Tears in Rain Part 23

And he cut the link. The rep was left staring at the screen, flabbergasted. What? He wasn't even going to bother to argue with her? Four years, three months, and fourteen days. Four years, three months, and fourteen days, she repeated mechanically. But she didn't feel any less devastated.

Just then a call came through on Annie Heart's mobile from the supremacist Serra. Of course, Bruna thought gloomily. No doubt my meetings with the supremacist and the pirate will coincide. When things were going badly, they usually got worse. She answered with the screen switched off.

"What can I do for you?"

"You're lucky. Hericio will see you. In half an hour's time, in front of Saturn."

The detective caught her breath.

"No."

"No?"

"No, not today. Tomorrow."

She could sense the man's stunned silence.

"What do you mean, not today?" he said, finally.

"Look, you're the lucky ones, not me, because I could be a good contributor to your cause. If Hericio wants to see me, it means you've already checked out my good intentions. Fine, so now I want to check out yours. Since I'm going to give you a tidy sum of money, I want you to treat me well, politely, even with a little respect. What's this business of expecting me to come running like a dog when you whistle? It will be tomorrow or not at all, because I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. And since I'm generous, I'll let you choose the time. I have all the time in the world for Hericio tomorrow."

She stopped talking and held her breath, amazed at her own audacity.

"All right. I'll see what I can do," grunted Serra before disconnecting.

Bruna slowly released the air from her lungs. She hoped she hadn't ruined everything. She pushed the chair back to stand up and the wheels jammed: they were caught up in some frayed rags. Intrigued, the detective pulled on the fabric, and tight little b.a.l.l.s of half-chewed cloth began to emerge. She had just discovered one of Bartolo's secret stashes of food; the chair's hollow leg was filled to bursting with a haul of various rags. Bruna emptied the tube-initially with irritation, then with a certain tenderness, and finally with something akin to longing. But her mood turned foul when she realized that she almost missed the silly animal and that she was even contemplating storing the rags somewhere. This is definitely not my day, she said to herself as she threw the rags into the incinerator.

At least she left her apartment on time, and after catching the subway and two sky-trams, she reached the designated location on the outskirts of Madrid. It was a former industrial zone that had fallen into disrepair. Almost all the premises were closed and a good number were in ruins. Weeds were growing in the cracks in the walls, and small mountains of ancient refuse had fossilized in the roadways, creating a soggy mess that time and rain had leeched of color. There was hardly any traffic moving on the streets, which were full of potholes and laid out in a grid. In the ten minutes she spent wandering around until she found the warehouse, she didn't meet a single pedestrian. A charming place.

Warehouse 17-B in Sector 4 looked like just another ruin, which was why it took Bruna some time to find it. The whole zone lacked GPS tags, which showed its age and degree of deterioration. The detective had to find the warehouse by sight, as almost all the signs were either ripped off or covered, making them illegible. In fact, the bra.s.s plate for 17-B was on the ground next to the warehouse door. It looked as if it had fallen off, but when Bruna tried to pick the bra.s.s plate up, she discovered that it was bolted to the pavement. The sliding front door of the warehouse-the only visible entrance-was misshapen, rust-ridden, and twisted, and looked as if it hadn't been opened for years and would never be opened again.

"h.e.l.lo? Is anyone here?"

She banged on the rusted metal panel a few times without much enthusiasm, asking herself if she'd gotten the address wrong. She was about to ring Nopal to confirm the location of the appointment when suddenly the door lifted upward, silently and easily. Bruna stepped inside and the door noiselessly lowered itself again behind her. Clearly, it was a new system and in good shape; the broken, rusted exterior was merely a facade. The detective looked around. She was in a small, white, empty vestibule.

"Enter the lift and push b.u.t.ton B," ordered a computer-synthesized voice.

It was a gray freight elevator, an industrial relic from the twenty-first century. There were only three b.u.t.tons: A, B, and C. She pressed the one she'd been told to press, and the box shook and started to rise very slowly. When it stopped and opened its doors, she found herself in a large living room, richly decorated in neocosmic style. Floating divans and form-hugging sofas in the latest style shared s.p.a.ce with select antique pieces-an art deco desk, a small Chinese chest of drawers. The walls displayed animated images of panoramic vistas: a beautiful deserted beach and, in the background, a white village at the foot of a mountain. The design of the landscape artwork was ingenious and it seemed as if the walls of the room were actually huge, outward-looking windows. The pictures even maintained continuity, so that if a dog was running across one wall it moved on to the next wall without losing the appropriate perspective. A really expensive piece of work.

"Come in. Over here."

The s.p.a.ce was so big and so full of furniture that initially Bruna had trouble working out where the voice was coming from. Eventually she located its owner in a group of red divans. They studied each other as Bruna walked toward him. He was a young man and very slender. But when she reached him, the rep realized that the smooth, childlike little face was the product of surgery. He was undoubtedly much older than he seemed to be at first sight. Close up, he had a plastic, inexpressive appearance. Unpleasant.

"Looks like being a mem pirate is pretty lucrative," said Bruna by way of a greeting.

The man's mouth formed what was presumably a smile. But it was so tightly stretched that the corners couldn't bend.

"Yes, business isn't bad. I'll take your remark as a compliment, since I'm doing you the favor of seeing you...to give you certain information that is of interest to you. So I won't a.s.sume that you are so stupid as to insult me as soon as you arrive. No, I'll presume you have been surprised by this beautiful apartment, and your sentence is an implicit recognition of how lovely it is."

Bruna swallowed. The man was right. She cursed herself for being a big mouth and, in particular, she cursed the aggression that memorists aroused in her. The memory of Nopal, and Nopal's arms as they were dancing, flashed through her mind like a searing wind. It was even worse if memorists didn't bring out her aggression.

"You're right, it was a compliment. It's just that we replicants aren't very good at social niceties. Of course I'm impressed with your home. May I sit down?"

The man nodded his a.s.sent and Bruna dropped into the divan facing him. The piece of furniture swayed slightly in the air as she lowered herself into it.

"I'm even more impressed by the fact that you have agreed to see me. Why did you?"

"For that, you have to thank Nopal," the memorist answered, waving a skeletal hand in front of him.

"Are you friends?"

The man snorted sarcastically.

"Friends. I wouldn't say that. Hmmm...not exactly friends, no. But I'm seeing you because he asked me to."

"Then Nopal must be very persuasive, because on top of everything you've received me in your own home. Extraordinary. Very...intimate."

The man made the same attempt at a smile as before. His excessive, crude plastic surgery didn't match the exquisiteness of the apartment. His clothing seemed vulgar as well: ostentatious but tasteless black velvet, never mind the gold necklaces strangling his skinny neck. Clearly the guy was out of place in this refined environment.

"I don't have much time. Are you going to waste it talking about Pablo Nopal?" he growled.

"I'd rather we talked about the mems."

"Which ones?"

"The doctored ones. The ones that make the replicants go mad and then kill them."

"I know nothing about those. I never killed anyone. Pirate, yes; murderer, no. I only work with traffickers I trust. Reliable people. They have the customers, they get a hold of the hardware; I restrict myself to writing the content."

"Right. And I a.s.sume you know nothing about who might be behind the deadly implants either."

"Well, you do hear things out there. I know it's someone from outside."

Labari was Bruna's immediate thought.

"Outside Earth, you mean?"

"Outside the profession."

"Yours is a profession?" she asked, disappointed.

"As much as yours, with the difference that I am more professional than you."

Bruna sighed.

"I don't doubt it. Forgive me. But if you really are so good, you would have been asked to write the killer mems."

"I've already told you I didn't."

"How many are you? I mean, how many illegal memorists like you are there out there?"

"Like me, there's no one. I'm the best. But apart from me, maybe a half dozen."

"And which of them might have done it?"

"Of those, none."

"Why not?"

"The majority of the mem pirates are very bad. They use random plots bought on the black market and images synthesized by a computer. Their mems are garbage. But those killer memories are incredible. Unusual, very unusual. I've never seen anything like them. Very violent and full of hate, but also full of truth. There's definitely a writer behind them. Someone who's desperate to express himself. They're short-barely forty scenes-but they're good. The pirates I know would never have been capable of making them."

"You astonish me. How do you know about the content on the killer mems?"

"Well, we all have our contacts...and it's my profession. What's more, you could say that my life depends on it."

"You say they're unusual. Is that why you think there are new traffickers in town?"

"No, no. I didn't say that. That's what's so strange about the whole business. There aren't any new traffickers. There aren't any new memorists. There's no adulterated consignment. No one's putting killer mems on the market. No one's selling them. It's not a commercial operation. It's not drug related. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Bruna thought for a moment, processing the man's words.

"You're saying that the victims didn't buy the implants voluntarily, that the memories were inserted by force, and that they probably weren't random victims but they've been chosen for a reason."

"That's it."

Which meant that not just Chi but also all the other replicants were likely to have been carefully selected according to some plan.

"Then why are they killing the regular traffickers as well?"

The memorist scratched the tip of his ear nervously.

"Hmmm...That's a good question. I'd love to know the answer."

He was scared. The man was frightened, the rep suddenly realized. That explained a few things.

"You're frightened that they'll kill you too. That's why you wanted to talk to me."

"I've already told you that seeing you had to do with Nopal. But it's logical that the deaths alarm me. As the saying goes, there's no smoke without fire."

"And you don't have a theory?"

"What about you? You're the detective, after all."

Bruna furrowed her brow in thought.

"At first I thought it was a battle for the market, to get rid of the compet.i.tion."

"No. It doesn't look like they want to finish everyone off. They've only killed one of my regular colleagues. I was in his company, together with another trafficker, when they killed him, but they didn't touch the other one. It would seem that they also pick and choose."

"Perhaps because of something they know?"

The memorist went pale. That's why he's had such savage surgery, said Bruna to herself. Everything was starting to make sense. It wasn't plastic surgery but a complete change to his looks and his ident.i.ty. Here was a man who intended to hide, a fugitive.

"Because of something they know," the mem pirate repeated gloomily.

"About that secret EU project to implant artificial mems with induced-behavior programs into humans, for example?"

The idea had suddenly occurred to her out of the blue. The android tended to run with those sudden flashes of intuition. She was convinced that sometimes those thoughts worked their way into her mind because somehow she had picked them up from her surroundings. The batch of combat replicants to which Bruna belonged had been provided with an experimental enzyme, nexin, which supposedly boosted their ability to empathize, to make links. The experiments hadn't been conclusive and the enzyme was officially considered a failure, but whatever the bioengineers might say, it seemed to the detective that nexin worked-at least from time to time. The memorist cringed.

"How do you know about that?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"As you put it, we all have our contacts."

The man seemed uncomfortable.

"It's a very...ahem...I took part, yes. I don't mind telling you that. I took part in those experiments. They were secret, true, but official. A matter of state. And then, when they hurriedly and unpleasantly shut down the program, they made my life impossible. They accused me of things I hadn't done. They expelled me from the profession. They didn't allow me to return to my work as a memorist. And I was the best. I am the best. That's why they hired me."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"It was an outrage!"

"And who were the people who did that to you?"

The man grimaced.

"I don't intend to say any more. I've already said too much. It's dangerous."

"But those wretches who hired you and then destroyed your life, they deserve to have people know what they've done."

Furious, the man retorted, "If it were known, I'd already be dead! Do you think I'm an imbecile? Don't try to make me feel outraged. You won't get any more information out of me by using such a crude tactic."

Bruna raised her hands in a gesture of appeas.e.m.e.nt.

"Okay, fine, my apologies. It's true that I was trying to ingratiate myself...somewhat. But it's also true that I find it a terrible story. And it could be the reason for the murders. Who was running the project? Who did this to you?"

The memorist screwed up his eyes and bit his lower lip. But he was too angry to be able to contain himself.

"It wasn't the fault of the person leading the scientific section. In fact, the scientists were also..."

The man suddenly stopped speaking and stared at Bruna wide-eyed, with his deformed mouth wide open. It all happened in a fraction of a second-the immobility, the shocked expression-and then a stream of blood gushed from his mouth. By that stage, the rep had already flung herself headlong onto the floor and rolled under the floating divan. The air smelled of burnt caramel-the smell of plasma-and of the sickly sweet smell of blood. Plasma shots didn't make a sound, so you only knew someone was shooting at you when the cold light opened up a hole in you. Bruna crawled under the sofas and sought protection behind the Ming chest of drawers. She took out her own gun, which seemed so small in her large hand, and tried to weigh up her options. From behind her precarious barricade, she couldn't see anyone. The memorist had fallen facedown on the floor; the shot had entered through his neck and seemed to have split his windpipe. They must have used a black plasma gun, an illegal weapon of the sort that turned its luminous impulse into a broad beam when it hit the target. That was the reason why so much blood had come out of the memorist's mouth, the reason for the instant destruction. Anyway, the shot must have come from the door. It was the only entrance to the place, right next to the elevator, and it clearly led to the stairs. She held her breath and listened carefully. She couldn't hear anything other than the liquid bubbling of the dead man's blood. And she couldn't see anything either.

But the a.s.sailant, or a.s.sailants, must still be there.

Or maybe they'd only wanted to kill the memorist?

She waited.

And waited. Surely they're gone already, she thought. The Chinese chest of drawers she was trying to shelter behind was of no more use against a black plasma gun than a sheet of paper. If the a.s.sa.s.sin had wanted to kill her too, he would have done so already. Cautiously, and following the route she'd previously worked out, Bruna moved from the chest of drawers to the big armchair, from the big armchair to the table, and from the table to the desk. There she stopped, because the worst part came next, an un.o.bstructed and relatively long stretch to the door. The warehouse didn't have any windows but instead was illuminated by solar panels, so she'd have to leave the same way she had come in, but taking the staircase rather than the elevator, which could turn into a cramped trap. Use the same route that the a.s.sailant had no doubt taken.