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  THE RACE FOR GOD

  Brian Herbert

  The Race for God

  Brian Herbert

  Who needs Heaven?

  God, it turns out, lives on the planet Tananius-Ofo in the distant galaxy 722C12009. And now, after countless millennia, He’s invited us to come visit Him.

  Not everybody, mind you. Just an odd assortment of heathens, heretics, pantheists, perverts, and true believers of every sect and creed—all crammed into a single white spaceship piloted by a slightly crazed biocomputer. Each pilgrim is determined to be the first to reach God and learn His secrets . . .

  If they don’t all kill each other on the way there.

  First published by Ace Books 1990

  Copyright 1990, 2007, 2012 DreamStar, Inc

  Smashwords edition 2012

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfire.com

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61475-036-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire Inc

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  Dedication

  For Darel Jenkins and Audrey Alande.

  Introduction

  The Race for God

  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. Afterward 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 it is 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 hatemongers 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

  Prologue

  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.

  M
cMurtrey, 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. . . .

  Chapter 1

  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 ICK’ 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 d
ropped out of college. Rumor has it you didn’t expect any response, that you’d been freebasing sparkle. And voila! 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.