Tears in Rain

by Rosa Montero

  “Be sure you don’t do anything naughty, Bartolo. And in particular, don’t even think about touching the jigsaw puzzle! If you eat anything, I’ll throw you out on the street. Do you hear me?”

  “Bartolo beautiful, Bartolo good.”

  So Bruna left the apartment, dressed as if for a party and somewhat perplexed at the excessive care she’d taken with her appearance. But she was in high spirits, almost happy, feeling healthy and full of life, her TTT still a long way off. In complete control of the perfect machine that was her body. The feeling of well-being became somewhat tarnished when, having barely left the entrance to her building, she saw the wretched bluish-green extraterrestrial on the corner, in the same spot as the night before. The Omaá of canine patience. Dammit! Bruna had forgotten about him—that is, she had managed to forget him. But there was Maio, surrounded by a small circle of curious onlookers, and prepared to stand forever in front of her door. Was that the way things were done where he came from? A cultural misunderstanding? Should she have fulfilled some specific farewell ritual, like giving him a flower or scratching him on the head or who knew what? The rep bit her lip with concern, regretting that she hadn’t paid more attention to the documentaries aimed at spreading information about alien cultures. All the Omaá fauna suddenly seemed to have decided to become part of her life. It was like a curse. Without stopping to think about it, she resolutely walked up to Maio.

  “Hi. Look, I don’t know how it is in your land, on your planet, but here, when we say good-bye to each other, we go. I don’t want to be rude, but...”

  “Calm down. I know. You haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have to say anything else to me. I know the meaning of the word good-bye.”

  His sentence sounded like the hiss of a wave breaking onto the shore.

  “So why are you still here, then?”

  “It’s a good spot. I can’t think of a better one. No one is waiting for me anywhere else. It’s hard to find friendly Earthlings.”

  The importance of what the bicho had said registered with the rep. So, then, does that mean he thinks I’m friendly? she wondered. Me, the person who rudely threw him out and who’s just thrown him out again. The scene that Maio’s words were conjuring up was too much for Bruna, something she didn’t feel capable of handling. So with that, she turned on her heel and marched off without another word.

  She was walking quickly and had gone about 200 yards when someone grabbed her arm from behind. Irritated, she turned around, thinking it was the bicho, but she came face-to-face with a pale, ghostly person whom it took her a few seconds to recognize.

  “Nabokov!”

  It was Chi’s lover, the head of security at the RRM. The thick knot of her bun had come loose and her hair, tangled and dirty, was now hanging down around her shoulders. She seemed to have lost an incredible amount of weight in the three days since Bruna had last seen her, or at least her face had become sharper and her skin, grayish and withered, was stretched over a frame of prominent bones. Her feverish eyes were sunk deep within the rings around them, and her body was shaking violently. It was Total Techno Tumor in full flight. Bruna had seen it too many times not to recognize it.

  “Nabokov...”

  Valo continued to hang on to Bruna’s forearm, and Bruna didn’t move away for fear the rep would collapse if she lost her support. Valo was leaning to the right and didn’t seem capable of maintaining her balance. Her huge fake breasts now looked like a grotesque addition to her broken body.

  “Habib has told me...Habib has told me...” she stammered.

  “What? What has he told you?”

  “You know it too. Tell me!”

  What do I know?”

  “They’re like scorpions, worse than scorpions; a scorpion gives a warning.”

  She had a wild look about her and her hand was burning into Bruna’s arm.

  “Nabokov, I don’t understand you. Calm down. Let’s go to my apartment. It’s close by.”

  “Noooo...I need you to confirm it for me.”

  “Let’s go to my place and we’ll talk.”

  “The supremacists. They’re like scorpions.”

  “Yes, they’re absolute swine, but—”

  “All humans are supremacists.”

  “You need to rest, Valo, listen—”

  “Habib told me.”

  “Well, let’s go and talk to him.”

  Bruna tried to move the arm to which Nabokov was still convulsively clinging in order to free her mobile computer and call the RRM to ask for help.

  “Revenge!” moaned the woman.

  The detective became alarmed.

  “Did Habib tell you that? Did he mention the word revenge?”

  Valo gazed briefly at Bruna with wild eyes. Then her mouth distorted in a grimace that was perhaps an attempt at a smile. Her gums were bleeding.

  “Noooo,” she whispered.

  She let go of Husky and, in an extraordinary effort, straightened her battered body and managed to gather enough energy to start walking with a relatively firm and quick step. The detective went after her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Wait...Valo, let me—”

  “Let go!”

  The woman freed herself with a jerk and continued on her way. Bruna watched her walking away with concern, but she was already going to be late for her meeting with Nopal, and she didn’t think she was the most suitable person to look after the sick woman anyway. She rang Habib’s personal number, and he answered instantly.

  “I’ve just bumped into Nabokov and she seemed very ill.”

  “By the great Morlay, thank goodness!” he exclaimed, relieved. “Where is she? We’ve been looking for her for hours.”

  “I’m sending you my GPS location right now...Have you got it? Nabokov has just taken off southward on foot. I can still see her.”

  “We’re heading there right now, thanks!” said Habib hurriedly.

  And he cut out.

  Bruna had more things to discuss with the acting leader of the RRM, but she decided they could wait. Pressed for time, she caught a cab again, something that was turning into a disastrous and wasteful habit. Despite the expense, she was fifteen minutes late when she walked into the Bear Pavilion. Nopal was waiting for her seated on one of the benches in the garden inside the entrance, elbows resting on his knees, his lank hair falling over his eyes. He looked annoyed.

  “Late again, Bruna. Allow me to say it’s a very bad habit. Did your memorist do a bad job with your upbringing memories? Didn’t your parents ever tell you that it’s bad manners to be late?”

  The rep noticed that he’d called her by her first name, and that disturbed her more than his sarcasm.

  “My apologies, Nopal. I’m normally very punctual. There was a last-minute complication.”

  “Fine. Apology accepted. Have you been here before?”

  Pablo Nopal seemed to have a strange predilection for meeting in peculiar places. The Bear Pavilion had been built five years earlier, at the time of the Madrid World Expo. The city’s symbol had always been a bear eating fruit from a tree, and Inmaculada Cruz, the many times reelected and almost permanent regional president, had decided to celebrate the exposition by updating the ancient emblem. A half century had passed since polar bears had become extinct through drowning as the Arctic ice cap melted. A slow and agonizing death for animals capable of swimming desperately for more than three hundred miles before succumbing to exhaustion. The last polar bear to drown—or at least the last one anyone knew about—was followed by a helicopter from the organization Bears at Risk, which had tried to rescue it, but the polar bear’s final swim had coincided with the outbreak of the Rep War. The result was that animal lovers were unable to gain the support or necessary funds to carry out their rescue plans. All they could do was film the tragedy. They also froze and stored in a genetic bank the blood of that last bear—a female. Thanks to that blood, President Cruz was able to get her new symbol for Madrid. Employing a similar system to the o
ne used for the production of technohumans, bioengineers created a bear that was a genetic clone of that last animal. Her name was Melba.

  “Yes, I know this place,” Bruna replied.

  She had always been aware of the existence of the rep bear, as they more or less shared the same birthday. She found the Bear Pavilion a poignant place and had visited it a few times; in particular, during those months of torment after the death of Merlín, when she felt she was degenerating from the pain of her grief in the same way that the original Melba had degenerated on her solitary and ever-smaller iceberg before finally drowning.

  “I haven’t been here for ages. Shall we take a look?” asked Nopal, standing up.

  Bruna shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t understand his urge to sightsee, but she didn’t want to argue with him about something so insignificant. They crossed the small garden and entered the pavilion building itself, a gigantic, transparent dome. They immediately felt a blast of cold air. Around them, everything seemed to be made of ice or crystal, although it was in fact made of thermoglass, a synthetic, unbreakable material used to create thermal environments. They walked through a re-creation of the Arctic as it once had been, with huge glacial rocks and sparkling icebergs floating on seas of glass, until they reached a large, irregular, moat-like crevasse that separated the visitors from an intensely blue lake with some ice shelves that formed Melba’s home. You could look at the animal from the edge of the moat if she was out of the water and hadn’t hidden among the rocks, but it was better to go down inside the crevasse. That was what Nopal and Bruna did now. They stepped onto the moving sidewalk like conscientious tourists and descended between slippery, crystal-clear walls. The walkway moved very slowly, and a film of the last moments of the original Melba was projected onto five successive and overlapping screens on the walls of the crevasse. You really felt as if you were there, watching the last small piece of ice that the bear was trying to hang on to breaking up; the animal swimming more and more slowly, snorting as it sank beneath the surface, then thrusting its dark snout out of the water with one last, agonizing effort and letting out a chilling wail, a furiously terrified growl. And then finally disappearing under a black, gelatinous sea. The life-size images left the spectators speechless. And surrounded by this imposing silence, you reached the bottom of the crevasse and in the darkness the walkway deposited you in front of a shimmering wall of water. It was Melba’s artificial lake, viewed from the bottom of the tank through a thermoglass wall. And there, with any luck, you would be able to see the bear diving and playing with a ball and happily frolicking while releasing a trail of bubbles from her snout. And once in a while Melba would swim close to the glass, because she could sense the visitors, too, and was no doubt curious.

  Today, however, the animal was nowhere to be seen. Bruna and the memorist waited a while, noses frozen, the intensely blue shimmer of the water dancing across their faces. But Melba didn’t appear. So they went back up on the exit walkway, which was considerably shorter and quicker, and emerged from the crevasse into the polar landscape. Thanks to her excellent eyesight, Bruna managed to spot Melba on solid ground. Or more accurately, Melba’s hindquarters—her round, shaggy behind—lying well camouflaged in the shelter of some equally white rocks.

  “Look. She’s over there.”

  “Where?”

  Of all the times that Husky had been in the pavilion, this was the only one when the bear hadn’t been clearly visible. Too bad, Nopal, she thought with a certain malicious pleasure, proof that we reps just don’t like memorists.

  “Fine. Let’s head out,” said the man. “I’m absolutely frozen.”

  They went into the cafeteria, deliciously warm and bright under the transparent dome. It was half-empty, and they sat down at a table next to the curved thermoglass wall. Above the memorist’s straight, bony shoulders, Bruna could see a procession of clouds scudding across the sky. It must be windy out there.

  They were in an automated establishment, so they ordered two coffees for their table, and after a short while, a small robot arrived with the order and the bill, which came to the exorbitant sum of twenty-four gaias. Entry to the Bear Pavilion might be free, but the cafeteria was highway robbery. No wonder nobody was there.

  “How can they charge this for two coffees?! And in a place with robots!” muttered the detective.

  “You’re right. But thanks to that, it’s more peaceful. No, it’s my treat.”

  Nopal paid, and for a while they focused on drinking their coffees in silence. You could certainly keep yourself amused with a coffee. You had to pour the sugar into the cup and stir it. Then you could blow on the liquid to cool it down, creating gentle waves. And play with the spoon, separating the foam. Bruna unwrapped the small biscuit that came on the saucer and nibbled at it. It was almost lunchtime but she wasn’t hungry; she’d had too much for breakfast. The cafeteria was a nice place. You could do worse than this, calmly having a coffee without saying a word. Almost like a human family. Or one of those couples who’d been together for decades. The twisted, ghostly face of the dying Valo suddenly flooded her mind. Bruna shivered. Melba, the replicant bear—would she also suffer from TTT when she completed her ten-year existence?

  “Do you think the bear will die, too?” she asked.

  “We’re all going to die.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  Nopal rubbed his eyes in a weary gesture.

  “If you’re asking about TTT, it would seem so. As far as they can tell, the average life span of replicant animals is a little shorter than yours—only eight years. But when this Melba dies, they’ll produce another one. An infinite chain of Melbas down through the ages. I read all that while I was waiting for you. Here.”

  Nopal took a pavilion brochure out of his pocket and threw it on the table. Bruna glanced at the brochure without touching it; it had a 3-D photo of the bear. A poor image, a cheap brochure. Four years, three months, and eighteen days. That was all she had left to live. She wanted to stop, she wanted to give up counting, but she couldn’t.

  “You’re very beautiful, Bruna. Very elegant,” said the memorist.

  The rep gave a start. For some reason, the man’s words hit her like a reprimand. Suddenly she felt overdressed. Ridiculous in her shiny jumpsuit and her gold necklace. She blushed.

  “I have...I have a date later, that’s why I’m dressed like this.”

  “A romantic date?”

  They looked at each other, Nopal unperturbed, Husky disconcerted. But this rapidly gave way to boiling rage.

  “I don’t think who I’m meeting is of interest to you, Nopal. And we’ve come here for something more than to talk nonsense. You said you had news for me.”

  The man smiled. A cold, smug little grimace. Bruna hated him.

  “Well, yes. Don’t ask me how, but I came across one of those mem pirates who write illegal mem implants. And it turns out the guy owes me a favor. Don’t ask me about that, though. The thing is, he’s prepared to talk to you when he gets back to the city. He’s traveling. But he’ll see you in four days—Friday at 13:00 sharp. I’m transmitting the address to you right now. I hope you’re a good interrogator, because he’s quite a tricky customer.”

  Bruna checked that the information had made it to her mobile.

  “Thanks.”

  The large screen above the counter was showing a tumultuous scene—blood, flames, people running about, police. The sound system was turned off, so Bruna had no way of knowing where it was happening. It didn’t matter much, either, to be honest. It was just another violent scene on the news.

  “And there’s something else, something I remembered after our meeting at the museum.”

  Nopal paused hesitantly and Bruna waited expectantly for him to continue.

  “I don’t know if it’s relevant, and I’m not even sure it’s true, but there’s no question that when I was in the business there was a rumor running rife among the memorists that about twenty-five years ago, just
before Human Peace and the beginning of the process of the Unification of Earth, the European Union was developing an illegal secret weapon that had to do with artificial memories...for humans.”

  “For humans!”

  “And for technos as well, but primarily for humans. That’s why it was a clandestine operation. The thing is, the implants supposedly took over the subject’s will and made them do things.”

  “An induced-behavior program.”

  “Exactly. And after a few hours, the memory killed the carrier. It was that detail that made me think it might be related to the current cases. But that old story could also be an urban myth. You’ll have noticed that it has all the ingredients: a memory implant that, rather than being for technos, is for humans, and kidnaps your will and then finishes you off. It corresponds really well to our unconscious fears, don’t you think?”

  The cafeteria’s screen continued to show disturbing images. Now some people appeared in ash-colored tunics, their faces painted gray, holding a sign that read: “3/2/2109. The end of the world is coming. Are you ready?” It was some of those crazy Apocalyptics. Recently, they had become very active because their prophet, a blind physiotherapist called the New Cassandra, had predicted on her deathbed fifty years earlier that the end of the world would take place on February 3, 2109—in other words, in less than two weeks. Bruna frowned. Judging by the images, the Apocalyptics were giving their fiery speeches right in front of the RRM headquarters.