Foundation (27 page)

It was exactly at that moment that a cumbersome cargo with a metal patchwork for a hull took off; it rumbled like thunder as its rockets engulfed the spaceport in vapors, propelling the ship out of gravity’s greedy fingers’ reach.

The bright exhaust cloud lingered for a while in the launch bay, whirling lazily, dissolving gradually, revealing another ship ...

The diaphanous shroud fell off the Neptune the same way a snow-white mink would drop from the shoulders of a gorgeous diva ... until she was naked, and she was haughty and proud and beautiful.

Trumaine moved to the boarding hall assigned to the Neptune which, contrary to the rest of the boarding gates, was on the upper level.

Exclusive and expensive as the Neptune was, the hall displayed the latest fashion in matter of design objects. From the chairs, to the low tables, to the lamps, to the partition walls, everything was smooth, polished and had that peculiar translucent finishing that made objects look like they were made of water.

At the moment, only a tall businessman wearing a double-breasted suit sat in the waiting hall, reading an electronic newspaper he held in his hands. He looked up with a bored glance at Trumaine, then went back to reading.

Trumaine approached a wide desk standing beside the boarding corridor. The boarding officer behind the desk looked dashing in his neat, tailored uniform; he glanced at Trumaine and he seemed to acknowledge him from the many times he had previously embarked.

“Good day,” said the officer, decidedly friendlier than his fellow countryman at the Aquarian embassy.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Aquariana,” said Trumaine.

Aquariana was Aquaria’s capital city. Starshanna’s house was half a dozen miles away from it, on the west coast of the long island that cut the planet from north to south, which was named Meridian Island.

“One week return ticket, as usual?” asked the officer. “I shall need to see your visa, sir.”

The officer had an excellent memory. If he didn’t, he probably wouldn’t have been chosen for that job. The Aquarians had a fondness for showing off; they belonged to a new, thriving planet and they needed to show the rest of the universe they could not only manage it, but that they could do it better than anybody else. It was an attitude that had driven Trumaine mad in the past, but he had now sort of gotten used to it.

“One-way ticket,” he said.

It wasn’t easy to catch an Aquarian off guard, but when that happened, it made Trumaine’s day.

The Aquarian smiled patiently, as if he was dealing with an inattentive boy.

“Due to immigration restraints, I’m afraid visa carriers are not entitled to single tickets.”

Trumaine didn’t say anything, he just searched his suit pocket, retrieving the yellow card Firrell had given him. He slapped it down on the officer’s desk as if it were a poker of aces.

He had to fight hard to maintain a stony face and not dance around jeeringly, sticking out his tongue and shouting unpleasant words at the befuddled officer.

They stared into each other’s face for a long while. It was a battle for the best stony face and the prize was one’s idle pride—It ended when the supercilious face of the officer fell off suddenly. In the time it took him to grab the card, check it with the computer and realize it was genuine, his face had turned ashen.

“I—I couldn’t imagine—”

He bowed deferentially, then punched the keys on his console, until a golden ticket was deftly released through a side slot.

“Your documents are in order, sir. Here’s your single ticket for Aquaria’s Aquariana. The ISS Neptune will take off in exactly ten minutes; if you would be so kind as to step along the corridor, your flight assistant will be more than happy to show you to your seat. Have a nice stay on our beautiful planet, sir.”

He said all that without drawing one single breath.

With a faint smile, the officer motioned Trumaine over and kept looking after him with wide eyes, until he was gone.

The corridor reached over and around the Neptune through a glass drawbridge that looked like thin ice. As Trumaine walked along it, the shuttle grew in size to the point that he could almost touch it. It was as close as his dream was to being fulfilled, he thought. A few more hours and he would be with Starshanna forever.

His pace quickened. He wanted to march. He wanted to run and shake hands with the flight officer and invite him to dinner and let him talk hours about his beloved Aquaria ...

Instead, he slowed down and stopped. What was wrong with him? Trumaine wondered. Now that his wish had been granted, why did he stop?

He looked back at the entrance to the boarding corridor and saw a wizened old couple walk in; they crawled along so slowly a snail could outrun them to the shuttle.

Trumaine stood aside and waited for them to pass.

The old woman and her old husband reached out their quavering hands; when they clasped them, the flutter steadied and subsided—together, they were stronger.

As they proceeded toward the Neptune’s hatch, they smiled warmly at Trumaine, nodding at him.

Trumaine’s feet didn’t move, not even then—they had become as heavy as lead. But there was something else that was moving, spinning faster than an overloaded electrical engine—it was his brain.

Thoughts started to chase around in Trumaine’s head and they weren’t about Aquaria, or Starshanna, or Maia, or all the Aquarian clerks in the universe who sneered at him. They were about the case he had so brilliantly solved.

Trumaine watched the couple arrive at the hatch, where a young uniformed woman welcomed them ...

Suddenly, a voice rang about in his head. It was Faith’s voice and it was repeating the words she had told him when they had first met at the canteen of Credence.

“
Jarva developed Pistocentrism to change the world. If we were only given the chance, we could reshape it as it was in the beginning.
”

“
You mean all green and flowery—without traffic? I’d love that,”
said another voice—it was Trumaine’s.

“I mean ... without evil ...”

Faith’s words alighted in the air like a fog that wouldn’t go away.

Trumaine’s brain kept whirring, when a neat image formed in his mind, replacing the sight of the towering Neptune: it was an illustration he had seen in an old book, an ancient Bible that had been sitting on Jimmy Boyd’s desktop and it portrayed the forbidden tree at the center of Eden.

Its painter had taken one too many liberties, since he had depicted not just Adam and Eve, but a throng of young and old people as well; they had all joined in a merry spring dance around the tree, celebrating it, until the tree wasn’t a forbidden tree anymore—it had become a flourishing tree of life ...

But there was a third forgotten memory that awaited to be summoned. Trumaine’s brain had chewed on it since the first moment it had recorded it, without being able to digest it. It was a memory that had meant nothing until now when, put in the right context, it made a world of difference.

The memory was a fragment of the conversation Trumaine and Samuel Diggs, the medical examiner, had in Jarva’s bunker.

Trumaine was kneeling next to Jarva’s corpse, inspecting it; a few paces away, Diggs was typing away in his electronic pad, but he was denied access with a buzz. He tried once again; another buzz.

“Damn computers,” swore Diggs.

“What is it?” asked Trumaine.

“I’m issuing the death certificate for the woman,” said Diggs. “Computer says she died five years ago ...”

When he had first heard that, Trumaine had shaken his head, assuming, as everyone else in that room did, that Raili couldn’t possibly have died twice—it was just a mistaken entry. But now that he knew more about the case, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

For, suddenly, another scenario was taking shape before his eyes; a vision so crazy and so far removed from any conceivable thought and physical rule it sounded impossible.

Trumaine had to dribble the impervious blocks of his rational mind to imagine the most tremendous belief a Credence’s believer could believe. Just the thought of that one, absolute belief made his legs wobble, clogged the words in his parched throat and covered his forehead in sweat beads ...

If what Trumaine was thinking had the slightest chance of being true, Faith could never kill Jarva, because they were both accomplices in the most extraordinary plan man could ever conceive.

If Faith hadn’t killed Jarva, then she was being unjustly imprisoned. It was that thought that shook Trumaine from his reverie.

Once again, he found himself in the boarding corridor of the Neptune. The Aquarian shuttle rose in front of him in all her majestic beauty, calling for him like a tempting siren.

He watched the young woman standing by the spaceship’s hatch, waiting for him to board. A few yards more separated him from his dream; a few yards more and he Starshanna would reunite forever ...

His feet started to move again. They made one step. Another. Then another. Trumaine started to jog. The jog became a run. He must be running in the wrong direction, he thought all of a sudden—because he was getting away from the Neptune ...

Chapter Nineteen

Trumaine had returned to the spaceport hall.

He needed to know more about the death of Raili Jarva. He had never for once doubted that the five-year-old death certificate she had been issued was invalid; that it was, as Diggs said, one of the database inconsistencies that once in a while would jar the system. It has never been an issue, so he didn’t cross-check it. But now that more tiles had clicked together, he wasn’t so sure anymore. What if Raili had really been issued a previous death certificate? What if ... she really died two times?

Trumaine approached the video message booths that lined the spaceport hall, entering one. He swept his ID card in the monitor controller and the screen lit up, activating itself.

“
Call for Samuel Diggs,” he said.

After a while, the wide face of the medical examiner appeared on the monitor. From his furrowed and sweaty brow, it looked like he’d been caught in the midst of something. Diggs swept his arm over his forehead, dabbing at it, revealing a gloved hand smeared with dirt, clutching a couple of gardening shears.

“
How’re your begonias doing?” asked Trumaine.

“
Oh, it’s you, Trumaine. I’ve heard you solved the case, congratulations.”

“
I have a question for you.”

“
Sure. Shoot.”

“
You still remember about the glitch in the system, according to which Raili Jarva had been dead for five years?”

“
Of course I remember, what do you want to know?”

“
You told me she had been issued a death certificate by mistake. Can you find out who signed the mistaken certificate?”

“
I need to check,” said Diggs, again dabbing at his forehead. “Later?”

“
It’s important. Can you do it now?”

“
All right ... It will take just a moment.”

A blue begonia in a pot swayed briefly in and out of the monitor as Diggs lifted it and moved it out of the way. Then he was gone for a couple of minutes, leaving Trumaine to contemplate a beautiful greenhouse crowded with a hundred different varieties of begonias, orchids and roses ...

A sudden, deafening rumble drew Trumaine’s attention from the screen in front of him to the gigantic, glassed walls of the spaceport beyond.

With an explosion of steam, the purple-silver hull of the Neptune rose, taking off. The majestic spaceship pierced the clouds as it climbed into the sky, shrinking in moments to a bedazzling spot of light, leaving Earth for the depths of space.

Trumaine couldn’t help but swear under his breath.

“
Here,” said a voice from the blooming screen.

It wasn’t like Diggs to rush—his face was flushed and sported one more smear of dirt. He had taken off his gloves and now his plump fingers were holding the familiar electronic pad.