by Rosa Montero
“I wanted to tell you something, too, Bruna. I’ve been keeping an eye on it for some time, but it’s getting worse. And this morning, it was something truly scandalous. I’ve asked for an official investigation.”
“What are you talking about, Yiannis?”
“The archive. Someone’s manipulating the documents, falsifying the facts in order to stir up the revolt against the technohumans.”
The central archivists worked under a strict confidentiality clause that forbade them from talking about their work, and old Yiannis, who was a meticulous and somewhat obsessive man, had always kept strictly to this rule. But now he was so worried by the drift of events that, for once, he felt released from his obligations—or, rather, indebted to an even greater obligation. So he spelled out the blatant alterations that he was finding in the articles.
“And that’s why I’ve asked for an urgent investigation.”
“And how did they reply?”
“They haven’t replied yet.”
“You don’t say.”
That was alarming indeed. Mercenaries, spontaneous demonstrations that appeared to be carefully organized, the collusion of the news media...and now the archive as well. So many fronts at once. It was like a dance, a sinister, well-rehearsed dance. On her way to Oli’s bar, Bruna had noticed the public screens: nine out of every ten messages were diatribes against reps, with varying levels of anger and intransigence. Some of the comments were so violent that even a month ago, they would have been censored by the Department of Harmonious Coexistence. She recalled a couple of poisonous statements, and the bile rose in her throat. She had to make a real effort to reflect calmly, and she looked at Yiannis and Oli to prevent herself from being swamped with hatred for humans. The rep was well aware, moreover, that the public screens, despite their name, were not at all public; citizens had to pay a monthly fee if they wanted to upload their pictures and messages. It was a private company, easily controlled and manipulated. A company that anyone could hire and use to launch a poisonous campaign. Bruna couldn’t believe—didn’t want to believe—that nine out of every ten humans wanted to destroy her.
“And another thing: they killed one of RoyRoy’s sons,” added Yiannis.
“The supremacists?” asked the detective, appalled.
“What have the supremacists got to do with this?” replied the archivist, mystified.
Yiannis and Bruna looked at each other in confused silence for a few seconds. How can you have faith in communication between the species if friends can’t even understand each other? thought the android with misgiving.
“No, no, Bruna, forgive me, it has nothing to do with what we were talking about before. What I meant was that RoyRoy has also lost a son.”
Also? She realized he was revealing a personal matter.
“A sixteen-year-old boy. He was shot by mistake during a police operation. He was walking past, quite by chance, and the shot shattered his skull. Poor RoyRoy. That’s her heartache, you know. That sorrow you can always sense within her. It was a long time ago, but it’s never over.”
He likes her, the rep thought with surprise. She had a sudden intuition—not entirely pleasant—that old Yiannis liked the billboard-lady. Of course. Another grieving parent, another wasted son. In the months after Merlín’s death, when Bruna was lost and devastated, Yiannis had taken her into his home; he’d taken care of her and managed to get her back on her feet again. The android was enormously grateful to him for all he had done, but she’d always had an unsettling suspicion that his friendship was based on the pain of bereavement, that Yiannis had turned his life into a temple to the memory of his son, and what attracted him to Bruna was her grief at the loss of Merlín. As if they could share the emptiness. But the android didn’t want to dedicate her short life to memories. Let Yiannis befriend RoyRoy; let them exchange sorrows; let them build an enormous cathedral to honor the children they had lost. It was all the same to her.
“You see, Bruna, everyone drags along their own little bundle. Sometimes, it seems to me that we humans—and you technos, of course—we’re like ants, all walking along with the overwhelming weight of our lives on our heads.”
The rep hated the tone of self-pity in his voice.
“But you once told me that what distinguished us is what each person does about it,” muttered the rep.
She couldn’t bear seeing the archivist so mournful, so adolescent. Falling in love makes you stupid, she thought with a certain bitterness.
Yiannis sighed.
“Yes, I suppose it all depends on what you do.”
A short time later, when Bruna left the bar, she was still feeling annoyed. She’d always believed that her friend was as sealed-off from emotional fickleness as she was. Yet again, she felt odd. Different from everyone else. She was rare, even among the reps. A genuine monster, as the supremacists maintained. But hold on a minute, hold on! It’s me who’s falling into self-pity now. By the great Morlay! It was a wretched vice, weak and contagious.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tall, hips swaying, her dress clinging to her exaggerated curves as convention dictated, her blonde hair wafting just above her shoulders, the detective didn’t go unnoticed when she walked into Saturn, which turned out to be a retro-style bar with marble pedestal tables and pseudomodernist wall lights. A sufficiently old-fashioned atmosphere for reactionary types. It was eight o’clock in the evening and the place was half-full: all humans, more men than women, the majority of them young. Bruna strolled slowly around the place as if she were trying to decide where she would sit, while covertly studying the clientele and allowing herself to be checked out. When she was sure that everyone present had taken note of her arrival, she sat at a table near the door and again ordered vodka and lemon with two cubes of ice. She liked to develop the fictitious personalities of her creations and be true to the tiniest details, to the point where she almost believed them. Right now, for example, she was beginning to feel that there was no better drink than a vodka and lemon. She took a sip from the glass the robot brought her and glanced around through the veil of her eyelashes. A couple of women and half a dozen men were gazing at her invitingly, trying to catch her eye and initiate some sort of interaction. After a brief analysis, she decided that none of them seemed very useful, although two of the young men formed part of a more promising group seated around a couple of the tables. Just then one of the two young men got up and came toward her, swaggering and swaying like a cocky little idiot. He stopped at her table.
“You’re new around here,” he declared.
“Yes.”
The youth grabbed a chair and sat down, full of self-importance.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to have another drink—I’m buying—and while we’re drinking it, you’ll tell me all about yourself,” he pronounced.
“No! I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” Bruna replied. “You’re going to go back to your table, and you’re going to tell that man in the green vest that I’d like to have a word with him.”
The man in the vest was a few years older and seemed to be the one in charge of the group. It was that air of strict hierarchy that had led Bruna to suspect that they might be militant supremacists.
“And why the hell do you think I’m going to obey you?” said the youth, infuriated.
“Because if you don’t, it’s possible the man in the green vest will get mad at you.”
The young man gave an angry snort, but he got up like a lamb and went straight to his table to deliver the message. There’s a boy who knows how to do as he’s told, thought the rep.
The guy in green listened to the message and took his time. Better, thought Bruna to herself. The longer he takes, the higher up he must be in the chain of command. She saw him order something from the robot, and she ordered another vodka, too. Five minutes later, after he’d had a few sips of his fresh beer, green vest got up and came toward her.
“What can I do for you?”
The man screwed up his face in a comical manner, caught between two opposing emotions: personal flattery and suspicion at the request. Uncertain, he dropped into the same chair the youth had occupied earlier.
“Let’s assume for a moment that I am from the HSP. Why do you want to meet Hericio?”
“Because he’s the only one who seems to know what to do in these times of danger and insanity. Because we’re condemned to disaster at the hands of a government of useless replickers. Because like all good people, I can see the abyss into which we’re headed if we don’t remedy the situation. Because I want to collaborate in the defense of the human race, which is what’s at stake, nothing more, nothing less,” she railed emphatically.
And then, in a moment of absolute inspiration, she added, “Because I don’t want to leave any future child of mine with the legacy of a corrupt, perverted, heinous world.”
And she smiled her most maternal and helpless smile.
Bruna-Annie’s fiery speech seemed to have some sort of an impact on the man, who scratched his chin hesitantly—or, rather, the implants in his chin, which made his jaw look more manly and powerful. Under the soft skin of his arms, his silicon biceps moved up and down like tennis balls. But all the same, he still wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Sure. And you suddenly turn up here from nowhere, saying all these lovely words, and you want us to believe you. Where have you come from? Who the hell are you? I’ve never seen you around here, nor at any of our events.”
“I was born in the Britannic region, but I live in New Barcelona. Here, I’m transmitting my ID number to you. Three days ago I took part in a supremacist demonstration and the police arrested me for assaulting a rep. They finally let me go for lack of evidence. But I’m a university professor and I can’t afford this sort of thing or they’ll fire me from the university. You know how strict they are about these things. That’s why I’ve come to Madrid to offer my assistance. Better to be active here and live in New Barcelona. So the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”
The man agreed.
“But you don’t need to see Hericio to collaborate with the cause. I’m Serra, one of his deputies. Won’t I do?”
Bruna tried to look like a pussycat, softening her usual tiger look as much as possible. Her cheek padding helped because it rounded her mouth and made her look insipid.
“I’m delighted I wasn’t wrong; I knew you were someone important. I could tell. However, I still have to speak to Hericio. Because I’m thinking of making a donation to the party. I know you’re in a period covered by an FP. Well, I want to give some money to the cause. But I want to be certain that Hericio is all he makes himself out to be. That we’re inspired by the same ideas.”
Serra nodded his head. The talk of money seemed to resolve all his doubts.
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Where can I find you?”
“I’ll be at the Majestic Hotel. But only for three days.”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said.
And he walked away, his tennis balls wobbling like jelly with each step.
Bruna noticed they were following her as soon as she hit the street. She had assumed that they’d tail her and she tried to make it easy, because the tail, one of the boys who had been with the man in the vest, was not at all good. He was so clumsy that she was almost tempted to ring Lizard so he could give him a few pointers on how to tail someone without being seen.
She entered the Majestic and asked for a room as Annie Heart. The hotel was from the middle of the twenty-first century but had recently been replastered and converted into a lower-range establishment. Bruna had stayed there when she first arrived in Madrid and, as was always the case with her, had taken note of what the hotel had to offer. She went up to her room, which was on the top floor, and checked that everything was still as she remembered it. If you were a guest of the hotel and had a key, you could get down to the street via the external fire escape at the back of the building. It ended up at a lung park that hardly anybody ever used. She left her bag in the room and went downstairs to the hotel bar, which was half-full. It was eleven o’clock at night and she was hungry. She asked for a gigantic real-chicken sandwich and a vodka and lemon with two ice cubes, even though the two drinks she’d had earlier on an empty stomach had left her with an unpleasant throb in her head. But consistency was consistency. She saw her tail at the back of the place doing a disastrous job of hiding behind an interactive screen and decided to put on a good show for his sake. Just then, two Apocalyptics came into the bar, handing out brochures and promoting their cause.
“Brothers and sisters, listen to the word. Here you are losing your most precious asset—your lives—in alcohol and recklessness. The world is ending in one week. Don’t close your minds to the truth!”
There were vague rumblings of annoyance, and the barman rushed from behind the bar to throw them out, which he did quite easily. They were fairly docile visionaries.
Bruna swallowed her mouthful of sandwich and spoke loudly enough to be heard throughout the bar, taking advantage of the momentary attention the business of the Apocalyptics had attracted.
“They might seem like a couple of crazies to you, and they certainly are, but it is true that the world is ending. That’s to say, the world as we know it. Do you want those technological freaks to finish off the human race? The reps are our creatures! Our artifacts! We made them! So are we now going to let them exterminate us? They’re our mistake! Let’s put an end to this dangerous error!”
Some applause was heard from the other end of the counter. It was an endorsement that left Bruna with a bitter taste in her mouth. She had completely lost her appetite, so she paid and, pretending to be a little more inebriated than she was, went up to her room, supposedly to go to bed.
But she still had much to do. She pulled off the wig and the false eyebrows; she removed all the padding and undressed; she opened her bag, took out the solvent and removed the dermosilicon covering her tattoo. Next, she took out the contact lenses and got rid of her makeup, and had a quick vapor shower. She sighed with relief on rediscovering Bruna in the steamed-up mirror. After she had dressed in her usual clothes—a dark purple latex jumpsuit—she put away the items of her disguise and went out into the corridor with considerable stealth. She crossed the deserted corridor and, using the key to her room, opened the service door that provided access to the fire escape. It was twelve thirty at night now, she was on the fourteenth floor, and on the external metallic platform an unpleasantly cold wind was blowing that raised goose bumps on her skin, still damp from the shower. She again swiped the chip in her key across the electronic reader that controlled the emergency staircase and the steps quickly unfolded ahead of her descent, making a worrying metallic screech that could have betrayed her presence. Just as well that the tinkling of the nearby lung park served to cover it up. Bruna hadn’t thought of any of that, neither the noise of the staircase nor the unexpected help from the artificial trees. She was irritated by her lack of foresight; she was too tired to think properly. Thank goodness she’d had luck on her side.
She reached the bottom, jumped onto the sidewalk, and the staircase folded itself back up above her. The keys only worked to go down, never to go up. That was why the android was forced to do what she was about to do now. She walked around the corner, entered the Majestic, walked up to the reception desk and as
ked for a room. The manager, a pale man with prominent cheekbones, looked at her in a strange way. In a flash of inspiration Bruna realized, He’s going to tell me there’s no vacancy. The android felt feared, felt hated—more hated and more feared than ever before. She felt segregated and a sudden, distressing premonition made her imagine a world like that, an Earth where reps couldn’t go into hotels or travel on the same sky-trams as humans, or even mix with them. A drop of cold sweat slid down her skull, following a line parallel to her tattoo. And at that same moment, just when the immobility of the receptionist was starting to become unnatural, the man broke his absolute stillness, cleared his throat uncomfortably, and asked Bruna for her details so that he could check her in. He doesn’t dare, said the android to herself; the idea of refusing her had probably passed through his mind, but he hadn’t dared. Discrimination between the species was still illegal.
He gave her a room on the twelfth floor, two down from Annie Heart, and the rep went up to her new room, for which she’d registered with her real name, dragging her feet and feeling vaguely disconsolate. She went into the room and, suddenly feeling all the exhaustion of her overlong day, allowed herself to fall flat on her back onto the bed. She could sense the tiredness building up in her muscles, in the lower parts of her legs and arms, as if the fatigue were water weighing down on her body and pressing her into the bedspread. She was tempted to close her eyes briefly and sleep right there, but she knew it would be better to go back home. With a force of will, she spun around on the bed and scrunched up the sheets and the blanket so that the robot cleaners would have something to do the next morning. Then she got up, grabbed her gear, and left the building, again using the emergency staircase.