Tears in Rain (11 page)

“And the grief? All that pain I have inside? All that suffering in my memory?”

Nopal looked at her gravely. “That’s life, Bruna. That’s how it is. Life hurts.”

There was a brief silence and then the man stood up.

“I’ll make a few phone calls and try to find out what’s going on among the memorists. I’ll get in touch with you if I find anything.”

Nopal leaned over and brushed Bruna’s tattooed cheek with a finger. Such a light touch that the rep almost thought she had imagined it. Then the memorist smoothed his hair, regained his charming and barely trustworthy smile and, giving a half-turn, walked away. The android—still seated, still stunned—watched him as he left, her thoughts buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees. Five hundred scenes. That miserable pittance was her entire life? She was trying to gather the strength to stand up when she heard the sound of an incoming call. She looked at her wrist mobile: it was Myriam Chi.

“We have to talk,” said the leader without even bothering to greet her.

“What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you in person. Come and see me tomorrow morning at nine.”

And she cut the connection. Bruna was left staring at a blank screen, filled with self-loathing. She was bitter about having to obey a client like Myriam Chi, who trumpeted her orders as if Bruna were her slave; and losing her self-control with the memorist made her feel literally ill. The armchair in which the detective was sitting was at the back of the exhibition space, and a slow stream of visitors was passing by in front of her, crossing from the one side of the gallery to the other, and beginning the return walk to the entrance. But strangely, no one was looking at her. No one appeared to notice the tall, striking technohuman; too much invisibility for it to be normal. Yes indeed, Nopal had gotten it right when he arranged to meet her here. Illuminated by the skylight as if by a spotlight, Bruna felt like one more fake. Without a doubt, the least valuable one in the entire collection.

“B
runa! Bruna! Get up! Wake up!”

The rep opened one eye and saw a human figure rushing toward her. She sat bolt upright in her bed, yelled, and chopped defensively with her hand. Her arm passed cleanly through the colored air without meeting any resistance. She refocused her vision and recognized old Yiannis.

“Dammit, Yiannis, I’ve told you a million times not to do this!” she growled, her tongue numb and her mouth dry.

The full-length holograph figure of the archivist was floating around the room. He was the only person Bruna had authorized to make holo-calls.

“I will not have you entering my home like this! I’m going to put you on the prohibited list!”

“Sorry, but there was no way of waking you, and Myriam Chi—”

“Oh, shit—Chi!”

Before the old man had even mentioned the rep leader, Bruna had already seen the time on her ceiling, 10:20, and her neurons, abused by her hangover, had painfully begun to fire up, reminding her of a missed appointment. The previous day began to reconstruct itself hazily in her memory: the meeting with Nopal, Chi’s phone call, the excessive glasses of wine when she got home. Drinking by herself—or rather, getting drunk
by herself—was the penultimate stage of alcoholism. There was no question that she had a problem with alcohol, and now she also had a problem with her sole client, whom she had stood up. Bruna leaped out of bed so quickly that her jellylike brain seemed to bang against her skull and she had to hold her head between her hands and close her eyes for a few moments. That was it. She would never ever have another drink.

“I know I’m going to be late for my appointment with Chi. I know I’ve fucked up,” she groaned, her eyelids still tightly shut.

“No. It’s not that, Bruna. You won’t be late.”

The rep lifted her head and saw that Yiannis had turned his back to her.
Of course, I’m naked. My poor old gentleman
, she thought to herself, feeling a sort of irritated affection toward him. Her Chinese bathrobe was lying on the floor. Bruna picked it up and put it on.

“You can look now. What do you mean I’m not going to be late?”

Yiannis—or rather his holograph—turned around. His face was strained and pale; there was no doubting that he was the bearer of bad news. A burst of adrenaline ran up Bruna’s spine and her headache magically improved.

“What’s going on?”

“Chi is dead.”

“What?”

“Early this morning in the subway, she attacked a secretary from the Department of Labor. She gouged out the woman’s eyes and smashed her windpipe. It goes without saying that the woman was a techno. Then Chi threw herself onto the tracks in front of a train. She died instantly.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s on the news.”

Bruna ordered the home system to turn on the screen and found herself face to face with images of the android leader: Myriam at a rally; Myriam on the street; Myriam smiling,
arguing, doing an interview. Beautiful and full of life. On the news there was no talk of her having an adulterated memory, but that didn’t mean anything because, as far as Bruna knew, the information about the illegal memories had not been made public yet for any of the deaths. Was Myriam’s behavior due to the havoc wreaked by a lethal implant as well? And if so—as was most likely—who had injected it through her nose? Because it was unthinkable that the RRM leader would have done it voluntarily. Myriam’s death was murder. And it was also the biggest failure of Bruna’s professional career. She hadn’t even been able to keep her client alive for two days.

“I told her. I told her she had to be careful; I told her we should—”

“Be quiet, Bruna, be quiet and listen.”

The hologram of Yiannis now appeared to be seated in the air and staring fixedly not at Husky’s screen but at another point more to the right, probably the screen in his own house. But they were both seeing the same thing. A journalist, a famous but unpleasant individual with shiny blond hair called Enrique Ovejero, was discussing the event with an avid, sensational emphasis.

“And what people are asking themselves is, what’s happening with the technos? Are they ill, perhaps? Is it an epidemic? Could humans become infected? Why are they so violent? So far they’ve only attacked other androids, but could they pose a threat to normal people? We have with us José Hericio, a controversial figure whom many of you will know, a lawyer, and secretary-general of the HSP, the Human Supremacist Party. Good morning, Hericio, how are you? First of all, from your perspective, the death of one of your greatest enemies, the leader of the RRM—is it good news?”

“No, Ovejero, for heaven’s sake, I don’t delight in the death of anyone. Moreover, not only is it not good news but I think it’s also cause for great concern. Did you know there were other, earlier cases of violence?”

“Yes, of course. There was the one in the sky-tram last Thursday, and the one with the woman who gouged out her eye. With Chi, that makes three very similar cases in less than a week.”

“No, no, I’m talking about before those. There were four other such cases earlier on. In other words, seven in total. It’s just that the earlier cases went unnoticed because they were further apart. But they were all in the last six months. The seven cases are clearly interconnected, and not just because of that obsession with gouging out their own—or someone else’s—eyes. They have other elements in common as well.”

“What other elements?”

“My dear Ovejero, please allow me to keep that information to myself.”

It was true. There had been four suicides who hadn’t attacked anyone other than themselves. Three of them had gouged out their eyes, and all four had injected an adulterated memory. Or that was what Bruna had read in the documents Chi had given her. Hericio must have been referring to the mems when he was talking about what they had in common. Where could he have gotten a hold of those facts? The supremacist leader was a repulsive character with silicon cheeks, grafted hair, and a weak, slobbery mouth—one of those mouths that are permanently moist. Bruna had always felt that his fanatical extremism turned him into a clown of sorts, and that no one could take his awful nonsense seriously, but in the most recent regional elections, the HSP had won an astonishing 3 percent of the vote.

“Come on, Hericio. So how is it that the ordinary citizen knows nothing about these other incidents?” the slimy Ovejero asked, feigning outrage.

“Because, once again, our government—and I’m speaking not just of the regional government, but of the planetary one as well—is concealing information. Concealing it, or what would be even worse, it’s not aware of it, because we’re in the hands of the
most incompetent politicians humanity has ever had in its history. And that’s extremely serious, because we in the HSP have reliable information that suggests that a rep conspiracy is underway, a secret plan to seize power from humans.”

“Hold on; wait a minute. What are you saying? That the technohumans are preparing a coup d’état? But so far, the victims have only been technos.”

“Of course, because this is just the beginning. All this is part of a Machiavellian plan that I can’t reveal right now. But I assure you—and listen carefully to what I’m saying—I assure you that before long, the victims will start to be humans.”

“Look, Hericio, those are very dangerous, and very extremist, assertions, and I don’t—”

“Unfortunately, it will happen. It will happen very soon! Because this government of mental weaklings and replickers is incapable of doing anything to prevent it.”

“So, what should we be doing, according to you?”

“Look, the reps are our mistake. In fact, I even pity them—I feel sorry for them—because they’re monsters that we humans created. They are the children of our arrogance and greed, but that doesn’t stop them from being monsters. We have to put an end to this aberration as soon as possible, and in our party’s platform we spell out clearly how to do this. In the first place, shut down forever all the production plants; and then, given that their lives are so short, it will be enough to intern all the reps until they die.”

“Sure. The famous concentration camps of the sixties. I remind you that the horrendous Rep War was unleashed for far less than that.”

“That’s why we have to act quickly, without warning, and with a firm hand. There’s a lot more of us than them. We can’t allow them to attack first.”

“Assuming that they do attack at some point, Hericio. In conclusion, on this program we don’t always share the opinions
of our guests, but we are strong supporters of freedom of expression. So we leave you with the categorical views of the leader of the Human Supremacist Party. Many thanks.”

Bruna was stunned. It was a long time since she had heard anything so violent. And Ovejero seemed the more guilty to her for having invited such a cretin on to a live show, and for allowing him to unleash his paranoid propaganda without contradicting him or cutting him off, barely simulating a show of dissent. But then, what could you expect from a nasty character who referred to humans as “normal people”?

“This is unheard of. I think they should be reported for incitement to violence between the species,” spluttered Yiannis.

Maybe Hericio had paid Ovejero, thought Bruna. Or perhaps antirep fanaticism was growing far more quickly than she had believed. She shivered.
Come on, Husky, you know we’re totally discriminated against
, Myriam had said. And she had spoken of plots and conspiracies too—from the human side. It couldn’t be; they were all crazy. It had to be something simpler and more idiotic than a conspiracy: a consignment of damaged mems. She noticed a light tingling sensation in her head, a tiny idea struggling to emerge. She decided to ignore it; normally, her ideas came to the surface of their own accord if she ignored them.

“I have to go to the RRM, Yiannis.”

“Yes. And I have to go to work.”

The hologram of the old man disappeared. Bruna had a quick vapor shower, put on a purple metallic skirt and blue T-shirt, and took a double serving of coffee out of the fridge to drink on the way. She caught a cab and didn’t take long to get to her destination. In fact, she hardly had time to shake the container to heat up the coffee and then drink it before they pulled up in front of the headquarters of the Radical Replicant Movement.

“You’ve left my cab stinking of coffee,” the driver grumbled.

“Well, it’s a very pleasant aroma. You should charge me less for the ride,” replied Bruna calmly.

But when she got out of the cab, a disturbing thought crossed her mind:
that cabdriver was unpleasant to me because I’m a rep
. Bruna shook her head, irritated with herself. She hated having any thoughts that smacked of a persecution complex. And it was a well-known fact that cabdrivers generally loathed people eating or drinking in their vehicles.
Four years, three months, and twenty-one days.

At the entrance to the RRM there were two police cars, as well as the usual security guards. Bruna had to identify herself several times and pass through the scanner before they would allow her to go upstairs. She asked for Valo Nabokov, the head of security and Chi’s lover, and to her surprise, the woman received her immediately. When Bruna walked into her office, Valo was standing with her back to Bruna, looking out the window. She was as tall as Bruna and probably also a combat rep, but she was dressed in a much more feminine and sophisticated manner: tight-fitting pants under a full, diaphanous skirt with 3-D spots depicting rosebuds on it, and huge platform shoes. She wore her hair—deep black and thick—in an intricate bun on top of her head.