Tears in Rain Page 5

  “Why haven’t you been to the police?”

  Chi smiled sardonically.

  “You mean, to the human police? You want me to go and ask them why there’s someone out there killing reps? Do you think they’re going to be very interested?”

  “There are technohuman cops as well.”

  “Oh, right. Four wretched imbeciles playing the part for the sake of appearances. Come on, Husky, you know we’re totally discriminated against. We’re a secondary species and third-class citizens.”

  Yes, Bruna knew it. But she felt that the discrimination against reps encompassed a greater discrimination—that of the powerful against the wretched. Like that poor human in Oli’s bar, the Texaco-Repsol billboard-lady. The world was basically unjust. Perhaps reps had to put up with worse conditions than humans, but for some reason, feeling that she was part of a victims’ collective made the detective feel ill. She preferred to think that injustice was democratic and rained its formidable blows on everybody.

  “Moreover, I don’t trust the police, because it’s likely the enemy has infiltrators on the inside. I’m convinced there’s something much bigger behind this business of adulterated memories. Something political.”

  Come on, thought Bruna, irritated. Next she’ll say there’s a plot. They were entering the paranoid zone typical of these radical movements.

  “Something that might even be a conspiracy.”

  “Well, Chi, allow me to question that. I don’t usually support conspiracy theories,” Bruna couldn’t avoid answering.

  “That’s fine by me, but conspiracies exist. Look at the recent revelations about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We’ve finally managed to find out what happened.”

  “But at this stage, a century and a half after the assassination, the truth is of no interest to anyone. I’m not saying that conspiracies don’t exist; what I am saying is that there are far fewer than people imagine, and they tend to be improvised, one-off jobs rather than perfect Machiavellian constructions. People believe in conspiracies because it’s a way of believing that deep down, horror has some order and meaning, even if that meaning is evil. We don’t support chaos, but there’s no question that life is totally senseless. Pure sound and fury.”

  Myriam looked at her with some surprise.

  “Shakespeare...what an educated quotation for someone like you.”

  “And what am I like?”

  “A detective, a combat rep, a woman with a shaved head and a tattoo that splits her face.”

  “Right. Well, I’m equally surprised that a political leader would recognize Shakespeare’s words. I thought activists like you dedicated your lives to the cause, not to reading and painting your fingernails.”

  Myriam smiled crookedly and briefly lowered her head, pensive. When she raised it once more, her face again showed that unexpected fragility that the detective thought she’d seen moments earlier.

  “Why don’t you like me, Husky?”

  The detective shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In reality, she was sorry she had said so much. She didn’t know why she was behaving in such an unusual way. Discussing chaos in life with a client? She must have lost her mind.

  “It’s not that. Let’s just say I find people with a victim mentality annoying.”

  She’d done it again! Bruna was astonished. She was continuing to argue with Chi, totally out of control.

  “You think, for example, that denouncing labs that don’t look for a cure for TTT is feeling victimized? I have the data: considerably less than one percent of the budget for medical research is spent on the search for a cure for Total Techno Tumor, even though we reps make up fifteen percent of the population and we all die of the same thing.”

  Four years, three months, and twenty-three days, thought Bruna, without being able to do anything about it. She was just as unable to do anything about the awful impulse to keep arguing.

  “Believing that the entire universe is conspiring against you seems like a victim mentality to me. As if you were at the center of everything. The feeling of superiority is a defect that tends to accompany a victim mentality...as if you deserved any merit for being a product of fate.”

  “Fate and human genetic engineering in our case,” whispered Myriam.

  The two women stopped talking and the seconds passed with embarrassing slowness.

  “I know you, Bruna,” the RRM leader finally said in a soft voice—so soft that the sudden use of her first name seemed both necessary and natural. “I know people like you. You’re so full of anger and hurt that you can’t put words to what you feel. If you admit your pain, you’re scared that you’ll end up being nothing more than a victim, and if you acknowledge your anger, you’re scared you’ll end up being a tyrant. The point is that you hate being a rep but you don’t want to admit it.”

  “Don’t tell me—”

  “That’s why I disturb and intrigue you so much,” continued Myriam, unperturbed. “Because I represent everything you fear. That rep nature that you hate. Relax. In reality, it’s a very common problem. Look at the people on the Trans Platform—you know, the association that encompasses all those people who want to be what they’re not: women who want to be men; men who want to be women; humans who want to be reps; reps who want to be humans; blacks who want to be white; whites who want to be black. At this stage, we don’t seem to have aliens who want to be Earthlings, or vice versa, but it will happen; we haven’t spent enough time in contact with the extraterrestrials yet. I think we reps and humans are sick beings; we always feel our reality isn’t enough. So we consume drugs and give ourselves artificial memories; we want to escape from the confinement of our lives. But I assure you that the only way to resolve the conflict is to learn to accept it and find your own place in the world. And that’s what we do in the RRM. That’s why our movement is so important, because—”

  Despite herself, Bruna had listened to Chi’s argument with a degree of attention, but when the woman cited the RRM, a stream of uncontrollable and liberating sarcasm popped out of the detective’s mouth.

  “An eloquent homily, Chi. A fantastic speech. You should turn it into a holograph and sell it in your shop. But how about we get back to the matter in hand?”

  Myriam smiled. A small grimace, tight and cold.

  “Of course, Husky. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d forgotten that I’ve just hired you, and you charge by the hour. My assistant will give you all the information we’ve gathered on the earlier cases, and deal with you regarding your professional fees. You can ask him to add a few gaias for the time you spent listening to the speech.”

  Bruna felt the sting of the small slight. It was as if she’d been slapped. And in a way, deservedly so.

  “I’m sorry if I seemed rude earlier on, but—”

  Myriam completely ignored her and continued to speak. Or rather, to give orders.

  “Just one more thing: I want you to go and see Pablo Nopal.”

  “Who?”

  “Nopal. The memory writer. You don’t know who he is? Well, you should. Unfortunately for him, he’s quite well known.”

  In fact, Pablo Nopal’s name did ring a vague bell with Bruna. Wasn’t he the one who’d been accused of murder?

  “He had problems with the law, didn’t he?”

  “Exactly so.”

  “I don’t remember much. I don’t like memorists.”

  “All the worse for you, because I think that in this instance you’ll have to talk with a few. Go and see Nopal right away. He might know who wrote the adulterated memories. And then come and tell me. I want you to give your reports to me alone. That’s all for now, Bruna Husky. I hope to have some news from you soon.”

  “Just a minute. We haven’t talked about your personal security. I think you should change your habits and take certain additional measures. Maybe we should—”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve been threatened with death, and I know perfectly well how to defend myself. Moreover,
I have an excellent head of security, as I’ve told you. And now, if you don’t mind, I have a complicated morning in front of me.”

  Bruna stood up and shook the woman’s hand. A hard, rough hand despite the fingernails painted a delicate shade of pastel blue. On the wall behind Myriam’s chair there was the inevitable framed picture of Gabriel Morlay, the mythical rep reformer. How young he looked. Too young, given his fame. Chi, on the other hand, had little wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and lacked a certain freshness overall. She must already be close to her TTT, although she was still a beautiful woman. Myriam’s attractiveness hit Bruna again like a splash of cold water. The private detective felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable. She suspected she’d behaved like an idiot. She expelled that irritating thought from her head and tried to concentrate on her new assignment. She’d have to speak with that excellent head of security, she said to herself. The fact that she was Myriam Chi’s life partner not only didn’t exonerate her but turned her into a suspect as well. It was statistically proven that money and love were the main causes of violent crimes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After her interview with Chi, Bruna went back home on the sky-tram and, before heading up to her apartment, stopped off at the supermarket on the corner to stock up on provisions and buy a new card for purified water. During those periods when she didn’t have work, the android never found a moment to attend to her daily needs, despite supposedly having all the time in the world. Her pantry emptied, surfaces became covered with layers of dust, and the sheets stayed on her bed so long that they acquired an almost solid smell. Whenever she picked up a job, however, Bruna needed to organize her surroundings in order to feel that her head was in shape. Having a sharp mind was an essential requirement of her profession. The mark of a great detective wasn’t her investigative skills but her ability to think on her toes. So, after putting the shopping away in the kitchen and inserting the water card in the meter, Bruna spent a few hours cleaning and tidying her apartment, washing her dirty clothes, and throwing out the empty bottles that were lined up like tenpins by the door.

  Then she served herself a glass of white wine, sat down in front of the main screen, and for a few minutes enjoyed the neat calmness of her apartment. She set herself to thinking about her new case and how to approach it. The first steps in an investigation were important; if you made a mistake, you could sometimes end up wasting a lot of time and adding confusion to what was already confused. She grabbed her electronic tablet—since taking notes by hand seemed to help her think—and started to jot down the ideas that were buzzing around in her head. Though she wasn’t creating a list of priorities, a rebellious streak made her leave the memorist for later, disregarding the words of the rep leader, who had insisted that she start with him. But she did write on the tablet, Why is Chi interested in Nopal? Underneath, she added other phrases using the stylus: Hologram, Threats against Chi, Lock register, Traffickers, Document four other cases, Victims—chance or choice? After hesitating for a moment, she added Pablo Nopal. She told herself that putting him in eighth place was rebellious enough.

  She opened the holograph, took out the chip, put it in her computer and began to examine the image minutely using an analysis program. It was the same program the police used, a powerful tool that immediately deconstructed the original fragment of Myriam and showed the image’s ID properties, which, understandably, corresponded to those of the RRM. As for the additional footage, the program couldn’t find the original sequence on the web, so it performed a hypothetical reconstruction. It was the gutting of a pig and might have originated in a legitimate slaughterhouse, because the animal seemed to have been killed first in the regulation manner, using anesthesia and a stun gun. The image’s ID properties had been carefully erased, together with all its electronic tags, making it almost impossible to track down. Although there were now fewer and fewer slaughterhouses—in part due to a growing sensitivity toward animals, and in part because in order to reduce CO2 emissions, the government required meat eaters to acquire an expensive license—hundreds of them were still in operation across the planet. Moreover, the recording could have been made at any stage during the last three years, this being the software’s maximum life span, according to the program. As to the chip itself and the holograph ball, they were basic, everyday products, the sort any kid could buy in the local corner store to make a hologram to take to school. It would be very difficult to extract useful data from them. Nevertheless, Bruna started an exhaustive analysis of the sequence with the pig and left it running in the background. The analysis program would take hours to complete its task.

  She decided to take a break and eat something. She put an individual serving of compressed fish cakes into the Chef Express, and in one minute it was ready. She removed the lid, poured herself another glass of wine, and returned to sit in front of the main screen, eating straight from the container.

  “Find Pablo Nopal,” she said out loud.

  Various possibilities came up, and Bruna touched one, leaving a faint, greasy food stain on the screen. The man’s image came up instantly, a life-size 3-D head shot on the right-hand side of the screen, with various film clips on the left. Dark hair, slim, with a long, narrow nose, thin lips, big black eyes. An attractive guy. He was thirty-five: TTT age, had he been a rep. But he wasn’t. According to the records, Nopal was a playwright and novelist, as well as a memorist. And he did indeed enjoy a certain celebrity—not just for his books, which were well received, but also for a couple of scandals in his past. Seven years earlier, he had been accused of the murder of his elderly uncle, a patrician millionaire. Nopal just happened to be the sole beneficiary. He even spent a few months in custody, but in the end, there was some murky business about contaminated evidence, and Nopal was cleared due to lack of evidence.

  His reputation was tarnished, however, and many people continued to believe that he was guilty; in fact, the government stopped commissioning memories from him because of it all, so he hadn’t gone back to being a practicing memorist. At least not officially, Bruna thought to herself, because black market memories also needed memorists to write them. Three years after his acquittal, Nopal was implicated in another violent death—this time, of his private secretary. He had been the last to see the victim alive, and for a time he was targeted by the police, although in the end he was never even accused. Naturally, both incidents increased the sales of his books. There was nothing like a really bad reputation to make you famous in this world.

  Bruna studied Nopal’s face. Yes, it was attractive, but it was also disturbing. An easygoing smile but too sardonic, too tough. An indecipherable expression in his eyes. He had published three novels, the first a few months after his uncle’s death. The title was The Violent Ones, and the book’s publication had been celebrated with a small cultural event. Bruna typed in her password and credit account number, paid five gaias for the book, and downloaded the text onto her electronic tablet. She planned to just glance through it, but she began to read and couldn’t stop. It was a short, unsettling novel, the story of a boy who lived in one of the Zero Air Zones. Bruna had been in one of those supercontaminated, marginal sectors during her time in the military, and she had to admit that the author knew how to convey the desperate and poisonous atmosphere of those wretched holes. What happened was that the boy became friends with the recently arrived adolescent daughter of a judge. Magistrates, like doctors, police, and other socially necessary professionals, were posted to the Dirty Air Sectors on double salary, and for no longer than a year, to prevent any health repercussions. Bruna knew that even under those conditions, many refused to go. The novel told the story of the relationship between the two youths during those twelve months. At the end of that time, the night before the judge and her family were to leave, the two adolescents killed her with a hammer. The scene was brutal, but the novel was written in a way that was so convincing, so true to life, and so distressing that Bruna experienced a genuine complicity with the killers and wante
d them to escape justice. Which they didn’t, so the end of the story was depressing.

  Bruna switched off the tablet. She was numb from having spent several hours in the same position and had the strangest feeling of grief. There was something in that damn novel that seemed to have spoken directly to her. Something strangely close to home, recognizable. Something bordering on the unbearable. Four years, three months, and twenty-three days.

  She leaped up and paced back and forth feverishly. The apartment had only two rooms: a lounge-kitchen, and a bedroom. Neither of them was very big, so two strides took her to a wall, and she had to turn around. She looked through the picture-window; the city shimmered and hummed in the dark. She approached the large jigsaw puzzle board: she’d been doing the puzzle on it for more than two months, but there was still a central hole of about a hundred pieces to be filled. It was one of the hardest puzzles she’d ever undertaken: an image of the universe, with a great deal of blackness, and few celestial bodies from which to get her bearings. She looked at the jagged edges of the hole for a moment and fiddled with the loose pieces, trying to find one that would fit. Hidden order within chaos. Usually when she was solving jigsaw puzzles, she felt closer to serenity than at any other moment in her edgy life, but right now she couldn’t concentrate, and she ended up abandoning the puzzle without having managed to place a single piece. It was Nopal’s fault, she thought, and the fault of that revolting novel that had hit so close to home. Those damn memorists were all equally perverse, equally repugnant. And then, as on so many other occasions when anxiety was exploding inside her body, Bruna decided to go for a run—physical tiredness was the best tranquilizer. She put on an old pair of track pants and sneakers, and left the apartment. When she hit the street, it was midnight on the dot.