Tears in Rain (26 page)

****Scandalously inaccurate! Technohumans had not even been invented during the period of the Plagues. I wish to record here my concern and revulsion in regard to certain seriously erroneous inserts that I am finding of late in the archive. I recommend an internal investigation. Yiannis Liberopoulos, central archivist FT711****

Although the worst period of Plagues was already over by the middle of the twenty-first century, the political and geographical landscape was so affected that the planet was plunged into explosive instability for decades. The
Rep War
(2060–2063) worsened the situation,
showing yet again the pernicious effect of the technos
and the illegitimacy of the new territorial borders became one of the elements that triggered the
Robot Wars
(2079–2090). This long period of general instability and violence caused the world’s population to fall below four billion people. In the last quarter of the twenty-first century, some countries had already begun to limit the number of children their citizens could have, but it was post-
Unification
(2096) that the United States of the Earth decreed the
Demographic Laws
(2101) that
regulate pregnancies so as to avoid renewed overpopulation. The objective is to maintain the number of inhabitants of the planet at four billion, to which should be added a further billion or so distributed between the two Floating Worlds, Labari and Cosmos.
Given that 15 percent of Earth’s residents are reps (six hundred million individuals), a further advantage to their extermination would be the ability to increase in a sensible manner the quota of human children.

****I recommend that the internal investigation be carried out as a matter of urgency. Yiannis Liberopoulos, central archivist FT711****

It was also post-Unification that the Planetary Government decided to exploit the Submerged Worlds to the maximum. Various sites were established, containing the most iconic of the flooded zones, and their management was auctioned among several leisure and tourism mega-enterprises. To date, about a dozen theme parks have been opened, and another twenty are under construction. The consortiums shored up the ruins of the Submerged Worlds and created artificial islands to accommodate hotels, restaurants, and other services. The flooded zones can be visited in a bathyscaphe,
in one-person underwater bubbles, or using diving equipment. There are urban theme parks like the well-known Manhattan, or historical ones like the Nile Delta. These popular holiday destinations make up the so-called
wet tourism
.

M
erlín was a really good chess player. He was a calculation rep and had a formidable mind: mathematical, musical, a precise labyrinth of sparkling thoughts.

“I sometimes think about the wild little animal you’d be without me and I shudder in horror,” he’d say to her occasionally, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck like someone handling an overly nervous young filly.

Merlín was joking, but he was in fact quite close to the mark. Bruna believed that the two years she’d lived with him, together with subsequent learning from her friend Yiannis, had made her into what she was—a combat rep unlike any other. Life was an unfathomable and mysterious thing, even the brief and preset life of reps. In fact, those genetic engineers who thought they were gods had no idea what they were doing. Yes, they could boost certain abilities in technohumans depending on the function for which were produced, but after that each rep was different, and developed capabilities and defects that no engineer had known how to anticipate in the lab as he cut up and mixed helixes of cloned DNA. Merlín was special, too: creative, imaginative, with a playful temperament that predisposed him toward happiness.

They met when she’d just been granted her license from the military and the settlement allowance was warming her pocket. So Bruna was still young, while Merlín was already 8/33. But he
lived with no fear of death, as if he were eternal. Or as if he were human, because humans had the capacity to forget they were mortal. That was something Bruna failed to learn from her lover.

“Husky! Are you with me? You’re not listening to me at all.”

Habib’s distorted face reflected weariness and impatience.

“Sorry. I was distracted for a few moments, thinking about—”

“Well, do your thinking on your own time. Given the expenses you’re running up, you could try not to make me waste my time.”

Habib had been like this all morning—extremely nervous, combustible, with an aggression Bruna had never seen in him before.

“You gave me carte blanche with expenses.”

“And if you were offering some results, I’d consider it money well spent. But so far...” he grumbled.

And the worst of it was that he was right.

They were in the apartment Myriam Chi and Nabokov had shared. A spacious, comfortable, but coldly functional apartment, as if radical ideology did not encourage too many decorative refinements. Or as if they didn’t want to become too attached to things. There was only one personal touch: a photo of Myriam and Valo embracing each other, affectionate and smiling. It was laser-cut in 3-D, inside a block of glass. The photo was the typical souvenir done on the spot in many holiday destinations. Bruna and Merlín had had a similar portrait done in Venice Park during a wet tourism weekend they had given themselves as a present not long after their relationship began. After her lover died, Bruna threw out the glass block; she couldn’t bear that picture of happiness. But now, coming across the picture of Nabokov and Chi, it had triggered something in her mind and she had started thinking about Merlín. Something she generally preferred to avoid.

Apart from that conventional glass souvenir, the room could have been the bland lounge room of any apartment. Compared with these surroundings, Bruna’s apartment seemed even cozy.
The rep reflected with a certain pride on her copies of two works of art: Leonardo da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man
and Jan Vermeer’s
Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid
. They were very good reproductions, not holographs but superrealistic, and they had been quite expensive.

“There’s nothing here. I told you so,” growled Habib, closing the drawers in the kitchen.

The police had just unsealed the apartment after searching it thoroughly. Bruna pictured the huge Lizard sniffing around and found the idea unpleasant, even offensive, and a bit obscene. Myriam and Valo wouldn’t have liked having a human rummaging through their things, though they probably wouldn’t have liked her and Habib being there either. When Habib had found out that Bruna wanted to inspect the apartment, he insisted on accompanying her, and now he was displaying a frenzy of totally useless activity, as he could have no idea what the rep was looking for. In point of fact, neither did she, but experience had taught her that her unconscious being was much wiser than her conscious equivalent. And simply by looking, she often saw things that others missed. Evidence that jumped out before her eyes as if it were calling to her. So Bruna walked along behind Habib, reopening and checking all the drawers and cupboards that he had dismissively just closed. Although it was true that so far they had found nothing revealing.

Then they went into the bedroom, and Bruna felt embarrassed but moved. This was a private room, a nest, a den, a sacred sanctum in which mortals took refuge believing they would be able to protect themselves from the desolation of the world. The enormous bed was covered with exquisite, brilliantly colored silk cushions, and along the wall facing the bed there were at least fifteen white orchids planted in gold baroque flowerpots and arranged in two groups. Lilac-colored strips of chiffon hung from the ceiling like banners, and the floor was covered with a glorious, soft, deep red Omaá carpet.

“Wow! Oh, my! Impressive,” said Habib.

Bruna wondered which of the two, Myriam or Valo, was responsible for such a feminine and opulent decor: Chi with her painted fingernails, or Nabokov with her huge breasts and impossible bun? Although it was probably the two of them: an intimate, excessively ornate and secret world they shared. That was love, in reality: having someone with whom to share your quirks.

“I’ve been in this apartment before, naturally, but not in this room,” murmured Habib.

On top of the bedside table there were traces of a living hell: countless bottles, subcutaneous injectors, patches, pills, disinfectants, dressings, ointments. All the medical paraphernalia, that foul flood of useless remedies, that illness leaves in its wake. When Merlín died, the room was full of all that miserable rubbish, too: double-strength painkillers; medication to treat the psychotic delirium, agitation, and violence caused by TTT; sedatives for anxiety. After he’d gone, there were still remnants of his suffering attached to those drugs, in the same way that you could follow the trail of Nabokov’s death throes in that jumble of pills. Bruna felt a pinch of dread. The usual, ancient, and well-known dread snaking its way around her insides.
Four years, three months, and seventeen days. Seventeen days. Seventeen days.

Habib was down on the floor on all fours, running his finger along the thin strip between the carpet and the wall.
He’s taking it very seriously
, the rep said to herself half-jokingly.
If truth be told, he’s taking it
too
seriously
, she thought right after that, somewhat surprised. In fact, he didn’t seem to be searching the apartment as such but looking for something specific. That meticulous inspection, that acute agitation...

“Revenge!” she exclaimed.

“What?” asked Habib, turning toward her.

The detective had spoken on impulse, a sudden intuition, as if testing the waters. She looked Habib in the eye.

“
Revenge
. Does the word mean anything to you?”

The man frowned.

“Hmmm...not a lot. What should it be telling me, Bruna?”

He looked absurd, still on all fours with his head turned over his shoulder so that he could look at her. It suddenly seemed to her that he was being too pleasant. He had used her first name, and on top of that, his tone was too friendly, whereas he’d behaved obnoxiously all morning. Bruna was suspicious. She often was; she’d suddenly feel the cold wind of suspicion pass through her. She decided not to tell him about the tattoos. That was a secret she shared with Lizard.

“No. Nothing. It was something Nabokov said that last time I saw her.
Revenge.
And then she marched off to kill and to die.”

Habib stood up and shook his head.

“She was delirious. Listen, Bruna, I don’t know what we’re searching for here. I don’t think they inserted a memory in Valo. She was just very ill and mad with grief over Myriam’s death.”

The detective nodded in agreement. The man was probably right.

“And another thing, Bruna. Forgive me if I’m a little...tense. In two days’ time, we’re holding the RRM assembly to elect the movement’s new leader. I thought it would be a given for me, but two other androids have turned up who are vying for the position, and they’re mounting the dirtiest of campaigns against me. They’re accusing me of not being sufficiently diligent in my attempts to clear up Myriam’s death; they’re even accusing me of being glad she’s gone, as it allows me to take her position. That’s why I need results as soon as possible—do you understand? As soon as possible!”

“I get it now. Especially the electoral results,” said the rep somewhat sarcastically.

Habib looked at her angrily.

“Well, yes, that too. Does it surprise you? We’re at a critical moment in the history of replicants and I know that I can help
to improve the situation, that I can lead the RRM with a firm hand during this critical stage. I didn’t welcome Myriam’s death as those wretches suggest—of course not—but in a certain sense maybe it was fortunate. Because I know what needs to be done. And I think I even know better than she did. Is it a crime to aspire to leadership when you know it will enable you to have a positive influence on society?”