Foundation (29 page)

“
I don’t want to talk about that,” she said, and again turned her head.

“
You told me that Jarva wanted for Credence to be the cornerstone of a new Eden,” continued Trumaine, knowing that she was now listening. “But what was the one thing that was possible in Eden that’s lost to our world, beside the fact that Adam and Eve could see their Lord?”

Faith was silent.

“
They were immortal! If they didn’t eat from the apple, they would have lived forever, because death was not allowed in Eden! Is that so?”

Faith’s eyes were stubbornly set on the horizon.

“
IS THAT SO!?”

Her shoulders jerked again.

“
You want to rot in here!? Is that what you want? Then you better talk! What was Jarva up to, reviving people? Will you tell me?”

“
I can’t trust you ...”

Trumaine rolled his eyes and scowled. Talking to Faith was like talking to Maia when she was persuaded that something was some way but it wasn’t; what infuriated him the most was that Faith wasn’t twelve anymore, damn her! Trumaine glared at the crystal wall standing between them. All of a sudden, he wanted to uproot it and fling it out of his way, get hold of Faith and slap her hard across her face.

He set his jaw and groaned instead, then sighed, then wiped his face and ... tried a different approach.

“
I’m on your side! If you’re a victim too, I want to know!”

Trumaine leaned his forehead against the glass surface—it felt refreshing and easing. When the idea came to him, he felt the dumbest person in the world for not having thought it before.

He slapped his forehead then, again, he rested it on the glass partition.

“
There’s a surefire way for you to know if I’m lying or if I’m telling the truth, isn’t there? Because you can see for yourself what’s inside my head!”

Faith turned, clearly intrigued by the idea, but still undecided.

“
You hated me for entering your mind. I thought about that, a lot ... And you were right, I have no right of doing that to the other people ... it’s a horrible thing to do ...”

“
I’m asking you!” snarled Trumaine.

“
You really sure ...?”

He felt he was going to have a stroke now.

But then Faith stood, approaching him. She looked deeply into his eyes, then closed hers for one brief moment and touched her forehead to the glass partition as well.

They remained in that position for some time.

When Faith looked up again, she was relieved.

“
Am I telling the truth?” asked Trumaine.

“
Yes, you are ...”

Faith was suddenly lost in thought as memories of things long gone came to life and washed over her.

“
Five years ago, I was a fresh believer. Back then, Jarva and Benedict were on good terms, Jarva was welcomed in Credence and granted access to the chamber to study the feed and the believers. One rainy night, Raili, who had come to pick up Jarva, had a car accident. It was Jarva’s old car—it had none of the safety restraints modern cars have. She careened off the road and crashed into a low wall. When Benedict left Credence, about half an hour later, he was driving along the same road and saw the car. Knowing that it was the same model Raili drove, he was suddenly worried that something bad might have happened to her. So he stopped and hurried over to see if he could help. When he realized it really was Raili in the car, he tried all he could do to save her, but she had hit her head hard against the windshield, she was unconscious and had already lost a lot of blood. Benedict packed the wound as best as he could, then he called the medics, but it was too late to save her ...”

Faith looked up again.

“
That’s when the first death certificate was issued,” said Trumaine. “It was Adam Peterson who signed it!”

Faith nodded her head.

“
You weren’t there, how do you know all that?” asked Trumaine.

“
I read it in Benedict’s mind, later on.”

“
What happened, then?”

“
You see, Aarmo was used to having Raili around, she was a constant inspiration to him and helped him with his work. He could never do without her.”

“
Jarva must’ve thought that if he could borrow the powers of Credence, he could try and bring her back,” argued Trumaine, “but that meant breaking the law ...”

“
Jarva proposed that to Benedict, his long time friend, but he refused. It was illegal and that settled it. Jarva had undervalued Benedict’s loyalty to Credence and to the Federal law. They argued, they shouted at each other. In the end, Benedict forbade Jarva to enter Credence ever again. Jarva left. A few months later, he was offered a job on Aquaria and Jimmy went with him. It was studying the Aquarian Leviathan that they stumbled in something Jarva thought impossible ...”

“
They discovered that, despite the Leviathans having none of the usual organs living creatures use to communicate, nonetheless, they understood each other—because they were telepaths,” said Trumaine in a flurry. “With proof that telepathy was possible, Jarva must’ve wondered if the human brain was also capable of such an extraordinary means of communication.”

“
Jarva still had the data he had collected in the believers’ chamber,” continued Faith. “He thought that past a certain level of belief, a believer had high chances to become a telepath.”

“
Wait a minute, one
becomes
a telepath?”

“
You see, telepathy, like all human skills, needs training to develop.”

Trumaine, beside himself with wonderment, scowled.

“
Jarva had seen your resume as a believer,” he said. “He contacted you.”

“
He told me I had an unprecedented belief level. He asked me to help him create a parasite feed inside Credence. Also, I should keep it secret, since Benedict would report us.”

“
You accepted and, unbeknown to Benedict, Raili was revived. But you had to take care of all the incident witnesses as well. Old Peterson thinks he’s got amnesia, the truth is, his memory was tampered with—you did it.”

Faith nodded.

“
Why didn’t you change Benedict’s memory, too?”

“
We did, but something happened ...”

“
One day, somehow, Benedict realized that Raili was still alive, when she should be long dead,” said Trumaine. “That very moment, Benedict knew that Jarva had infiltrated a crawler among the believers, because without the believers, no parasite belief would be possible.”

“
Yes,” admitted Faith.

Trumaine thought hard and aloud: “Benedict must have been furious at finding that Jarva had used him and Credence, his creature, to carry out his personal, illegal plans. He needed to stop Jarva, or his career would be forever compromised.”

Trumaine looked up at Faith, realizing something that drove him mad.

“
Either Benedict is the murderer or he’s the principal behind Jarva’s murder!”

“
But Benedict never enters the chamber,” argued Faith. “He’s no believer, I’ve seen his test chart. How could he possibly convert the believers?”

At once, the answer dawned on Trumaine like a cold shower.

“
He must have found—”

“
Another telepath!” said Faith.

“
Christ, this is getting insane—there’s always been two telepaths in Credence!”

Trumaine groaned, cursing himself for having fallen into Benedict’s trap like a fool: all that Benedict had told him since he had first set foot in Credence was part of a big plan woven around him to frame Jarva’s telepath—Faith.

“
Who is the other telepath?” he wondered. “How am I gonna get him now?”

His brain whirred like mad. It had taken an awful lot of time just to single out Faith, and that was only because she had been “curious” about him, because she had entered his mind of her own will. If Benedict had instructed his telepath to stay away from Trumaine, there wasn’t a chance in the world he could find him.

Trumaine racked his brain for a solution, but he couldn’t find any. Yes, he could use Faith as a witness to try and charge Benedict with Jarva’s murder, but would her word be enough to nail Benedict?

Trumaine glanced at her: she was standing just inches behind the glass partition, looking as helpless as she could ever be, waiting for him to come up with an idea that would save her and put Benedict in her place.

Damn, he thought, even if he was the cop, even if he was supposed to come up with the brilliant ideas, he was stuck. He sighed, then pulled his chin, then wiped his face, clueless as to what to do next ...

The most obvious thing in the world hit him with the strength of a mallet and he felt the dumbest person that had ever walked the planet for not having thought about it already.

He turned toward the end of the corridor.

“
Guard! GUARD!” he shouted.

Then he glanced back at Faith.

“
You’re coming with me ...” he said.

Chapter Twenty

Firrell didn’t say anything when Trumaine had called, telling him that, far from being aboard the Neptune, he was still on the planet, at the City prison. He groaned when he heard about the reason Trumaine wasn’t on Aquaria. And he almost fell off his chair when he was told that the case, far from being solved, was more intricate than ever.

It had taken Trumaine some time to explain to his captain what he had discovered and why Firrell would never find Faith’s motivation for killing Jarva—she didn’t have any. She didn’t kill him, someone else did, someone who had a row with Jarva about the illegal use of Credence’s powers—that someone was Benedict.

But Trumaine couldn’t just arrest him; Benedict could still count on the help of another telepath—his own crawler, and nobody except him knew who it was.

They needed to lay a snare for him, and the only way to catch a telepath was using another telepath. That was the idea that had struck Trumaine in the prison, that’s why they needed to let Faith go. Trumaine would bring her in the chamber and have her search the minds of all believers, until she would find Benedict’s crawler.

Firrell had thought it over for a whole minute, then he had exhaled in a long whistle. In the end, he had agreed that the plan might even work.

It took him almost three hours to go to the Civic Court and convince the judge who had sent Faith behind bars that he should release her instead. The judge didn’t object, but he was very clear about one point: if they were wrong, their heads would roll. If Faith ran, Firrell could say good-bye to his promising career in the police and Trumaine won’t need his spanking new Aquarian citizenship, because he’d be in jail in her place.

Were they going to take up the risks along with the challenge? Fair enough. Faith had been released on parole ten minutes later. She was under Trumaine’s direct responsibility now, if she ran—they had been warned.

Trumaine had been delivered his old unmarked car just outside the prison. Firrell had been so kind to include the detective’s taser as well. Probably he wouldn’t use it—it was more a precaution. Trumaine strapped the gun holster around his shoulder, put on his jacket, then slid the taser inside the holster and waited by the car for Faith.

At long last, she had walked out from the crystal building that was the civic prison, taking a long, deep breath. Even if she wasn’t free yet, being outside was doing her a lot of good already. She felt happy; her smile and her good mood were slowly returning. She glanced at Trumaine and knew at once what worried him. Even if she could find all the answers to her questions just focusing on his thoughts, she was still shaken by the row they had had at her home. She was afraid she could upset him again, so she resorted to using real words instead of her powers. Even if words were a slower, old-fashioned means of communication, they were still quite a reliable way to express one’s feelings.