"Brian Herbert - The Race for God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

What did that mean? "might amount to nothing . . ." Might. The Interplanetary Church of Cosmic Chickenhood might am
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 McMu
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 we
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
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
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 th
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 eery, strangely
convincing fashion that God revealed His location to him at dawn in some sort of an oral visitation, that God is domiciled on
planet Tananius-Ofo in the barely discernible galaxy 722C12009. This planet, according to Mr. McMurtrey, is at the origin
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
no obstacle, for God is at this moment preparing the means by which we can narrow the gap. 'Devices' (unexplained term)
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 Chick-enhood 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. T
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 wh
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, ha
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