Credence Foundation

Chapter Four



Benedict didn’t remember having any appointments today, and it wasn’t like him to forget something. He studied Trumaine with a slight frown.

“You’re not here to apply, are you?” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

“Detective Investigator Trumaine,” said Trumaine, showing his blue badge.

Benedict shot a quick glance at the plastic card, then looked up again and smiled vaguely.

“I’m Noah Benedict, chief of board and main responsible for the federal institution that is Credence. How may I help you, Detective?”

“This morning, Aarmo Jarva was found dead in his bunker house,” said Trumaine. “It was in the lunchtime news.”

“So I’ve heard. It is a great loss for the scientific community as well as for mankind.”

“Did you happen to know Professor Jarva, Mr. Benedict?”

“I must say that I knew him quite well. For a brief season in the past, he had access to Credence. He was allowed to collect data about anything he wanted, including our believers. Mostly, it was a professional relationship. Without a doubt, a very inspiring and profitable experience, I should add. He was an exquisite man to know. At least he was to me. I regret that he’s dead ...”

Trumaine, intrigued by the answer, wondered if he could be on a hot trail already.

“When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.

“Not recently, I’m afraid,” said Benedict.

“What’s it been, months? Weeks?” prodded Trumaine.

“I believe Professor Jarva left Credence more than five years ago. It mustn’t be any later than that.”

“Five years is an awful lot of time,” grumbled Trumaine, then he went on. “As you might have also heard, the circumstances in which both Jarva and his wife were killed are, to put it mildly, odd. They were killed in a closed environment to which nobody seemingly had access—Jarva’s own bunker. As queer as this may sound, the murderer found a way to enter the sealed bunker, kill Jarva’s wife, let Jarva bleed to death, then vanish into thin air ...”

“I don’t see how I can be of any help, Detective,” pouted Benedict.

“I’d say it again, for clarity: when the Jarvas were being killed, the plate door to the bunker’s keep was shut,” repeated Trumaine.

Again, Benedict didn’t seem to get it.

“Isn’t this exactly what you do in here?” asked Trumaine. “I mean—flush things and people around different places, despite the void or any other objects that might be in the way?”

“Are you suggesting that the murderer had himself flushed in and out of the crime scene? Like a big spaceship?” Benedict didn’t laugh in Trumaine’s face, he just exhaled in a polite scoff of disbelief.

Trumaine studied Benedict’s eyes for a moment, then stepped to the window from where the fluctuating believers could be seen.

“Tell me, Mr. Benedict. Is there any way to change the feed before it is administered?”

“Clearly, you have no idea about what the feed is,” said Benedict. “What we call ‘the feed’ is an endless list of extremely detailed information. The feed includes the list of spaceships which are going to travel on a given day. Their destinations. The timetables for their arrival and for their departures. The names of the civilians bound to travel—in case of passenger transportation. The detailed list of the number, type and quality of the goods traveling—for cargo transports. The feed is compiled on a daily basis in the offices of the Transport Security Administration. The massive amount of information is then assembled in one large file. Five copies are published, each of them encrypted according to the highest standards of security. The copies are then locked into five different security cases, each one with its own access code. All the cases are then securely transported to the Federal Agency where they are once again verified and then released. One copy goes back to the Transport Security Administration for archiving. One copy is kept by the Federal Authority for archiving. One copy is sent to the mainframe for archiving. The last two copies are finally delivered to Credence and loaded into our computers. The computers work on their own. No one has access to them.”

Benedict made a long pause, waiting for his words to sink in. Trumaine might as well as be the smartest cop in town, but the proceedings were just as complicated.

“As you can see for yourself,” he went on, “there are simply too many redundant checks in all the various stages of the process to even remotely consider a change in the feed possible. No. I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Trumaine set his jaw. “All right,” he said. “Is there any other way the murderer could have changed the feed after it was administered and before the Main Belief was created?”

Benedict thought for a moment.

“I don’t see how he could,” he said. “The feed is securely delivered into the minds of the believers through a transmitter embedded in the headrest of their couches. The murderer would have had to have tampered with more than half of the deckchair computers—decidedly an unlikely event.”

“And why is that? Why more than half the couches?” asked Trumaine.

“Because the Main Belief is attained when more than half the believers are synchronized, which is to say when they believe exactly the same thing. But it’s only when more than eighty-five percent of the total believers are correctly aligned that the Main Belief becomes effective. Under that threshold, even if the Main Belief is established, nothing happens. No spaceship is going to move, not even an inch,” explained Benedict.

“Well,” said Trumaine with a frown. “A man weighs a small fraction of a spaceship’s whole tonnage. The murderer might have needed to tamper with far less computer headrests to have himself flushed into Jarva’s bunker and kill him.”

Benedict nodded his head. Trumaine had a point there. “Still, the couches are guarded,” he said. “One could never access them without being discovered. I’m afraid that’s out of the question too.”

“Couldn’t the murderer have converted the believers outside Credence?” threw in Trumaine.

“Well, that’s possible in theory, but it’s actually unfeasible. Think about it, Detective. Let’s say that the average weight of a grown man is, what, about a hundred eighty pounds, at most? Still, the murderer should have approached more than forty believers. Not any believers, mind you, but Credence’s believers. He would have convinced them he was going to be in the bunker at a given time, then that he was going to be in another place, say half an hour later. I mean, convinced them in such a satisfying way that they would believe him. Again, I’m afraid that’s not the case. It is one thing administering the feed in a trancelike state specifically designed to take advantage of the subject’s suspensions of disbelief. It is another thing to do that when the subject is fully awake, when all the barriers the logic mind arranges between us and the world outside are up and working. The thing just couldn’t be done.”

Trumaine groaned. Something deep inside him kept telling him that the murderer had found a way to use Credence for his awful purposes.

“I’m sure there’s something we’re overlooking,” he said. “Is there anything else you can think of? Don’t limit yourself to what you think is possible. The murderer might be one step ahead of us.”

Benedict stroked his chin and took a few steps around as he pondered the question. Somehow, he seemed to have lost a bit of his cockiness and self-assurance. The thought that, unbeknown to him, something unlawful could be going on under the crystal-clean semblance of Credence made him uneasy.

He stopped in front of the window that gave onto the believers’ chamber and watched the believers float around peacefully, mindless of the troubles of the world. After a moment of silence, he turned.

“There might be another possibility, but it so defies my beliefs, I’m reluctant to even consider it.”

“I’m all ears,” prodded Trumaine. “Go on.”

“This is highly hypothetical, mind you. There’s no proof whatsoever that such an individual exists.”

“I’m used to examining the strangest hypotheses. Who are you talking about?”

Benedict rolled over the word in his mouth, as if it had an unsavory taste, almost unable to pronounce it. It took him a lot of effort to get it out of him.

“I’m talking about ... a telepath,” he said at last.

“A telepath?” The jarring word rang inside Trumaine’s ears like an offbeat note. He shook his head, confused, as if the word made no sense at all.

“I repeat, this is merely hypothetical,” said Benedict. “But suppose, for argument’s sake, that the murderer was also a telepath. He could act as a mental crawler, penetrating the minds of the believers to the point of being privy to what pleases them. He could easily build on or interfere with the stream of their memories, planting parasitic elements into the believers’ most pleasurable memories. What’s more important, he could do that despite the intricacies of the feed and the roadblocks of the aware mind. One by one, he might convert all the believers he needs, until the critical mass required to obtain a parasite belief would be reached. If properly done, the parasite belief would add to the Main Belief, not interfere with it, I guess.”

Trumaine considered Benedict’s words.

“It sounds like it would take him a very long time to convert one individual alone,” he said. “What about all the other believers he needs? It would take the murderer months, if not years to convert them all.”

“If he’s good, I think a few months would do,” said Benedict.

“It you are right, this means that Jarva’s murder has been carefully planned.”

“Have you found any evidence against that?”

Trumaine didn’t say anything. As far as he was concerned, he could use any evidence.

“All right. Let’s suppose that our killer is not just a shrewd telepath, but that he’s a mind crawler as well. Let’s say that he’s murdered Jarva for reasons that we have yet to understand and that he carefully planned the whole thing, choosing in advance both the place and the time for killing. Wouldn’t it be easier for him if he too was a believer?”

From the silence that followed, it was clear that Trumaine’s guess was Benedict’s worst fear: if a crawler was hiding among his believers, it was going to be the end of Credence.

“He might be ...” said a deadpan Benedict.

“Tell me then, what would you do to find him?”

Benedict wet his lips. A moment was all it had taken him to go back to his confident manners. All of a sudden, he looked like a trophy hunter who had just been offered the lead in the search of a much fabled species.

“What a great challenge for the mind that would be,” he said. “Usual investigating techniques would be useless in this case, I’m afraid. Direct questioning? How would you possibly know if the believer you are interviewing is really telling the truth or if—as a crawler—he’s second guessing you, depending on what he reads in your mind? Following suspects? That would be ridiculous, you will be tailing the crawler forever. No. That’s not the way to go ... You must think out of the box.”

“How do you mean?” asked Trumaine.

“Since it’s the crawler who owns the keys to your mind, your only chance to catch him would be to let him into your head.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“For curiosity, I guess. Curiosity can be a tremendous motivator, Detective. The crawler might want to see for himself who is the hound chasing after him. See if you are really as good as everybody claims. If you’ve got what it takes to catch him. He might want to confront you ...”

“There’s very little for me to work on, don’t you think?” said Trumaine.

“On the contrary, there’s a lot that you can do,” insisted Benedict. “Let him make the first move. Just expose your mind; let him in. Let him take a good look at your memories. Make him familiar to the way you think—to what makes you tick. There is a good chance that, once he’s inside your mind, he’s going to expose his own in turn. Without his knowledge, some details could slip from his mind into yours. Putting those details together, like in a puzzle, would be your job. Until you have a detailed enough profile of him—that’s when you drop your net, Detective.”

Trumaine was unsure. “Use my mind as the bait?”

“I’m afraid so ...”

“In the chamber?”

Benedict curled his lips into a nasty grin. “Where else?”

Trumaine didn’t say anything, he just didn’t like it. It all sounded too weird to him. So far removed from what he had been taught all the years he had spent in the force. So far removed from the nuts-and-bolts of his profession that were sheer and plain facts. Facts won’t betray you, Firrell used to tell him. Always follow the real thing, not haphazard reconstructions that have the most remote chance to be the truth.

What Benedict had just proposed to him was exactly the opposite: forget all about the little sense the reality of facts was offering in the Jarvas’ case. Dismiss the worn-out clothes of the old-fashioned, traditional detective who insisted on using too conventional techniques that lead to nothing.

Trumaine was required to make a generational step. New tools needed to be forged if he wanted to find his bearings in the irrational realm that was the unconscious mind.

If the telepath actually existed, and if Benedict’s theory was any good, this was going to be a lot more complicated than what he had grown used to, thought Trumaine. It was going to be a big jump in the dark; it was going to be a leap of faith. Benedict had his reasons for wanting the telepath out of Credence, of course. Professional reasons as well as personal reasons. He was responsible for Credence; if the telepath was able to produce a parasite belief, one could easily imagine the power he had at his disposal and the amount of damage he was liable to do.

On the other side, Trumaine had the clear feeling that behind the seeming warmth and understanding that Benedict bestowed so liberally upon his fellow humans, there was something else. Beyond the measured voice, the cloying smile and the forced confidence, he had glimpsed something slimy, cold and green. It was the coiling snake of arrogance, the sin of a man who considered himself a choice individual—the one in a million. Benedict was a king and Credence was his kingdom.

Trumaine suspected that what Benedict feared most wasn’t an attack on Credence, but on his own personal world. On his perfectly controlled and prioritized system.

He had seen that kind of men before in his life. They were the kind of individuals who could turn to very nasty resolutions to defend the bitch that was power.

“What if he gets into my brain and I don’t realize it?” he asked.

“It’s a risk you must take,” said Benedict with a soothing yet patronizing tone that precluded any further debate.

“I’m afraid there’s no other way ...”