Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky Book 2) (6 page)

9

A
fter leaving Loperena’s apartment, Bruna discovered that she’d missed five calls, all from Yiannis. She heaved a sigh of displeasure but felt obliged to call back. She missed those times of total solitude—living like someone on death row inside the prison of your own body, a small, arid, reassuring existence entirely apart from other living beings. The archivist appeared on the screen, looking disheveled and listless.

“Gabi still hasn’t come out from under the bed. Last night I left her dinner near the bed, and this morning I brought her some breakfast. Nothing. She hasn’t even touched the food. I don’t know what to do.”

Bruna diagnosed a state of sustained melancholia in Yiannis, not yet deep enough to set off the endorphin pump. She was already getting caught up in that hormonal business.

“I’ll stop by.”

But what about Bruna? Who was diagnosing her? Who was concerned about her? Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed by her responsibilities: she had to decide what to do with the wretched girl, with the fragile Yiannis; on top of that she ought to investigate the nuclear incident and find out how Gabi had received such a high amount of radiation. Then there was the Loperena case. It didn’t seem to be a very exciting job, but it was the only one she had, and there were only four thousand gaias left in her bank account. She also had her first appointment with the tactile in a few hours and she couldn’t miss it, since her license was on the line. But wait, there was more! Because of the Gabi situation, Bruna had taken Bartolo back home with her; she’d left him on his own, and who knew what disaster he might have perpetrated? The rep gave a deep sigh, trying to untangle the disturbing knot of anxiety. One small step at a time, as Merlín used to say. First the child. Then the tactile. After that she’d take care of the missing diamond.

She took a small detour on her way to Yiannis’s apartment and stopped off at the hospital. To her surprise the doctor who had attended her was on indefinite sick leave and unreachable. She asked after the clinical assistant, but he had quit. She asked to see her own record from the emergency room. Everything was there except for the business about the girl’s radiation. Lizard was right: it was very disturbing.

Bruna didn’t say a word about all this to the archivist, whom she found flitting about his apartment, caught up in a manic phase. She didn’t want to sour his short-lived chemical happiness.

“The girl’s still there, refusing to come out. Which in one sense is very comfortable, as she’s quite a fastidious little thing. To have her quiet and still under the bed is a relief,” said Yiannis with a laugh.

The rep went into the bedroom, which was still spotless and tidy, and sat down on the floor. Lined up in perfect formation in front of her were a glass of water, a plate with an algae-and-tofu sandwich on it, a bowl full of fruit, and another bowl with wheat flakes and milk, which after sitting untouched for so long had turned into a compact, milky blob.

“Do you have any intention of ever eating again, Gabi?”

Silence.

“Do you have no intention of coming out from under there?”

Silence.

“If you don’t eat, you’ll die.”

Silence.

“Do you know what dying is?”

There was a sound like a snort.

“Well, I take it you do know. Let’s see. The wheat flakes will probably be revolting, but the fruit and the sandwich look fine. What do you want in return for eating the sandwich? If you ask for something reasonable, I’ll give it to you.”

Silence.

“You don’t have to come out. You can eat a sandwich anywhere.”

Silence.

“Come on. There must be something you want. Ask me for something. We’ll negotiate.”

“I want you to tell me a story,” said a quiet little voice.

“What?”

“Tell me a story.”

A memory flashed into the rep’s mind, a powerful and touching memory: her mother telling her a story before she went to sleep; her mother next to her bed, a shadowy figure outlined by the light in the hallway; her mother smelling of rain and freshly cut grass and spring; her mother cornering the night monsters and calming the world with her words. All very moving, but it was a fake memory, a memory artificially implanted into Bruna’s brain. Every technohuman received a set of childhood memories. Although they knew that these memories were false, it had been demonstrated that having a biography to tell consolidated and stabilized a technohuman’s personality. The standard set of memories written for reps by professional memorists were more or less cheerful, simple, and conventional. Each set contained five hundred scenes. It was assumed that five hundred scenes were sufficient background to give you a rich sense of life. But Bruna had received a special memory, a much broader, tougher, and more complex one, because her memorist had decided to implant his own personal memories into her. So this beautiful, powerful mother whom Bruna was now remembering was the mother of Pablo Nopal. Bruna still resented him for this. Her memorist had turned her into a monster among monsters, a being totally different from all others.

“A story? Okay. Fine. A story for a sandwich.”

Bruna delved into the delight of her memory to retrieve that story her mother used to tell her again and again night after night, nonexistent and yet so real. She knew it by heart, and its repetition was one of the magical aspects of the tale, one of the conditions that turned it into a talisman. She’d tell it to the little Russian just like that, with the same inflections, the identical words, with the seductive eloquence of that mother who was never her mother. It was easy. How did it begin? It was the story of the giant and the dwarf. Yes, that was it. The giant and the dwarf.

“Once upon a time there was a giant and a dwarf . . .”

How did it go? What came next? By the great Morlay, how could she possibly not remember? She was seeing her mother, that silhouette edged with light; she was feeling the weight of her eyelids, the gentleness of sleep enveloping her. She was hearing the words; she was sensing the syllables slipping through her mother’s lips! She was hearing the words, but she wasn’t understanding the story. It was like trying to catch a slippery fish. She was glimpsing the shimmer of its scales through the water’s foam, but she was unable to visualize the entire fish. A giant and a dwarf, a giant and a dwarf, a giant and a dwarf . . .

“There was once a giant and a dwarf,” she repeated uncertainly.

A curse on all species! It wasn’t there! It wasn’t there! Suddenly, Bruna understood what was happening: she had never known the tale! The story of the giant and the dwarf had never formed part of the memories given to her by her memorist. He’d simply inserted the scene, the emotions, the significance of that moment. But he’d never taken the trouble to tell the story to Bruna. Why bother if the young rep didn’t really exist? A heartrending pain pierced her chest:
The heart really does hurt at moments of great sorrow.

“You tell stories very badly,” said the grumpy voice of the little Russian. “I think the deal’s off.”

Bruna stopped speaking and focused on breathing, despite the weight she was feeling. She was drenched with cold sweat. “Wait . . . Give me . . . a minute,” she stammered.

Silence.

So now what? Now what?

Now she would invent. Now she’d have to make up something. The giant and the dwarf. Inhabitants of an imaginary childhood paradise. That warm, happy childhood in which there was no death, no loss, no loneliness.

“Let’s start again, this time for real,” Bruna said, trying to order her thoughts. “Once upon a time there was a giant and a dwarf. And I’m talking about the beginning of time. Before our world began. Before you were born, before your parents were born, before the word
before
was invented, because in this place I’m telling you about, time didn’t exist. That ancient world was a garden where flowers always bloomed. The sun shone very gently in the same corner of the sky, while in the opposite corner it was balanced by the moon, an icy half slice on a blue background. It was neither hot nor cold, and it was enough to breathe in the perfumed air to feel fully sated, with no need for food or drink. That was why the panther was placid and played hide-and-seek with the rabbits, and the bear bathed in the river and let the salmon tickle his back with their tails.”

“So where are the giant and the dwarf?” said Gabi.

“I’m getting to that. Don’t be impatient. This perfect, placid world was inhabited by double-beings, each one formed by a giant and a dwarf. They could be male or female, because in those times genders didn’t exist, so there was none of that harshness there tends to be between the sexes, although you might not know anything about that yet.”

“In Dzerzhinsk I often used to fight with the boys. I only lost once,” said the girl with a hint of pride.

“Right. Well, in that very first world there weren’t boys to fight with. Try and imagine it if you can. Those double-beings were pure, innocent creatures who lived happily in a perpetual present. Each dwarf rode on the shoulders of his giant, and they were never separated. The dwarf provided the pair’s intelligence, imagination, and subtlety, while the giant was all serenity, sensuality, and bravery. They complemented each other so well, they were so united, that there was no need for them to speak. In fact words didn’t exist. Each dwarf rode his giant as if he were part of himself. They never felt lonely, they didn’t know sadness. They loved each other so completely, so perfectly, that neither needed any more love. We can’t even begin to imagine that.”

Bruna stopped, amazed at herself. Where were those images, this story, these words coming from? That verbal linking, that fluency, that tinkling cascade flowing out of her mouth. From her, always so curt, so lacking in expression and so reserved. It was as if another person were speaking through her mouth. She didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it.

“And what else?” asked the girl impatiently.

“I’m getting to it. There were many double-beings, many such pairs in that world. No one had bothered to count them, because in a place outside time and space there was no point. In fact the double-beings had little to do with each other, because each pair was self-sufficient. They lived in the simplicity of absolute happiness. Since time didn’t exist, there was no past either, and naturally they had no memories. They remembered nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” repeated the rep, shivering.
Just like me when I was born, or rather, when I was activated. Just like me if they hadn’t implanted false memories
.

“That’s weird,” said Gabi.

The rep sighed. It was time for her appointment with the tactile.

“Yes, it’s weird, and that was the beginning of the catastrophe. But I’ll tell you about that next time. Now I have to go. Keep your promise and eat.”

There was a short silence, and then a small, dirty hand emerged from under the bed and grabbed the sandwich.

“Don’t you want something to drink?” Bruna said, pushing the glass forward a little.

“I have a water bottle,” mumbled the girl with her mouth full.

How cunning
, Bruna thought.
She’s taken a water supply with her under the bed. She knows you can live for quite a while without eating, but not without drinking.
She was a little warrior, a survivor. But she wouldn’t survive the radiation.
Three years, ten months, and nine days
. The rep stood up.

“When will you be back?” asked Gabi.

There was a knot. When Bruna got up, she discovered that the back of her T-shirt was tied with a knot: a small piece of Gabi’s cord had snared a tiny piece of material. The girl must have done it surreptitiously while she was telling the story. What an incredible skill; what magician’s—or pickpocket’s—hands she must have to successfully tie a knot without arousing the technohuman’s genetically enhanced awareness.

“Hey, when are you coming back?”

“Soon. As soon as I can.”

10

Y
ou’re late,” said the tactile.

No aggression, just someone announcing an indisputable fact.

“You’re not Daniel Deuil,” Bruna replied.

She had of course looked up the tactile in the Central Archive and seen that he was a sixty-two-year-old man with a youthful appearance, thanks to some good plastic surgery. This man, on the other hand, was too young, and Deuil was Caucasian; this one looked more Asian.

“Yes, I am. Maybe you’re confusing me with my father. We have the same name. We’re both tactiles, though he’s more famous than me of course. If you prefer to be treated by him, I can switch you. But his schedule is full. You’ll have to wait for at least a couple of months.”

Two months was too long; Bruna wouldn’t be able to work on the stolen-diamond case. One damned tactile was like any other as far as Bruna was concerned.

“No. It doesn’t matter. Let’s begin.”

The tactile smiled gently. He was a bit shorter than Bruna, strikingly slim, with straight shoulders and a dancer’s slender hips. His skin was very pale, and his straight black hair was tied in a round topknot like a samurai. Bruna figured he was just over thirty. Her age, except that he’d probably live seventy years longer. Daniel Deuil, son of Daniel Deuil. With a real flesh-and-blood father. A father of the same name, the same blood. With shared genes and genuine memories. The rep clenched her jaw at the stab of sorrow and anger.

“Calm down. Slowly. There’s no rush. We’re here to enter into the body’s time, which is distinct and slow,” he said.

The body’s time. By the great Morlay.
With some difficulty Bruna succeeded in curbing a loud, contemptuous snort. Deuil was watching her closely.

“You’re very tense. And annoyed. Right now I’m the object of your anger. It seems to me that you tend to turn your emotions into violence.”

“Right. Everything you’ve said is in my file,” Bruna said, incensed. “One assumes I’m here because I don’t do a good job of controlling my aggression.”

The tactile
started to laugh, revealing a row of sharp, dazzling, perfect teeth. He was an attractive man, Bruna had to admit grudgingly. When he’d opened the door, she’d immediately noticed his deep, electric Asian eyes. Very dark blue, almost black.

“You have in fact just demonstrated it,” the tactile replied amiably. “You think I’m a fraud, a bullshitter. You’ve been forced to come, and you’re sure it will be a waste of time. Who knows? It may well end up being of no use to you. The journey we have to make is a joint trajectory. If you don’t collaborate, we won’t get anywhere.”

That was precisely what Bruna wanted: to go nowhere. But she wisely held her tongue. The tactile’s consulting room was of medium size. Although it was still light outside, the window was covered by an opaque blind, and the room was filled with warm indirect lighting. A shelf with a long row of burning candles ran along one entire wall. Vessels with burning incense, natural flowers in a vase. A couch covered with a soft, spongelike blanket of Omaá material. The comfortable anthropokinetic armchairs they were sitting in had adapted perfectly to their bodies. A faint sound was playing in the background, similar to the sound of the sea. Bruna sighed, a little calmer. There was another door in the office’s small foyer. Maybe that was his father’s consulting room.

“All right,” Bruna said with the fatalistic tone of someone surrendering to the enemy.

Daniel smiled again. A small gesture, maybe friendly, maybe pretentious. Bruna still wasn’t clear what she thought of the tactile. Thin lips, high cheekbones, hairless face like so many Asians. Deuil gestured with his hand, and the lights went off. All that remained was the dancing glow of the candles.

“Lie down on the couch on your back please.”

Bruna obeyed. In her two compulsory years of military service, she’d been treated by physios a few times. They were hired by the company and tried to mend the frequent injuries sustained by combat reps. But from what she’d heard, tactiles were nothing like that. The ceiling lit up with a 3-D projection of a beach at dusk. The sea was lapping above her head, and the sound of the waves was now more audible.

“This is like going for physiotherapy,” she said stupidly out of sheer unease as she got settled on the couch.

“You’re not too far off. I’m a sort of physio of the soul.”

“I don’t believe in souls,” she muttered.

“Well, call it what you like. Would you rather call it
kuammil
? It’s a concept that appeals to me.”

Kuammil
, yes.
A word used by the Omaás, one of the three alien species humans had come into contact with through teleportation.
Kuammil
was the indefinable and elusive principle of identity, intertwined with the most complete and diaphanous intimacy, the ability to have a profound effect on one another through a marvelous invisible nothingness.

Bruna didn’t say a word. The sea was murmuring its liquid song above her. Deuil had gotten up from his chair and must have moved behind her, because she couldn’t see him. The seconds passed lazily and soon became minutes. The peaceful waves on the ceiling had a hypnotic effect. Bruna, drowsy, closed her eyes but opened them quickly with some anxiety, because unexpectedly she became conscious of a feeling of warmth on her ears, which she had been sensing for a while. Heat which was increasing.

“Don’t worry,” whispered the tactile from close by as Bruna noticed that the throbbing had increased astronomically.

The rep now realized that the man had placed his hands on either side of her head, about five centimeters away from it, with his palms facing inward. The warmth seemed to be coming from them. It was spreading down her neck and along her spine. A pleasant heat were it not so disconcerting. But why were they called tactiles if they didn’t actually touch you? Bruna gradually started to relax again. She closed her eyes and noted how the heat was working its way down her arms like a shivering flood of warmth. And that was when the tactile touched her. He grasped her hands and turned them palm up; the rep, eyes closed and half-drowsy, half-awake, allowed him to do so. She felt his hands covering hers. Warm and dry. Soft yet hard. Palm against palm, leaving a faint imprint. A strengthening touch fusing skin to skin, until Bruna didn’t know where she ended and he began. The rep floated on the couch, her head full of swirling images. Merlín’s lips kissing her on the lips. Her mother’s lips kissing her on the forehead. Her father carrying her on his shoulders, Bruna feeling secure and so happy up there. Her mother at night, outlined by light, telling her the story of the giant and the dwarf. Mainly fictitious memories, reminiscences embedded in her brain on an artificial memory chip. Yet nothing distinguished their substance and their evocative power from the real memory of Merlín, from the pain of his absence. But in that very moment the images started to vibrate in a strange way and then began to warp; the figures tore and the scenes were erased like drawings in the sand washed away by a wave. Suddenly, there was only darkness in her head, a black abyss into which she began to fall. She cried out and opened her eyes and came face-to-face with the eyes of the tactile, who was leaning over the couch, still touching her hands. Deuil’s eyes were black now, as black as the abyss from which Bruna was emerging, and the rep immersed herself in them and felt a rare sense of refuge in that losing of oneself in the other.

“Keep calm,” said the tactile, releasing her and standing upright. “It’s over. Are you all right?”

The lights came back on. Bruna was flustered, frightened, and irritated with herself for having lost control.

“Yes. I’m just fine. Although it was strange. I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know, maybe I got nervous. It won’t happen again.”

Deuil smiled, at once soothing and arrogant.

“What do you mean, Husky? Nothing has happened yet. This is only the beginning.”