The Race for God Read Free

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