The Race for God Read Online Free PDF Page B

rather unaerodynamic, pudgy shapes. Each vessel had a nubby pointed tip at the top, exhaustlike vents at the bottom, an exterior hatch, and flight-deck-type windshields way up near the top. The ships were too high for a person on a lift truck or ladder truck to see inside the windshields, and thus far McMurtrey had only seen Bureau of Loyalty guncopters and hoverplanes near the ships at that height. The Bureau knew something, and it disturbed McMurtrey that he hadn’t heard anything directly from them.
    How did the fleet of ships get to St. Charles Beach, and were they really going to transport people to God? A number of people theorized they were full of aliens or Outer Planet warriors, prepared to leap out and carry humans off into subjugation. Some felt the ships ran automatically, with computer-controlled drive systems or robopilots. Others subscribed to none of this: The ships had no controls, no crews, no robots, and were there simply because God willed it so. The last theory seemed easiest for McMurtrey to accept, although paradoxically it was the most illogical and difficult to explain.
    Not even Old Man Jacoby, a stargazer and the most nocturnal person in town, had seen or heard the ships arrive. They were just there for everyone to see and marvel at when the sun came up one day. Reportedly, Jacoby only shrugged his shoulders when asked how it could have happened.
    Old men doze off, McMurtrey thought. Or their minds wander. He must have missed something. . . . What an understatement!
    McMurtrey recalled a game he and a friend used to play as children in Ciscola, when they walked over cars instead of around them, denting car tops in the process. They were thoughtless acts, recalled to mind by these ships, the way they had set down wherever they pleased—atop buildings, yards, vehicles, spanning streets. But the ships had platforms that prevented damage to anything. Even Domingo’s Video Palace with its high marquee was straddled without damage. This suggested a degree of courtesy as well as flexibility, and phenomenally rapid construction technology.
    Look at all the parking violators, McMurtrey thought, scratching the back of his head. And not a tow truck in sight. It amused him to think of the insidious Domingos and their vulture trucks, with no way of hauling off spaceships. No doubt the Domingos were in touch with their lawyers, ready to ticket God if they dared.
    McMurtrey’s pulse quickened.
    He gazed upon the throngs of people and life insurance robots knotted around each ship, and a sensation rushed through his brain. He closed his eyes momentarily, and when he reopened them he squinted and was able to distinguish the pious from the onlookers and hangers-on, for he detected a slight, barely discernible pale yellow aura around some, those he sensed were the pious. A sensation of Great Wordless Truth enveloped him, and he barely got an angle on it. He tried to concentrate, felt the concept slipping away.
    He knew those with auras were the pious, the ones who truly belonged here. Some of them wore white, black, saffron or other raiment of various religious orders, and others wore common everyday clothing, as anyone on any street might wear. These pious comprised only a small proportion of those present, but in the distance, on the road winding down the rocky hillside to town, he saw more approaching on foot—the followers of many religions. Their bodies glowed slightly, a pale yellow, and McMurtrey felt like a man wearing infraglasses, seeing things that others could not or should not see.
    Three deer watched from a safe distance on a hillside, then scurried up the hill and disappeared into a cluster of sycamore trees.
    The dunes and flatlands around Domingo’s Reef were covered with tents, and locals were beginning to call that area “Tent City.” Only a few recreational vehicles were visible.
    McMurtrey knew he would have to face the multitude sooner or later, explaining God’s message to the extent