Foundation (24 page)
“
You son of a bitch of a crawler!” growled Trumaine. “Maybe I haven’t been clear enough. I need that paper! I need it to go back to my wife and to my daughter! Don’t you get it?”
Trumaine slapped the stunned clerk.
“
Don’t you get it!?”
Trumaine was about to slap him once more when, unexpectedly, the Aquarian reacted, kicking him hard in the stomach. As the clerk rose, it was clear he didn’t just have big muscles under the tailored suit, but that he was also in perfect shape.
“
Bastard of an Aquarian ...”
Livid, Trumaine attempted to punch the clerk, but he parried and jabbed back full in his face.
“
Watch your mouth, Detective! I’m proud of being born on Aquaria and you have no right to insult me!”
Trumaine looked at the blood dripping from his nose to the front of his jacket. With a snarl, he flung himself at the clerk, grabbing him around the neck and trying to throttle him, but the clerk elbowed him, forcing Trumaine to let go.
“
What have I got to do for that scrap of paper?” wheezed Trumaine, holding his aching side. “Pay you? Pay someone else? Kiss someone’s ass?”
“
This is not the way we work, Mr. Trumaine,” replied the clerk, horrified at the very idea. “As I told you, our immigration policies are very strict. Aquaria is a new planet and we can’t let everybody in. And you, Mr. Trumaine, just don’t qualify ...”
Trumaine, beside himself with fury, jerked back his arm, about to punch the Aquarian ... but the clerk was faster and, with a powerful swing, he hit Trumaine hard in the stomach. The detective went down to his knees holding his belly in pain, squirming for air.
As if another application had been satisfactorily handled and processed, the clerk smoothed out his rumpled suit, regained his unflappable composure, then turned to the bystanders and, with his usual sneer, he said, “Next!”
Time was up.
The three days Firrell had given Trumaine to find the crawler were gone, with the only result that the Hibiscus was still astray and Jarva’s murderer was on the loose.
Things couldn’t be worse.
Trumaine stood by the gallery parapet, looking down at the sea of believers floating in front of him, aware that the murderer was there, in that same moment; fast asleep, dreaming jeering dreams about the clueless detectives of the world.
Trumaine couldn’t stop thinking that Benedict could be wrong and that he could have used more profitably the time he had spent in the chamber.
He had considered all possible clues and leads: they paved a highway that brought unfailingly back to Credence. Unfortunately for him, the roadway stopped before the gate guarded by the mousy guard with his ridiculous bellhop cap.
Who was the believer whose mind was so developed to make him a telepath? Who had convinced a great enough number of believers into believing that the murderer was going to be in the bunker first, and then that he wasn’t there anymore, to the point that it had really happened? Why was Jarva studying telepathy?
Trumaine racked his brain for some bit of information he might have overlooked, anything that could help him get closer to the crawler, but he didn’t find anything—he had failed.
What was going to happen now? Was the
TSA
really going to shut down Credence forever, knowing that so many people depended on its services? Was Trumaine’s failure really going to be the end of Credence?
He glanced into the distance, at the choice believers floating in formation, looking for the Hibiscus, then he turned his head to his right.
That day, a person he knew very well had been granted access to the gallery. It was a stubborn man who, once assigned a case, wouldn’t let go until a solution was found. A satisfactory solution had always been found since he had been in charge—except in this case.
Firrell kept looking into the chamber, from time to time shaking his head in disappointment.
“
Nothing,” he said, without taking his eyes off the floating couches. “We have nothing and we have run out of time.”
He turned, and his face was sad and tired. “I must report to the Feds. I’m sorry, Chris, time’s up.”
“
Look at them,” said Trumaine, “They’re sleeping like babies. The bastard is floating in front of my eyes, right now, but I just can’t get him.”
He clutched the parapet so hard his knuckles went white.
“
It’s over. I’m sure you could have used that citizenship.”
Firrell peered into Trumaine’s eyes for a moment. It was all there: the regret, the crushed hope, the pitying for an old friend, the shame for not being able to find the murderer through Trumaine.
Firrell always thought that even if the Feds had given up on the case, that didn’t mean a darned thing; it didn’t mean that the case was impossible, it didn’t mean they were supposed to fail. He had taken it on and it was his duty to find and bring the killer to justice. Firrell felt the responsibility of the failure weigh on him like a boulder, squashing him.
He shook his head disconsolately.
“
See you at the central.”
He shuffled away, until he was lost in the stream of the believers turning over.
“
Damn crawler!”
The Feds had set him up real swell, thought Trumaine. With the promise of a first-class Aquarian citizenship they had lured him like a school of mackerel and now he was trapped.
For the umpteenth time, he went over in his mind what had happened in those three days.
According to Benedict, the telepath had all that time at his disposal to come visit him. Except for the dolphin, Trumaine had only dreamed about four characters. He was sure that the crawler couldn’t be Maia, because what she did and what she told him rang too fresh and immediate to come from anyone else but from her.
The crawler couldn’t be Starshanna, either. Not one single word, not a move of her, not even one hair in her eyebrows had moved differently from how it should have.
If the telepath hadn’t assumed their identities, who was left?
He had dreamed of the Aquarian nurse, what about her? She wasn’t exactly a real character; she had been given just a supporting role, so to speak. She never said much and, after Maia had born, he had never ever dreamed about her. How could she be the telepath?
That left the Aquarian clerk. Trumaine was sure that if the telepath had come to visit him in the feed, he must have taken the shape of the spiteful clerk. He had suspected him from the very first time he had dreamed about him. What if he was the character the crawler had chosen to impersonate?
He recalled the words of the Aquarian clerk, played them over and over with the voice of his mind, trying to find out some hidden clue in what the clerk had said in the feed that could reveal who he was in the real world ... Once again, Trumaine didn’t find anything.
Exhaling in a long sigh, he stepped over to a nearby electronic spyglass. Benedict had it installed for him the day before, after he had been at Faith’s for the first time. Benedict had told him it was a broadly shared psychoanalytic belief; looking at people’s faces could help recall details about them we don’t consciously remember. Trumaine had scoffed at that, but now that he had nothing to lose, he bent over and looked into it.
The lens focused on every single face of the believers floating in the chamber. One by one, it peeked at them all, as if it could single out the telepath from his features alone. The lens kept sweeping left and right, low and high, until it came to rest on the couch where Faith was lying:
She looked beautiful and at peace, lost in a dream Trumaine would never be part of ...
As he studied her, he realized how much she reminded him of Starshanna. Both were sparkling with life, each crazy in their own, special way; both proud, unyielding to any compromise that would have lessened them—
All of a sudden, Trumaine found himself lost in the stream of past and recent memories about Faith and Starshanna ...
He was back to the living room of the beach house, the first time he had shown it to Starshanna.
The house was silent, except for the moans of pleasure coming from behind the sofa.
A sweaty and flushed Starshanna rolled away from Trumaine.
“
They offered me the job,” she said, still panting.
“
That’s great. You don’t get that kind of offer every day. Did you accept?”
“
I don’t know, Aquaria isn’t exactly around the corner ...”
“
But you’re dying to go.”
“
It will be the chance of a lifetime ...”
“
Then what are you waiting for? Go grab it, before they think again and give the job to someone who doesn’t give a damn about what he’s doing.”
“
Are you okay with that, Tru? I’ll be away most of the time. We’ll be seeing each other far, far less—we’ll be together only on the holidays ...”
“
I’ll get a first-class Aquarian citizenship,” promised Trumaine. “And then I’ll be with you all the time.”
“
Come here, you,” said Starshanna, straddling him. She started kissing him, then stopped at once and looked straight in his eyes.
“
Life’s a beautiful dream ...
” she said.
Another scene emerged from Trumaine’s recent memory. He was in Credence’s canteen, sitting at the table in the corner, the picture of Maia in front of him. Faith was looking at him from the next chair, waiting for him to answer to her last question.
“
There’s no point in living in the past,” he said.
“
What about meaning?”
“
Once your lesson is learned, the past is better left behind, forgotten once and for all.”
“
Is that why you keep looking at that picture? To forget her?” asked Faith.
A third scene appeared in front of Trumaine’s eyes.
It was a memory from the night before. It wasn’t anything he had seen or heard in the feed; that scene had been real and it had taken place on the beach in the back of Faith’s house.
They were sitting in the sand. The wind mussed Faith’s hair and she kept sweeping it off her disappointed face: even if she half expected Trumaine to refuse to make love to her, all the same, his rejection had hurt her.
It was only in that moment that Trumaine had realized that his allegiance to Starshanna was stronger than anything else.
“
I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just—I’m still in love with Starshanna ...”
“
I can understand ...” said Faith with a small voice.
Trumaine scowled. “Ain’t life a bitch ...”
It was in that precise moment that Faith had turned her head and had said the words.
They were the same words a billion people around the universe used in their conversation, every single day, but once Faith had uttered them, they weren’t words anymore, because they had turned into the key to a whole another world—Trumaine’s world.
And the words were:
“
Life’s a beautiful dream ...
”
Trumaine came to with a jerk, suddenly aware of the simplest thing he and Benedict had overlooked; that the telepath might have approached him in the real life.
“
Christ—Faith is the crawler!” he shouted.
At once, he turned on his heels and ran toward the turnstiles, leaving the gallery.