Part 17 (1/2)

When he was close to the end of his 10/35 years, Merlin disappeared. He left. Bruna finally managed to locate him: he'd moved to a hotel. The detective, for whom eloquence had never been a strong point, nevertheless managed to make Merlin understand that watching him die from afar would be even more painful. So Merlin returned, and they were still able to enjoy a few months of serenity before his TTT manifested itself.

When the illness appeared, they went to the Scottish Highlands. Bare, windswept land, with brooks like threads of mercury flowing through black banks. They both liked cold, remote, inhospitable places-one of those shared oddities that formed the basis of their love. That was why, when Merlin decided to withdraw into the dark like a wounded dog, he chose that distant corner. They installed themselves in a small, very old rented cottage, which they immediately filled with their pathetic cargo of medical equipment and medication. The smell of illness and poisoned time. The slow, oppressive time of dying. Death stalked them like a predator, tarnis.h.i.+ng everything with suffering, but Bruna still remembered one night when it was raining, with raindrops drumming on the window just as they were now, and Merlin was dozing by her side in bed, momentarily relieved from his suffering while she, lying on top of the bedspread, read a novel by the yellow light of a small lamp. From time to time, she would glance over at her lover-his back, so familiar but now so bony; his emaciated features; the beard he had acquired. Because the nails and hair of the dying keep growing: while everything else is collapsing, those small cells continue to weave their substance with a blind and desperately tenacious vitality. A useless organic effort that cast a shadow over Merlin's cheeks and made his beautiful face seem ever more gaunt. Bruna knew that, just before the end, the profile of sick people became sharper, as if to cleave the darkness, penetrate the shadows like the prow of a s.h.i.+p. Her lover's face had already begun to sharpen. But they were together and they were still alive; and outside, the wind whistled and the rain whispered its desolate song, turning the bedroom into a refuge. That night, time stopped and there was a strange peace within the pain.

At times Bruna felt such acute pain that she thought she wouldn't be able to bear it.

But afterward, she always could.

Tears in rain. Everything would pa.s.s and everything would be quickly forgotten. Even suffering.

She took another sip of wine and looked at her reproduction of Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. The maid, arms crossed, was waiting, for her mistress to finish writing so that she could then undoubtedly take away the letter. She wasn't in a hurry. While she waited, she wasn't required to work; it was a small break in her day. She was a young girl with a chubby face. She was standing in the background and gazing with quiet pleasure out of the window through which a clean, early morning light was entering. It must have been a lovely day outside. The girl was enjoying the suns.h.i.+ne, her youth, and her health, the perfect serenity of the moment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The joy of life captured in an instant. That painting moved Bruna because it was like a slice of time outside time. It made her feel the way she had felt that rainy night next to Merlin. That night, while her lover was dying, she was immortal. Almost like a human.

Just then a robot courier beeped at her door and Bruna gave a start. Her nerves were on edge. It was a high-security delivery, so she had to allow the robot to do a DNA check before she could pick up the sealed, waterproof container. How the devil has Mirari gotten hold of my DNA? the rep wondered, somewhat annoyed. The violinist was a dangerous woman. Bruna broke the seals and took out a wrist computer-mobile, a data chip, and an ID tag that was so perfectly made it was even a bit battered, as if it had been used a lot. She inserted the tag in the computer and confirmed that she was a thirty-year-old woman called Annie Heart from Tavistock, Devon, in what used to be Great Britain, and a professor of applied robotics at the Asimov Technical University in New Barcelona. This was followed by the usual encrypted files, which contained the remaining details about Heart: medical history; genetic profile; student record; employment history; dental record; financial and banking details; security reports; incidents involving the police or criminal acts; a list of activities and interests and the like-almost a hundred different references that could only be opened if you had the various authorization codes. Naturally, as the owner of the ID she could without a doubt consult all of them. She would have to study them carefully so as to know this Annie Heart, the woman she would become for a few days. But before doing that, she inserted the data chip into the slot in the computer. Mirari's face appeared on the screen.

”I only guarantee full cover for ID checks for six days. Five is better, to stay within the safe zone. As far as the mobile is concerned, I've bought you a month's usage with a clandestine satellite, so it will only be untraceable for that period. Check file FF3. I think I've done a good job,” she said.

And she smiled a small, cheeky smile, totally out of character for the normally stern violinist. The chip switched itself off. File FF3 was a police report. Annie Heart had been arrested three days ago during a supremacist demonstration in New Barcelona and accused of having taken part in a beating handed out to a technohuman. But she had been released a few hours later because, apart from the confused testimony of the victim, there were no witnesses against her and Heart was neither politically active nor had she ever been in any radical human group, and she maintained that she had simply been pa.s.sing by. Bruna smiled; it was a perfect touch, just what she needed. Mirari's work was impeccable.

The rep verified on the computer that, just as Habib had told her, the HSP had applied for a funding permit. Political parties didn't receive any funding from the state. They kept themselves afloat with party members.h.i.+ps and donations, but the latter were strictly regulated, and to receive them, they had to have a funding permit. FPs were valid for two, four, or six months, and during that period, the party could ask for and receive donations from private individuals or companies, subject to the prior payment of a certain amount of money to the Tax Office. It was a.s.sumed that this money was to pay the inspectors who controlled the transactions, but in reality it was a type of indirect tax whose imposition caused considerable resentment. That a party such as the HSP, so reluctant to recognize the legality of the state, would compromise itself by asking for an FP suggested deep financial need, or imminent plans, or both. The Supremacists' FP was valid for two months, and there were only two weeks left. They'll probably be keen to collect as much as possible before they run out of time, thought Bruna. And that might suit her very well.

The rep spent the next hour and a half studying the details of her false ident.i.ty and eating a huge portion of precooked rice with tofu. Bartolo was snoring. Then she tidied the house, made the bed, placed three pieces in her puzzle and listened to a Brahms concerto. The greedy-guts continued to sleep like a log. Then the rep was struck by a sudden intuition. She sat down in front of the main screen and did a search on the word hungry. The seventh entry in the list of options read HUNGRY.

The best multi-entertainment center in Madrid A multipurpose venue to satisfy every conceivable craving.

12 Iris Avenue. Open 24 hours, 365 days of the year.

So Hungry was the name of a club. In fact, she now had a vague recollection of having seen it in ads or on the news. It was a multi-e, as they were referred to colloquially: a mega-entertainment center that accommodated diverse tastes, with restaurants, bars, discos, virtual games, all of them with the latest technology, always emphasizing the spectacular, and with zones dedicated to the tastes of reps and aliens. The rep had been in a multi-e in Paris. And it was quite entertaining. Maybe that was what Bartolo had been referring to with his incessant ”hungry”; maybe Cata Cain had hung out in the place. There would be no harm in taking a stroll out that way and checking it out.

Four hours later, Bruna left her apartment wearing a lilac dress, one of her favorites, with the ethereal and luminous gold pectoral hanging around her neck. She was very elegant, maybe overly so, she thought, when she got to Iris Avenue. It was an industrial zone on the outskirts of Madrid. Number 12 was a round, six-story tower. There were no windows except on the top floor, which was occupied by the main restaurant, and the outside walls had a luminous, opalescent overlay that slowly changed color. On the roof there was an enormous sign that said ”Hungry” in fiery letters. It must have been some holograph trick. Night had already fallen and the huge lobby of the multi-e was quite full with a motley crowd of people, from young boys who seemed barely over the curfew age, to Kalinians with safety pins stuck through their cheeks, and middle-aged, well-heeled, conventional-looking couples. Bruna stopped in front of one of the interactive information boards and checked out the various options on offer. Above her head, on a public screen, Inmaculada Cruz, the regional president, was furiously talking in the chamber. It seemed that the opposition had moved a censure motion against her. The whole situation continued to unfold with an inexorable escalation in tension. The detective looked around and couldn't see any other technohuman. She was on her own with her elegant outfit and her gold necklace.

She approached a young man with shaved eyebrows at the information booth in the middle of the lobby and showed him a picture of Cata Cain.

”Does she ring a bell?”

”Oh, yes, poor Cain...We were all horrified,” answered the man matter-of-factly.

”Oh, yes? She was that well known around here? Did she come often?”

”What do you mean, did she come often? Cain worked here...in the lunar disco.”

Bruna frowned.

”Really? Since when? And why didn't anyone say so? As far as I was aware, Cata had an administrative job with a hotel business.”

”Well, what she did here was just part-time work. She helped with the management of the disco-maintenance, logistics, accounts. She'd been coming here to do a few hours in the afternoon for about four months. Until one day she stopped coming. And two days later she was dead. But ask on the next floor; they had more to do with her.”

Taking the young man's advice, Bruna went up one floor to the lunar disco. She held her mobile against the electronic eye and was charged thirty Gs. It was a very expensive place. The metallic doors opened with a pneumatic sigh and the rep found herself on a small balcony of sorts that overlooked a vast circular room. The dance floor was at one end, and next to it, slightly elevated, as if it were suspended in the air, was the gleaming, opal-like bar. And the rest of the s.p.a.ce was filled with comfortable floating sofas on which people could sit or lie as they drank and chatted. A dark luminosity, a restrained brilliance, prevailed, and the decor mimicked outer s.p.a.ce, with stars and planets spinning slowly in the distance. It was really well done: you felt as if you were floating in the blackness of the cosmos, and that effect was heightened by the gravity, which was lower inside the disco than outside. Bruna started to go down one of the two staircases inside the disco and felt the drunkenness of a relative lack of gravity-that wonderful, deceptive lightness. Despite the club's name, there was no doubt its gravity was not as low as the moon's, a sixth of the Earth's. But it might be at two-thirds. Bruna had to make a real effort to stop herself from taking off and tumbling down the stairs.

She headed for the bar with springy, elastic strides and had to grab the counter to come to a halt. The low gravity was entertaining. It was very entertaining. It created a sense of bubbly light-headedness and irresponsibility. As if nothing bad could happen to you while your body weighed so little.

Bruna spilled her entire first gla.s.s of white wine all over her face because she lifted it up too quickly, and her fit of laughter lasted some minutes. The barman laughed along with her in a friendly way, although you could see that he was used to such disasters. Still with tears in her eyes, the rep asked him about Cata Cain. She seemed to be a nice person, the man answered. Timid, reserved, hard-working. She didn't have any friends. She didn't confide in anyone. She didn't go out with anyone. There was nothing special to say about her. Or maybe there was, the barman suddenly added, throwing a discreet glance at the other end of the bar; she had a drink a couple of times with that woman over there.

Bruna took a look. She was a gangly woman, maybe as tall as Bruna, but very thin, wrapped in a purple habit of sorts, with lank hair parted in the middle falling on either side of her bony face. She was leaning on a corner of the bar, staring vacantly into her drink, a tall gla.s.s with a phosph.o.r.escent pink liquid. There was something sad and slightly repulsive about the woman. The detective grabbed her drink and went over to her.

”Hi.”

The woman gave her a hostile look and didn't answer.

”My name's Bruna.”

The woman remained silent and managed to do it in such a way that the silence became menacing. Her hair was lank because it was very dirty: two curtains of heavy, greasy hair consuming her face. In the hollow of her neck, there was a small, dark green tattoo: the letter S in heavy ink curved over itself, oppressive and contorted. It was a Labaric script, for sure. And the purple color of the shapeless habit.

”That's a letter of power...and you're a Labarian. I'd never have expected Ones to hang out in Earthling discos. I thought you were forbidden such excesses.”

The woman looked at her angrily and then downed her drink in one gulp. The drink seemed to calm her down a little.

”I'm not a Labarian. Not anymore. Hey, you, same again.”

”Let me get it. And I'll have the same, too. What is it?”

”Iridescent redcurrant vodka with oxytocin. The strongest dose allowed by law,” said the barman.

”You don't say. I could do with that.”

Oxytocin in small doses encouraged empathy and affection. That was why it was called the love drug. It must have been having an effect on the greasy-haired collection of skin and bones as well, because she now seemed more approachable. The barman brought over two tall, luminous gla.s.ses, and the rep hastened to have a drink, hoping that the woman would do likewise, and the drug would soften her up a bit more. It worked. When the gangly woman put her half-empty gla.s.s down on the bar, she turned toward Bruna and pulled back one of the curtains of hair covering her face. She leaned forward slightly, showing the rep the right-hand side of her face: there was a third eye on her temple or rather, the beginnings of an eye-an eyeball only partially covered by a rudimentary and rigid eyelid, a grayish-white film covering the iris and the pupil. She let her hair fall back again and sat back.

”You're a mutant,” said Bruna.

”That's why they expelled me from Labari. I was doing TP transfers for them. I was working in the mine the Kingdom has on Potosi, and when I was deformed by atomic disorder, the Ones threw me off the Floating World.”

”How many transfers did you do?”

”Eight.”

”How barbaric! That's illegal! The Agreements of Ca.s.siopeia forbid more than six teleportations!”

”But the Kingdom of Labari didn't sign the agreements. People TP indefinitely there. They a.s.sume that the One Sacred Principle defends you from everything bad. If you're a pure enough person, the principle will protect you. The Ones who are good never suffer from atomic disorder.”

”That's idiotic. It's not a matter of faith but of statistics and science.”

”Well, that's what I thought...and I think that sometimes, I still believe it,” observed the woman darkly. ”On Labari they use TP disorder for their sacred trials. If two people from the upper castes-priests or masters-have a serious lawsuit to resolve, they put themselves under the protection of the One Principle and begin to TP themselves, and the one who suffers TP disorder is the guilty one. The sacred trials are open to the public, and I've attended a few and I can a.s.sure you that they work.”

”What do you mean by they work?”

”That one of the contestants is unscathed and the other is punished with a deformity.”

”By all the d.a.m.n species, what nonsense! The contestants in those trials undoubtedly transfer, and continue to transfer, until one of them mutates, right?”