself for a time, marketing advertising novelties ... and an old saying held that the easiest person to sell was another salesman. But on this occasion Orbust was slow to buy. It was early, he felt tired from not having slept well, and he asked the man to leave.
The salesman requested a glass of water, a familiar stalling technique.
Orbust motioned toward the kitchen. "In there."
Presently the man had a glass of water in hand, and stood in the kitchen doorway, sipping slowly from the glass.
"Look," the salesman said. "I was a merchant on Maros, and we had a tradition there I still follow. You're the first customer of the week and I have to make a sale or my whole week is ruined."
"All right, all right. Whattaya have for under five javits?"
The man shook his head, and his epicanthic eyes narrowed. "No, it must be a real sale. Something valuable."
"But you don't have anything I want or need. I'd like to help you out, but I'm tired and--"
"I have just the thing," the salesman said, smiling in a strange way that revealed the gums of his teeth.
He set the glass on a table, reached down and lifted one pant leg. From a calf-strapped sheath he removed a slender silver metallic card.
"This is ver-r-r-y special," he said.
The card was about the size of a credit card, and he said there weren't very many of them in existence. The salesman hesitated for a moment, as if deciding whether or not he wanted to go through with what he was about to say.
"What is it?" Orbust asked.
"With this Snapcard in hand, I could sell you anything. It would tell me precisely how to win any argument with you on any subject. I use it--on occasion--but never for the first sale of the week. That wouldn't be right. Even when most desperate, I've never offered it to another customer. But you ... for some reason..."
"If it's so valuable, why sell it to me?"
He considered this for a moment. Then: "I'm getting older, nearing retirement age, and I don't have any children. You seem like a nice young fellow."
The salesman held the card in the upturned palm of one hand and squeezed each end of the card slightly, bending it into a gentle arc.
Orbust stared transfixed at the card. It sparkled with tiny golden lights against silver, lights that danced and spun. A while later he was to recall that looking at the lights had made his eyelids heavy. Now thinking back on this years later, Orbust believed he had been hypnotized by the card, which suggested an explanation of how it worked. But the capabilities of the card went far beyond that. They touched one or more ESP wavelengths and tapped into storehouses of information that were too vast to be confined within any one brain.
He tossed such recollections aside for the moment, became aware of a noise behind him. An organizing robot entered the room, carrying a heap of family pictures. The boxy, simulated-oak robot had shelves and trays all over its body, made accessible by its long flexible arms.
"Is this everything?" the robot asked, in a very sophisticated voice.
Orbust shrugged. "I dunno. I guess."
The robot's eyes flashed green, indicating message received, and it stood to one side, scanning the photographs for chronology and sliding them into compartments. Orbust didn't know how it figured out dates, only knew what he'd heard when he bought it, that it always worked.
Orbust's wife hated the robot, despite the fact that she was a messy person, one who should have welcomed the device, or so it seemed to him.
She used bad language as well, and Orbust couldn't abide that.
Orbust flipped on the televid and strolled into the kitchen. He opened the upright-freezer door, felt a blast of coolness, and stared without enthusiasm at a leftover plazymer bowl of pastawax he could reheat for dinner.
A news program blared from the televid in the other room, but only bits of information entered his consciousness. He was thinking about his wife, lamenting the problems he had with her.
Karin, his wife of six years, was at a coffeehouse poetry session near the university. Orbust hated those readings, found them boring. Karin was the only money earner in the household, and as a consequence she went where she pleased, whenever she pleased. This had been another source of friction in their lives, and religion was yet another. Orbust had given up trying to discuss religion with his wife, and for nearly a year he had gone off to church without her. He was a Rebom Krassee, one of the recently formed fundamentalist Krassian denominations.
He had the bowl of pastawax in his hands, and as he turned toward the microwave he realized the news announcer had been talking about God.
The oval televid screen was visible through the doorway, and Orbust beheld a most peculiar individual on the screen--an immense man with scraggly hair and what looked like a green-plumed chicken on his shoulder. Green plumes? The woman reporter interviewing the man was keeping her distance, because the bird was snapping and hissing and spitting menacingly. Orbust realized in a rush who the man was, from wire-service stories that had been carrying his incredible message across the solar system.
This was the lunatic who said he knew where God was.
"Is it true that the Bureau of Loyalty has approved your spaceships for takeoff, Mr. McMurtrey?" the reporter queried, extending a microphone cautiously.
"Well, I haven't actually been in touch with any BOL people," McMurtrey said, uneasily, "but a reliable intermediary informed me today that the Bureau is staying out of this."
The reporter shook her head, smiled. "I've counted half a dozen red and gold Bureau guncopters in the area, every one of 'em undoubtedly brimming with electronic gizmos. You can bet undercover agents are crawling all over this place."
McMurtrey shifted on his feet. He appeared uncomfortable at the reporter's candor.
In the background, Orbust saw an almost uniform fleet of spaceships, described in recent news accounts. They extended far into the distance in a most unusual straight line, with some perched precariously on frameworks over building tops or straddling streets, as if the whole bunch had been set down indiscriminately from above. They were fat ships of nearly the same size and shape, like big ripe pomegranates with nubby points on top. Some were bright and shiny red, others glistened varying shades of yellow and orange, and others were white. There appeared to have been some consideration for the town beneath the ships, for wherever a building top, fence, or other structure lay beneath, the underside of the craft had been custom-fitted with a shiny metal landing platform that straddled the structure without touching it, so that the weight of the ship actually rested on the ground.
"For those who tuned in late," the reporter said, "tell everyone again where you're going with these ships. I'm still having a hard time believing this."
"We're going to see God!" McMurtrey responded ebulliently.
The reporter faced the camera, and it zoomed in for a close-up of her face. "There you have it, Inner Planet citizens," she said. "Shortly after Mr. McMurtrey's historical announcement of God's location, a fleet of ships appeared in his town from out of nowhere, apparently ready to go. Who will fly them? The Grand Exalted Rooster does not know. Only God, it seems, has this information. No explanation has been tendered as to how the ships got here, but the fact remains that they are here. I have touched their outsides, and they are not apparitions. Something very unusual is occurring here on the Wessornian coast."
Orbust focused on the nearest ship visible, a white craft behind the reporter, and as the picture changed he held the image of the ship in his mind. It looked familiar, inexplicably so, and he felt particularly drawn to it. Despite its apparent similarity to the other ships, there remained something materially different about this one, something intriguing and magnetic.
He had to touch it.
Within an hour, Orbust was on his way to St. Charles Beach by airbus, having exchanged his wife's stash of household money for a note.