Tears in Rain Part 33

"Bruna...I sensed you; I realized you were in danger, and that's why I came."

The rep was still kneeling on the floor, the crumpled body of the a.s.sailant between her legs. She removed the helmet. He was a young man, unknown to her. His head was leaning grotesquely to one side, and his face looked relaxed but sad. Less than a minute ago, he had been alive, and now he was a corpse. A flood of images washed over Bruna. b.l.o.o.d.y knife cuts pierced her memory, and this time the images were from her real memory, of her real past-nothing to do with the imaginary fear of her fake childhood. It wasn't the first time Husky had killed; her years in the military had been tough. But killing wasn't something you became used to.

"Bruna, Bruna, I sensed you before, and I sense you now," whispered Maio.

He approached the android and gently placed one of his huge, too-many-fingered hands on top of her shaved head. Warmth, gentleness, shelter. The flurry of sharp knives died down a little. The corridor had filled with people: Mirari, with the bubi in her arms; other circus performers; members of the audience craning their necks to see better. The Omaa's departure from the stage in the middle of the show, in full flight, must have aroused considerable attention. Never mind the commotion caused by the fight, the dressing room had been destroyed. And now all those humans were staring at her, wide-eyed and terrified. Bruna pictured herself kneeling with the lifeless body of her victim resting on her lap. It was like an image of the Pieta-the Pieta of the G.o.dless. She wasn't sorry for the man, who was a killer; she was sorry for herself, for her lethal automatism. She didn't have to kill him, but she hadn't even had time to think before doing it. A woman opened a path through the crowd and aimed a regulation plasma gun at her.

"Police. Bruna Husky, you're under arrest."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

The policewoman who arrested Bruna was as excited and pleased as if she'd won the Planetary Lottery, but her immediate superior quickly arrived and, also feeling exultant and happy, took charge. But his happiness was equally short-lived, as the rep's detention was wrested from him by his boss. And in this manner, over the course of a few hours, the rep was pa.s.sed from one person to the next up the hierarchical police ranks in an unstoppable manner, as if she were rich booty being fought over by pirates. And after the forces of law and order, it was the turn of the politicians, who, like sharks caught up in a feeding frenzy, also tried to hang onto a mouthful of her capture, until finally, at four o'clock in the morning, it was decided to lock her up in one of the high-security cells inside the Law Courts to await the arrival of a more reasonable hour to stage a grandiose media event. They wanted to squeeze every last benefit out of her arrest. Bruna spent two minutes talking to a public defender, an apathetic human whom she told she was innocent of course, and whom she requested to contact the lawyers of the Radical Replicant Movement. After that, she was left alone in a state-of-the art prison cell, a s.p.a.ce that was permanently lit and constantly monitored. She tried to control her anguish and catch up on some rest. She still didn't feel all that well physically.

But much to her surprise, at five thirty in the morning, the policewoman who had first detained her, accompanied by one of her colleagues, came to fetch her. This time, the woman was bad tempered and taciturn, perhaps as a result of her bitterness at discovering how little personal triumphs counted when one had too many superiors farther up the chain. She curtly ordered Husky to stand, and altered the program on her electronic shackles to enable the techno to walk. They'd disabled Bruna with every conceivable means of restraint: manacles on her feet, paralysis cuffs, and even a knockout collar around her neck capable of remotely inducing heart failure. It was clear the humans were frightened of her. Extremely frightened. And finding her with someone lying in her arms whose neck she had just broken hadn't exactly helped the situation.

The taciturn policewoman threw a big, dark gray cape over the rep's shoulders to cover all the convict hardware and pulled a black mesh cap over her head all the way down to her eyebrows. Given my height, the sweeping cape, and the cap pulled down so low, I must be an extraordinary sight, thought Bruna. If this was how they hoped she'd pa.s.s unnoticed, their attempt would undoubtedly be a complete failure.

Thus attired, the android was led through the quiet, empty corridors of the Law Courts by the two officers. When they took the back stairs down to the storage and equipment levels, Bruna began to worry. Given that she was tied up, electronically blocked, and defenseless, any idiot would be able to do as he pleased with her. She asked where they were going, but neither of the officers bothered to answer. It wasn't light yet and that part of the building was illuminated only by emergency lighting. The atmosphere was unreal and nerve-wracking.

They walked through an unexpected gym on the second level of the bas.e.m.e.nt, came out into an underground parking lot, and got into a car similar in make and color to the one Lizard had-clearly a police vehicle, although it had none of the official markings. The woman darkened the windows and tapped in their destination manually, so the rep continued to be none the wiser as to where they were headed. Twenty minutes later they stopped at the back entrance to another enormous building. But by this stage the rep already knew where they were: the Reina Sofia University Hospital. The police officers knocked and identified themselves, and the door opened. A security guard led them through a maze of corridors until they reached the psychiatric services area. Or at least that's what was written in big letters on the wall. Then the guard unlocked the door to one of the rooms and nodded at the rep to go in. Bruna did so, and the door was locked behind her. She looked around. She was alone. It was a very large s.p.a.ce, more like a conference room, illuminated by the weak, soulless light of a few ecolight tubes. Along one side there was a work table with two or three chairs in front of it; on the other side were about twenty chairs arranged in two semicircular rows. The best feature was the huge windows that looked out onto the hospital's inner courtyard, which was large and resembled a medieval cloister. The building was very old. Bruna knew that it had originally been a hospital and then an important art museum for more than a century. The building had been destroyed during the Robot Wars, and when it was restored, it regained its former status as a hospital. The rep went up to the windows to have a look at the dark outdoors and noticed that they contained a grid of electromagnetic wires. Bars. She was still in a cell, although a much bigger one.

"Hi, Husky."

Bruna turned around. Paul Lizard was standing at the door. He grimaced in a way that could have meant anything from a smile to disdain, came into the room and walked up to her. He was carrying two cups of coffee.

"Want some?"

"No."

"Fine."

He calmly drank one of the coffees, followed by the other. Then he stood looking at her with a concerned expression on his face.

"It wasn't easy to arrange to have you brought here. I eventually managed to convince the delegate from the Government of Earth. I told her that, given the current state of play, we couldn't guarantee the safety of your life if people knew where you were. And that's true."

Bruna didn't say a word.

"She authorized me to transfer you, because I told her I'd be able to lock you up here; she's obsessed with ensuring you don't escape. This hospital has a high-security psychiatric wing. They're looking for a room to put you in. It's a.s.sumed that only half a dozen of us know where you are. We'll see. I'm convinced the police have been infiltrated."

"Right," replied the rep despondently.

"How are you feeling?"

"Very tired."

"Well, try to grab some sleep. We have some tough days ahead of us."

The rep appreciated that plural we; it made her feel slightly less alone. She looked at Lizard: he, too, appeared pale and exhausted.

"Thank you for everything, Paul."

"Don't thank me. It's frustrating not to have solved this case. We're trying to identify the guy who attacked you yesterday. How did he find out you were at the circus? I even got to the point of thinking that they might have implanted you with an intramuscular locator chip, but the thorough search they gave you last night before they put you in the cell didn't come up with anything."

Lizard stopped talking for a few seconds and then gave the rep a sidelong glance.

"Too bad you killed that man. It would have been very helpful if we'd been able to interrogate him."

The detective stiffened.

"He was going to shoot Maio."

"I'm not accusing you, Bruna."

"I'm not defending myself, Lizard."

Something sharp and bitter had suddenly come between them. The inspector grunted and rubbed his face.

"Okay. I'm off to see if there's anything new. I'll be back later."

He went to the door and rapped on it with his knuckles, and it was opened for him. He was already on the way out when Bruna shouted at him from the other side of the room: "Hey! You people have made me what I am."

"What?"

"I'm a combat techno. You're the ones who made me so quick and so lethal."

Lizard frowned at her.

"I'm not the one who made you like this. And anyway, I like you the way you are."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

Taking Lizard's advice, Bruna installed herself in a couple of chairs next to the window and spent the next hour trying to take a nap. But each time sleep loosened her muscles and her consciousness began to cloud over, she would experience an abrupt, dreadful sense that she was falling and suddenly wake up. The cuffs and control collar were heavy and uncomfortable, and the electromagnetic bars were humming softly in the silence like mosquitoes. She looked out in the direction of the courtyard. Dawn was breaking. The air was a dense, bluish color that was becoming lighter by the minute, as if it were fading. She stood up, and after making her way clumsily on her hobbled legs to the light switch, she turned off the ecolight tubes. The new day instantly entered through the windows with devastating force. Four years, three months, and ten days. And this new day promised to be calamitous, too.

She shuffled her way back to the same seat by the window. She could have had her choice of twenty chairs, but humans and technos are creatures of habit: they always try to turn any chair into a nest. It was 07:10. Would they give her something to eat if she asked them? Four years, three months, and ten days.

The door opened hesitantly and Habib's head appeared. The rep leader came in, closed the door behind him and smiled with embarra.s.sment.

"Habib!" Bruna exclaimed with relief.

She had never imagined that seeing another android would give her so much pleasure.

"Did the public defender let you know I was here? I wasn't sure if he'd do so."

Habib walked over to her and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder in a friendly way.

"I'm really sorry," he said sympathetically.

And in the same moment, still smiling, he quickly and expertly took out a plasma gun and held the barrel up to the detective's temple. Bruna looked at him in amazement.

"I'm sorry, Husky. I like you. But if you had any idea what's at stake...It was a deal I just couldn't turn down."

The man's hand trembled lightly, a negligible, involuntary movement that, as the detective was well aware, preceded a shot by a tenth of a second, and she knew it was the end. Heroes die young, she thought absurdly in that final moment. But suddenly the world collapsed. A tremendous explosion, a shower of broken gla.s.s; Habib slumped on the floor. It all happened at once. Bruna stood up and a pile of gla.s.s fragments fell off her and landed, tinkling, on the floor. She bent over the body lying on the ground. He was dead. He had a round, black hole in the middle of his forehead and an opening at the back of his skull. She fixed her gaze on his weapon: the junky, badly made gun Habib was carrying was the one Hericio's deputy had sold to her.

"By the great Morlay!"

Blood and brains stained the brilliant shards of gla.s.s scattered everywhere. The rep looked toward the large window. Someone had fired from outside and the gla.s.s was broken, although the electromagnetic grid was still working, still buzzing.

The door crashed into the wall as it was violently thrown open, and Lizard rushed in with the force of a battering ram, weapon drawn.

"It's Habib! He's dead!" babbled the android.

The inspector threw a quick glance at the body.

"Who fired?"

"I don't know. It came from outside."

Lizard walked up to the windows. The courtyard was beginning to fill with people drawn by the noise.

"Paul, Habib came to kill me."

The inspector turned around and looked at her.

"That gun-do you see the plasma gun in his hand? That gun was mine. They took it from me the day before yesterday when they kidnapped me."

"By all the sentients, Bruna, how many more weapons have you got hidden away out there for them to steal from you? Anyway, I a.s.sume they manipulated Habib's brain as well so that he'd do this."

Bruna slowly shook her head. She was certain the techno had been in full possession of his faculties.

"How did I look under the influence of the salt mem? How did I behave?"

"As if you'd gone mad."

Just like Cata Cain, the rep neighbor who had gouged out her own eye. Tense, feverish, delirious.

"Habib behaved perfectly normally. He told me he was sorry, but they'd made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I'm sure he was involved in the plot. But why? And who killed him?"

Lizard tapped his mobile.

"I'm calling for reinforcements. I don't dare leave you on your own."

Just then the policewoman and her colleague appeared at the door.

"Where did you get to? Your orders were to guard this room at all times," thundered the inspector.

The officers stood there opening and closing their mouths, looking embarra.s.sed.

"I...I felt dizzy and...we went to..." stammered the woman.

Lizard pointed his sleek, regulation plasma gun at them.

"Hand over your weapons right now. You're under arrest."

The pair of them, distraught and with hands trembling, meekly complied, and then Lizard handcuffed both of them to an old radiator out in the corridor. The inspector came back into the room and closed the door behind him, dejected.

"What do you think, Bruna? Are they just incompetent or corrupt? You can't trust anyone one in this d.a.m.n case."

The man walked over to Habib, trying not to step on the brains strewn everywhere, and scrutinized the body.

"And you say it's your gun?"

"Yes, he held it to my temple. I think he wanted it to look like suicide. I'm sure he's wearing a dermosilicon glove so as not to leave any fingerprints."

Lizard nodded in agreement.

"Probably. But how did he find out where you were?"

"I told the public defender to let him know."

The inspector snorted angrily.

"Right. Well, I've called in a couple of reliable colleagues to come and protect you. They'll be here any minute. Naturally, the examining magistrate and forensics will arrive too, and someone charged with taking away that pair of imbeciles I've left handcuffed out there. And undoubtedly some police bigwig or politician will also appear to protest. That's a given. I'm going to see if I can find somewhere else to put you."

Bruna looked at him transfixed, her expression totally transformed.

"Paul."

"What's up?"

"I'm wondering...why all this effort to kill me? They've already gotten what they wanted from me. Well, I didn't release the gas, but they have made it look as if I'm guilty of Hericio's murder. What do they gain by removing me from the scene now?"

"You can't prove your innocence."