Tears in Rain Part 24

She filled her lungs with air and sprinted for the door. She kicked it open. n.o.body. Exhilarated, she thought, I've nearly made it. And at that moment, she smelled sweat and adrenaline and sensed a slight vibration in the air behind her. She thought about turning around but there was no time; something hard hit her head and shoulder. Her vision blurred and she opened her legs wide to prevent herself from falling. Hazy a.s.sailants, emerging from who knew where, threw themselves on top of her. It's not possible, she thought for an exasperated moment. Where were they? Where the h.e.l.l had they been hiding? She fired her plasma gun at a shape, but a searing pain in her wrist forced her to drop the weapon. Half-stunned, she defended herself against her attackers with the fury of a wild animal. She hit, she kicked, she bit. The blows she was receiving didn't hurt, but she was conscious of them landing on her. Too many blows, she calculated. I won't be able to take many more. Then her knees went out from under her and she found herself on the floor. It's the end, she told herself coldly. Without any fear. Without surprise. And she thought about Merlin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

"Bruna...how are you feeling?"

The rep didn't recall having fainted. She thought she had been conscious the whole time-perhaps a bit stunned, but conscious-and yet she must have missed something, because there was no one around now. At least, none of her a.s.sailants. Only Lizard was there, leaning over her. He made a large, pleasant shadow, like a protective cave.

"How are you feeling?"

"Perfect," answered the rep.

Or that's what she tried to say. In reality, it sounded something like "purrffcc."

"Bruna, do you know who I am? What's my name?"

Irritation got her going.

"Oh, by-aw-the-speeshies, you're Paw. Paul. Wha-you-dooo-here?"

She was recovering by the minute. And with lucidity came pain. Her neck hurt. Her hand hurt. Her kidneys hurt. Her head hurt. Even the air going slowly in and out of her lungs hurt.

"I tracked you. Just as well. You were taking a long time to come out so I decided to have a quick look around. The door was open and I found you lying here. They've given you a real beating. Unfortunately, I didn't see anyone. There's a hidden door in the entrance hall that leads to a back staircase. They must have escaped that way."

Bruna tried to sit up and groaned.

"Hold on."

Lizard raised her up as easily as if he were lifting a doll and left her sitting with her back against the wall. That hurt, too. Her back, or maybe the wall.

"How do you feel?"

"Dizzy."

She carefully felt her mouth with her hand.

"I think they've broken a tooth," Paul announced.

"You're joking."

Bruna spit a clot of blood onto the floor. Which reminded her of the mem pirate.

"There's a man here who's-"

"Dead. Yes. They shattered his neck with a shot," replied Lizard.

A pair of scared young FCPs appeared at the door.

"It's about time you turned up. There's a present for you over there," said the inspector, signaling with his head toward the body.

"I've already alerted the examining magistrate. n.o.body touches anything until he gets here."

"Yes, sir."

Meanwhile, Paul was examining the rep's body with experienced hands, moving her legs, her arms, feeling her ribs.

"You're covered with blood, but I think most of it is his."

"I'm fine," said Bruna.

"Sure. Come on, I'll take you to the hospital."

"No, not the hospital. To my place."

"Okay. To your place, but via the hospital."

Lizard picked up one of the android's shoes from the floor-it had come off in the midst of the maelstrom-and raising her leg, he put the shoe on her foot with exquisite gentleness. And then Bruna felt that something was breaking inside her, that something was beginning to hurt her more than all the other aches in her bruised body.

"I'm fine," she repeated, barely resisting the ridiculous temptation to cry.

Oh, what was going to become of her? To make love with someone was easy. To sleep with the inspector, for example, would have been a very simple and ba.n.a.l thing to do. A gymnastic triviality quickly forgotten. But that someone would place a missing shoe on her foot, that someone would put the shoe on her foot with such gruff care, with such awkward tenderness-that was impossible to surpa.s.s. Lizard's small gesture had left her defenseless. She was lost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

At the hospital they gave Bruna a full body CT fluoroscan and, surprisingly, there was no major damage. Her organs were fine, there was no internal hemorrhaging, and the knock on the head hadn't produced any lasting trauma. She had a couple of cracked ribs and a superficial wound on her wrist from the plasma shot; luckily it wasn't black plasma so it hadn't affected the bones. In summary, there was nothing that couldn't be cured with a round of subcutaneous paramorphine injections. As far as the broken tooth was concerned, they dealt with that in the same emergency cubicle by extracting the stump, inserting an implant and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g on a new tooth that was totally indistinguishable from Bruna's own. She was undoubtedly benefiting from being there with Paul Lizard. Bruna was paying with her own mediocre health insurance, but the inspector knew half the hospital personnel and he had managed to arrange for her to receive first-cla.s.s treatment.

"It's the medical center the Homicide Squad uses; that's why I brought you here."

I brought you, Bruna repeated softly to herself as Lizard was helping her into his car. The rep had the feeling that he was making too many decisions for her. Under other circ.u.mstances, she would have found that situation infuriating. But she was exhausted and the paramorphine was deadening her nerves, so she sank back comfortably into her seat and allowed herself to be taken away without saying a word. As they left the hospital parking station, a blast of gale-force wind rocked the car.

"Siberian wind. I don't know if you're aware of it, but we're in a state of emergency. There's a polar crisis on its way."

Not even the peacefulness of the drug could prevent the android from feeling a deep irritation at the news. Although climate change had caused the annual average temperature to rise several degrees and had turned previously temperate, wooded zones into desert, an inversion of the so-called Arctic Oscillation-a phenomenon Bruna had never managed to understand-periodically caused brief and unusual waves of extreme cold, with one or two days of heavy snowfalls, howling gales, and plummeting temperatures that in Madrid could easily reach minus four degrees Fahrenheit. Although the crisis had only just started, the temperature was going to drop still farther. The pedestrians, their faces cold, were struggling to walk against the wind, and were standing in line to buy provisions or, even worse, heaters and thermal clothing. The rep was always amazed at people's lack of foresight; there were at least two polar crises each year, but people lived as if they were a one-off occurrence, something abnormal that would never happen again. And so, every time a cold snap arrived, supplies of thermal articles sold out.

"Look, it's snowing already," said Lizard.

And he was right. Half-dissolved snowflakes were crashing against the windshield. Deadly snow, thought the detective; the icy cold always left a trail of victims: the very old, the very sick, the very poor. The android breathed deeply, feeling incredibly good in the warm, soft interior of the vehicle, in the fuzzy calm of the drug, in the protective company of Lizard.

"You're going the wrong way. It's straight ahead."

"We're not going to your place, Bruna. I think it would be better, at least for today, if you rested in a safe place, and I'm not convinced that your apartment is it. You could say that in recent times too many people have been bent on a.s.saulting you."

True, thought the android. Before the memorist killers, there had been the thugs who had intercepted her on the way to her apartment, and before that, the attack by her neighbor Cata Cain, who had the scene of Bruna's murder written on her deadly mem. The image of the rep gouging out her own eye lit up briefly in Bruna's mind like a lightning flash of blood. She shivered.

"So where are we going, then?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"To my place."

The android gave a slight frown. That wasn't a good idea; it wasn't at all good to give in to the inspector's wishes, to a.s.sume the pa.s.sivity of a wounded animal, the comfortable weakness of a victim. It wasn't at all good to allow Paul to make decisions on her behalf without even pretending to consult her; to allow him to control her, no matter how gently he did so. On any other occasion, the rep would have refused, would have argued and protested, but now she allowed herself to be led, feeling a rare pleasure in her compliance. A perverse pleasure. What difference does it make? she thought.

"What difference does it make?" she growled softly.

Suddenly she remembered that, a few days back, she had left her panties on the hood of this very car, and she gave a little smile. What had the inspector thought when he found her gift? Had he guessed that it was from her? It was the night she met Lizard for the first time. A mad night; her body had been burning from the candy. Just the thought of the oxytocin c.o.c.ktail made Bruna feel as if her body was slightly on fire. Indistinct but searing memories of her carnal rapture began to ignite in her head. But then she also remembered that she'd ended up in bed with the Omaa, and the mild, erotic excitement she was feeling suddenly vanished. All that had happened eight-no, seven-days ago. Friday, January 21. How many things had happened in that short time! If she were capable of living every day of her life with such intensity, her short technohuman existence would seem very long indeed.

She tipped back her seat and closed her eyes. Four years, three months, and fourteen days. Today was Friday, January 28, 2109. Merlin had died on March 3; it would be the second anniversary of his death in just over a month. Bruna wondered what the exact date of her own death would be. Her obsessive countdown only provided the time left before she reached the fateful ten-year border, but as of that point TTT could take two to three months to finish her off. She figured it would be in April or May, or perhaps even June.

She must have fallen asleep, because she suddenly opened her eyes with a start and saw that the car had stopped, and Paul was saying something to her.

"Come on! We're here."

The snow was beginning to settle in, and as she got out of the vehicle, the intense cold pierced through her thin clothes like a thousand pinp.r.i.c.ks. Lizard flung an arm across her shoulders and leaned his large body in close to hers. He did it so naturally that Bruna didn't find it at all odd; on the contrary, her own body automatically adapted itself to the inspector's as if it had made that move a thousand times in the past. And just like that, holding tightly on to each other, leaning into the cutting edge of the wind and protecting each other, they covered the distance to the building.

As she was going through the entrance, however, the detective, somewhat embarra.s.sed, immediately disentangled herself. The movement produced a sharp stab in her injured ribs.

"So this is where you live," she remarked foolishly, just for something to say, as she tentatively felt her rib cage with her fingers.

It was one of those old houses in what used to be the heart of Madrid, renovated on the inside a few decades earlier but not very well maintained. The narrow s.p.a.ce next to the worn stairs housed a single, vintage elevator. Lizard opened his mailbox and a few holograph flyers emerged, shrieking. He crushed them with his hand and put them into the sealed bin. Then he opened the elevator door for Bruna.

"You take it. Fourth floor. I'll take the stairs."

It was no surprise that he should walk up, as the cage was so small that the two of them would have fitted in only if they were tightly embraced. A pity, thought Bruna with a small smile as the elevator rose, shaking suspiciously. When it stopped on the fourth floor, Lizard was already there, only slightly out of breath. He wasn't in bad shape, especially considering his bulk.

"Come in. Make yourself comfortable."

How the h.e.l.l 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 const.i.tuted 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 s.p.a.cious 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 a.s.sailants 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 gla.s.s."

"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 t.i.tan.

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 reconst.i.tuted 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 gla.s.ses. He had a few sips from his own gla.s.s 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 a.s.sume it has nothing to do with the case. And I also a.s.sume 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."