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.”“I never imagined,” McMurtrey said.“Come with me,” Corona said, motioning for McMurtrey to accompany her.“We have an intruder to meet, an intruder Appy saw before downloading into me.This intruder is at the heart of the mess we’re in now, and it is only through the intruder that our Gluon can extricate itself from Pelter.”McMurtrey moved to her side, and they negotiated the carpeted mezzanine walkway toward the elevator bank.“I don’t understand again,” he said.“Isn’t Pelter the intruder?”Corona shook her head.“It’s a human,” she said.“A peculiar little man carrying a dead child.”“Clear the way,” Corona ordered, in Appy’s voice.She pressed through a crowd of pilgrims thronging the main passenger compartment.They moved aside for her sluggishly.McMurtrey followed her, through startled whispers.When the last layer of humanity fell away, McMurtrey got his initial glimpse of the intruder.Indeed this was a peculiar little man seated in the center of the deck.He cried silently, bore a pained expression, and in his arms he held the limp and lifeless form of a dead girl-child.The man appeared to be in late middle years, with thinning curls of black hair, dark little eyes and a short but crudely trimmed gray-flecked beard.He held the dead child tightly, with white-knuckled fingers that were the length of digits more suited to a much taller person.Or to an ape.The little finger of one hand was missing.The man pulled his hands free gently, letting the body rest on his lap.Briskly with one hand, he rubbed the knuckle above the missing finger.Afterward he put the four-fingered hand under one of his legs, apparently to keep the hand warm.Yes, McMurtrey thought.He resembles an ape, with that protruding forehead, those high cheekbones, those hands.and look at his arms—they’re extraordinarily long.Of the child’s death there could be no doubt.Her eyes were open and empty, with a grievous wound on the side of her head.The man holding her wore a short-sleeved denolyon shirt that was brown with a broad magenta stripe across the chest.The trousers matched, with a magenta stripe down each side.He had blood on his clothes.A pungent, acrid odor irritated McMurtrey’s nostrils, forced him to mouth-breathe.It wasn’t the stench of death, at least McMurtrey didn’t think it was, from the impossible-to-forget odors of dead animals he had been near a few times.“That smell,” McMurtrey said, wrinkling his nose.“What is it?”“Opium,” Corona said, glancing at McMurtrey.“He’s an addict.”The apeman looked up at the crowd, and down at the lifeless form.Then he pressed a loose flap of skin over the open wound, and with tender fingers pressed it in place.It held.“I didn’t kill her,” he said, with the gaze of his tearful dark eyes darting from face to face in the throng.Corona positioned herself by the man, and with remarkable efficiency she explained to everyone what she had already related to McMurtrey, beginning with the saved Appy program she carried within her body.She told of multiple universes, skinbeating and Gluons, and of her comlinks via Appy with God and Shusher.Finally she glanced down at the intruder.“This is Harley Gutan,” she said.“God informs me that he is one of the most disgusting, depraved and despicable creatures in any universe, and that we must resolve the matter of Gutan before our journey can continue.”“Why do we have to resolve anything like that?” a woman shouted.“We need to repair the ship! Let’s get busy with that!”“The matter of Gutan and the repair of this ship are intertwined,” Corona said.“God contributed the channeling environment necessary to create this ship, and for reasons unexplained to me, He can provide no further information or assistance to us.”This information Kelly’s getting, McMurtrey thought.What has she become?“Gutan was on the Gluon we hit?” the nun Sister Mary asked.“He and the unfortunate child were matter-impregnated on the antimatter of the Gluon known as Pelter.Like us they may have been on their way to see God, but their destination is not known at this time.It is known that they were joined through the arcane activity of a machine constructed on D’Urth.There are many troublesome devices on D’Urth.““You’re suggesting God doesn’t control Gutan?” Sister Mary inquired, her voice shrill and agitated.A moment’s hesitation, then Appy replied, through Corona: “Some things are easier to explain than others, even for a god of great power.God does not control the whipping passageways between universes.God in the context we’ve used the name is the god of but one universe, the one containing D’Urth’s solar system.There are many universes, with different types of authority.”“Blasphemy!” Sister Mary exclaimed.“God has infinite power!” Nervously, she smoothed her white habit with one hand.“I beg to differ,” Appy said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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