The Race for God Read Online Free PDF

stretched north of town along the dunes.
    “No parking” signs were everywhere, as if the place were a breeding ground for them, and they were posted in eclectic unfriendliness by the Domingos and almost everyone else who owned property. One sign that stuck in McMurtrey’s memory like a bad song depicted a ferocious, red-bearded cartoon character holding a hogleg handgun. The caption: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE.
    It cost twenty javits to get into the swimming beach, seventy-five javits a night for the RV facility, and a visitor couldn’t even leave a car in the store parking lot to take a half hour walk. Tow trucks lurked in alleyways and shadows like hulking muggers, waiting for opportunities. One Domingo son-in-law held the towing concession. He was also the sheriff, a one-man town council, and the local judge, so towing abuses couldn’t be appealed.
    “A cutthroat town,” McMurtrey called it. But he had grown accustomed to the place, even liked it now during the winter off-season. Winters on the Wessornian coast hadn’t been cold since earlier in the century when three of the continent’s biggest volcanoes went off. The locals got their town back to a great extent at this time of the year . . . except for the parking situation, which irked most everyone at one time or another. At least the locals didn’t have to deal with surly, chiseling old Mr. Domingo for supplies, because Faberville was only a couple of miles inland. Prices were better there, and there weren’t any “no parking” signs.
    As McMurtrey looked out of his living room window, he saw the multicolored pomegranate-shaped flying ships assembled in a long, straight line from the northernmost tip of Domingo’s Reef right through the center of town, across building tops, in iceplant-covered yards, and in streets. Throngs of people milled around the ships, waiting to see what would happen next.
    They looked like movie extras at an employment hall, so diverse was their raiment. Most were men, some in traditional white or pastel robes, with the long beards and sandals or shaven heads of ascetics. Others resembled ferocious warriors, with sharply cut beards and weapons that hung at angles from their hips—swords, pulverizers, guns, knives and stunbows. Still other men resembled royalty, with gold-trimmed, jewel-encrusted robes, long coats and tiers of jewelry. There were numerous turbans, in a panoply of folds and colors.
    The women were nearly as impressive in range, including nuns in plain white or black cotton habits alongside weapon-toting musclefems in flak-resistant jumpsuits. There were even those who could easily have passed for princesses or queens, bedecked as they were in exquisite long gowns with high, swirled coiffures. Some women came to town in elegant landaus, drawn by robotic horses, while others had come long distances on foot.
    Life insurance robots worked in the midst of all this, selling flight insurance to people who thought they were going on the journey.
    Thus far no one had been able to open a ship’s hatch, and despite entreaties from some that he try, McMurtrey hadn’t done so. He had a feeling that he could get into any one of them if he wanted to, and that others . . . only certain people with certain ships, the ones they . . . It wasn’t clear.
    McMurtrey occupied a special position, and realized for the first time as he gazed out on the town that he was one of the few that God had ever selected to deliver messages to mankind.
    I am a messenger of God, he thought. A prophet?
    Several of the ships were white, and one that stood nearest to his bungalow held his attention most often. Sometimes he caught himself staring into its whiteness hypnotically, and when this happened he couldn’t recall how long he had been so engrossed. He felt curiously soothed when he finished looking at it, and coming to consciousness was not unlike awakening from a good sleep.
    McMurtrey assumed that these were ships, despite their