Tears in Rain (35 page)

“Nooo!” shouted the android, sensing that he was getting away from her.

In a desperate effort to hold onto him, she dug her nails into his back, but her sweaty hands were slipping, and suddenly they were no longer touching. Merlín, with all his extremities stretched out in the air like a star, was ascending toward the black, never-ending sky until he finally disappeared into the drift among the shadows of nothingness.

Bruna sat bolt upright in bed. She was drenched in sweat and gasping, because the nightmare’s terror was still crushing her lungs. She looked at the time projected onto the ceiling: 03:35. Thursday. No, Friday. January 28, 2109. One week out from the end of the world, according to the Apocalyptics.
Four years, three months, and fourteen days.

She moaned quietly because the pain was killing her. The pain of Merlin’s absence, the pain of remembering his pain. If people saw other people dying as a matter of course, if people were conscious of what it cost to die, they would lose faith in life. Bruna tensed her jaw and ground her teeth.
Enough
, she thought. She leaped up, put on her old military training gear, and left the apartment to let off steam. Madrid was deserted, even lonely now that Maio was no longer to be found at his post on the corner. His
presence had been so constant that now his absence seemed to have left a hole in the scenery. But the
bicho
had remained behind at the circus, with Mirari.

Bruna started jogging along the empty street, but immediately broke into a run, racing along without even waiting to warm up. She ran and ran, pushing herself beyond her capacity, and her muscles began to hurt and the air set her lungs on fire. One stride after another, her feet pounding the hard asphalt, her heart pounding in her throat, the sky above her head as black and menacing as the one in her nightmare.
Oh, Merlín, Merlín.
The sound began to push out through her clenched teeth, first as a grunt, then as a wail. And now Bruna opened her mouth wide and was shouting, howling with all her might, with her entire body, flesh and bone, every cell combining to exhale that scream; running and shouting as if she wanted to kill, running and shouting as if she wanted to turn herself inside out. The thick military boots hit the sidewalk again and again, and the heavy thuds were vaguely pleasing; she seemed to be trampling on the world and actually kicking it. Bruna was running viciously.

Now and again, shadows as fleeting as cockroaches disappeared at top speed in front of her. Windows were opened as she went past, lights were turned on.
Four years, three months, and fourteen days
, thought the android as she yelled at the top of her lungs. Or 711 days. Almost two years had passed already since Merlín’s death. Between the two vectors—the ascending sum of her memory and the descending one of her own life—the huge hole of all terrors was opening up, the unbearable incoherence. It was impossible not to despair, not to scream.

Right at that moment she saw a gun emerging from the dark in front of her.

“Stop! Police! Identify yourself.”

He was an FCP, a member of the Freelance Contract Police, a mercenary service hired by the regional government, which was always in a state of economic crisis and incapable of
maintaining its own security forces. FCP companies varied a great deal in price and quality; this extremely young policeman with his hesitant voice and shaking weapon had to be part of a very cheap and very bad contract. Without stopping, Bruna took advantage of the impetus of her fury and her running speed to kick the gun out of the FCP’s hand and throw herself on top of him. The young man fell backward onto the ground with the rep above him, grabbing him by the neck. The policeman didn’t even try to defend himself; he was ashen, paralyzed with fear. In a moment of sanity, the android saw herself with another’s eyes, her face twisted with rage, bellowing. Because the deafening noise she was hearing was her own howl—the threatening howl of an animal.

“Please, please, please,” stammered the half-choked policeman.

He was a child.

“Why did you point the gun at me?”

“I’m sorry...I’m sorry...The neighbors alerted us, and I was the closest one.”

That meant that others would arrive soon.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

Twenty! Bruna had never been twenty, although she had a memory of that age. She was startled by a sharp, unexpected twinge of hatred, an infinite hatred toward this privileged human who didn’t even know how much he had. Her hands twitched momentarily with the desire to tighten her fingers, to close her hands around the boy’s neck. It was like a shock, like the instantaneous and galvanizing passage of an electric current. But then the impulse disappeared without a trace. All that remained was a young man, almost a boy, about to burst into tears beneath her claws. And a very black sky over their heads.

So Bruna released the policeman and stood up.

“Forgive me. I’m really sorry. I hope I haven’t hurt you.”

The policeman sat up on the ground and shook his head.

“It was a reflex action when I saw you coming toward me with the plasma gun. My nerves are on edge, as I’m sure you can understand. You’re pursuing us reps, you’re marginalizing us, you’re hating us, you’re killing us. And yet you were the ones who created us.”

Two tears, dense and round like drops of mercury, rolled unexpectedly down Bruna’s cheeks. Where was the water coming from? How was it possible to have experienced so much pain without any tears and now cry for no reason? Then, as she tried to control and contain herself, the rep saw that the FCP was also crying. Sitting on the ground, he was crying like a little boy, his eyelashes damp with tears. So different, the two of them, yet suddenly united by tears on this dark and solitary night. It was a very strange moment. The strangest in Bruna’s life.

W
hat with the early morning run and the time it had taken Bruna to get to sleep, she hadn’t slept much at all. She got up feeling more tired than she had when she went to bed, clumsy to the point of exasperation, slow and groggy. She hit the wrong button on the food dispenser and instead of coffee ordered soup, which she had to throw out. So then she decided to grab one of those disposable espresso coffees that reach the perfect temperature with just a shake of the container, but when she took the lid off the cup, the liquid spilled out all over her. She was in a bad enough mood already, but then on top of everything else, the vapor shower suddenly stopped working and the android had to rinse herself with water. An expensive outlay, especially given the calamitous state of her finances.

At that stage, the only thing that appealed to Bruna was to get back into bed or maybe even crawl under the bed for fear of what else such a clearly disastrous day might bring. But she plucked up courage and set to work unwillingly. She spoke to Habib to tell him about her progress with the investigation, which had not in fact advanced at all. But at least she could tell him about her upcoming meeting with the mem pirate. She spoke with Yiannis to tell him that everything was fine, because she assumed that he’d be worried about her infiltration of the HSP, and discovered to her amazement that the old man not only seemed
unconcerned but also probably didn’t even recall their conversation about it. He was in too much of a state about the manipulation of the archive and the lack of response to his complaints. More irritated by the minute, Bruna checked her bank account with Bancanet and confirmed that her situation was even worse than she had expected, because they had withdrawn the third repayment on the personal loan she had taken out months earlier when she found herself out of work and out of sorts. Next, she rang the person in charge of maintenance in her building to tell him about her broken vapor shower, and the man replied that, according to the autoanalysis records, there was nothing wrong with it. So the android took advantage of the moment to give him a piece of her mind, very loudly. Then, still trembling from the adrenaline hit, she went into the kitchen, pulled the built-in oven out from its cavity, and dropped it on her foot. Or rather she didn’t drop the oven, as the appliance simply slipped from her hands; but it missed her foot only because her rapid reflexes allowed her to jump into the air and save her toes. And the oven crashed loudly onto the floor, and the door cracked and came off.

“A curse on all the wretched species,” she muttered in desperation.

She’d have to buy a new oven, and buy it very quickly, despite the parlous state of her finances, because the appliance no longer fit into the hole and she couldn’t risk having someone come in and find her secret hiding place—the hiding place from which she now removed the small plasma gun, putting it in her backpack. She had a vague but persistent feeling of danger, and she decided to take a weapon with her to the meeting with the mem pirate. Then she went to her main screen and checked manually one last time to make sure that she hadn’t received any call or message from Lizard.

“That damn stubborn mule,” she muttered.

Bruna was ready, and she had to leave now if she wanted to use public transportation to get to her appointment with the
mem pirate. But instead of doing that, she flopped into the chair and told the computer to call the inspector. The man’s face filled her screen, more impenetrable than ever.

“What do you want?”

Clearly, he wasn’t in a good mood. The android had no idea what she wanted; maybe to apologize somehow for her behavior the day before. But Lizard’s unpleasant curtness instinctively made her adopt a similarly harsh tone.

“A question: Do you think what the ambassador said about the tattoos being forgeries of Labaric writing is true?” she improvised.

Paul lowered his heavy eyelids a little farther.

“What do you think?” he replied in a somewhat irritated tone.

The rep thought for a moment.

“It infuriates me to say he’s right, but I think that’s the case. Lies tend to come with lots of unnecessary details, and he made no effort at all to embellish what he said.”

“Could be. Anything else? I’m really busy.”

“I’m going to meet a mem pirate this morning.”

Bruna heard herself saying it and was amazed. Why was she telling the inspector such an important detail?
Because I don’t want him to hang up
, she answered herself.
Because I want us to go back to being friends.
But in reality, it had been a stupid thing to confide. Lizard would undoubtedly start talking about Nopal again and advise her against going to any meeting arranged by him.

“Fine. I hope it goes well.”

And he cut the link. The rep was left staring at the screen, flabbergasted. What? He wasn’t even going to bother to argue with her?
Four years, three months, and fourteen days. Four years, three months, and fourteen days
, she repeated mechanically. But she didn’t feel any less devastated.

Just then a call came through on Annie Heart’s mobile from the supremacist Serra.
Of course
, Bruna thought gloomily.
No
doubt my meetings with the supremacist and the pirate will coincide
. When things were going badly, they usually got worse. She answered with the screen switched off.

“What can I do for you?”

“You’re lucky. Hericio will see you. In half an hour’s time, in front of Saturn.”

The detective caught her breath.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, not today. Tomorrow.”

She could sense the man’s stunned silence.

“What do you mean, not today?” he said, finally.

“Look, you’re the lucky ones, not me, because I could be a good contributor to your cause. If Hericio wants to see me, it means you’ve already checked out my good intentions. Fine, so now I want to check out yours. Since I’m going to give you a tidy sum of money, I want you to treat me well, politely, even with a little respect. What’s this business of expecting me to come running like a dog when you whistle? It will be tomorrow or not at all, because I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. And since I’m generous, I’ll let you choose the time. I have all the time in the world for Hericio tomorrow.”

She stopped talking and held her breath, amazed at her own audacity.

“All right. I’ll see what I can do,” grunted Serra before disconnecting.

Bruna slowly released the air from her lungs. She hoped she hadn’t ruined everything. She pushed the chair back to stand up and the wheels jammed: they were caught up in some frayed rags. Intrigued, the detective pulled on the fabric, and tight little balls of half-chewed cloth began to emerge. She had just discovered one of Bartolo’s secret stashes of food; the chair’s hollow leg was filled to bursting with a haul of various rags. Bruna emptied the tube—initially with irritation, then with a certain
tenderness, and finally with something akin to longing. But her mood turned foul when she realized that she almost missed the silly animal and that she was even contemplating storing the rags somewhere.
This is definitely not my day
, she said to herself as she threw the rags into the incinerator.