Tears in Rain
Authors: Rosa Montero,Lilit Zekulin Thwaites
| Tears in Rain | |
| Rosa Montero Lilit Zekulin Thwaites | |
| AmazonCrossing (2012) | |
| Rating: | ★★★★☆ |
Death is inevitable. Especially when you have an expiration date.
As a replicant, or “techno-human,” Detective Bruna Husky knows two things: humans bioengineered her to perform dangerous, undesirable tasks; and she has just ten years on the United States of Earth before her body automatically self-destructs. But with “anti-techno” rage on the rise and a rash of premature deaths striking her fellow replicants, she may have even less time than she originally thought.
Investigating the mysterious deaths, Bruna delves into the fractious, violent history shared by humans and replicants, and struggles to engage the society that fails to understand her—yet created her. The deeper she gets, the deadlier her work becomes as she uncovers a vast, terrifying conspiracy bent on changing the very course of the world. But even as the darkness of her reality closes in, Bruna clings fiercely to life.
Rosa Montero is an acclaimed novelist and an award-winning journalist for the Spanish newspaper
El País
. A native of Madrid and the daughter of a professional bullfighter, Montero published her first novel at age twenty-eight. She has won Spain’s top book award, the Qué Leer Prize, twice—for
The Lunatic of the House
in 2003 and
Story of the Transparent King
in 2005. A prolific author of twenty-six books, her other titles include the short-story collection
Lovers and Enemies
and the novels
Beautiful and Dark
,
My Beloved Boss
, and
The Heart of the Tartar
.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2011 by Rosa Montero
English translation copyright © 2012 by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonCrossing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612184388
ISBN-10: 1612184383
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917528
In memory of Pablo Lizcano
Non ignoravi me mortalem genuisse.
[I have always known that I was mortal.]
—Marcus Tullius Cicero
Agg’ié nagné ‘eggins anyg nein’yié.
[What I do shows me what I am seeking.]
—Sulagnés, artist from the planet Gnío
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to get and a time to lose,
a time to keep and a time to cast away;
a time to rend and a time to sew,
a time to keep silence and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time of war and a time of peace.
—Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
B
runa awoke with a start and remembered that she was going to die.
But not right now.
A whiplash of pain shot between her temples. The apartment was in semidarkness and the early evening light was fading on the other side of the window. Dazed, she looked out over the familiar urban landscape, the towers, the flat rooftops, and the hundreds of windows over which shadows were falling, as the pain inside her head continued to pound. It took her a few moments to register that the thudding was not just inside her skull. Someone was hammering on the door. The clock showed 19:21. She caught her breath and sat up with a grunt. Seated on the edge of the bed, her clothes twisted and her bare feet on the ground, she waited a few seconds while the liquid mess that was her brain stopped sloshing around and stabilized.
Four years, three months, and twenty-nine days
, she calculated rapidly. Even a hangover couldn’t prevent her from repeating her crazy mantra. If there was anything that depressed her more than getting drunk, it was doing so during the day. Alcohol seemed less harmful, less despicable, at night. But starting to drink at midday was pathetic.
The hammering at the door continued, chaotic, frenzied. Bruna tensed. It seemed more like an assault than an unexpected visitor. “Home, check the door,” she whispered, and the face of
the invader appeared on the main screen. A female intruder. It took her a few seconds to recognize the twisted and convulsed features, but that awful hair, dyed a shocking orange, was unmistakable. It was one of her neighbors, a replicant who lived in the east wing of the building. She’d barely exchanged a greeting with her in the last few months and didn’t even know her name. Bruna was not particularly keen to have dealings with other reps. Although, if truth be told, she didn’t mix much with humans either.
Stop and be done, damn it
, she moaned to herself, tortured by the noise. But the unbearable din forced her to get up and head for the door.
“What’s up?” she mumbled.
The neighbor’s fist stopped midblow and she jumped back, startled by Bruna’s sudden appearance. She turned sideways, as if she were about to run off, and fixed Bruna with a distrustful look of her left eye—an opaque, yellowish eye split by the striking vertical pupil of the reps.
“You’re Bruna Husky.”
It didn’t seem to be a question, but she answered anyway.
“Yes.”
“I have to speak to you about something very important.”
Bruna looked her up and down. Her hair was tangled, her cheeks were smudged, and her clothes were dirty and wrinkled as if she’d been sleeping in them. Not unlike what Bruna herself had just been doing, to be fair.
“Is it a work-related matter?”
The question seemed to throw the woman off balance momentarily, but then she nodded her head in agreement and smiled. A half-smile, in profile.
“Yes. That’s it. Work-related.”
There was something disturbing, something not quite right, about this slovenly, trembling rep. Bruna weighed up the possibility of telling her to come back another day, but her hangover was killing her and she sensed that turning away a person so
clearly full of nervous tension would prove much more difficult and tiring than listening to her. So she stepped back and let her in.
“Come in.”
The android obeyed. She walked with short little hops, as if the floor were burning hot. Bruna shut the door and headed toward the kitchen area. She felt dehydrated and urgently in need of a drink.
“I’ve got purified water. Do you want a—?”
She didn’t finish the sentence because she somehow sensed what was about to happen. She started to turn around, but it was already too late. A wire had been wrapped around her neck and was beginning to strangle her. She put her hands up to her throat where the wire was biting into her skin and tried to free herself, but the woman continued to tighten it more and more with an unexpected determination. Fatally attached to one another, assailant and victim moved around the room in a frenetic dance of violence, banging into walls and overturning chairs as the loop kept tightening and Bruna started to run out of oxygen. Until Bruna, desperately thrashing about, managed to sink an elbow into some sensitive part of her enemy’s body, which caused the woman momentarily to relax her grip on her target. A second later, the woman was on the floor, and Bruna had immobilized her by falling on top of her. It was difficult to do, despite the fact that Bruna was a combat replicant, and hence bigger and more athletic than most. The neighbor seemed to possess an inhuman energy, the desperate strength of an animal.
“Cool it!” shouted Bruna, enraged.
And to her amazement, the woman obeyed and stopped writhing, as if she had been waiting for someone to tell her what she should do.
They eyed each other for a few seconds, gasping for air.
“Why did you do this to me?” asked Bruna.
“Why did
you
do this to
me
?” babbled the android.
There was a deluded and feverish look in her catlike eyes.
“What have you taken? You’re high.”
“You people drugged me; you’ve poisoned me,” moaned the woman, and she started to cry with profound despair.