Tears in Rain (30 page)

“Although at least the disturbances have made those damn reps disappear. There isn’t a single one on the streets! It’s great, isn’t it?” he said, giving her a complicit wink.

Bruna thought,
I’d love to smash his face.
Thought:
This means my disguise is working
. Thought:
Control that anger, conceal it
. But she must have shown something, because the driver backed down a little.

“Well, it’s not that I wish them ill, you understand. I don’t want them lynched or anything like that, but why don’t they go, and leave us in peace? Let them build themselves a Floating World. Speaking of which, you have the people of Cosmos and Labari, who don’t allow technos on their worlds. They sure are smart. And why do
we
let them in? Because we’re wimps. Because we have a government of replickers and wimps.”

The cabdriver had set the autopilot and he was still leaning over the back of his seat, spewing his xenophobic, racist views. Bruna thought,
I want to strangle him
. Thought:
Concentrate on remembering that your disguise works
. Thought:
Four years, three months, and sixteen days, sixteen days, sixteen days...

She walked into the bar, frustrated and nervous. Fat Oli scrutinized her with half-closed eyes, as she always did any new
customer. The detective saw that the mulatto was taking mental note of the striking bruises on her forearm, which the rep had chosen not to cover up. Big Oli missed nothing.

“Hi. What can I serve you?”

“Vodka and lemon with two ice cubes.”

She said the first drink that came into her head, something well-defined and yet totally removed from her usual tastes to reinforce her disguise. Clearly Oli hadn’t recognized her. She felt optimistic. She grabbed the glass and walked to the end of the counter, where the archivist was already waiting for her.

“Hi. I think I know you from somewhere,” said Bruna, smiling.

Yiannis looked her up and down, barely showing any sign of interest.

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so. You don’t look familiar.”

“And I’m telling you that I do. You’re Yiannis Liberopoulos.”

The old man straightened up, surprised.

“Yes, I am, but...”

“Yiannis, Yiannis, do you really not know who I am?”

Up to that point, Bruna had been forcing herself to speak with a deeper voice, but she said the last sentence with her normal voice. The man’s mouth and eyes opened wide in a perfect caricature of surprise.

“Bruna! It can’t be. Are you Bruna?”

The rep smiled.

“Shhh, don’t speak so loudly. I see my disguise is working. Yiannis, I want you to know where I’m going in case anything happens. I’m hoping to infiltrate the HSP. I’m going to go to Saturn, the bar RoyRoy told me about, and I’m going to try to get an appointment with Hericio.”

Oli approached with a cloth in her hand and, while she pretended to clean the counter, asked, “Is everything okay down here, Yiannis?”

“Everything’s fine.”

The mulatto walked away and Bruna looked affectionately at her monumental back. The big mother hen always looking out for her chicks.

“That seems very dangerous to me, Bruna. Really dangerous. Are you sure of what you’re doing?” whispered the old man anxiously.

“Absolutely sure. And don’t say another word, Yiannis, or I’ll never tell you anything again.”

The archivist frowned but didn’t say anything, because he knew her too well. The rep sighed. In fact, she herself wasn’t all that clear about what she was going to do. Infiltrating the supremacists seemed reckless, and it could be a disproportionate and pointless risk. Of course, it could be that it was risk she was looking for; maybe by putting herself in danger she was placating her guilt for living and her despair at being condemned to die. To kill herself ahead of time—young, like Achilles—and thereby save herself the horror of TTT. The rep shook her head to allow that troubling thought to escape, to make it as light as a balloon and rid herself of it, and her biosynthetic blonde hair brushed her shoulders. It was an unexpected and unpleasant sensation, one that caused her to shiver.

“I wanted to tell you something, too, Bruna. I’ve been keeping an eye on it for some time, but it’s getting worse. And this morning, it was something truly scandalous. I’ve asked for an official investigation.”

“What are you talking about, Yiannis?”

“The archive. Someone’s manipulating the documents, falsifying the facts in order to stir up the revolt against the technohumans.”

The central archivists worked under a strict confidentiality clause that forbade them from talking about their work, and old Yiannis, who was a meticulous and somewhat obsessive man, had always kept strictly to this rule. But now he was so worried by the drift of events that, for once, he felt released from his
obligations—or, rather, indebted to an even greater obligation. So he spelled out the blatant alterations that he was finding in the articles.

“And that’s why I’ve asked for an urgent investigation.”

“And how did they reply?”

“They haven’t replied yet.”

“You don’t say.”

That was alarming indeed. Mercenaries, spontaneous demonstrations that appeared to be carefully organized, the collusion of the news media...and now the archive as well. So many fronts at once. It was like a dance, a sinister, well-rehearsed dance. On her way to Oli’s bar, Bruna had noticed the public screens: nine out of every ten messages were diatribes against reps, with varying levels of anger and intransigence. Some of the comments were so violent that even a month ago, they would have been censored by the Department of Harmonious Coexistence. She recalled a couple of poisonous statements, and the bile rose in her throat. She had to make a real effort to reflect calmly, and she looked at Yiannis and Oli to prevent herself from being swamped with hatred for humans. The rep was well aware, moreover, that the public screens, despite their name, were not at all public; citizens had to pay a monthly fee if they wanted to upload their pictures and messages. It was a private company, easily controlled and manipulated. A company that anyone could hire and use to launch a poisonous campaign. Bruna couldn’t believe—didn’t want to believe—that nine out of every ten humans wanted to destroy her.

“And another thing: they killed one of RoyRoy’s sons,” added Yiannis.

“The supremacists?” asked the detective, appalled.

“What have the supremacists got to do with this?” replied the archivist, mystified.

Yiannis and Bruna looked at each other in confused silence for a few seconds.
How can you have faith in communication
between the species if friends can’t even understand each other?
thought the android with misgiving.

“No, no, Bruna, forgive me, it has nothing to do with what we were talking about before. What I meant was that RoyRoy has also lost a son.”

Also?
She realized he was revealing a personal matter.

“A sixteen-year-old boy. He was shot by mistake during a police operation. He was walking past, quite by chance, and the shot shattered his skull. Poor RoyRoy. That’s her heartache, you know. That sorrow you can always sense within her. It was a long time ago, but it’s never over.”

He likes her
, the rep thought with surprise. She had a sudden intuition—not entirely pleasant—that old Yiannis liked the billboard-lady. Of course. Another grieving parent, another wasted son. In the months after Merlín’s death, when Bruna was lost and devastated, Yiannis had taken her into his home; he’d taken care of her and managed to get her back on her feet again. The android was enormously grateful to him for all he had done, but she’d always had an unsettling suspicion that his friendship was based on the pain of bereavement, that Yiannis had turned his life into a temple to the memory of his son, and what attracted him to Bruna was her grief at the loss of Merlín. As if they could share the emptiness. But the android didn’t want to dedicate her short life to memories. Let Yiannis befriend RoyRoy; let them exchange sorrows; let them build an enormous cathedral to honor the children they had lost. It was all the same to her.

“You see, Bruna, everyone drags along their own little bundle. Sometimes, it seems to me that we humans—and you technos, of course—we’re like ants, all walking along with the overwhelming weight of our lives on our heads.”

The rep hated the tone of self-pity in his voice.

“But you once told me that what distinguished us is what each person does about it,” muttered the rep.

She couldn’t bear seeing the archivist so mournful, so adolescent.
Falling in love makes you stupid
, she thought with a certain bitterness.

Yiannis sighed.

“Yes, I suppose it all depends on what you do.”

A short time later, when Bruna left the bar, she was still feeling annoyed. She’d always believed that her friend was as sealed-off from emotional fickleness as she was. Yet again, she felt odd. Different from everyone else. She was rare, even among the reps. A genuine monster, as the supremacists maintained.
But hold on a minute, hold on! It’s me who’s falling into self-pity now
. By the great Morlay! It was a wretched vice, weak and contagious.

T
all, hips swaying, her dress clinging to her exaggerated curves as convention dictated, her blonde hair wafting just above her shoulders, the detective didn’t go unnoticed when she walked into Saturn, which turned out to be a retro-style bar with marble pedestal tables and pseudomodernist wall lights. A sufficiently old-fashioned atmosphere for reactionary types. It was eight o’clock in the evening and the place was half-full: all humans, more men than women, the majority of them young. Bruna strolled slowly around the place as if she were trying to decide where she would sit, while covertly studying the clientele and allowing herself to be checked out. When she was sure that everyone present had taken note of her arrival, she sat at a table near the door and again ordered vodka and lemon with two cubes of ice. She liked to develop the fictitious personalities of her creations and be true to the tiniest details, to the point where she almost believed them. Right now, for example, she was beginning to feel that there was no better drink than a vodka and lemon. She took a sip from the glass the robot brought her and glanced around through the veil of her eyelashes. A couple of women and half a dozen men were gazing at her invitingly, trying to catch her eye and initiate some sort of interaction. After a brief analysis, she decided that none of them seemed very useful, although two of the young men formed part of a more promising
group seated around a couple of the tables. Just then one of the two young men got up and came toward her, swaggering and swaying like a cocky little idiot. He stopped at her table.

“You’re new around here,” he declared.

“Yes.”

The youth grabbed a chair and sat down, full of self-importance.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to have another drink—I’m buying—and while we’re drinking it, you’ll tell me all about yourself,” he pronounced.

“No! I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” Bruna replied. “You’re going to go back to your table, and you’re going to tell that man in the green vest that I’d like to have a word with him.”

The man in the vest was a few years older and seemed to be the one in charge of the group. It was that air of strict hierarchy that had led Bruna to suspect that they might be militant supremacists.

“And why the hell do you think I’m going to obey you?” said the youth, infuriated.

“Because if you don’t, it’s possible the man in the green vest will get mad at you.”

The young man gave an angry snort, but he got up like a lamb and went straight to his table to deliver the message.
There’s a boy who knows how to do as he’s told
, thought the rep.

The guy in green listened to the message and took his time.
Better
, thought Bruna to herself.
The longer he takes, the higher up he must be in the chain of command
. She saw him order something from the robot, and she ordered another vodka, too. Five minutes later, after he’d had a few sips of his fresh beer, green vest got up and came toward her.

“What can I do for you?”

He was very short and plain-looking, with muscles all over, probably silicon implants. Bruna smiled. She was blonde, she was shapely, she was retrograde. How did ultrafeminine,
ultraconventional blondes smile? Not with eyes blazing like Bruna’s, of course, but as if making an offering, with moist tenderness, demonstrating that her mouth was yet another cavity. With promising submissiveness. Bruna-Annie smiled coquettishly and said, “You see, they told me that people from the HSP meet in this bar, and clearly you’re the most important person in the bar right now. That’s why I think you can help me. I want a meeting with Hericio.”

The man screwed up his face in a comical manner, caught between two opposing emotions: personal flattery and suspicion at the request. Uncertain, he dropped into the same chair the youth had occupied earlier.

“Let’s assume for a moment that I am from the HSP. Why do you want to meet Hericio?”