The Race for God Read Free Page A

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,