Tears in Rain Part 3

The first doc.u.mented encounter between human beings from Earth and Other Beings, or ETBs (extraterrestrial beings), took place on May 3, 2090, a date thereafter known as Day One. On that day an alien s.p.a.ceship landed on the Chinese sector of the mining colony of Potosi. Inside it were Gnes explorers, a people from the planet Gnio, close to Potosi; both planets circle the star Fomalhaut. Their ship was very fast and very advanced technically, although their displacement method was conventional and they traveled at well below the speed of light. They knew nothing of physical teleportation but had developed an ultrasonic means of communication supported by light beams, and capable of reaching phenomenal distances in record time. Thanks to such messages, or telegnes, the Gnes had established nonvisual contact with two other remote extraterrestrial civilizations, the Omaas and the Balabis. We humans had ceased to be alone in the universe.

The impact of such a remarkable discovery was absolute. Three days later Human Peace was signed, thereby ending the Robot Wars. Though the accord was undoubtedly deemed to have been driven by the fear the extraterrestrials inspired in the inhabitants of our planet (the very name-Human Peacealmost suggests a desire to highlight the unity of this species against the aliens), a positive feeling of community began to develop over the few short years leading into the Unification process and the creation of the United States of the Earth in 2098. At the same time, contact was established with the three ETB civilizations, and there is no doubt that the existence of teleportation was the most significant factor enabling a genuine political and cultural exchange among the four worlds: for the first time, everyone could meet face-to-face. There were studies, reports, the intensive training of translators, negotiations, pre-agreements, emissaries being TP'd, myriad telegnes crisscrossing the galaxies, and frantic diplomatic activity throughout the universe. It soon became clear that the four species were in no way competing against one another and posed no threat to one another. Their home planets were vast distances apart, and teletransportation was equally harmful to all of them. The grandeur of the cosmos seemed somehow to encourage human n.o.bility, and the talks advanced rapidly and harmoniously, culminating in the Global Agreements of Ca.s.siopeia in 2096, the first interstellar treaty in history. The agreements regulate the patenting and use of technologies (for example, we buy the Gnes' telegnes, and they buy teleportation from us, but both the intellectual property and the rights to exploitation belong exclusively to the civilization that developed the particular invention), the exchange of goods, the type of currency, the use of teletransportation, terms of migration, etc. Faced with the need to coin a word that would define our new partners in the universe and identify us with them, the term

sentient beings, an expression borrowed from the Buddhist tradition, was agreed to. The sentients (G'nayam in Gnes, Laluala in Balabi, Amoa in Omaanese) const.i.tute a new level in the taxonomy of living things. If, up to that point, human beings had belonged to the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Cordata, the cla.s.s Mammalia, the order Primates, the family Hominidae, the genus h.o.m.o and the species h.o.m.o sapiens, after the agreements a new rank was added-the line Sintiente, located between cla.s.s and order-because, curiously, all extraterrestrials appear to be mammals and to have hair of one sort or another.

Although teleportation has enabled the four civilizations to exchange amba.s.sadors, it is not very common to see an alien in person. In total, there are fewer than twenty thousand aliens on our planet, a tiny number compared with the four billion citizens of Earth, known as Earthlings. Each diplomatic delegation consists of three thousand individuals, spread across the most important cities in the USE. There are also about ten thousand Omaas, who TP'd to Earth fleeing from a religious war on their own planet. That said, their unusual looks are extremely well known to all, thanks to the images screened on the news. The official name for extraterrestrials is Other Beings, but they are commonly referred to as bichos, or creeps.

CHAPTER SIX.

"I found this on my desk two days ago," said Myriam Chi.

She leaned forward and handed Bruna a small holograph ball. Bruna held it in her palm and pressed the b.u.t.ton. Immediately, a three-dimensional image of the RRM leader formed on her hand. It was no more than four inches tall, but it clearly showed Myriam in her entirety, smiling and waving. Suddenly, from nowhere, a minuscule hand appeared holding a knife, and the blade, enormous by comparison, slit the rep's belly from top to bottom and, using the tip of the weapon as a lever, skillfully extracted her intestines. Her guts spilled out and the hologram switched off. That was it, but it was more than enough.

"s.h.i.t," murmured Bruna despite herself.

She had felt the impact of the scene in her stomach, but a millisecond later she had managed to recover her aplomb. She pressed the b.u.t.ton again and this time paid closer attention.

"You're smiling the whole time. It must be an image from a news bulletin, or-"

"It's from the end of one of last year's rallies. We holographed the whole thing and sell it in our souvenir shop. Our sympathizers buy it. It's a way of raising funds for the movement."

"So anyone can get hold of it."

"We have many supporters, and that hologram is one of our most popular items."

Bruna picked up a particular timbre in Myriam's words, an ironically sarcastic tone, and glanced up. The other woman gazed back at her with an impenetrable look. Long, wavy, chestnut-brown hair, a tailored suit, makeup on her face. For the leader of a radical movement, she had an oddly conventional look. Bruna pressed the ball again. The superimposed image of the disembowelment seemed to be real, not virtual. Maybe it was of an animal in some slaughterhouse.

"It's in fact a fairly clumsy piece of work, Chi. I'd say it's a homemade job. But it's very effective, because that wholly unexpected and horrific butchery prevents you from noticing the defects. Can I hang on to it?"

"Of course."

"I'll return it as soon as I've a.n.a.lyzed it."

"As you can understand, there's no way I want it. But yes, I suppose it's evidence that has to be kept."

Hah, thought Bruna, I've got you. Myriam had accompanied the sentence with a small sigh, and her strong and somewhat arrogant pose of the world-leader-who-is-above-such-trifles had cracked a little, showing a flash of fear. Yes, of course she was frightened, and rightly so. Husky vaguely recalled other, earlier incidents during Chi's rallies that were violent and disruptive, even some supremacists who had tried to shoot her-or was it blow her up with a bomb? When Bruna had arrived at the RRM headquarters, she'd had to go through various security checks, including a full body scan.

"And you say that, apart from you, there are only two other people authorized to enter this office?"

"That's right. My personal a.s.sistant and the head of security. And neither of them opened the door. The register that records lock activity shows no one entering here from the time I left the previous night until when I returned the following morning. And by then the holograph ball was already on my desk."

"Which means that someone has manipulated the register. Maybe someone internal. The head of security?"

"Impossible."

"You'd be amazed at the infinite possibilities of the impossible."

Myriam cleared her throat.

"She's my partner. We've been together for three years. I know her. And we love each other."

Bruna had a fleeting vision of Myriam as a potential lover. That cold self-a.s.surance punctuated by the fragility of fear; that loud, intrusive activism linked with her old-fashioned appearance. Why, she even had fingernails painted in the retro style! All those contradictions magnified her attractiveness. For a moment Bruna convinced herself that she could understand why the head of security had fallen for her. But finding Myriam s.e.xy put Bruna in a bad mood.

"And what can you tell me about your personal a.s.sistant? Do you love him enough to exonerate him, too?" she asked, with uncalled-for rudeness.

Myriam Chi didn't react.

"He's also beyond suspicion. We've worked together for too many years. Don't make a mistake. Don't waste your time looking where you shouldn't. I repeat that this is linked to trafficking in adulterated memories. I'm certain of it. That's what you have to investigate and that's precisely why I've called you: because you saw one of the victims."

Indeed, Myriam had told her all this in a commanding tone as soon as Bruna had arrived. The RRM leader had explained to her that before Cata Cain, there had already been four other reps who had died in similar circ.u.mstances. And that when she became interested in the matter and went to talk with friends and colleagues of the victims, she began to receive strange threats: anonymous, untraceable phone calls; increasingly threatening messages on her computer; and finally the holograph ball, more intimidating because of its appearance in her office than because of its gruesome content. Bruna wasn't used to having her clients tell her what she had to do; usually, it was the opposite. People hired private detectives when they felt at a loss, when they felt threatened but weren't sure by what, or when they needed to prove some suspicion so dark that they didn't even know where to begin to look. A private detective's clients were generally lost in confusion. Otherwise they would have gone to the police or the courts. And Bruna knew from experience that the more confused the person hiring her was the better their working relationship would be, because then the client would give the sleuth greater freedom and be more grateful for the smallest fact the detective might find. If truth be told, a private detective was a finder of certainties.

"Why haven't you been to the police?"

Chi smiled sardonically.

"You mean, to the human police? You want me to go and ask them why there's someone out there killing reps? Do you think they're going to be very interested?"

"There are technohuman cops as well."

"Oh, right. Four wretched imbeciles playing the part for the sake of appearances. Come on, Husky, you know we're totally discriminated against. We're a secondary species and third-cla.s.s citizens."

Yes, Bruna knew it. But she felt that the discrimination against reps encompa.s.sed a greater discrimination-that of the powerful against the wretched. Like that poor human in Oli's bar, the Texaco-Repsol billboard-lady. The world was basically unjust. Perhaps reps had to put up with worse conditions than humans, but for some reason, feeling that she was part of a victims' collective made the detective feel ill. She preferred to think that injustice was democratic and rained its formidable blows on everybody.

"Moreover, I don't trust the police, because it's likely the enemy has infiltrators on the inside. I'm convinced there's something much bigger behind this business of adulterated memories. Something political."

Come on, thought Bruna, irritated. Next she'll say there's a plot. They were entering the paranoid zone typical of these radical movements.

"Something that might even be a conspiracy."

"Well, Chi, allow me to question that. I don't usually support conspiracy theories," Bruna couldn't avoid answering.

"That's fine by me, but conspiracies exist. Look at the recent revelations about the a.s.sa.s.sination of President John F. Kennedy. We've finally managed to find out what happened."

"But at this stage, a century and a half after the a.s.sa.s.sination, the truth is of no interest to anyone. I'm not saying that conspiracies don't exist; what I am saying is that there are far fewer than people imagine, and they tend to be improvised, one-off jobs rather than perfect Machiavellian constructions. People believe in conspiracies because it's a way of believing that deep down, horror has some order and meaning, even if that meaning is evil. We don't support chaos, but there's no question that life is totally senseless. Pure sound and fury."

Myriam looked at her with some surprise.

"Shakespeare...what an educated quotation for someone like you."

"And what am I like?"

"A detective, a combat rep, a woman with a shaved head and a tattoo that splits her face."

"Right. Well, I'm equally surprised that a political leader would recognize Shakespeare's words. I thought activists like you dedicated your lives to the cause, not to reading and painting your fingernails."

Myriam smiled crookedly and briefly lowered her head, pensive. When she raised it once more, her face again showed that unexpected fragility that the detective thought she'd seen moments earlier.

"Why don't you like me, Husky?"

The detective shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In reality, she was sorry she had said so much. She didn't know why she was behaving in such an unusual way. Discussing chaos in life with a client? She must have lost her mind.

"It's not that. Let's just say I find people with a victim mentality annoying."

She'd done it again! Bruna was astonished. She was continuing to argue with Chi, totally out of control.

"You think, for example, that denouncing labs that don't look for a cure for TTT is feeling victimized? I have the data: considerably less than one percent of the budget for medical research is spent on the search for a cure for Total Techno Tumor, even though we reps make up fifteen percent of the population and we all die of the same thing."

Four years, three months, and twenty-three days, thought Bruna, without being able to do anything about it. She was just as unable to do anything about the awful impulse to keep arguing.

"Believing that the entire universe is conspiring against you seems like a victim mentality to me. As if you were at the center of everything. The feeling of superiority is a defect that tends to accompany a victim mentality...as if you deserved any merit for being a product of fate."

"Fate and human genetic engineering in our case," whispered Myriam.

The two women stopped talking and the seconds pa.s.sed with embarra.s.sing slowness.

"I know you, Bruna," the RRM leader finally said in a soft voice-so soft that the sudden use of her first name seemed both necessary and natural. "I know people like you. You're so full of anger and hurt that you can't put words to what you feel. If you admit your pain, you're scared that you'll end up being nothing more than a victim, and if you acknowledge your anger, you're scared you'll end up being a tyrant. The point is that you hate being a rep but you don't want to admit it."

"Don't tell me-"

"That's why I disturb and intrigue you so much," continued Myriam, unperturbed. "Because I represent everything you fear. That rep nature that you hate. Relax. In reality, it's a very common problem. Look at the people on the Trans Platform-you know, the a.s.sociation that encompa.s.ses all those people who want to be what they're not: women who want to be men; men who want to be women; humans who want to be reps; reps who want to be humans; blacks who want to be white; whites who want to be black. At this stage, we don't seem to have aliens who want to be Earthlings, or vice versa, but it will happen; we haven't spent enough time in contact with the extraterrestrials yet. I think we reps and humans are sick beings; we always feel our reality isn't enough. So we consume drugs and give ourselves artificial memories; we want to escape from the confinement of our lives. But I a.s.sure you that the only way to resolve the conflict is to learn to accept it and find your own place in the world. And that's what we do in the RRM. That's why our movement is so important, because-"

Despite herself, Bruna had listened to Chi's argument with a degree of attention, but when the woman cited the RRM, a stream of uncontrollable and liberating sarcasm popped out of the detective's mouth.

"An eloquent homily, Chi. A fantastic speech. You should turn it into a holograph and sell it in your shop. But how about we get back to the matter in hand?"

Myriam smiled. A small grimace, tight and cold.

"Of course, Husky. I don't know what I was thinking. I'd forgotten that I've just hired you, and you charge by the hour. My a.s.sistant will give you all the information we've gathered on the earlier cases, and deal with you regarding your professional fees. You can ask him to add a few gaias for the time you spent listening to the speech."

Bruna felt the sting of the small slight. It was as if she'd been slapped. And in a way, deservedly so.

"I'm sorry if I seemed rude earlier on, but-"

Myriam completely ignored her and continued to speak. Or rather, to give orders.

"Just one more thing: I want you to go and see Pablo Nopal."

"Who?"

"Nopal. The memory writer. You don't know who he is? Well, you should. Unfortunately for him, he's quite well known."

In fact, Pablo Nopal's name did ring a vague bell with Bruna. Wasn't he the one who'd been accused of murder?

"He had problems with the law, didn't he?"

"Exactly so."

"I don't remember much. I don't like memorists."

"All the worse for you, because I think that in this instance you'll have to talk with a few. Go and see Nopal right away. He might know who wrote the adulterated memories. And then come and tell me. I want you to give your reports to me alone. That's all for now, Bruna Husky. I hope to have some news from you soon."

"Just a minute. We haven't talked about your personal security. I think you should change your habits and take certain additional measures. Maybe we should-"

"It's not the first time I've been threatened with death, and I know perfectly well how to defend myself. Moreover, I have an excellent head of security, as I've told you. And now, if you don't mind, I have a complicated morning in front of me."

Bruna stood up and shook the woman's hand. A hard, rough hand despite the fingernails painted a delicate shade of pastel blue. On the wall behind Myriam's chair there was the inevitable framed picture of Gabriel Morlay, the mythical rep reformer. How young he looked. Too young, given his fame. Chi, on the other hand, had little wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and lacked a certain freshness overall. She must already be close to her TTT, although she was still a beautiful woman. Myriam's attractiveness. .h.i.t Bruna again like a splash of cold water. The private detective felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable. She suspected she'd behaved like an idiot. She expelled that irritating thought from her head and tried to concentrate on her new a.s.signment. She'd have to speak with that excellent head of security, she said to herself. The fact that she was Myriam Chi's life partner not only didn't exonerate her but turned her into a suspect as well. It was statistically proven that money and love were the main causes of violent crimes.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

After her interview with Chi, Bruna went back home on the sky-tram and, before heading up to her apartment, stopped off at the supermarket on the corner to stock up on provisions and buy a new card for purified water. During those periods when she didn't have work, the android never found a moment to attend to her daily needs, despite supposedly having all the time in the world. Her pantry emptied, surfaces became covered with layers of dust, and the sheets stayed on her bed so long that they acquired an almost solid smell. Whenever she picked up a job, however, Bruna needed to organize her surroundings in order to feel that her head was in shape. Having a sharp mind was an essential requirement of her profession. The mark of a great detective wasn't her investigative skills but her ability to think on her toes. So, after putting the shopping away in the kitchen and inserting the water card in the meter, Bruna spent a few hours cleaning and tidying her apartment, washing her dirty clothes, and throwing out the empty bottles that were lined up like tenpins by the door.

Then she served herself a gla.s.s of white wine, sat down in front of the main screen, and for a few minutes enjoyed the neat calmness of her apartment. She set herself to thinking about her new case and how to approach it. The first steps in an investigation were important; if you made a mistake, you could sometimes end up wasting a lot of time and adding confusion to what was already confused. She grabbed her electronic tablet-since taking notes by hand seemed to help her think-and started to jot down the ideas that were buzzing around in her head. Though she wasn't creating a list of priorities, a rebellious streak made her leave the memorist for later, disregarding the words of the rep leader, who had insisted that she start with him. But she did write on the tablet, Why is Chi interested in Nopal? Underneath, she added other phrases using the stylus: Hologram, Threats against Chi, Lock register, Traffickers, Doc.u.ment four other cases, Victims-chance or choice? After hesitating for a moment, she added Pablo Nopal. She told herself that putting him in eighth place was rebellious enough.

She opened the holograph, took out the chip, put it in her computer and began to examine the image minutely using an a.n.a.lysis program. It was the same program the police used, a powerful tool that immediately deconstructed the original fragment of Myriam and showed the image's ID properties, which, understandably, corresponded to those of the RRM. As for the additional footage, the program couldn't find the original sequence on the web, so it performed a hypothetical reconstruction. It was the gutting of a pig and might have originated in a legitimate slaughterhouse, because the animal seemed to have been killed first in the regulation manner, using anesthesia and a stun gun. The image's ID properties had been carefully erased, together with all its electronic tags, making it almost impossible to track down. Although there were now fewer and fewer slaughterhouses-in part due to a growing sensitivity toward animals, and in part because in order to reduce CO2 emissions, the government required meat eaters to acquire an expensive license-hundreds of them were still in operation across the planet. Moreover, the recording could have been made at any stage during the last three years, this being the software's maximum life span, according to the program. As to the chip itself and the holograph ball, they were basic, everyday products, the sort any kid could buy in the local corner store to make a hologram to take to school. It would be very difficult to extract useful data from them. Nevertheless, Bruna started an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of the sequence with the pig and left it running in the background. The a.n.a.lysis program would take hours to complete its task.

She decided to take a break and eat something. She put an individual serving of compressed fish cakes into the Chef Express, and in one minute it was ready. She removed the lid, poured herself another gla.s.s of wine, and returned to sit in front of the main screen, eating straight from the container.

"Find Pablo Nopal," she said out loud.

Various possibilities came up, and Bruna touched one, leaving a faint, greasy food stain on the screen. The man's image came up instantly, a life-size 3-D head shot on the right-hand side of the screen, with various film clips on the left. Dark hair, slim, with a long, narrow nose, thin lips, big black eyes. An attractive guy. He was thirty-five: TTT age, had he been a rep. But he wasn't. According to the records, Nopal was a playwright and novelist, as well as a memorist. And he did indeed enjoy a certain celebrity-not just for his books, which were well received, but also for a couple of scandals in his past. Seven years earlier, he had been accused of the murder of his elderly uncle, a patrician millionaire. Nopal just happened to be the sole beneficiary. He even spent a few months in custody, but in the end, there was some murky business about contaminated evidence, and Nopal was cleared due to lack of evidence.

His reputation was tarnished, however, and many people continued to believe that he was guilty; in fact, the government stopped commissioning memories from him because of it all, so he hadn't gone back to being a practicing memorist. At least not officially, Bruna thought to herself, because black market memories also needed memorists to write them. Three years after his acquittal, Nopal was implicated in another violent death-this time, of his private secretary. He had been the last to see the victim alive, and for a time he was targeted by the police, although in the end he was never even accused. Naturally, both incidents increased the sales of his books. There was nothing like a really bad reputation to make you famous in this world.

Bruna studied Nopal's face. Yes, it was attractive, but it was also disturbing. An easygoing smile but too sardonic, too tough. An indecipherable expression in his eyes. He had published three novels, the first a few months after his uncle's death. The t.i.tle was The Violent Ones, and the book's publication had been celebrated with a small cultural event. Bruna typed in her pa.s.sword and credit account number, paid five gaias for the book, and downloaded the text onto her electronic tablet. She planned to just glance through it, but she began to read and couldn't stop. It was a short, unsettling novel, the story of a boy who lived in one of the Zero Air Zones. Bruna had been in one of those supercontaminated, marginal sectors during her time in the military, and she had to admit that the author knew how to convey the desperate and poisonous atmosphere of those wretched holes. What happened was that the boy became friends with the recently arrived adolescent daughter of a judge. Magistrates, like doctors, police, and other socially necessary professionals, were posted to the Dirty Air Sectors on double salary, and for no longer than a year, to prevent any health repercussions. Bruna knew that even under those conditions, many refused to go. The novel told the story of the relationship between the two youths during those twelve months. At the end of that time, the night before the judge and her family were to leave, the two adolescents killed her with a hammer. The scene was brutal, but the novel was written in a way that was so convincing, so true to life, and so distressing that Bruna experienced a genuine complicity with the killers and wanted them to escape justice. Which they didn't, so the end of the story was depressing.