Tears in Rain (5 page)

“What’s new?”

“Nothing. Apart from the rep deaths.”

Another thing Bruna liked about fat Oli was that she wasn’t given to prudish euphemisms. She always called reps
reps
, but she was always much more friendly and respectful than those who never stopped talking about technohumans.

“And what are they saying about that, Oli? About the guy on the tram, I mean. Why do you think he did what he did?”

“They say he was on something. A drug. Dalamina, maybe. Or an artificial memory.”

“There was a similar case last week, do you remember? The techno who yanked out her eye. And I know she had a memory implant.”

Oli put a sandwich down in front of Bruna, then she leaned forward, her abundant breasts spilling over the counter, and lowered her voice.

“People are scared. I’ve heard there could be many more deaths.”

“What’s happening? Has there been a shipment of adulterated mems?”

“I have no idea. But they say this is just the beginning.”

Bruna shivered. It was an unpleasant topic, something she found particularly unsettling. Not only because she still hadn’t managed to rid herself of the alarming incident with her neighbor, but also because she had always found anything to do with memories repugnant. Talking about memories with a rep was like mentioning something dark and dirty, something unspeakable that, in the light of day, seemed almost pornographic.

“Do you know who’s handing out the defective goods?” she asked, intrigued despite herself.

Oli shrugged her shoulders.

“No idea, Husky. Does it interest you? Maybe I could ask around.”

Bruna thought about it for a moment. She didn’t even have a client who might pay her bills, so she couldn’t afford to waste time digging into something that wouldn’t bring her any return.

“No, it doesn’t really interest me at all.”

“Well then, eat your sandwich. It’s getting cold.”

It was true. The sandwich tasted delicious, the algae perfectly fried and crunchy, not at all greasy. Merlín had loved algae and pine nut sandwiches. His face, a face distorted by illness, floated into her memory for an instant, and Bruna felt her stomach churn. She took a deep breath, trying to untie the knot in her gut and push her memories of Merlín down into the abyss again. If she could at least remember him happy and healthy rather than always trapped in pain. She bit angrily into her sandwich and returned to the problem of her lack of work. She decided to put her cards on the table.

“Oli, I’m out of work,” she mumbled, her mouth full. “Have you heard of anything that might suit me?”

“Like what?”

“Well, you know, someone who wants to find something—or someone. Or vice versa. Someone who doesn’t want to be found, or someone who wants to find out something, or who wants me to check out someone. Or someone who wants to put together evidence against someone, or wants to find out if there’s any evidence against him.”

Oli had interrupted her slow, majestic ministrations behind the counter and was looking fixedly at Bruna, her dark face impassive.

“If that’s your line of work, it’s a bloody mess.”

Bruna smiled halfheartedly. She didn’t smile too often, but she found fat Oli amusing.

“Messy or not, if you find me a client, I’ll give you a commission.”

“You don’t say, Bruna,” she heard from behind her. “It just so happens I have a job for you. And you don’t have to pay me anything.”

The android turned around to face the recent arrival. It was Yiannis. As almost always seemed to be the case where he was concerned, Bruna felt torn. Yiannis was the only friend she had, and she sometimes found the emotional weight somewhat asphyxiating.

“Hi, Yiannis, how’s it going?”

“Old and tired.”

He really meant it, and he looked it, too: old like before; old like always; old like the self-portraits of the elderly Rembrandt that Yiannis had taught her to appreciate in the marvelous holographs in the Museum of Art. There were not many people who, like Yiannis, entirely dispensed with the countless treatments for old age on the market, from plastic or bionic surgery, to gamma rays and cellular therapy. Some refused treatment out of sheer resistance to change because they were recalcitrant retrogrades, nostalgic for a golden age that had never existed. For the majority of those who didn’t use these therapies, it was because they couldn’t afford them. Given that people typically opted to pay for treatment rather than for clean air, having wrinkles had become a clear indication of extreme poverty. Yiannis’s situation was somewhat different, however. He was neither poor nor a reactionary, although he might seem to be a somewhat old-fashioned and anachronistic gentleman in the twenty-second century. If he didn’t make use of rejuvenating therapy, it was mainly for aesthetic reasons: he didn’t like the havoc wreaked by old age, but he considered artificial alterations even worse, and Bruna understood him perfectly. She would have given anything to be able to age.

“You said you’ve got something for me?”

“Could be, but I’m not sure you deserve it.”

Bruna furrowed her brow and looked at him, surprised.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you have something to tell me?”

The rep felt little wheels of ill-humor—serrated cogs of irritation—starting to grind inside her. Yiannis always did the same thing to her: he interrogated and goaded her; he wanted to know everything about her. He was like her father. The nonexistent father whom a nonexistent murderer had killed when she was nine years old. Nine equally nonexistent years. She looked at her friend. He had a gentle face with indeterminate features. He had been quite handsome in his youth—Bruna had seen images of him—but not an overtly good-looking man, with small eyes, a small nose, and a small mouth. Time had left him looking as if someone had melted his face, and his white hair, pale skin, and gray eyes had fused into a faded monochrome.
Poor old man
, thought Bruna, noticing that her annoyance was dissipating. But in any case, there was no way she was going to tell him anything.

“Nothing in particular that I can recall.”

“You don’t say. You’ve already forgotten about Cata Caín?”

Bruna froze.

“How do you know about that? I haven’t told a soul.”

And as she was speaking, she thought,
But I gave my details to Samaritans, and I spoke to the police and with the caretaker of the building, and I had to identify myself to get into the Forensic Anatomy Institute; and we live in a damn society of gossips, with instantaneous and centralized information
. She began to sweat.

“Don’t tell me I made it onto the news or the public screens.”

The corners of Yiannis’s mouth turned down. Bruna knew that that was his way of smiling.

“No, no. Someone who came looking for my help told me. Someone who has asked me to speak to you. She has work to offer you. I’ll pass along her details.”

Yiannis touched the mobile computer on his wrist, and Bruna’s mobile computer beeped as it received the message. The android looked at the small screen: Myriam Chi, the leader of the RRM, was expecting Bruna in her office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.

C
ourage is a habit of the soul
, Cicero used to say. Yiannis had grabbed hold of that thought by his favorite author like a person clutching at a dried branch when he’s on the point of falling over a precipice. He had spent years trying to develop and maintain that habit and, in a way, that routine of courage had been hardening within him, forming a type of alternative skeleton that had managed to keep him upright.

Forty-nine years had passed. Almost half a century since the death of little Edú, and he was still carrying the scars. Of course, time had dimmed—or rather dulled—the unbearable intensity of his grief. That was normal; it would have been impossible to live constantly in that paroxysm of suffering. Yiannis understood this and forgave himself. He forgave himself for continuing to breathe, for continuing to enjoy food, music, or a good book while his son was turning to dust under the earth. Yet he sensed that in some way, a part of him was still in mourning. It was as if the disappearance of Edú had created a hole in his heart, so that he had only half-experienced everything since then. He could never totally concentrate on his reality because the pain buzzed nonstop in the background, like one of those maddening ringing sounds that some deaf people hear. Something inside him was definitely broken, and that seemed right to Yiannis. He found it necessary, because
he would have been unable to bear his life continuing as usual after the death of his son.

Over time, however, something terrible had happened; something that Yiannis refused to believe could happen. First, his child’s face began to fade in his memory; by resorting to that memory so much, he had worn it out. Now, he could only visualize Edú as he was in the photos and films he had kept of him; all the other images had been erased from his mind as if they had been wiped clean from a blackboard. The worst thing was that at some stage during the course of those forty-nine years, the internal thread that linked him with the father he had been had broken. When the old Yiannis of today remembered the young Yiannis, aged twenty, playing and laughing with his child, it was as if he were recalling an acquaintance from that long-distant era of his youth—a close friend perhaps but definitely someone else, and someone whom he had last seen a long time ago. The result was that he saw all those events from the outside: the pleasures of fatherhood and the horror of the unnecessary death; the slow death agony of the two-year-old child; the stupid illness that could not be treated because of shortages arising from the Rep War. It was a very sad story indeed, so tragic that he sometimes became teary when he recalled it. However, it was a story that he was no longer able to feel belonged to him; rather, it was a drama he had maybe once witnessed, or something someone had once told him.

And it was that remoteness that was so devastating, so unbearable.

The inner remoteness was the second, and definitive, death of his son. Because if
he
couldn’t keep his little Edú alive in his memory, who else would?

How weak, how untruthful and unfaithful was human memory. Yiannis knew that during those forty-nine years that had gone by, each and every cell in his body had renewed itself. Not a single original organic particle remained of the Yiannis
he had once been, nothing save that transcellular and transtemporal current of air that was his memory, that spiritual thread woven by his identity. But if that thread, too, were broken, if it were unable to remember itself continuously in time, how did his past differ from a dream? To stop remembering was to destroy his world.

It was for that reason—because he always felt that dizzy lack of trust in memory—that Yiannis decided to become a professional archivist. And for that same reason, from time to time he would really try to remember Edú from within. He would close his eyes and, with an enormous effort, endeavor to re-create some distant scene. Visualize again the old room, the outline of the furniture, the precise density of the shadow; feel the heat of the afternoon, the stillness of the air right against his skin; hear the silence barely broken by a calm, diminutive breath; smell the odor—so warm and so carnal—of that delightful little creature. Then and only then would he see again the child sleeping in his cot, and not even the whole child but maybe a reconstruction of his chubby little hand in all its purity and veracity, still baby soft; that perfect hand with its fingers curled, abandoned in repose and ignorant of its total vulnerability. With any luck, having reached this point, the memory would emerge from the past like a flash of light that pierced Yiannis, suddenly activating the suffering in all its intensity and making the old man cry. Cry from pain but also from gratitude, because somehow, and for just a moment, he had managed not simply to recall Edú, but to sense again that Edú had once been alive.

Central Archive, the United States of the Earth.

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