Tears in Rain (47 page)

That’s what Nopal said with his serious, calm voice, and suddenly Bruna saw herself there, inside that sleepy body and that bed, inside the warm cocoon of the sheets and her mother’s fragrance, which wrapped around her like a protective ring. The
burning memory cut through her sharply, leaving her breathless, and it was just the first of many. Nopal unraveled memories from the tangled ball inside her mind and little by little, the hazy outline of everything began to recover its definition. Half an hour later, Bruna had gone through her dance of the phantoms again; she had cried again as the deception was revealed, and she understood that she was a rep. That she couldn’t have children. But Gummy was still crying deafeningly within her. Her child continued to call her and need her. The rep moaned. Tears burned her eyes. With her left hand, she reactivated the safety catch and then withdrew her numb fingers from the membrane. Lizard moved as if he were going to approach her, but Bruna halted him with a fierce yell.

“Don’t move!”

The inspector stopped in his tracks.

“Now I’m the one asking you for five minutes.”

No one said a word.

The rep bowed her head and closed her eyes. And she set about killing Gummy. She remembered the weight of the child in her arms, his warm animal smell, his sticky little hand touching her face, and then she told herself,
It’s not true, he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t exist!
She repeated the words with a silent shout until she had managed to erase the image bit by bit, like the pixels of a defective graphic. Then she moved on to her next memory of the little boy, and the next. His first wobbly steps. That quiet, blue summer afternoon when Gummy ate an ant. The way he said “candy” in his funny baby-speak—
dandy
; the little bubbles of saliva at the corners of his mouth. And how he used to put his hand inside hers when something frightened him. None of that existed! It didn’t exist! The memories were disappearing, bursting like soap bubbles, and the pain became ever more unbearable, more searing. It was like burning yourself and then scraping the blister. But Bruna kept going, agonizing, suicidal, scratching around in living flesh until she reached the final memory
and burst it. And right down there, in the depths, after she’d completed Gummy’s imaginary death, Merlín’s real death was poised, waiting for her. Bruna Husky was back, whole.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, exhausted and aching. She looked at the expectant Lizard and Nopal.

“So, is the implant still going to kill me, like it did the others? Will my brain explode? Will I gouge out my eyes?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

And just at that moment she lifted her head and saw herself. Suddenly, her image was swamping the public screens: Bruna as she actually was, and as Annie Heart; Bruna entering the Majestic Hotel; Annie entering the HSP headquarters. And she saw the big, red 3-D flashes signaling breaking news: “Techno Bruna Husky Guilty of Torture and Murder of Hericio.” It was just on twelve o’clock.

I
t was Bruna’s idea. She needed to have the implant removed, but if she went to a hospital, she’d be arrested. Then she thought of Gándara.

“The medical examiner?” asked a surprised Lizard.

“He knows how to remove artificial mems, even if it is from cadavers.”

“Yes, but are you sure about him? He’s a strange character. Won’t he turn you in?”

Bruna shook her head, and that was enough for the world to start spinning. She was feeling increasingly dizzy.

“No, he’ll do the right thing; he’s a friend. And if we give him some money, he’ll be even friendlier,” she murmured weakly.

She was convinced she was going to die and her only hope was that Lizard would prevent her from gouging out her eyes. The inspector called Gándara. The medical examiner worked nights and wasn’t at the Forensic Anatomy Institute, but Paul gave him some vague excuse and managed to make it sound official and urgent enough for Gándara to promise he’d be there quickly.

“I’ll make sure he keeps his mouth shut,” grunted Nopal.

“What do you mean by that?” asked the inspector, somewhat concerned.

“I’m talking about money. I’ll give him some Gs.”

The three of them were in the policeman’s car. They’d ordered the vehicle to darken the windows in order to hide Bruna; the public screens were showing images of her incessantly, and unfortunately she was too easy to recognize. Lizard and the memorist seemed to have signed a truce, a temporary alliance the rep would have found very odd if she had been in a state to think about it. But she was feeling so awful that ideas didn’t seem to register in her brain. In fact, she hadn’t noticed something even stranger: instead of arresting her, the inspector was helping her escape.

By the time they reached the Forensic Institute, Bruna’s heart was beating abnormally fast and she was experiencing cold sweats. Lizard stopped in a discreet corner of the parking lot, left Bruna in the car with Nopal and went in search of the medical examiner. He returned with the doctor in tow after what seemed an exasperatingly long time to Bruna and Nopal.

“You look terrible, Bruna. You look like my usual customers,” said the medical examiner by way of a greeting.

They had brought a robot-cart with a capsule.

“We’ll have to remove her clothes,” said Gándara.

They took off her clothes and the
netsuke
necklace, laid her down inside the capsule and lowered the transparent lid. The clearly visible bruise marks made her role as a corpse more credible. They entered the building and passed through security control quickly and almost without any checks, no doubt thanks to the caustic and somewhat imposing presence of the medical examiner. Then they rolled down the corridor until they reached one of the dissection rooms.

“I’ve indicated it’s a secret official matter and given the order that no one is to come in,” Gándara informed them.

He told the robot-cart to park itself in the middle of the room underneath the instrument module and open its lid. The room was icy cold. Lizard looked at the rep’s naked body, so pale and defenseless inside the capsule, and felt cold for her. And
devastation and fear, too, and something akin to a distressing weakness that might have been tenderness.

Gándara put on his lab coat and gloves and switched on the powerful antibacterial light above them.

“Well, now...how are you feeling, Bruna?”

“Bad.”

Concerned, Gándara looked at her.

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Monday...January 31.”

Her voice sounded fuzzy.

The medical examiner checked all her vital signs with a body meter.

“Tachycardia, slight hypothermia...Right. We can’t waste any time. If you’ve got a mem, it has to be removed now.”

With quick, precise movements the doctor pulled down a frightening machine hanging above his head and switched it on. It began to emit a menacing hum.

“You have to keep very still. Is that clear? Imagine you’re a corpse.”

The rep opened her eyes wide in acquiescence. Gándara placed the metal tip of the machine in the android’s nose and pressed a button.

“There goes the probe.”

Bruna whimpered and her hands contorted painfully.

“By all the damn species, Gándara! Can’t you make it more bearable for her?” growled the inspector.

“What do you want, Lizard? We don’t have anesthetics here. I don’t know if you realize it, but we don’t need them. Keep very still, Bruna; it will be quick. And it isn’t really such a big deal. Hey! Nobody’s ever complained, ha-ha.”

The progress of the nanoprobe through her brain could be seen on the screen, a probe so tiny that it had to emit a fluorescent flicker in order to be visible. The trail of light moved back and forth in the gray matter like a comet gone mad in an enclosed universe. Gándara frowned.

“It’s not possible.”

Bruna was panting hoarsely. Her fists were clenched and her body was so tense that her toes were curled like claws. That beautiful, suffering body, that battered flesh which the antibacterial light tinged with an unreal, purplish color.

“Shit! What’s happening? Wasn’t it going to be quick?” the inspector exploded.

The luminous worm ran around the screen one last time and then switched itself off. The probe hissed as it retracted. Gándara removed the implement from the rep’s nose and turned to Nopal and Lizard.

“There’s nothing there.”

“What?”

“There’s no implant. No artificial mem apart from the regular technohuman memory, which is still sealed and intact.”

“That can’t be. I’m a memorist, I spoke with Bruna, and I know she’s the victim of an implant with fake memories. I know that for an absolute fact,” said Nopal.

“Well, there’s nothing there I’m telling you. Nothing. And I’m absolutely certain, too,” said the medical examiner, somewhat annoyed.

But then he looked at the rep and scratched his right earlobe, as he tended to do when he was nervous.

“Though maybe...”

He lifted the rep’s hands, which were still tense.

“Hmmm. Bruna, have you noticed if you have more saliva than usual?”

The detective nodded.

“Now I’ve got it. Rigidity, excessive salivation. I’m sorry, but I have to reinsert the probe. This time it really will be quick.”

The implement unfolded itself again with the buzz of a drill, the fluorescent worm reappeared on the screen, and the android moaned. But Gándara had spoken the truth. Within a few seconds, the probe was done and back out. He switched
off the machine and pushed it back up to the ceiling. He was excited.

“I think I know what’s happening. It’s fantastic! I’ve heard rumors about it, but I’ve never seen it.”

“What? What?” asked Nopal and Lizard in unison.

“Sodium chloride crystals. You can program them like a chip, but they dissolve in the body after a few hours without leaving any trace. In other words, they implanted an artificial mem made of salt, and what’s happened is that it has dissolved. But I could still find traces of a higher than normal salinity. Nothing serious.”

“So she’s not going to die?”

“No, absolutely not. The salt has created a slight electrolytic imbalance in her brain that is responsible for the dizziness, rigidity, and the other symptoms. Luckily, I have some ultrahydration capsules that I use when the bodies they send me are too mummified. I’ll insert one of them subcutaneously and, with a bit of rest, she’ll be like new in twenty-four hours.”

“They didn’t want to leave any trace of the memory manipulation. That’s why they chose gas as the means of death. That way, Bruna’s body would have been intact when they brought her to the medical examiner, and when they did the autopsy, they wouldn’t have found anything. I mean, it would look as if Husky had committed all those horrors consciously and of her own free will. A perverse, avenging techno versus the human race,” mused Lizard.

“The perfect enemy,” murmured the rep weakly.

“Right, this small jab is to insert the hydration capsule...done. In a few weeks’ time, if you feel like it, stop by and I’ll take it out. As it’s a product intended for dead meat, it won’t be absorbed. It’s totally harmless, so you can carry it all your life if it doesn’t bother you. Now you should go as soon as you can. Having you here puts me in an awkward position,” said Gándara.

“An awkward position that we appreciate and want to thank you for,” said Nopal.

And he shook hands with the medical examiner, leaving a few bills in the doctor’s hand. Gándara smiled and put away the money as if it were the natural thing to do.

“I’d have done it anyway, but with this I feel much more loved and content. You can leave by the back door, where the robots take out the bodies. It will look better if she’s dressed.”

Lizard took Bruna in his arms and lifted her out of the capsule. The coarse material of his clothing scratched her naked skin. The rep would have stayed curled up against the inspector’s chest forever—she would have slept in that bodily refuge until her TTT arrived—but she felt better and knew she had no choice but to move. So she dressed, and even walked unstably of her own accord to the outside door, helped by Nopal. The back door opened onto a cargo dock attended by robots. A few empty capsules were stacked up next to the wall. Lizard, who had gone to fetch the car, appeared right away and picked them up.

“We have to find a safe place to hide you until you recover, and until we manage to clear up all of this.”

“She can stay at my place,” said Nopal.

“No. Not in your house,” Lizard replied categorically.

The memorist looked at him with a mocking smile.

“And why not, if you don’t mind telling me?”

The inspector was silent.

“Are you afraid I’m implicated in the plot? Or are you scared she’d prefer to be with me?”

They’re fighting over me
, thought Bruna.
How quaint.

“I’ve had you under surveillance for over a year. If she goes to your place, my men will find her immediately,” said Lizard, scowling balefully.

Oh. So after all that, Paul wasn’t fighting for her. It was nothing more than a simple question of strategy. Bruna tasted
something salty in her mouth. Too much saliva and too much bitterness.