Tears in Rain (45 page)

Central Archive, the United States of the Earth.

Modifiable version

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED
AUTHORIZED EDITORS ONLY

Madrid, January 30, 2109, 10:30
Good morning, Yiannis

ACCESS DENIED
YIANNIS LIBEROPOULOS IS AN UNAUTHORIZED
EDITOR
IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID CODE
QUIT THESE PAGES IMMEDIATELY

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED
AUTHORIZED EDITORS ONLY

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE
PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT UP TO
A MAXIMUM OF TWENTY YEARS

YIANNIS LIBEROPOULOS, YOU ARE ADVISED TO QUIT THESE PAGES IMMEDIATELY.

ANY ATTEMPT TO PERSIST IN FORCING THE SYSTEM WILL GENERATE AN ALERT TO THE POLICE IN THIRTY SECONDS.

COUNTDOWN TO POLICE ALERT

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

21

B
runa opened her eyes and confronted Yiannis’s face an inch from her own, shouting and gesticulating anxiously.

“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, sitting upright.

A wave of unsteadiness rocked her world. The room shook, her head ached, her stomach turned somersaults. Her body reminded her—before her mind did—that once again she had had too much to drink the night before. The archivist’s shape was flapping frantically around the room like a trapped sparrow. It was a damned holo-call.

“Yiannis, that’s it. I’m canceling your holograph authorization right now,” groaned the rep, steadying her head with her hands.

“They’ve fired me! It’s a conspiracy! And I can’t get into the archive! I tried to let you know last night but you weren’t answering.”

True enough. She had a clear recollection of refusing calls. She’d arrived home, tired and depressed, and started to drink. At other times she drank because she was happy and relaxed. Or then again, because she was distressed. She was always finding reasons to get drunk. Looking back, her short life was composed of a succession of nights she could scarcely remember and countless mornings whose unpleasant beginnings she remembered all too well.

“Let me see...calm down and explain it to me again. Slowly. As if I were a
bicho
and didn’t understand your language very well.”

Yiannis began to rush through the story of his conversation with the supervisor.

“Okay, okay, I see. Look, it would be better if I came over to your place. I’ll be there in under an hour,” said Bruna.

And she switched off, cutting the old man off midsentence.

Four years, three months, and twelve days.

She breathed in and stood up.

Nausea and dizziness.

She decided to give herself another paramorphine injection. It wasn’t the best way to get rid of a hangover; it was like killing flies with a plasma gun or cutting off a hand because of a sore finger. But she knew she would feel better instantly if she did, and these times were so unsettled that it seemed wiser to go outside with all her wits about her. Anyway, her ribs were still hurting a bit, she rationalized, in an attempt to exonerate herself as she injected the dose. One more to go. A pity.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She had slept in her clothes again and they were all wrinkled and crumpled. She was still wearing the genuine
netsuke
from her fake mother around her neck. She decided to leave it on; she felt she needed its company. Or its protection.

The outside thermometer was showing fifty-seven degrees; the polar crisis was over. She had a brief shower with water, chose a metallic green outfit from her closet, and got dressed, now feeling really well, rested, and alert. And hungry, too. She headed for the kitchen area to prepare herself something and then she saw it—the puzzle was finished! Solved. She looked at it in amazement, and in among the shreds of fog that were blotting out the previous evening, she seemed to see herself placing the pieces. She must have been working on the jigsaw puzzle until all hours, and with extraordinary luck or superhuman determination. The image of
the cosmos was complete and in the center, in the critical section that had previously been missing and had resisted her efforts for months, could now be seen the Helix planetary nebula, that spectacular gaseous object located in the constellation Aquarius that astronomers referred to as the “Eye of God.”
The Helix, of course
, thought Bruna, almost disappointed at how obvious it was. How had she managed not to guess? The Helix was the most famous cosmic accident and there were even a couple of crazy sects that believed it was sacred. The final piece of the puzzle had triggered a small 3-D effect and the image seemed to vibrate and pulse with the vastness of space. A beautiful eye trimmed with filmy, reddish eyelashes and with an intensely blue iris; a giant eye looking at her.
What I do shows me what I am seeking.
She was seeking the Helix nebula; she was seeking something obvious, and she hadn’t realized it. And she had had to get drunk and lose consciousness—she had had to allow herself to be guided by sheer intuition—in order to finish the jigsaw puzzle. The Eye of God. The lovely, cold, and indifferent eye that observes us.

After quickly eating some turkey-flavored protein burgers, she put the junky plasma gun in her backpack, convinced that the outside world was going to be somewhat more unpleasant than it had been the previous day, and headed out. And the good weather indeed seemed to have added fuel to the fire of hatred. Groups of demonstrators surrounded by police cordons were yelling out slogans that Bruna couldn’t catch, while the public screens above her head were spewing forth torrents of violence. There were overturned cars, broken store windows, burning recycle containers. As she passed through the lung-park, she saw that several of the delicate artificial trees had been shredded and uprooted. Street intersections had been taken over by the army, and Bruna had to show her ID at two security control stations. She was worried she’d be frisked and they’d find her gun, but luckily that didn’t happen. She was really on edge by the time she reached Yiannis’s house.

The archivist’s apartment was as old-fashioned as he was. It was a beautiful building, about three centuries old, which had survived various wars without excessive damage but was badly in need of refurbishment. The apartment had dark little corridors, useless rooms, and an incomprehensible number of bathrooms. Yiannis lived his entire life within the two main rooms, one converted into a living room and the other a bedroom, but he used the rest of the apartment to store the incredible amount of junk he kept, including an astonishing quantity of old, valuable paper books. Bruna had lived in one of those book-lined rooms for some months after Merlín’s death. Yiannis the human had taken care of her in the same way that the techno Maitena had looked after Lizard. But now relations between the species were decaying.

No sooner had she gone through the door than Bruna noticed something new: the little table in the entrance hall that was normally a mess had been cleared and the sole object on display was a blue jug with three yellow tulips. Natural flowers! The rep was stunned.

“Look at that. You’ve tidied the table.”

“Hmmm...” replied the old man ambiguously, making a vague gesture with his hand.

They walked down the hall and into the lounge, and there she was, smiling demurely. Bruna had trouble recognizing her initially, as she wasn’t wrapped up inside her billboard-lady panels.

“Hi, Bruna. I’m so pleased to see you,” said RoyRoy enthusiastically.

“Me too,” replied the rep automatically. “Although I’m a bit surprised to see you here. Have you left Texaco-Repsol?”

The woman looked at Yiannis with a slightly embarrassed expression.

“Well, I’ve...I’ve helped her to free herself of that slave labor. Let’s just say I’ve bought her her freedom!” replied the archivist on her behalf.

And then he laughed nervously at his own words.

“I mean, I’ve lent her money until she can find something better, and till then, she’s...she’s living here with me.”

“Oh, good. Right. Terrific,” said Bruna.

“Yiannis is very generous. But you already know that,” added RoyRoy.

Yes, the android knew it. The archivist wasn’t doing any more for the billboard-lady than he had done for her. Moreover, Yiannis looked...excited about RoyRoy. And she looked different too. Younger. More sure of herself. It was enough to make the rep happy for her friend. Bruna dropped down into the old, green armchair. Yiannis sat down on the sofa next to the woman. They made a sweet little couple.

“Not at all. RoyRoy is the generous one. You wouldn’t believe what a support she’s been in all this. Lucky she was here last night. As I’m sure you’ll understand, I came back from the interview with the supervisor totally devastated.”

“Yes, of course.”

The woman couldn’t have been in Yiannis’s home more than two or three days, but there were traces of her everywhere. The furniture was arranged differently and the bookshelves were tidy. The screen showed successive images of Yiannis’s child and of an adolescent whom Bruna took to be RoyRoy’s son.
Oh yes, the perfect couple, and intimately united by the worship of their dead
. She bit her lip, recognizing that her thoughts were unkind.

“So tell me exactly what that woman said to you yesterday, then,” she muttered.

Why was she so irritated? Why wasn’t she pleased that the old man had fallen in love? Hadn’t she felt that Yiannis was pushing her to hold on too tightly to the pain of Merlín’s loss? And wasn’t it better that he had found another, closer sorrow with which he could identify? The archivist was telling his tale, but Bruna was unable to concentrate on what he was saying. She saw Yiannis and RoyRoy sitting there, sitting together, humans, similar,
much older than her, but even then probably longer-living. She saw them together while she was alone, hopelessly strange even among the strange.

The screen switched on automatically with a breaking news bulletin. An image appeared of Helen Six, the journalist currently in vogue, with such a tragic expression on her face that Yiannis stopped talking and the three of them started to listen to the news. And that was when they discovered that Hericio was dead.

He had been assassinated the day before. Not only had he been killed, but he had also been tortured. Someone had slit his stomach from top to bottom and then removed his intestines while he was still alive. It had been a horrific crime.

Just like Chi’s hologram
, Bruna thought immediately, despite being sunk in a sort of stupor. Yiannis looked at her.

“But didn’t you tell me yesterday that you were going to see him?”

RoyRoy gave a start, opened her eyes wide and covered her cheeks with her hands.

“Bruna! What have you done?” she wailed.

“Meee?!” the rep spat out, outraged.