Tears in Rain Part 26

Lizard shrugged his shoulders, somewhat annoyed.

"Don't worry, I won't. And you're welcome. Hey-you're welcome. There's no need to overwhelm me with your grat.i.tude," he added sarcastically.

He stuffed himself into an enormous winter coat with a hood and opened the door to leave.

"Lizard!"

The inspector paused in the doorway.

"That...that story about Maitena and your childhood, is it true?"

"Why would I lie to you?" Paul replied without turning around.

Then he glanced at her over his right shoulder.

"Incidentally, speaking of lies...last night and this morning they've been calling you insistently on your other mobile. You know which one I'm talking about: the illegal one."

And with that, he left.

The Caiman always managed to unsettle her.

When they'd reached the hospital, Bruna had managed surrept.i.tiously to remove Annie's mobile-which she usually wore taped to her stomach-and after rolling up the thin, translucent sheet, had hidden it in the inside pocket of her backpack. Now, however, the mobile was lying unfolded on the table next to her. She grabbed it. Sure enough, there were six missed calls from Serra, Hericio's deputy. She made an effort to concentrate and a.s.sume the role of Annie Heart, and then hit the supremacist's number. The man's unpleasant face filled the screen. He looked irritated and suspicious.

"Where have you been?" he barked.

"It's none of your business."

"Of course it is. You're too mysterious, sweetheart. You appear suddenly out of nowhere, you disappear just as suddenly, and besides, I'm sick of not being able to see you. All that nonsense about the mobile being untraceable, about there being no picture when we speak. I'm beginning to think you're hiding something. And if that's true, I a.s.sure you, you'll be sorry."

Bruna took a deep breath.

"Let's clarify a few things: One, that's not how to treat a prospective donor. Two, I'm still not sure I want to give you my money. Three, don't ever threaten me or you'll never hear from me again. Call me when you know where and when I'll be meeting Hericio," she said in an icy tone.

She cut communication. She waited for two long minutes with her eyes glued to the screen. Finally, blue letters lit up: "16:00 at the bar in your hotel." Perfect! The funding permit clearly hasn't provided the antic.i.p.ated results, the rep said to herself. They still seem keen to fill their coffers. They would undoubtedly pick her up at the bar and take her somewhere. Perfect. It wasn't yet 10:00. She had more than enough time.

Bruna felt her ribs. They were still hurting but not as much. The bone regenerator they had injected at the hospital seemed to be working. She took off the blanket and stood up carefully. Despite her recent beating, she in fact felt reasonably good. A check in the large mirror on the wall confirmed that she was still wearing yesterday's clothing-torn, stained with blood, and far too lightweight for the cold weather outside. She undid the fasteners and let her clothes fall to the ground. Her entire body bore the marks of the blows; it was a multicolored map of the beating. The bruises climbed up her body to her face like a vine, and she also had a medicated bandage on her wrist. If she was going to see Hericio, she might have to hide all that with makeup.

Still naked, she walked to the kitchen area. She was as hungry as an ox, and the smell of toast and coffee Lizard had left floating in the air made her mouth water in antic.i.p.ation.

"Screen, I'm Bruna," she instructed.

"I have authorization for two Brunas. Please give me your second name," replied the soft female computer voice.

The rep got annoyed. How come two Brunas? So that reptile Lizard spent his life bringing women to his apartment?

"I'm Bruna Husky," she growled.

"Welcome, Bruna Husky. What can I do for you?"

The rep ordered a gigantic breakfast and devoured it as she continued to mull over her bad mood. Then she had a vapor shower and ransacked Lizard's wardrobe in search of warm clothes, vaguely relishing the thought that something would finally be too big for her: she was used to always having to wear trousers that were too short and left her shins exposed. She had opened the door and was already leaving the apartment when she suddenly turned and went back inside.

"Screen, I'm Ingrid," she said, forcing her voice to sound higher-pitched.

It was a name that had become fashionable a few decades earlier, and the streets were teeming with a ridiculous number of Ingrids; maybe Lizard had authorized one of them. In reality, she was using the name just to see how readily the man granted his domestic privileges.

"You are not Ingrid. You are Bruna Husky. How can I help you?" replied the electronic voice with an unshakable amiability.

The most recent computers were hopelessly tricky beasts to fool.

She walked out into a frozen Madrid that seemed to be wrapped in white lace. There was barely any traffic on the roads and half the travelators weren't working, despite teams of machine operators trying to unfreeze them with steam guns. The ground was crunchy and slippery even for her genetically enhanced sense of balance and motor coordination. Here and there, humans lacking these improvements were taking horrendous tumbles. That could well be another reason for hating reps, the android thought to herself acidly. Bulky thermal clothing and big hoods had the advantage of making everyone look the same, even more so if, like her, they were wearing sungla.s.ses to shield them from the glare. It was virtually impossible to recognize what sort of being each person was, which was a relief because the public screens continued to spew hatred despite the cold. They were all talking about an imminent crisis within the regional government. The subway was running normally, but it was bound to be packed, and Bruna didn't fancy being confined in a small s.p.a.ce with a horde of furious humans, so she decided to walk to the Majestic. The thermometers were showing minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't surprising that there were so few people walking, or that the travelator operators seemed to be moving with the unreal slowness of astronauts at zero gravity, slowed down as they were by layers and layers of cheap thermal fabric. The sky was the deep blue shade of Chinese lacquer and contrasted perfectly with the as yet untainted white of the recently fallen snow. There was no wind and the cold was amazingly quiet. Bruna began to enjoy her walk.

Why hadn't the murderers of the mem pirate killed her? There was no question they had had the opportunity to do so. And if they didn't want to kill her, why had they a.s.saulted her? They could have left without any difficulty and without being seen, so why take a risk by attacking her? Did they want to give her a fright? Did they intend to injure her just seriously enough to remove her from the scene? Or maybe they did it to steal her plasma gun. That possibility was disturbing. She'd have to pluck up the courage to ask Lizard if he had found it.

On another tack, who knew that she was going to see the murdered memorist? Pablo Nopal, naturally. But it seemed unnecessarily complex and absurd for Nopal to arrange a meeting with the mem pirate, lend him his own house, kill the man while Bruna was there and then give her a beating as well. It didn't seem logical that Nopal would think up such a complicated script when he could surely have carried out his plan at other times and in a much simpler way. Or maybe not. What if the pirate hadn't trusted her? What if Nopal had made the mem pirate come to the house by using her as bait? What if the subsequent attack on her was nothing more than a smokescreen to obscure the murder? And after all, wasn't Nopal an expert in writing complex scripts? Apart from also being an expert killer, according to Lizard.

But Lizard wasn't out of the woods yet either-that unsettling man who always appeared and disappeared at the most opportune moments. That impenetrable giant who had already twice saved her from enigmatic a.s.sailants. Twice in less than a week. Too much of a coincidence, the memorist would have said. Not to mention his strange kindness, the offers of collaboration, and the unsought friendship. And why had he drugged her the previous evening? What had he been doing during the hours she was sleeping? Going through her belongings, no doubt; that was how he must have found Annie's mobile. Had he gone over to look through her apartment as well? Did that nosy Lizard know of the existence of Annie Heart, of Bruna's work as a dual personality, of the rooms she'd rented at the Majestic? The police had also been infiltrated, according to Myriam Chi. They must have been; this was a ma.s.sive operation.

Four years, three months, and thirteen days. Thinking about the possible-or even probable-betrayal by the inspector made her ill. It would leave her entirely on her own again, so alone with her limited time and her death sentence; as abandoned as the wild bears before they became extinct, as Virginio Nissen had explained to her in their last session. Bruna recalled the psych-guide because she was pa.s.sing close by the Health Arcade where Nissen had his consulting rooms. Moved by a sudden impulse, the rep changed direction and headed for the arcade. A few feet from the entrance, she crossed paths with a young woman who was crying and who brushed past her with the warm breath of her pain. Each of us carries a personal burden, as Yiannis used to say.

There weren't many people in the galleries of the arcade, and at least a third of the stores were shut. The managers probably hadn't been able to get there because of the snow. Nevertheless, the rep noticed at least two changes since her last visit. The first was that they'd opened a Memofree store, the popular franchise for erasing memories. Although memory manipulation technology had been around for almost a hundred years, Memofree used modern, revolutionary technology invented by Gay Ximen. Ximen's great discovery had reduced costs to such an extent that the procedure was now within the reach of ordinary people. "Selective memory erasure from 300 gaias," proclaimed the neon sign in the window, although Bruna knew that it could cost six or seven thousand Gs to get rid of the long, complex memories that affected various parts of the brain. "Quick, permanent, safe, and painless: forget your suffering without suffering. Fully compatible with technohumans. It works. 100 percent guaranteed." The Ximen33 had been sweeping people's heads clean for decades already, and there were people addicted to the machine who, pathologically incapable of putting up with even the tiniest unpleasantness, would go once a month to have tiny p.r.i.c.kles removed from their memories-an unpleasant argument, a fleeting lover they wished they'd never had, a party at which they hadn't sparkled. But there were also people who refused to use the machine even though they were carrying a stone in their hearts. Like Yiannis. Or like Bruna herself. She wanted to go on remembering Merlin no matter how much it might hurt. The human who had come out of the arcade crying might have been someone who had pulled out at the last minute, preferring to go on clinging to her pain. We are also our pain, thought Bruna.

The other change was an art exhibition on the ground floor of the arcade. It was alien art, of the Gnes to be precise, perhaps sponsored by the Gnes doctor who had his rooms on the first floor. The pictures, magnificent superrealistic holographs, floated halfway up the central hall. They were enormous works, twelve feet by twelve feet or bigger, totally and perfectly black. Rectangles of a continuous and deep darkness that, at first glance, all looked the same but which, when you stopped to look at them closely, showed themselves to be distinct, dizzying, and swirling in their blackness. They were a darkness full of movement and light, images that were hauntingly strange. The artist's name was Sulagnes and, if you looked closely, the black sparks that seemed to move within the pictures formed, and incessantly repeated, the one phrase Agg'ie nagne 'eggins anyg g nein'yie Bruna pointed the lens of her mobile at the letters, and the curved screen hugging her wrist instantly translated the sentence: What I do shows me what I am seeking.

Beautiful, she thought, impressed by the alien's reflection. That was how it was; that was exactly how it was. That was her work as a detective, and that was life. It was dramatic to discover that the mind of a bicho could be so similar to hers. Vast interstellar abysses pulverized by the magic power of one small shared thought.

Bruna dragged herself away from her contemplation of the pictures with a degree of sorrow and made her way to the shop with the essentialist tattoos. She had, in fact, originally decided to visit the arcade because of Natvel. Fortunately, the store was open, and as she went in she recognized the smell of oranges, the amber half-light, the quiet, soothing atmosphere. Everything was so like it had been on her first visit that she seemed to have jumped back in time. Again, the beaded curtain stirred with a murmur like running water as the diminutive but strong body of the tattooist-male or female?-pa.s.sed through it.

"I knew you'd come back," rumbled Natvel with his deep baritone voice.

And a very feminine smile appeared on his beautiful, oriental-idol face.

"Oh, yes?"

Bruna really liked the essentialist, but his shamanic airs made her nervous. Just then she had detected a certain tone of triumphant solemnity in Natvel's voice that didn't augur well.

"I knew you'd finally want to know your essential form."

"Oh. Great, but..."

"I know who you are, I know what you are."

"I'm delighted, but I don't want to know. That's not why I've come."

Natvel sighed and crossed his hands over his belly. He was the picture of patience. A small, imperturbable Buddha.

"I just wanted to ask you something: Those Labaric power tattoos, are they done with a laser?"

The question shook the tattooist sufficiently to stir him-no, her-out of her impa.s.sivity.

"By the universal breath, of course not! No energy tattoo can be done with that amateurish instrument."

"Energy tattoo?"

"One that's capable of transforming or disturbing the person who bears it...living signs that alter your life. There are positive energies, like essentialist tattoos, and negative ones, like the Labaric script of power; but in either case, it has been proven that the laser interrupts the flow of energy."

"I see. So then if someone did a tattoo with a laser using the Labaric script of power-"

"It would be an obvious and crude imitation. A forgery. And the tattoo would have no effect."

"And who might do something like that?"

Natvel frowned as she distractedly but energetically poked around inside her ear with her index finger. Then she examined the end of her finger, squinting a little, and wiped the wax on her tunic.

"Well, not a lot of people. In the first place, the Labaric writing of power isn't well known. It's a well-guarded secret. I've only ever seen two words written with that script. One was years ago, and I couldn't copy it. And the other was Jonathan's name, which I showed you the other day. So, although everyone has heard of that evil writing, virtually no one really knows what it's like. But you recognized the signs, didn't you?"

Bruna thought for a second: yes, indeed. The n in revenge was exactly like the n in Jonathan.

"Yes."

"So it's someone who knows the alphabet, and I can a.s.sure you, that knowledge is possessed by only a few. On the other hand, n.o.body in their right mind would devote themselves to forging a Labaric script. It's fierce and powerful writing and something pretty awful could happen to you if you went down that path..."

"So I a.s.sume that means that whoever did it is not a believer in that..." Bruna was going to say nonsense, but she contained herself. "...In those esoteric things."

"Oh, no, it makes no difference if you believe or not. I've already told you that the script of power is a well-guarded secret. If you do something unacceptable with it, you run the risk of an unpleasant visit from the Labarians, who are already unpleasant enough in their own right even at the best of times. Why do you think I haven't displayed Jonathan's tattoo on the public screens? Why do you think I haven't sent it to the archive? As you've seen, I don't make a mystery of it, I don't mind showing you the word. But from that to publishing it, to officially revealing it...Let's just say that I look out for myself."

It seemed a sensible observation. So it had to be someone who was either totally unaware of the risks-unlikely, given the scale of the operation-or else sufficiently powerful not to be scared off by reprisals from the mafia sect otherwise known as the Ones. And who on Earth could feel safe from them? The entire planet was infested with a heaving ma.s.s of henchmen and spies from Cosmos and the Kingdom of Labari. Double and triple agents who took advantage of the weakness of the Earthling state, still too unstructured post-Unification and full of security holes, like any democratic system.

"You really don't want to know?" asked Natvel.

"What?"

"You don't want to know who you are?"

"I know perfectly well who I am."

"I doubt it."

And Bruna, mortified, had to acknowledge that deep down she was in effect far from being sure about this. But she would never admit it.

"Natvel, thanks for your help. You've again been most kind and very helpful, but I'd rather you didn't tell me what you see in me."

"Your essential design. Your form. What you are."

"Yes, that. It's all the same to me. I don't want to know."

"If it really made no difference to you, you wouldn't mind my telling you. There's a part of you that believes. That's why you're scared."

Stop bothering me, thought Bruna, irritated. Stop pestering me.

"I have to go. Thanks again."

She smiled a tight little smile, and quickly left the store. Behind her she could still hear the essentialist's words: "That line which cuts your body! Not only does it divide you, it's also a rope that binds you."

The door to the store, with its old hinges, slammed too forcefully against the frame as it shut behind Bruna. Natvel was a good sort, but visionaries got on the detective's nerves.

She left the Health Arcade and strode off toward the Majestic, despite occasionally feeling a stab in her damaged ribs. The air was so dense and cold that it almost seemed to have a physical consistency; her body opened a path through the air like an icebreaker through a frozen sea. She was walking along looking at the ground, concentrating on where she was stepping, when her ears caught a phrase that shocked her: "And it was about time this government, which was leading us into a catastrophe, fell..."

She looked up. It was a message on a public screen. All the screens were heaping rabid personal allegations on Inmaculada Cruz, the eternal regional president. Bruna activated the latest news on her mobile and learned that the government crisis that had been brewing for the past few days had finally exploded in the middle of the cold snap. President Cruz had resigned and an obscure politician called Chem Cones had provisionally a.s.sumed power. The detective wikied the name Cones and looked at his biography: extremist, racist, a disciple of Hericio. His first resolution as acting president had been to remove all reps in government from their positions. "It's a temporary measure to protect them and to protect us; we're investigating the existence of a possible technohuman conspiracy and we still don't know if any of our government colleagues are implicated. If they haven't done anything wrong, they have no cause for concern, but for those who are trying to deceive us, I have to tell you that we will follow this through to the bitter end," thundered the man in front of a swarm of journalists. Other screens showed Hericio waving triumphantly to a crowd. "The leader of the HSP is the only one who can save us in these dangerous times," declared Maria Lucrecia w.a.n.g, the famous author of interactive novels. "I trust only Hericio," said Lolo Bano, the soccer player. The android shuddered. By all the martyred reps, what the devil was going on? The supremacist leader had gone from being an outrageous, marginal player to the Great White Hope. She anxiously inhaled a mouthful of freezing cold air because she was feeling choked. She had a worrying, almost physical sense that reality was closing in on her bit by bit, like a cage.

She entered the hotel, went up to Annie's room and, before applying her makeup, spoke to Lizard and explained to him what Natvel had told her about the Labaric script. The inspector was serious and taciturn. When she'd finished telling him about her visit to the essentialist, a long, uncomfortable silence descended over them.

"And nothing else?" Paul finally asked.

"That's all Natvel told me."

"But you, you've got nothing else to tell me?"

"What do you want me to tell you?"

"I have no idea...that's for you to say...about the illegal mobile, about what you're up to. What are doing in the Majestic Hotel right now, for example?"

Bruna lost her temper.

"I'm sick of you tracking me."

Paul looked at her severely.

"Bruna, things are really bad. I'm not sure you realize this. They're very bad in general, and they're bad for you. We've found Dani dead."

"Dani? So, who's Dani? Another rep victim?"

The face of a human appeared on the screen.

"You don't know who this is, Bruna?"

Yes, she knew...or she should know. That face rang a bell. The android put her hands over her eyes and made an effort to remember. She reconstructed the woman's features deep inside her mind and imagined them moving and alive. And then she recognized her. She uncovered her face and looked at Paul.

"She's one of the people who attacked me the other night when I was going home. It's the woman who seemed to be the leader of the group."

Paul nodded his head slowly.

"Dani Kohn. A racist activist. And a well-to-do young woman. The daughter of Phi Kohn Reyes, the director-general of Clean Water. A multimillionaire businesswoman. A bigwig. They're ha.s.sling us over her death."

They were silent again for a moment.

"When was the last time you saw her, Bruna?"

The rep put up her guard. A mix of fear and anger rose in her throat.