Tears in Rain (34 page)

“I can’t,” said the Omaá.

“You can’t
what
?” asked Lizard.

“What do you mean you
can’t
?” Bruna shouted.

“What is it that he can’t do?” the policeman insisted.

The Omaá lowered his head and repeated, “I can’t!”

It sounded like someone throwing a bucket of water against a wall.

“But why?” asked Bruna in despair.

The alien began to change color. He went dark all over, becoming reddish-brown.

“What’s happening to you?” asked the rep, concerned.

“It’s the
kuammil
. It’s the result of an intense emotion. Like when you want to speak but you shouldn’t.”

“What’s going on here?” growled Lizard in annoyance.

Something told Bruna she shouldn’t pursue the matter further. Not right now.

“So you really can’t?”

Maio shook his head. The rep turned toward the inspector.

“Look, I’m sorry, but it’s better that we drop it and you leave. I haven’t got anything to eat anyway. We’ll talk another day.”

Lizard looked at her, more wide-eyed than ever. Just then, he noticed that Bartolo was chewing on the cuff of his pants and with a shake of his leg, he sent the creature flying a few feet. The bubi shrieked.

“What are you doing, you brute?” yelled the rep angrily, squatting down to pick up the greedy-guts, forgetting that she had done the same thing two days earlier.

Indignation seemed to have swept away all of Lizard’s lethargy.

“You’re insane,” he spluttered.

He said it with anger. With hatred.

“What’s happening is that I don’t trust you, Lizard.”

“Nor I you. Because you’re insane. Keep your interplanetary zoo and leave me in peace,” he spat.

And he left, slamming the door behind him.

The android turned to Maio, who was slowly recovering his customary multihued color.

“And now, you, tell me why the devil you can’t read his thoughts.”

The Omaá turned slightly darker in color.

“I can only get inside the heads of those people with whom I’ve been close.”

Bruna became worried.

“How close?”

“Very close. Totally close.
Intimately
close. As close as two beings can be. When an alien makes
guraam
, the
kuammil
comes into contact with the other being’s
kuammil
, and from that moment, the alien can read the other being’s thoughts.
Guraam
means connection. It’s what you call—”

Bruna raised her hand. “Don’t go on.”

“I won’t go on.”

He had turned reddish-brown again.

Four years, three months, and fifteen days
, thought Bruna in order to concentrate on something other than the Omaá. She went to the bathroom to see if the nausea she was feeling might lead to her throwing up, but nothing happened. She wetted her face using her precious, meager supply of water.
Four years, three months, and fifteen days.
How Merlín would have laughed at all this.

She went back to the living room, where Maio was again blowing on his little piece of wood. Or something similar to wood. It was like a flute, except that on one side there were grooves that ran the length of the instrument. And it was played transversally, like a harmonica, by moving the lips across the grooves. It produced a captivating sound—a beautiful, delicate, liquid hiss. Bruna sat down on the armchair and allowed the alien music to relax her. The notes seemed to caress her skin, to enter through her epidermis, not her ears. After a while, Maio stopped, as opaline and multicolored as ever.

“Do all Omaás play this well?”

The
bicho
smiled.

“No. I am an
ambalo
. That means an
amb
virtuoso—that’s this instrument. I’m a musician.”

Then Bruna had another brilliant idea. The second big idea of the day. And she mentally prayed to Gabriel Morlay that this time it would work out well.

They reached the circus between the afternoon and evening sessions. On this occasion, Bruna didn’t disconnect her mobile because she had a legitimate and understandable reason for visiting Mirari. The journey there was quite unpleasant. It wasn’t the best moment in history for a shabby alien and a combat replicant to be crossing Madrid side by side. Never mind Bartolo, who had hitched a ride on the Omaá’s powerful shoulders. They formed an eye-catching group, but the fear they provoked was much stronger than any rejection, and humans took off hastily at the sight of them. Streets, sky-trams, and travelators emptied at their passage, as if they were radioactive. If it hadn’t been so depressing, it would have been amusing.

They found the violinist in her dressing room eating a pizza. She looked at them impassively, and Bruna envied her calmness, or maybe her experience. Mirari had probably dealt with aliens in the past.

“What’s up?”

“Hi. This is Maio. He’s a musician. I’d like you to listen to him play.”

Mirari turned her head to look carefully at the alien. She resembled a bird, with her face crowned by her shining, thick, white hair, like a feathery crest.

“An Omaá flutist. They say they’re good. Would you like some pizza?”

She fiddled with the small food dispenser she had in the room, and two steaming extra-large vegetable pizzas, and a small one for Bartolo, appeared instantly in the drawer. They all chewed in silence for few minutes until the last crumb had disappeared. Then they washed their hands in a jet of vapor.

“Let’s hear what you can do,” said Mirari, leaning back in her seat.

Maio raised the amb to his lips and began to blow. Liquid notes flowed from his mouth, threads of sound that seemed to glide around the room leaving a trail of light. Bruna held her breath—or, rather, she forgot to breathe for a few seconds, submerged in the music like a diver underwater.

A delicate, moving lament of a sound responded beside her. The rep turned her head and saw that Mirari was on her feet, playing her violin. The voices of the two instruments intertwined in the air, the flute sinuous and soothing beside the raw lament of the violin, creating such a profound, vast whole that Bruna felt she had sounds flowing through her veins instead of blood. Time dissolved, the past fused with the present, and Merlín was alive again because absolutely everything but death fitted into that primordial music. And then the horsehair bow slipped and the violin screeched, breaking the spell.

“Shit!” shouted Mirari, beside herself, throwing the bow to the ground.

She put the violin on the chair and began to hit her seized-up bionic arm with her other hand. She must have found it insufficient because she then walked over to the wall and, balancing
her body, repeatedly smashed her arm against the doorjamb in a whipping motion. She was furious, and the sound of metal being pounded seemed to intensify her frenzy. Finally, she stopped, panting and exhausted, her extremely pale face flushed with fiery red blotches, her shattered artificial arm hanging limply from her shoulder. Mirari gasped, moved the violin aside with a trembling hand, and fell into the chair. Maio and Bruna watched her in silence. The violinist gradually recovered her normal breathing rhythm. Then she looked at her orthopedic member with aversion and began to examine and move it. It squeaked.

“Now I’m in trouble,” she murmured gloomily.

She bent over to pick up the bow.

“At least
this
isn’t broken.”

She raised her head and looked at the alien.

“You’re very good, Omaá. You’re fantastic. What a pity.”

She grimaced, perhaps intending to look severe but actually looking desolate, and, opening a red box on the floor, took out an electronic screwdriver and began to poke around in the joints of the arm.

“Wait, Mirari. I know a bit about this. I think I can help,” said Bruna.

And it was true. The standard package for combat technos included midlevel training as electronics technicians so that in an emergency they could repair weapons, peripherals, and vehicles in the field.

The violinist handed over the screwdriver and leaned against the back of the chair. She looked spent. Squatting down beside her, Bruna began to study the workings of the prosthetic arm.

“You told me the other day that your violin was a Stan...a whatever. Something very expensive. Couldn’t you sell it and buy yourself a good arm?” she commented as she tightened some screws.

“A Stainer. Everyone used to say I was a good violinist. In fact, they used to say I was
very
good. I’m not telling you this out
of vanity, but so that you’ll understand what happened. The thing is, I was confident in my violin playing and wanted to improve...I’m sure you understand me, Omaá. I wanted to improve, and for that I needed a good violin. I fell in love with that Stainer and I couldn’t think about anything else, so I borrowed the money and I bought it. But a few things went sour for me and all of a sudden I couldn’t make the repayments, so I teleported myself a few times to the outer mines to earn the money. And what happened was that on the way back from my second trip, on my fourth transfer, cellular disorder destroyed the bones in this arm. The only thing remaining was the bone in the tip of my ring finger; the rest of the bone tissue had volatilized and the remaining extremity was a useless scrap of flesh that they had to amputate. So I lost an arm to get the violin, and now there’s absolutely no way I’ll sell the violin to get an arm. That’s why I’ve become involved in underground deals: to accumulate Gs and get hold of a good piece of bionic engineering. Although, given my luck, I’m sure to end up in jail first.”

Bruna had never heard such a long speech from Mirari. She carefully tightened a cable in the elbow and then looked at the violinist.

“You thought Maio was good, didn’t you?”

“He’s splendid. He could do it for a living. He’d earn good money. Omaá flutists are a much sought-after rarity.”

“Exactly. That’s what I thought. So I asked myself, wouldn’t Mirari be interested in him for her orchestra?”

The violinist sat upright in the chair and focused. You could almost hear her thinking.

“Such a good musician, and an alien to boot,” she said slowly. “Yes, that would be good. Our small orchestra would be greatly improved. We could renegotiate our contract. Even ask for a percentage of the takings. Are you interested?”

Maio nodded.

“All right then. We split everything equally. But I’m the one in charge, you understand? I still have to consult with the others, but they’ll say yes. They always agree with whatever I say.”

The alien nodded his head again energetically. His large body was lighting up in vibrant color. Maybe it was a demonstration of happiness.

“One more thing. Maio has nowhere to live. And then, I wouldn’t like to separate him from the greedy-guts; they get on so well!” said the rep, hopefully. With a bit of luck, she’d be able to free herself of both of them in one hit.

Mirari shrugged.

“They can stay here in the dressing room. There’s a bed behind that screen.”

And without realizing it, she pointed toward the back of the room with her bionic arm, which unfolded itself obediently in the air.

“Oh! Hey, it’s working now,” she said, testing the metal joints with a finger.

“Yes, it’s working. But try not to smash it against the wall again until you can afford a new arm.”

B
runa was standing in line in front of the ticket office. She had been there for a while and was beginning to get tired. It was hot, the room lacked ventilation; it was an oppressive and depressing place. Hundreds of people were squashed into a space that was too small, with low ceilings and faint lighting. There were old people sitting on bags, adults nervously walking back and forth, children crying. But apart from that crying, a strange silence prevailed, as if the people had used up all their words because of such a long wait. They looked like war refugees, stateless people in search of asylum, and the rep somehow knew this to be so. She looked around and told herself that all those people filling the room, technos and human, mutants and
bichos,
were desperate beings, although it was a cold, passive, resigned desperation. Suddenly Bruna found herself at the ticket window. Finally she’d made it. A woman took charge of her documents and a man led her toward a door.

“It’s your turn,” he said.

In front of her, a long way down, in a panoramic view beneath her feet, the marvelous spectacle of a multihued, ebullient city—a brilliant, multicolored pool—was spreading out under the dark vault of the sky. Excitement and vertigo. She took a step forward, but someone grabbed her by the arm and stopped her.

“He can’t go through.”

The android turned in surprise and discovered that Merlín was at her side. They were holding hands.

“Not him,” repeated the voice, authoritatively.

Merlín looked at her and smiled. A small, melancholy smile. Bruna tried to speak to him, tried to turn around and go back into the room. But they were already in motion, nothing could be stopped now, and everything was happening very quickly. Bruna was flying downward toward the city and Merlín was being left behind; Merlín was a dead weight pulling on her. The rep gripped her lover’s hand—gripped it so as not to lose him, so as not to become separated from him—but Merlín was floating like a helium balloon and he was being left behind, painfully stretching her arm.