Tears in Rain (40 page)

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 assaulted 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 assailants. 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 massive 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 passing 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 prickles 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 Merlín 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 Gnés to be precise, perhaps sponsored by the Gnés 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 Sulagnés and, if you looked closely, the black sparks that seemed to move within the pictures formed, and incessantly repeated, the one phrase

Agg’ié nagné ‘eggins anyg g nein’yié

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?—passed 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 impassivity.

“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 assure you, that knowledge is possessed by only a few. On the other hand, nobody 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 assume 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 mass 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 Conés had provisionally assumed power. The detective wikied the name Conés 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 María Lucrecia Wang, the famous author of interactive novels. “I trust
only Hericio,” said Lolo Baño, 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.