by Rosa Montero
Bruna gasped for air.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
She put a hand up to her head to relieve her headache and contain the riot of horrific thoughts. Stealthily, she made her way around the bed until she was close to the face of the sleeping occupant—a wide, flat nose; bushy eyebrows; greenish skin.
She had slept with a bicho.
She felt like throwing up.
But had she really slept with a bicho? What she meant was, had she...? Merely exploring the idea in her head turned her legs to jelly. She had to sit down on the bed so that she wouldn’t fall. And that movement woke the alien.
The alien opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyes were honey colored, with a melancholy expression. He was an Omaá. Frantic, Bruna tried to remember what she knew about Omaás. They were the most numerous Others on Earth because, apart from the diplomatic delegation, there were the thousands of refugees who had fled from the religious wars on their world. Those refugees were the poorest aliens precisely because they were stateless, and that meant they were the most despised of the bichos. They were...hermaphrodites? Or was that the Balabís? Hell’s bells! Bruna was terrified at the thought of having to see her bedmate in his entirety.
Moving slowly, meticulously and with infinite calm—the same way that a human would move in the face of a small animal he didn’t want to frighten—the bicho sat up in the bed, naked from the waist up, and with the rest of him covered by the sheet. Oh, yes, thought Bruna with faint disgust, and these are also the translucent ones. What was most disturbing about extraterrestrials was their appearance, at the same time so human and so alien. The impossible similarity of their biology. The Omaá was tall and muscular, a robust version of a man with arms and hands and nails on the ends of his—Bruna stopped to count them—six fingers. But the head—with its bristly hair and bushy eyebrows, its wide nose that resembled a snout, and its sad eyes—was too much like that of a dog. And then there was the worst part, the skin: semibluish; greenish in the wrinkles; and worst of all, semitransparent, which meant that, depending on the activity and the light, you could make out bits of the internal organs, pink suggestions of pulsating viscera. Hell, what would it feel like to touch that damn skin? She had no memory of having touched it, and if truth be told, she didn’t want to remember either. So now what were they going to do? Ask each other their names?
The bicho smiled timidly.
“Hi. I’m Maio.”
His voice had the husky roar of the sea crashing against rocks, but you could understand him all right, and his accent was more than acceptable.
“I...I’m Bruna.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
A silence bristling with unasked questions sprang up between them. And now what? the rep asked herself.
“Do you remember...Do you recall when we got home last night?” Bruna asked, finally.
“Yes.”
“In other words, you...ahem...I mean, do you remember everything?”
“Yes.”
Damn, thought Bruna, I’d rather not go on checking.
“Well, Maio, I’ve got to go. Sorry. I mean, we have to leave. Right now.”
“Okay,” said the bicho with a friendliness bordering on gentleness.
But he didn’t move.
“Come on, we’re going.”
“Yes, but I have to get up and get dressed. I’m naked.”
Oh, yes. Of course! Are Omaás that modest? Though it went without saying that she wasn’t ready to look at him either.
“I’ll get dressed, too. In the bathroom. And in the meantime, you...”
Bruna left her sentence hanging in the air, grabbed her clothes from the previous night so that she wouldn’t have to waste time looking for something else, and locked herself in the bathroom. Dazed, her head still splitting with pain, she had a short vapor shower and then put on the metallic skirt and T-shirt again. She grunted with displeasure when she realized that she didn’t have any underwear at hand and remembered what she’d done with her panties the night before. Not having the garment now really annoyed her. She wet her face with a tiny jet of her really expensive water in an attempt to clear her head and then stealthily opened the door. In front of her, the alien stood waiting for her beside the bed like a well-behaved dog anxious to please. He had to be about six and a half feet tall. He was wearing a sort of tubular skirt that hung from his waist down to the middle of his calves. That was when Bruna remembered that that was how the Omaás dressed, with those skirts made from material that resembled fluffy wool in warm, earthy colors—ochre, burgundy, mustard yellow. Elegant attire, although the skirt that Maio was wearing was quite threadbare. The worst thing was that on top he was wearing a horrendous Earthling T-shirt, one of those promotional freebies, with a garish image of a frothy beer. It was two sizes too small and was stretched to bursting point across his strong chest.
“It’s to cover me up. The T-shirt. I’ve noticed that you Earthlings don’t like to look at bodies with transparent skin,” said the alien in his oceanic voice.
Yes, of course, thought Bruna. Omaás usually went about with their chests bare, apart from some wraparound belts whose usefulness was a complete mystery to the rep. Maybe they were just for decoration. Anyway, the T-shirt was awful. He was an astral beggar.
“Right. Good. Okay. Well then, let’s go,” spluttered the detective.
They left the apartment and on the way down they came across a couple of neighbors. Bruna could see the amazement in their eyes, and the fear, repugnance, and curiosity. Just what I needed, she thought. Apart from being a rep, now I’m with a bicho, and on top of that, a bicho with the grubby looks of a vagrant. When they reached the street, they stopped, facing one another. Should I have offered to let him use the bathroom? wondered Bruna, feeling slightly guilty. And shouldn’t I have offered him some breakfast? If he was a refugee, as seemed likely, maybe he was hungry. And what did these creatures eat? The problem was the alien’s sad dog look, those ever-so-human eyes that you only ever found on strays, that wretched appearance of an abandoned little animal, despite the size of his bulky body. For heaven’s sake, thought Bruna. She’d slept with some dreadful people during her craziest nights, but waking up with a bicho was going too far.
“Well, good-bye, then,” said the rep.
And she headed off without waiting for a reply, hopping onto the first travelator she came across. A few yards farther on, just before the travelator took a wide curve around a corner, she couldn’t resist the urge to look back. The alien was still standing by the entrance to her building, looking at her helplessly. Get lost, thought Bruna. And she let herself be carried on her way until she had lost sight of the bicho. Finished. Never again.
And now where am I going? she asked herself. At that very moment, an incoming call sounded on her mobile. It was Inspector Paul Lizard. Oddly enough, thought Bruna, she could still remember the Caiman’s name.
“We have a date in twenty minutes, Husky.”
“Uh-huh. I haven’t forgotten,” she lied. “I’m on my way over there.”
“So why are you on a travelator going in the opposite direction?”
The rep became irritated.
“You’re not allowed to locate anyone by satellite without their permission to do so.”
“Indeed, Husky, you’re quite right, unless you’re a judicial inspector like me. I can locate anyone I please. Incidentally, you’re going to arrive late. And if you keep going in the opposite direction, you’ll be even later.”
Bruna cut off her mobile with a smack of her hand. She’d have to go and see Lizard, although she wasn’t at all happy about it: maintaining her private detective’s license was inevitably linked to how well she got on with the police. She jumped over the handrail of the travelator onto the sidewalk and started to hunt for a cab. It was Saturday and a beautiful day, and Reina Victoria Avenue, with its central, tree-lined little park, was full of children. They were rich children, who were taking
their plush, animal-shaped robots for a walk: tigers, wolves, small dinosaurs. One little girl was even flying a few handspans above the ground with a toy reactor strapped to her back, despite the prohibitive price with which the waste of fuel and resultant excess pollution were penalized. For what it cost the child to fly for an hour, a human adult could cover the cost of two years of clean air. Bruna was used to putting up with life’s inequities, especially when they didn’t impact on her personally, but today she felt particularly irascible, and the sight of the child made her even more bad-tempered. She sat back in the cab and closed her eyes, trying to relax. Her head was still aching and she hadn’t had breakfast. When she arrived at the headquarters of the Judicial Police half an hour later, she was beginning to feel really hungry.
“Hi, Husky. Twenty minutes late.”
Paul Lizard was wearing a pink tracksuit. A pink tracksuit! It must be his idea of casual weekend attire.
“I’m hungry,” said the rep by way of a greeting.
“You are? Me too. Hold on.”
He connected with the canteen in the building and ordered pizzas, chicken-flavored sausages, fried eggs, hot rolls, fruit, cheese with toasted sunflower seeds, and lots of coffee.
“They’ll bring it to the evidence room. Come with me.”
They went into the room, which was empty, and sat down at the large holograph table. Paul ordered the lights to dim. Across the table, lit solely by the milky brightness coming from its top, the man’s face looked like stone.
“Listen, Husky, let’s play a game. A game of collaboration and exchange. You tell me something and I tell you something. Turn and turn about. And no tricks.”
Even you don’t believe that, thought Bruna, and then she also recognized that she didn’t have much to tell. Not many cards to play.
“Oh yes, Lizard? Well, then, I want you to explain to me why nobody’s talking about the adulterated memories. And what’s on those memories.”
The man smiled. A nice smile. A surprisingly charming smile that, just for a moment, seemed to change him into a different person. Younger. Less dangerous.
“You go first, of course. Tell me, how do you think your client died?”
Bruna frowned.
“Clearly, she was murdered. I mean, they implanted the adulterated memory against her will.”
“How can you be so sure that she didn’t do it voluntarily?”
“She didn’t strike me as a woman who would take drugs. Moreover, she knew about the lethal mems; she wouldn’t have risked it. Especially after being threatened.”
“Ah, yes. The famous ball that appeared in her office. What was on the ball?”
“You don’t know?” Bruna asked, surprised. “Haven’t the RRM made it available to you?”
“Habib says he hasn’t got it, that you have it.”
“I returned it to him by courier yesterday.”
“Well, I’ve just spoken to him and he hasn’t received it. The robot must have disappeared mysteriously along the way. But you analyzed the message.”
Bruna thought for a moment. The ball had been lost? It was all a bit strange.
“Hmmm, one second, Lizard. Hold on a bit. It’s your turn to give me information, now.”
Paul agreed.
“Fine. Have a look at these people.”
The holograph images of three individuals began to form on the tabletop—three corpses: a man with a perfectly round and neat hole in his forehead, definitely a laser shot; another man with his throat cut, covered in blood; and a woman with half her face blown off, maybe by a conventional explosive bullet or by a plasma shot. Bruna gave a slight start; the half-face of the victim that remained was vaguely familiar. Yes, that misplaced ear was unmistakable.
“Do you recognize them?” asked the policeman.
“Only the last one. I think she’s a drug trafficker from Nuevos Ministerios. I bought a mem from her three days ago.”
“And what did you do with it? Have you used it?”
“Who are the others?”
“They’re all illicit traffickers. Known dealers. Someone has started to murder them. Could it be to take revenge for the lethal memories?”
“Or to get rid of the competition and be able to sell the adulterated merchandise? I sent the mem off for analysis. It was normal. Pirated, but harmless.”
Paul nodded in agreement again. Just then the canteen robot arrived with their lunch. The quality of the dishes probably wasn’t all that good, but they were hot and turned out to be reasonably tasty. They placed the trays on the table and, for several minutes, dedicated themselves to eating with silent relish, while the images of the three corpses continued to float around in the air. It seemed like a lot of food, but after a few minutes Bruna confirmed with some astonishment that, between the two of them, they had managed to eat all of it. The rep poured herself another coffee and looked at Lizard with a benevolence produced by her full stomach. Sharing a meal with someone when you’re hungry predisposes you to complicity and coexistence.
“Okay. I think you were going to talk to me about the content of the holograph ball Chi received,” said Lizard, pushing aside the plates.
Bruna sighed. Her hangover was much improved.
“No, no. It’s your turn. I’ve told you about the illegal mem.”
Lizard smiled and manipulated the table again. Two new corpses appeared in front of them, floating like ghosts. Two reps. Strangers.
“I don’t know who they are,” said Bruna.
“Well, as you’ll see, they’re two odd corpses. They worked for the RRM. That’s to say, they worked for an outside maintenance company whose sole client was the RRM. Does this sound familiar to you?”
The private detective maintained an impassive expression on her face.
“How did they die?” she asked, stalling for time.
“Two shots to the back of the head. Executed.”
Should she tell him or not? But she didn’t want to reveal any details Habib had given her without the android’s permission. After all, he was her client. She decided to give Lizard a different piece of information instead of that one.
“No idea. I don’t know anything about that. As far as the holograph ball is concerned, you could see Chi giving a speech at—”
“No, don’t worry about that bit; I know what the message was about. Habib told me. What I want to know is the outcome of your analysis.”
“The disembowelment images are of a pig, and there’s a fifty-one percent probability that they’re not from a legal slaughterhouse but produced domestically. And I couldn’t find a single trace, fact, clue, or ID. Just...”
“Just...?”
“Can I use your holograph table?”
“Of course.”
Bruna used her mobile computer to request access and Lizard approved it. Within seconds the menacing message took shape in front of them. The table provided magnificent resolution and the image was life size; it was quite unpleasant. When the film had finished, the detective touched her wrist screen and transferred the original video of the pig, cleaned up and reconstructed. She focused on the knife, blowing up and sharpening the image until they could see the eye of the rep.
“Hmmm. So the sequence was recorded by a technohuman,” murmured Lizard thoughtfully. “Interesting.”
“You can keep a copy of the analysis.”
“Thanks. So the two androids who worked for the RRM don’t ring a bell?”
“I’d never seen them before in my life,” Bruna replied with the calm aplomb of someone telling the truth. “But it occurs to me that you could run them through an anatomical recognition program to check if the eye you can see on the knife belongs to either of them. Speaking of which, where did you find the bodies?”
Lizard gathered up the last bits of the soft cheese on the plate with his fingers and ate them with delight. A look of concern preceded the rest of his words.
“That’s the strangest part. We found all the bodies in the same place, in Bi
ocompost C.”
In other words, in one of Madrid’s four main garbage recycling centers.
“In the garbage dump?”
“The two technos were lying on top of the most recent mountain of waste. As if they’d been carefully placed there. The garbage robots are programmed to detect any sentient waste products and raise the alarm, so they stopped work and did so. And the other, earlier bodies were partially buried in that same mountain of waste, in varying stages of decomposition. The two males must have been dead for at least a month, but the bodies were reconstructed in the holograms you’ve just seen.”
“In other words they were somewhere else and were brought to Biocompost C.”
“Exactly so. As if someone had wanted us to find all of them together so that we’d link the cases. Obvious criminal clues for idiot detectives.”
Bruna smiled. This big man with the lazy voice had a certain charm, though it wouldn’t do to trust him.
“Lizard, I know there’ve been other, earlier, similar cases of rep deaths. Earlier than the ones that came to light this week. Four others. That fascist Hericio said so on the news. And Chi was investigating them.”
Lizard raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised for the first time.
“Chi knew about them too? Well, well...Then it was the region’s worst-kept secret. And what exactly was it that she knew?”
“That they were three men and one woman, all technohumans, all suicides, and none of them killed anyone else before killing themselves. They took their own lives in different ways, all of them quite ordinary: cutting their veins, drug overdose, throwing themselves off something. The last three—I mean, the last in time, the most recent ones—gouged out one of their eyes. And they all had adulterated mems.”
