Tears in Rain (48 page)

Nopal turned white with rage. An incandescent, quiet fury.

“Oh, fine. I’m delighted you’ve finally admitted that you’re spying on me. That’s police harassment. I’m going to file a complaint against you.”

“Do whatever you like.”

“Stop here!” ordered the memorist.

Lizard stopped the vehicle and the man got out.

“Nopal—” said the rep.

The memorist raised his finger.

“You be quiet. As for you, Lizard, I’m going to finish you. Believe me.”

Lizard looked at him phlegmatically, his eyes half-closed.

“I believe you. Or rather, I believe you’ll try. That’s why I’m having you watched. Because I think you’re capable of doing those sorts of things.”

Nopal gave a brief, sardonic guffaw.

“I’ll finish you off in court. I’ll report you, and it will be the end of your career. Enjoy your brief moment of power while you can.”

And turning around, he strode off up the street.

Bruna and Lizard watched in silence as he walked off.

“You called him,” Bruna said finally.

“Hmmm.”

“But you hate him.”

“When you spoke to me about your son, I realized it would be very difficult to get you out of the delirium they’d implanted in you. Then I remembered him and thought he might be able to help you.”

“How, um...How did you know Nopal had been my memorist?”

“I didn’t.”

“And how do you know I didn’t kill Hericio?”

“I don’t.”

“So why are you helping me?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Bruna was silent for a few minutes while she tried to digest the information and finally decided to leave it for later. She was exhausted and very confused. Although she was feeling a little better, she urgently needed sleep. She needed a safe place where she could rest.

“Do you know what happened to my mobile?” she asked.

I found it in your apartment. Here, take it. I’ve altered your data in the central police computer so they can’t trace you. I assume they’ll take a couple of days to realize that.”

The rep strapped the flexible, transparent little machine on to her wrist and called Yiannis. Lizard had told her that both the archivist and the billboard-lady were alive, and that the gas was nothing more than a narcotic substance from which they’d both recovered without any problems. They were the ones who had alerted the police to the detective’s disappearance. Yiannis’s anxious face filled the screen.

“Ah, Bruna, by all the sentients, how good to see you! Where are you? How are you? What happened? They do nothing else but display images of you everywhere, saying dreadful things about you. And then there are those pictures of you going into the HSP in disguise. Unfortunately, it all sounds quite believable.”

Bruna gave Yiannis a brief, if weary, summary of the situation and then brought up the need to find a place to hide. Clearly, Yiannis’s house wasn’t an option: she’d already been attacked there once. But she couldn’t think of anywhere else. Especially keeping in mind that everyone thought she was an assassin.

The old man’s face lit up.

“Wait. Maybe the
bicho
who was so taken with you, the Omaá...Didn’t you tell me you took him to the circus with the violinist? Couldn’t you stay there for a few days?”

“But I hardly know Maio and Mirari. Why would they trust me? They’ll be thinking I killed...”

And then it dawned on her. No, they wouldn’t think that, because Maio would know she was innocent. It was worth a try.

“Good idea, Yiannis. I’ll try.”

So, while Lizard drove toward the circus, Bruna relaxed and allowed herself to fall into a troubled sleep.

S
he was lying face up on the bed and the darkness was squeezing in around her, as heavy as a wet blanket. Bruna had just woken up and she was afraid. But what was frightening her wasn’t that they wanted to kill her, or that they’d put a salt mem in her brain, or that someone had chosen her as the scapegoat in a sinister plot. After all, those were genuine dangers, concrete threats against which she could try to defend herself. In those sorts of situations, her heart pounded and her brain filled with adrenaline. There was something very exciting about real danger. An exuberant reaffirmation of life.

No. The fear Bruna was experiencing right now was different. It was a dark, childhood terror. A deadly pain. It was the same fear she’d suffered at night as a child, when her fear of things had crawled through the shadows like a slimy monster at the foot of her bed.
By all the damn species
, thought the rep despairingly; she’d never been little; none of that had ever existed! It was nothing more than a false memory, someone else’s memory. Suddenly, a blindingly obvious idea flashed into her head: Pablo Nopal probably really had lived through all of that. That was the explanation for the incredibly expensive
netsuke
: it was his mother’s necklace. That was the reason for the genuine way in which Nopal had described the scenes when he dragged the android from her delirium. In one dizzying instant, Bruna understood
that the memorist was inside her, transformed into a frightened child, and she felt disgust and yet at the same time an unspeakable tenderness. She didn’t want to see Pablo Nopal ever again. Not true. She
did
want to. Even more than that, she needed to see him; she needed to ask him about his mother, about his father, about his childhood. She wanted to know more things, more details; she was hungry for more life. What fascination, and what a nightmare!

Four years, three months, and eleven days. Actually, ten days, because it’s already forty-one minutes after midnight. The dawning of February 1.

Life was a story that always ended badly.

She breathed deliberately for a few minutes, trying to relieve the pressure of her anguish. She thought about Merlín and sheltered in his memory—this one indeed a genuine memory, a precious and unique memory, the lived and shared memory of his wisdom and his courage.
There is a time for everything under the sun: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to cry and a time to laugh; a time to embrace and a time to be apart
, her lover had said to her a few days before he died, already very weak, but in a clear, calm voice. Merlín had always liked that fragment from Ecclesiastes. Beautiful words to organize the shadows and soothe the raging storm of pain, even if only for a moment. Now, as she relived that scene, Bruna again felt some small comfort, as if her pain were obediently going back to where it belonged.

The detective was in Mirari’s dressing room, on the bed behind the screen. Maio usually slept there, together with Bartolo, but they’d allowed her to use the bed. The door was locked with a key and there were no windows in the room; the rep felt as if she were inside a safe. The Omaá and the violinist had reacted extraordinarily well, offering their support without asking any questions. Of course Maio didn’t have to ask her anything. She checked the time again: 00:48. The last show would be over in about twenty minutes and then Maio and Mirari would
come back to the dressing room. Bruna felt better and she was hungry. But she didn’t want to turn on the light and activate the food dispenser; she didn’t want to make a racket and betray her presence. She would wait till they returned.

The beep from her mobile sounded thunderous in the silence of the night, and the rep moved her hand quickly to stop it. It was Habib.

“By the great Morlay, Husky!” sighed the rep. “Thank goodness I’ve found you.”

“Habib, I haven’t done any of the things they’re saying I did.”

“Of course not. I’ve always been certain you’re not guilty, but I thought they might have inserted one of those killer mem
s
, like they did with Chi. Did they implant one, Husky? Are you okay?”

Bruna briefly explained the situation to him, adding, “But I feel much better already.”

“Well, you don’t look good. Although I can barely see you...You’re in a really dark place.”

“I’m in—”

Habib looked scared and interrupted her.

“Don’t tell me where! Don’t tell me where! I don’t want to know where you’re hiding! It’s safer for everyone. Imagine if they were to catch me and do the same thing to me that they did to Hericio! I’d tell them everything!”

Bruna looked at him, a little taken aback. Habib appeared to be at the end of his tether.

“Okay. Fine. You’re right.”

Habib made an effort to compose himself.

“I’m sorry. Everything is so awful that...I’m a nervous wreck. I have an appointment tomorrow with Chem Conés and three hours after that, with the delegation from the Government of Earth. I’m going to explain to them how we see things. I’ll tell them why we think we’re dealing with an antirep conspiracy, and I’ll ask them to put an end to this madness. I’ll also talk to them about your situation. Can I tell them everything you’ve told me?”

“Everything except the involvement of Lizard, Nopal, and Gándara.”

“Of course. Naturally. Well, wish me luck. I’ll call you later.”

He cut off, and the little bluish gleam of the screen disappeared like a will-o’-the-wisp among the shadows. Immediately afterward, Bruna heard something. A barely perceptible sound. A very slight vibration of the air. Alarmed, she sat up. And then everything seemed to stop: time, Earth’s rotation, her heart. She uncoiled herself like a spring and threw herself head first onto the floor before she even knew why she was doing it, and as she rolled across the floor she watched a noiseless, blinding thread of light split the rickety old bed. Black plasma. Led by instinct, she crawled from one corner of the room to the other, pursued by shots from the silent death machine that was creating a trail of holes behind her. Her rep-enhanced eyes could make out the silhouette of the assailant, despite the dark. He was by the door, the lock of which he had undoubtedly forced with remarkable stealth. He was of average height and was wearing a thermal sensor helmet that enabled him to see his target better in the darkness of the night and through solid objects, like the screen. Bruna took in all of this in a flash while she slithered and scrambled across the floor like a cockroach in the shadows, absolutely convinced that the assailant would kill her with his next shot or the one after that. There was no way to get close to him without exposing herself, and there was no other way out except through the door the assailant was blocking.

Suddenly, she saw something appear behind him—huge, touching the lintel with its head. It was Maio. The
bicho
raised his colossal arm and drove his fist down onto the assailant’s skull, sending him crashing to the floor. But the helmet must have protected him, because he rolled himself onto his back like some vermin, aiming at the alien with his gun. Bruna imagined Maio’s broad, translucid chest and multihued entrails exploding as a result of the impact: a black plasma shot would kill him. So
she launched herself at the assailant like a feline—pure intuition, genetic coding, and training. She dived ferociously, efficiently, and savagely and, grabbing the man by the back of his neck, she twisted it. It was a crisp, deadly movement executed without thought or emotion, the perfect stroke of an assassin. His neck cracked and the man slumped between her hands. He was dead.

“Bruna.”

Maio turned on the light and spoke in his babbling voice.

“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 assailant 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. Bloody 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 Omaá’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
Pietà
—the
Pietà
of the godless. 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.