by Rosa Montero
But Caín had not one single personal item in her apartment. What a profound level of despair and desolation she must have reached! Bruna pictured her walking through the night with an addict’s anxiety, prying into the darkest corners of the city in search of relief, of a memory she could believe in, mementos that would allow her to rest for a time. She thought she could understand Caín, because she herself had felt like that often enough; she, too, had abandoned her home on occasion, as if to escape. She had burned up the night searching for the impossible. And on more than one occasion, as dawn was breaking, she had been tempted to inhale a shot of memory, a fake fix of artificial life. She hadn’t done it, and she was glad that was the case. Cata Caín had exploded her brain with a dose of fictitious memories. Perhaps a batch of adulterated memories had arrived in the city. It had happened before, though never with such a lethal outcome. If that were the case, there would be more rep deaths over the next few days. But that wasn’t Bruna’s problem. The only thing she was after was to find out what had happened to her neighbor, and that had now been resolved.
She turned to look at the young medical examiner. He was sweating and very upset, probably because of the emotional conflict arising from being forced to obey someone out of fear—a situation that, in young men in particular, usually provoked a burst of repressed anger and humiliation, a hormonal jumble of testosterone and adrenalin. Right now he hated himself for having been a coward, and that would prevent him from reporting her. Anyway, what could he report? She hadn’t done anything to him. Bruna shoved the two bills across the table and smiled.
“Thanks a lot; you’re very kind. That’s all I wanted to know. Give my regards to Gándara.”
The doctor’s flushed face accentuated the off-white color of the silicone implants. Bruna almost felt a twinge of compassion for him, a momentary weakness that was immediately overcome. She would never have broken his nose, of course, but the poor guy didn’t need to know that. That was one of the few advantages of being different: she was despised because of it, but she was feared as well.
CHAPTER FOUR
Three days later, another rep died in similar circumstances, which were further complicated by the fact that he took two other technos with him. The assault took place on a sky-tram, so the incident was filmed by the transport company’s security cameras. Bruna saw the video on the news. He was an exploration android, with a small, bony physique, but he easily overpowered the two more heavily built technos. The assailant was sitting in the rear of the tram; suddenly, he got up and walked quickly toward the front, grabbing the first rep by the hair. He pulled the head backward with one hand as he slit the throat cleanly with the other. The weapon he used had such a fine, narrow blade that it was almost invisible. So the effect was disconcerting, incomprehensible rather than violent: a stream of blood was suddenly spurting, and you couldn’t understand why. The victim’s body was still sitting upright in the seat, and the passengers next to him were still opening their mouths to scream when the murderer grabbed a woman on the other side of the aisle in the same manner and slit her throat, too. After which the little techno drove the point of the knife into one of his own eyes and collapsed.
The whole scene lasted barely a minute; it was an astonishingly rapid massacre, a spectacular slaughter, so much blood in so little time. It’s very hard to cut a throat with such speed and dexterity, thought Bruna. Flesh is surprisingly tough, the muscles tense, the windpipe presents a tenacious obstacle. And yet, the two necks had almost been severed and the heads tipped backward grotesquely, displaying the obscene smile of the enormous cut. It wasn’t easy to do, not even with a surgeon’s scalpel; maybe with a laser knife, but the blade used seemed to be a normal blade. Her next thought was, He wouldn’t have been able to grab me by my hair. That was why so many combat reps shaved their heads—they didn’t want to give the enemy any advantage. The difference was that, unlike other combat reps, Bruna had continued to shave her head after she’d been granted her license from the military. After all, she was still doing risky work. Work that wasn’t paying enough.
She had finished her last job almost two weeks earlier and had few savings to draw on. The USE had been in permanent financial crisis since Unification, but in recent times there seemed to be a crisis within the crisis and business everywhere was at a standstill. She desperately needed to find a client, so she decided to head out and do what she called an “information patrol”: do a few circuits and try to catch up with her regulars, to find out what was going on out there and see if she could offer her services to anyone. She looked at her watch: 23:10. She could stop by Oli Oliar’s joint and grab a bite to eat on her way through. Despite the frenzy of blood and killing, she was hungry. Or maybe she was hungry precisely for that reason. Nothing whet the appetite more than the sight of other people dying. Four years, three months, and twenty-four days.
It was January, the chilliest month of the short, mild winter, and it was a perfect night for walking. Using travelators in some stretches, Bruna took twenty minutes to get to Oli’s bar. It was a small, rectangular space, occupied almost entirely by the huge counter, which in turn was almost fully occupied by Oli’s massive bulk. Because of her vast body and her equally enormous hospitality, Oli never turned up her nose at anyone: techno, alien—usually referred to as a bicho—or mutant. It was for this reason that her clientele was varied.
“Hi Husky, what brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“Hunger, Oli. Give me a beer and one of those algae and pine nut sandwiches you do so well.”
The woman smiled at the compliment with the placidity of a whale and began preparing the order. Her movements were always astonishingly slow, but she organized things in such a way that she served all the customers efficiently on her own. Of course, it was a small space, with ten stools along the counter and another eight flush against the opposite wall, together with a small shelf for leaning on, which ran the length of the end wall, but the place was a hit, and at peak times up to thirty customers would squeeze themselves in. Now, however, it was half-empty. Bruna looked around; there was only one person she recognized, and she was seated at the other end of the counter. She was a billboard-lady for Texaco-Repsol and was wearing a horrible uniform in the corporate colors, crowned by a silly little hat. The screens on her chest and back played the company’s damned commercials on a perpetual loop. Normally, because they were so irritating, billboard-people weren’t allowed into bars, but Oli’s heart was as big as her enormous breasts, so she allowed these walking electronic ads to hang out in the back of the bar as long as they turned the volume of the commercials down as low as possible. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t usually all that low, as you couldn’t mute the screens or turn them off. You either had to be a poor wretch or very unlucky in life to end up in that line of work: billboard-people were only allowed to take off their outfits for nine hours a day; the rest of the time they had to walk around public places, which meant that since they weren’t allowed into most establishments, they would spend their day wandering the streets like lost souls, with the publicity slogans blaring in their ears nonstop. In return for such torture they were paid a scant few hundred gaias, although in this case, being Texaco-Repsol, the woman would undoubtedly get free air as well. And that was important, because each day there were more and more people unable to pay the cost of breathable air who would then have to move to one of the planet’s contaminated zones. If truth be told, many would kill to have such a lousy job. Bruna remembered her meager bank account and turned to the owner of the bar.
“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?”
&nbs
p; “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.
CHAPTER FIVE
Courage 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. Somet
hing 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.