Tears in Rain (38 page)

“Come in. Make yourself comfortable.”

How the hell was she going to do that? Her entire body ached. She entered hesitantly. The apartment consisted of only one room, but it was very large. Large and distressingly austere. An enormous bed, a work table, a couch, bookshelves. Everything as bare and impersonal as a technohuman’s apartment.
Or the majority of technos’ apartments
, Bruna mentally corrected, remembering Chi’s exquisite but excessively ornate bedroom, and even her own apartment, with its pictures and its jigsaw puzzle. Here there were so few decorative objects that the three ancient balconies with their iron railings constituted the biggest adornment in the place. But the street was very narrow and the building opposite—a cheap and ugly apartment building in the Unification style—seemed to be forcing its way in through the windows.

“You can sleep over there,” said Paul, pointing toward the spacious couch. “It’s even comfortable for someone my size—I’ve tried it out a few times. You’ll see.”

Bruna sat down carefully. And not for the first time that afternoon, she thought about her valuable little plasma gun. She didn’t know if her assailants had grabbed it from her, or if Lizard had it, and she preferred not to ask. Losing the gun was a genuine annoyance, and getting another one would be quite costly and problematic, but she decided to leave those concerns for the next day. The apartment was maintained at a very comfortable temperature, while on the other side of the windows, in the fading
light of the late afternoon, the snowstorm was intensifying. It was absurd, but the android felt almost happy.

Lizard came back to her side carrying a pillow, a thermal blanket, and a bottle of cask-fermented Guitian wine.

“Weren’t you the one who liked white wine?”

“No, it was the other rep,” Bruna replied jokingly, pointing at the photo of a techno that occupied the apartment’s main screen.

Paul glanced quickly at the image above his shoulder and then silently continued to spread out the blanket. The detective was afraid she’d said something inappropriate.

“Mmmm...Yes, I think I could do with a glass.”

“I’ll prepare something to eat,” said the inspector.

And when he got up, on the way to the kitchen, he whispered something at the computer and the image on the main screen changed to a scenic view of Titan.

While the man rummaged about in the oven dispenser, the android sat looking outside. The snow was making the air look solid and covering the windows with a grayish veil. Under the weight of the storm, the afternoon light was dying early, and the electric light switched on automatically. Bruna knew she shouldn’t ask but she couldn’t stop herself.

“That rep on the screen, was she one of the victims?”

Lizard didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise Bruna. She was more surprised to hear herself rudely insisting, “Or maybe one of the suspects?” And after a minute’s silence, to her own consternation, she even added, “Why don’t you answer? Are you keeping details of the investigation from me?”

Lizard returned, carrying a tray with a couple of enormous bowls full to the brim with miso soup.

“I was going to make some reconstituted tuna sandwiches, but then I remembered your recent tooth implant. Make room for me.”

He sat on the edge of the sofa and put an insulation band around the bottle to keep it cold. Then he uncorked the Guitian
unhurriedly and poured out two glasses. He had a few sips from his own glass and looked out in the direction of the street. Outside, night had already fallen and the light from the apartment was reflected in the curtain of snow as if it were a painting.

“If you really want to know who it is, why don’t you just ask directly?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dare to ask the question and I’ll answer you.”

Bruna was silent for a moment, ashamed.

“Fine. I assume it has nothing to do with the case. And I also assume I shouldn’t poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. But I’d like to know why you have that picture of an android.”

Paul slowly stirred his soup, filled his spoon, blew on the liquid, sampled a little appreciatively, and then swallowed the rest, while the rep waited impatiently for him to finish the pantomime and continue speaking.

“It’s Maitena.”

And he put another spoonful of soup into his mouth.

“And who’s Maitena?”

Another round of stirring, blowing, and swallowing. Was he making fun of her, or was it hard for him to talk about it?

“It’s actually a very simple story. When I was little, my parents disappeared. So my neighbor Maitena adopted me. An exploration rep.”

“What happened?”

“She died. What do you expect happened? She reached her TTT.”

“I mean, with your parents.”

Paul raised the bowl and started to drink from it. He made a slurping noise as he sipped and, from time to time, he would stop to chew the miso. He took a very long time to finish it.

“They put them in jail. They’d kidnapped a guy. They were criminals. Or rather they
are
, because I think they’re still alive.”

“Your parents are criminals?”

“Does that surprise you? The world is full of them. You ought to know. It’s part of your work,” commented the inspector sarcastically.

He carefully wiped his lips with his napkin and, for the first time since he had sat down on the sofa, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

“I was eight when I was left on my own. Maitena raised me. She died when I was fifteen. You could say it was a happy childhood—thanks to her. I already told you that I have nothing against reps.”

He stood up and threw the disposable bowl into the recycle bin. Bruna followed him with her eyes, not daring to say a word. Paul returned and sat down again. His thigh was brushing against the rep’s hip.

“Do you know who owned the loft you went to this morning?”

The question disconcerted her. She was too submerged in the smell of him, in the heat of his closeness, in the dizzying intimacy of the moment, and it was an effort to emerge from it.

“The murdered memorist, I presume.”

Lizard shook his head. He had a curious expression on his face, somewhere between mocking and belligerent.

“No. It belongs to Nopal. It’s one of your friend Nopal’s properties.”

Bruna gave a start.

“Are you sure?”

“He didn’t say anything to you, did he? I’ve already warned you: he’s not to be trusted.”

It was ridiculous, but Bruna wasn’t at all pleased by the news. The assailants’ use of the hidden door and the second staircase—didn’t that suggest a sound knowledge of the place? She sensed a profound weariness sweeping over her and with it, a return of all her aches.

“I’m exhausted,” she groaned.

“I’m not surprised. Here, have your injection. I think it’s due.”

Lizard handed her the injector tube, and the rep shot the paramorphine into her arm. Slowly, fresh waves of well-being began to wash over her body.

“Better?” asked Lizard, leaning toward her and placing a hand on her back.

Again, it was a totally natural gesture, a half-embrace, intoxicatingly affectionate.

“Muuuch better,” mumbled Bruna.

She wanted Lizard with her entire body, with her mind and her heart, with her hands, with her all-consuming sex, and with her mouth, capable of murmuring sweet nothings. She would have thrown herself on top of him were it not for the sudden drowsiness irresistibly closing her eyes.
But hold on a minute. Hold on. Maybe it was too sudden.
She made an effort to arouse herself.

“Why am I so sleepy?” she asked in a fuzzy voice.

“I gave you a sleeping pill together with the paramorphine. It will do you good to rest.”

In the warm apartment, under the thermal blanket, wrapped in the inspector’s embrace, Bruna felt cold.
I don’t want to fall asleep
, she thought. Lizard the Reptile had turned up by her side after the beating.
What a coincidence
, as Nopal would say. And now Lizard had brought her to his apartment. And he’d put a photo of a rep on the screen so that she’d see it, and he’d told her an absurd story about a melodramatic childhood. She inhaled deeply, trying to stay awake, but the drowsiness was like the lid of a coffin closing, shutting her in. The small death of sleep. Or eternal, everlasting death. She felt a stab of fear. Lizard the attractive Caiman had drugged her. She was engulfed by the darkness of sleep before she could determine whether Paul was her lover or her assassin.

Central Archive, the United States of the Earth.

Modifiable version

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED
AUTHORIZED EDITORS ONLY

Madrid, January 29, 2109, 15:27
Good afternoon, Yiannis

IF YOU ARE NOT YIANNIS LIBEROPOULOS,
CENTRAL ARCHIVIST FT711, QUIT
THESE PAGES IMMEDIATELY

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED
AUTHORIZED EDITORS ONLY

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE
PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT UP TO
A MAXIMUM OF TWENTY YEARS

Robot Wars

Keywords: Human Peace, Tenth Geneva Convention, coltan mines, the Congo Crisis
, Replicant Conspiracy, Lumbre Ras
.

#6B-138

Entry being edited

The Robot Wars, which began in 2079 and ended with the signing of
Human Peace
in 2090, are, together with the Plagues, the most serious armed conflicts suffered by Earth. The scale of violence that swept the planet in the second half of that century led to the signing of the
Tenth Geneva Convention
in 2079, which was ratified by almost all of the independent states (153 of the 159 then in existence). They agreed to the substitution of traditional armed conflict with robot battles. Armies would be replaced by mobile, fully automated fighting forces that would engage each other in combat, like a gigantic, reallife version of a computer game. The architects of the treaty thought that in this way the carnage would end, or at least be reduced, and that wars could be converted into a type of strategic pastime, in the same way that ancient medieval tournaments were a milder version of genuine battles.

However, the consequences of this measure could not have been worse. In the first place, within hours of the agreement having been signed, war broke out throughout almost the entire world, as if some nations had been waiting on hold, robots at the ready, to commence battle. (Some political commentators, such as the renowned Carmen Carlavilla in her book
Slippery Words
, argue that
the Tenth Geneva Convention was merely a commercial maneuver by the manufacturers of war robots.) As the wealthiest countries possessed a vastly greater number of robots than the poor countries, they had no intention of respecting the treaty despite having signed it, and they attacked the automatons with conventional troops, who destroyed large numbers of them because, based on the Geneva specifications, the robots were hamstrung by a chip that prevented them from harming humans. This chip, needless to say, was illegally and surreptitiously removed within a few weeks, the result being that the vast fields of smoldering scrap iron were instantly covered again in blood.

The counterattack by the automatons proved so devastating and out of control that more deaths were documented in six months than there had been in all the world wars that had gone before. The
Congo Crisis
belongs to this era. As is well known, 80 percent of the reserves of
coltan
, a mineral essential for the manufacture of all sorts of electronics, is to be found in the former Democratic Republic of Congo. The exploitation of the coltan mines had been the source of numerous conventional armed conflicts for a century, but the Robot Wars exceeded previously known levels of violence by far: the entire population of Congo was
exterminated, with the sole exception of the president, Ngé Bgé, and the two hundred members of his family, who were all out of the country when the massacre occurred and who continue to be the coproprietors of the coltan mines to this day.
together with a shelf company that is in reality secretly controlled by technohumans.