The Credulity Nexus (24 page)

“
Sorry, Newt, you lost me at 'blasphemous
Jesuit'. Could we just, you know, skip to the point of all this? I
like to hear a deranged rant as much as the next man,
but–”

“
Silence!” For a sickly guy in a
wheelchair, Newton Cordell still had a powerful set of lungs. His
bellow seemed to hang in the air as the seconds ticked past. The
ageing trillionaire glowered at Rik. Slowly, slowly, he got himself
under control again.

“
Very well. The point. I brought you here
to tell me where my package is. So tell me, and let's get this over
with.”

Rik's body
tensed, and he wished he'd let the old fool rant a bit more. There
was only one way this was likely to end. He thought briefly about
trying to bluff his way out of it. If he could, he might still have
a chance to find Maria before Cordell's people did – or Lanham's.
But he was flat out of convincing lies.

“
I don't know where it is. I lost
it.”

Cordell
laughed again, but not in a nice way.

“
We're talking about the salvation of the
human race, you buffoon! It took me a decade to find the faith
nexus–“

“
The credulity nexus, you mean.”

“
No! I mean faith! Faith! The pattern of
genes that opens a man's heart to faith. That will open his ears to
the Word of God. A decade to find it, and years more to build the
vector that would carry the genes to reshape it. And now, thanks to
you and those... those... machines, my lab is in ruins, and the
people I need are all dead. All I have left is what's in that
package, and I don't have the time to do it all again. I'm dying!
Look at me! I'm going to face my Maker soon. Within the year! And I
was going to bring Him the gift of eight billion converts. Eight
billion sinners, singing His praise!”

“
You must have a real bad conscience, if
it's going to take all that to buy your way into
Heaven.”

For a moment,
Cordell was apoplectic with rage. “Buy my way? Buy? You think God
can be bought, you miserable worm?”

He stopped
speaking and gasped in silence, eyes bulging, struggling to draw a
breath. Small arms and gadgets appeared from out of the chair and
attached themselves to his legs and chest, administering medicines
and checking his responses. Peth jumped up and ran to him, touching
him and soothing him, urging him to relax.

By the time he
could breathe again, Cordell looked exhausted. He slumped in his
chair, his face slack. His eyes, however, still regarded Rik from
under heavy lids.

Peth turned to
Rik, her own eyes bright with anger.

“
My husband isn't the kind of person your
sort is used to dealing with. The thought of all those billions of
people dying in sin is agony to him. His only thought is to bring
them all to God and eternal joy.”

“
Right, by screwing up their brains. You
think this god of yours would want that? Wasn't he supposed to have
given us free will so we could make up our own minds?”

Cordell
struggled out of his stupor. “The nexus is God's gift to us, the
path to Grace, and Satan has corrupted it. Corrupted it! But I will
undo the Beast's work. I will save us all from damnation!”

Rik was
growing increasingly creeped out by the man's obvious insanity. He
knew Cordell was reputed to be a religious man, but he'd assumed
that meant the same cynical lip-service that everyone paid the
Divine. The political scheming to take control of the world's
governments by use of the nexus, as explained by Lanham, had made
perfect sense to Rik. But this man was a True Believer, and the
difference between that and a raving nutcase was too close for Rik
to call.

“
All we want is your co-operation, Rik,”
Peth said, apparently trying for a more reasonable tone. “Just tell
us where the package is and no-one will get hurt.”

“
Who?” Rik asked, his temper rising again.
“Who are you planning to hurt now? Don't you freaks see the
contradiction here? Saint fucking Newton wants to save the world,
but he doesn't care how many people suffer to make it happen? If
you're really worried about your immortal souls, tell me where
Maria is, and forget about the damned credulity nexus.”

“
Faith!” Cordell shouted. The meds he'd
received seemed to be restoring him. He slammed his palm down on
the arm of his chair, insisting. “Faith!”

“
Whatever.”

“
Rik,” Peth tried again. “Those... people
at Omega Point, they're not the good guys.”

Rik knew that
all right. He had two dead wives and a friend in a coma to remind
him.

“
They probably told you all kinds of lies
about us. They probably painted us blacker than black. But why do
you think they want to get hold of the package so
badly?”

That seemed
pretty obvious to Rik, especially now he'd met the devout Mr.
Cordell.

“
They want to use it, Rik.”

“
What? What possible reason could they have
for turning the world into religious nutters? That doesn't make
sense.”

“
Think about the nexus Rik. It opens people
up to belief. It makes them willing to go beyond mere physical
evidence, beyond what they see and hear. Newton and I want to give
that blessing to everyone, Rik. But what if the ghosts got the
vector? What if they re-engineered it to shut the nexus down
completely?

“
You know what it's like for them now.
Ordinary people don't trust them. Decent religious people condemn
them for the abominations they are. Omega Point is their big symbol
of transhuman superiority, but the reality is it's not safe for
them down here on Earth, or anywhere close by. There are plenty of
people who want to destroy them.

“
But imagine if they could stamp out belief
altogether. Most of their enemies would turn into friends. Some
people might still be jealous of their immortality and their
wealth, but the rest would no longer be able to see what a foul
mockery of life they are. They would be accepted. Safe. They could
even move back among us and wield their power more
directly.”

Rik wanted to
argue with her, because that's what you do with paranoid,
crazy-people, but he'd met Lanham and his friend Celestina. He knew
they wouldn't hesitate to mess with people's genes if it would
serve their ends.

He shook his
head, trying to get his thoughts in a more orderly pattern. He
turned to Cordell. “All right, so Lanham's a creep too. So handing
the package over to him might be a bad idea. It doesn't change
anything. You can torture me, kill everyone I ever knew, whatever
twisted thing is in your decaying mind, but you can't change the
facts. I don't know where the package is. It's lost.”

Cordell looked
into Rik's eyes and smiled. “I don't believe you.”

He called for
the robots to take Rik's arms again, which they did.

“
Tonight you will be my guest, Mr. Drew. I
have arranged accommodation for you. Tomorrow I will show you all
those twisted things in my decaying mind.”

The
Barbie-bots led him along long corridors, out of the expensive,
plush parts of the house into an area that looked more like a
business-class hotel. They released him outside an anonymous door
and he heard the lock click open. One of the robots signalled for
him to enter, and he grabbed the knob and pushed the door wide.

Something
large and loud came charging out of the room and hit him in the
chest. If he hadn't been such a big guy, he would have been knocked
flat. As it was, he staggered back into his guards with his
attacker clamped to his chest, kicking and punching him with
gusto.

“
Hey!” he shouted, recovering from the
shock. His assailant, he realised, was a woman. He grabbed her by
the shoulders and held her away from him at arm's length. The woman
looked up at him, with blazing eyes and a curse on her lips, and
stopped dead.

“
Rik?”

“
Fariba?”

“
Oh, thank God!”

She threw
herself at him again, this time hugging him tightly. Rik wrapped
his arms around her and held her close. He felt a wash of emotions:
surprise at how small she seemed, astonishment and dismay at
finding her there, and a sudden, glorious happiness that she was
alive and unharmed.

“
Please enter the room,” one of the robots
said.

Freymann
looked around Rik at the tall, beautiful speaker in the white
catsuit.

“
Are you going to introduce me?”

They let go of
one another and stepped apart.

“
Fariba, meet Barbie, and, er,
Barbie.”

“
Please enter the room,” Barbie
said.

Freymann eyed
the twins critically. “These two catwalk models are your guards? I
don't see any weapons.”

Rik held up a
cautionary hand. “Don't be fooled by their willowy elegance. Either
one of these ladies could take the pair of us apart with her bare
hands. Shall we go in?”

Freymann was
clearly reluctant to believe him, but she turned and led him back
into her room.

As the door
closed behind him, Rik surveyed the shambles of broken furniture
and the gutted carcass of what might once have been a domestic
robot.

“
I like what you've done with the
place.”

He looked to
her for a smile but Freymann was all business.

“
The walls, floors and ceiling are hardened
concrete. The door is steel. The window is... Well, who knows what
it is, but I can't break the damned thing. There isn't a vent,
crack or gap anywhere big enough for me to crawl through. And I've
found three cameras already, so watch what you say.”

“
How long have they had you here?” He
cleared some electronic junk off the bed and lay down. Just the
possibility of rest made him want to sleep for a month.

“
I'm not sure. Days. Two or three. Maybe
four. Where have you been all this time? It's more than a week
since that zombie took you in LA.”

“
What's up with your face?”

She pulled her
hand away as if she'd only just realised she was rubbing it. “The
damned zombie broke my jaw. The Feds fixed me up, but I've got
three new teeth growing, and it hurts like shit.”

Rik almost
reached out a comforting hand. “I was just with Cordell. Jesus,
that guy's one sinner short of a prayer meeting!”

“
Cordell? I knew it must be him! I haven't
seen a soul since they brought me here.”

“
You didn't miss much.”

“
Do you know where we are?”

“
Not a clue. South-Western US, maybe.
Arizona? Nevada? Possibly farther south. Look, if no-one's been to
see you...”

“
Yeah, I know. I'm here for leverage. And
now you've arrived, I guess it's showtime.”

He looked at
her for a long time. She looked like someone who'd worn the same
dress for four days, and spent half that time trying to dig through
a concrete wall with a spoon and fork. Her big Persian eyes looked
back at him steadily. She was ready to face whatever was coming,
but she was tired, and he could see anxiety moving like a shark
beneath the calm surface.

Before he knew
why, he was on his feet and holding her again, apologising for
being the reason she was there in that room, telling her she'd be
all right, he'd take care of her. For a moment, she let him. She
put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. Then she
pushed herself away, roughly, and walked across the room.

“
I'm sorry,” he said. “I just wanted
to...”

She dismissed
whatever he was going to say with a wave. “You're a nice guy, Rik.
Really nice. But you're the kind of man who likes to look after
people. Especially women. Am I right?”

Rik blinked
back at her in confusion.

“
Well, I don't need that, and I don't want
it. I'm here to do a job. Well, I would be if they hadn't suspended
me.” She gave a wry grin, and Rik realised she wasn't actually mad
at him.

“
I wasn't coming on,” he said, but if he
wasn't, he didn't know quite what he had been doing. “I
just...”

“
You just saw a damsel in distress and rode
to the rescue, right? Couldn't help yourself.” She was smiling now.
“It's nice. Cute. There should be more guys like you. Tell you the
truth? It scares me how easy it would be to just let you take the
whole thing on those hulking great shoulders of yours. But that
just ain't me, honey.”

He still
couldn't understand what she was saying, but he got the message
that he should stop trying to comfort her. Despite the slender
build and the doe eyes, this was one tough cookie. He raised his
hands in surrender.

She seemed to
sense his bewilderment. “Look, Rik, I've met you twice. What do I
know? So I read your file once. It doesn't make me an expert,
right?”

He decided to
change the subject. “So what's the food like around here?”

Freymann
looked relieved. “It used to be OK, until I broke their toy.” She
kicked at the carcass of the robot. “That was a day or two ago. Now
room service won't call any more.”

Rik fished
around in his pocket and pulled out a couple of bags of peanuts. He
tossed them over. “I stole those on the plane. Didn't know when I
might get a meal again.”

Freymann
looked like she might run over and hug him again, despite all she'd
just said. She pulled a bag open, then remembered her manners.
“We'll share them.”