Tears in Rain (19 page)

“What’s happened, Husky? Come in, sit in that corner, where you’ll be left in peace...Over there with your friend Yiannis.”

The old archivist was indeed at the end of the counter and was delighted to see Bruna; he had heard nothing of her since the day before, when he had woken her up to tell her about Chi’s death. The rep filled him in on what had happened. Oli—who had served them two beers and a bowl of french fries and then, her body spilling over the countertop, had stayed to listen to the story—screwed up her bright, coffee-colored face and passed judgment.

“That damned thug. He should keep in mind that a century and a half ago, our people were the ones being lynched and persecuted. But the renegades are always the worst.”

“I’m starting to get worried about this supremacy business,” said Yiannis. “Lately, I’ve been coming across some terrible sentences in the archive.”

“Which I assume you’re correcting.”

“That’s what they pay me for.”

“Texaco-Repsol, always in the vanguard of social well-being!”

Bruna and Yiannis exchanged glances. It was difficult to maintain a normal conversation with the constant chatter of the advertisements interrupting all the time. RoyRoy noticed the look and got up from the stool, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s torture. I don’t want to go on being a nuisance. You’ve already done too much.”

“Nonsense. Sit down.”

“No, no, really. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I stayed. Thanks, Bruna. Many, many thanks. I won’t forget it. I think I’ll go and have a sleep; I’ll take my nine hours now. I need to rest. Please, let me pick up the tab.”

“It’s on the house today,” growled Oli.

“Oh...well then, thanks again. It seems to me I have too much to thank all of you for today.” She gave a faint smile.

Yiannis and Bruna followed her with their eyes as she was leaving. A little bird boxed in between the screens.

“She has one of the saddest looks I’ve ever seen,” murmured the archivist.

It was true. She did. The rep yawned. She suddenly felt drained. She always did after she’d taken a candy. The neuropeptide and alcohol cocktail inevitably had a huge impact on the body. Moreover, she’d only had one beer all day, the one Oliar had just served her. And that was fine. She wanted to stay that way, and for that reason, the best thing would be to leave now.

“I think I’ll head for home, too, Yiannis. I’m ready to drop.”

She felt so tired that she took a cab again, although she worried she’d get used to this bad habit. She arrived in five minutes, paid, and got out. The street was full of people; it was Saturday and the night had just begun. But Bruna could only think of her bed, of drinking a glass of chocolate-flavored milk, and of sleep. She activated the entry to the lobby with her fingertip and was pushing open the door to go in when a strange impulse made her
glance to her right. And there he was, about five yards from her, leaning up against the wall, shoulders slumped. The alien, the Omaá, the greenish
bicho
. There he was, waiting for her like an abandoned and eager dog, an enormous dog wearing a T-shirt that was too small. Bruna closed her eyes and took a breath.
It’s not my problem
, she said to herself. And went into the building without looking back at him.

C
ata Caín’s door was still sealed with a police security beam, although Bruna assumed the police had simply forgotten to remove it. Nine days had passed since the rep’s death and the seals usually didn’t stay that long. The only thing that the beam’s continuing presence showed was Caín’s extreme loneliness: no one had wanted to enter the apartment after her death; no one had shown the slightest interest in her belongings; and there was probably nobody who would remember her. Not even the police, who should have removed the seal. A short and wretched life.

Bruna easily switched off the electronic beam with a small pair of tweezers and opened the door with a key decoder. The detective possessed a good collection of small, illicit tools that served to disarm alarms, wipe traces, and decipher codes—effective as long as it wasn’t a question of very sophisticated security systems. In this case the lock was the cheapest and most basic on the market, and it opened in a flash. She glanced up and down the corridor before going in. It was Sunday, 16:00, and the building was quiet. The detective, accompanied by one of the janitors, had already been in Caín’s apartment the same day she had gouged out her eye. On that occasion Bruna had only checked out the place superficially, looking for basic information about the victim. Now she wanted to carry out a much more thorough examination. She needed to know why her own death
was programmed into Cata’s mem. She didn’t have a clear idea of what she was looking for, but she did know how to look. The detective was good at searches; it was as if for some reason, the evidence leaped out in front of her eyes of its own accord.

Caín’s apartment was identical in layout to hers, except that it was a mirror image and on the second floor rather than the seventh. Bruna remembered it as impersonal, empty and dusty, and her impression as she went in again now, nine days later, confirmed her recollection. It was still a very sad place. The blind on the large window was lowered almost completely, and the room was submerged in a quiet, dirty semidarkness that seemed almost funereal.

“House, raise the blinds,” Bruna requested of the screen that was flickering weakly in the dark.

But the computer didn’t respond; clearly it didn’t recognize her as an authorized voice. So the rep crossed the lounge room to use the manual control and immediately noticed something unusual. She hurriedly raised the blind and turned around to inspect the room. It was a complete mess. There was no way the police would have left it like that. Ever since the state had been ordered to pay two million gaias in the scandalous John Gonzo case a few years back, the police followed very strict orders regarding tidiness. Which meant that someone else had been hunting around here. You could see shreds of clothing everywhere, probably taken out of Caín’s closet and then ripped and left looking like rags. A corner of the carpet had been torn off and was nowhere to be seen, so perhaps the intruder had taken it with him. What would you need six inches of cheap carpet for? To stuff in someone’s mouth and choke them to death? On the table, a cushion was sliced open and the stuffing removed. Could the intruder have taken it with the carpet? Two drawers had been pulled off their runners, their contents scattered onto the floor and the drawers smashed, but three other drawers were still in place. Bruna went over to them and looked inside. The
contents were neatly arranged, so the drawers probably hadn’t been opened. Whoever had been here must have found what he was looking for.

The rep poked around a little inside the untouched drawers. Family photos, colored ribbons, cheap necklaces, teenage paper diaries. All the fake memento paraphernalia. Caín had it stored away out of sight, but she hadn’t gotten rid of it.

The unmistakable sound of glass breaking could be heard close by. Bruna turned around with a jump and rested her back against the wall so as to be protected from behind. She stayed very still. It had come from the bedroom. Or maybe the bathroom. The seconds passed slowly while the silence stretched like elastic. The rep was on the verge of deciding it had been a false alarm when her enhanced hearing again picked up something: a furtive noise, a tiny tinkle of glass. Something was moving in the bedroom. Someone was in there. Then she realized that if there were still some unopened drawers, that was because she’d surprised the intruder hard at work.

Bruna stealthily made her way to the bedroom door, wishing she had her plasma gun. As she went through the kitchen area, she grabbed a knife from the countertop; it was just a small table knife, but she was capable of doing a lot with that. She scanned the bedroom from the doorway. The bed was unmade, the closets were half-open. The window was partially ajar. The intruder must have come in through there. And it was likely he’d also end up going out that way. The detective held her breath for a moment to concentrate fully on any sounds, and she heard a tiny rubbing again on the other side of the bed, next to the closets. No, he hadn’t gone. Bruna weighed up all possible movements. She could move slowly, she could move quickly, she could go around the bed, or jump on top of the mattress, or roll along the floor. She could even turn around and try to leave Caín’s apartment without offering any resistance. But the fact that the intruder hadn’t attacked her so far suggested that he wasn’t feeling very
sure of himself. It was likely that he was neither armed nor very dangerous, and he might in fact be a good source of information. Moreover, he clearly had to be lying on the floor between the bed and the wall, without a weapon; this left him at a considerable disadvantage.

“I know you’re over there. I have a gun,” Bruna said, lying. “Stand up with your hands in the air. I’m going to count to three: one...”

And as soon as she said the first number, Bruna leaped onto the bed and threw herself toward the intruder’s hiding place. She landed on her feet, not on a body as she had expected, but on the floor.

“By the great Morlay!”

In front of her, among the remains of a broken mirror, a hairy thing was looking at her with a frightened expression. It was a small animal, about eighteen inches tall, with a body like that of a small monkey but minus the tail, potbellied and covered all over with curly, red hair. Then came a neck that was too long and a head that was too small, triangular, with huge black eyes. It vaguely reminded her of an ostrich’s head, except that it was furry and had a squashed nose instead of a beak. On the top of the flattened head was a crest of stiff hair. The creature looked both helpless and amusing. Bruna recognized it: it was a...What did they call it? A greedy-guts. It was an alien domestic animal—she couldn’t remember from which planet right now—and it had become fashionable as a pet. The little
bicho
was looking at her and shaking.

“And where have you come from?” she asked herself out loud.

“Cata,” gabbled the animal in a fuzzy but understandable voice. “Cata, Cata.”

Bruna dropped the knife and lowered herself to the bed, stunned. A talking monkey. Or a talking ostrich. Either way, a hairy thing that talked.

“Do you understand me?” she asked the
bicho
pet haltingly.

“Cata!” the thing repeated in its nasal and somewhat shrill voice.

The rep wikied the word
greedy-guts
on her mobile and an image appeared on the screen of a being very similar to the one in front of her, together with an article:

BUBI (pl. bubes, colloq. Erth. greedy-guts)

A creature native to Omaá, the bubi is a small domestic mammal that has recently been introduced to Earth with considerable success, because its resistant and adaptable constitution allows it to be reared easily on our planet and because it makes an ideal pet. It is a heterosexual species and lacks dimorphism: male and female are identical save for their genital equipment, and even the latter is difficult to distinguish externally. The adult bubi weighs about twenty pounds and can live for up to twenty years. It’s a clean animal, easy to train, calm, affectionate toward its owner, and capable of articulating words thanks to a rudimentary speech system. The majority of scientists consider that the bubi’s speech is nothing more than an imitative reflex similar to that of parrots on Earth. Some zoologists, however, maintain that these creatures possess a high degree of intelligence, almost comparable to that of chimpanzees, and that there is an expressive intentionality in their verbal utterances. The bubi is omnivorous and voracious. Its main food sources are insects, vegetables, and cereals rich in fiber, but if hungry, it can eat almost anything, especially cloth and cardboard. This constant eating has gained it the nickname “greedy-guts” on Earth. Various animal associations, both regional and planetary,
have presented legal arguments seeking the same taxonomic consideration for bubes as for our great apes, and therefore, recognition as sentient beings.

This was followed by several other articles with anatomical and ethological details, but Bruna skipped them. She looked at the animal again. It was still trembling.

“Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you,” the detective said gently.

The
bicho
had blood on its arm: maybe a cut from a piece of the broken glass. The blood was red and shiny, like human and rep blood. Bruna stretched out her hand very slowly and the bubi squashed itself up against the closet even more and emitted a little moan.

“Shhh...Be quiet...Calm down...I just want to see your wound.”

The animal’s hair was thick and strong, but not nearly as rough as Bruna was expecting. She slightly separated the curls, which were stuck together with blood, and inspected the wound carefully. It wasn’t much. A small, superficial cut that was no longer bleeding. Under the reddish hair, the skin was gray.

“Okay...it’s nothing. See? Calm down.”

She stroked the nape of its neck and its back a little. She could see why greedy-guts were so popular; they were cute little
bichos
that inspired affection. The animal’s shivering was lessening under her hand, although it continued to stare at her with a watchful gaze. Bruna stood up.