Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky Book 2) (10 page)

“What’s this diamond she was talking about?” asked Deuil, the pain audible in his voice.

“It’s a long story.”

If the Black Widow was prepared to go on maiming and killing in pursuit of the diamond, then it was obvious that neither she nor those for whom she was probably working, had it. So who had stolen it? How many opposing gangs were there in this case? And why was a cheap funerary diamond so important?

“It’s actually incredible. That stupid
bicho
of yours has saved our lives,” said Deuil, adjusting his position and emitting a small hiss of discomfort.

“He’s not a stupid
bicho
. He’s Bartolo,” she said to her own amazement, because up until now she’d always considered the bubi to be a stupid animal.

“Bruna good, Bruna beautiful,” purred the greedy-guts, attaching himself more firmly to the rep’s neck, so excited that he started to chew energetically on the shoulder pad on her T-shirt.

Bruna let him do it. He was her bubi.

16

W
e were at the bit where the giants and the dwarfs didn’t remember anything, and that was the start of the catastrophe,” the tiny voice of the little Russian girl recited like a diligent student from under the bed.

She hadn’t emerged from her hiding place since the last time Bruna had spoken to her—or at least, Yiannis hadn’t seen her out and about. But she must have gone to the bathroom at some stage. So Gabi had already spent two days—almost three—holed up in her improvised refuge. At least she was eating now.

“Yes, the dwarfs and the giants,” Bruna repeated hesitantly.

When she’d paused the story two days earlier, she’d more or less worked out where to go next, but now she’d forgotten. Too many things had happened since then, and her body was still galvanized by the flow of adrenaline unleashed during the attack of the Black Widow, which had happened just hours ago. The police had taken Deuil to the hospital, and she’d been forced to organize an emergency front door for her apartment—two thousand gaias. On top of that she’d had a heated argument with Lizard, who was determined to give her a bodyguard. Bruna had refused outright: a combat-rep detective requiring a bodyguard would be damaging to her image. She was, however, concerned about the safety of Yiannis, Gabi, and even Bartolo. Deuil, too. Husky regretted having involved the tactile in this mess.

“The giants carried the dwarfs on their shoulders, and they loved each other a lot. They loved each other so much that they didn’t even talk to each other, because they didn’t need to,” continued the child by way of encouragement.

“Hmm . . . That’s right. They understood each other without speaking. Because in that place there were no words, no memories, time didn’t exist. They lived in an ongoing, perfect present. A silent one, except for the birds, the murmur of water, and the rustle of the wind in the trees,” Bruna recalled, getting back into her tale again and realizing where she wanted to go with it. “Many giants and their dwarfs lived in that paradise, but one of those double-beings loved each other more deeply, or at least thought they loved each other better than any other. The dwarf of this pair was in fact so happy and so united with his giant that a small cloud cast a shadow over his happiness, the sadness of not being able to remember what they had already experienced.
If I could just store all those sweet moments I spend with my giant,
the little being began to think to himself. He became convinced that his joy would multiply infinitely if he was able to carry those moments in his head like an inspirational string of beads, rather than losing them in nothingness. So the dwarf tried to trap and hold on to those happy moments. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, put pressure on his brain, trying to etch into his memory those tender scenes: the wonderful afternoons they spent together by the murmuring river, the walks through the redolent woods, the inexpressible delight of knowing what it felt like to be loved. But no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to remember. Until one day finally he came up with a ruse. He squeezed the juice of some red berries onto a large leaf, and with the help of a small stick began to paint those loving moments on his own body. It worked. When he painted himself having a siesta in the arms of his giant, for instance, that siesta stayed in his memory forever. And so the dwarf started to decorate his arms and then his legs and his stomach and his chest, and when he ran out of empty surfaces on his own body he moved on to using his giant’s broad shoulders and back as storage space. His drawing skills kept improving, and the details became ever finer and subtler.”

“Painting your skin is a good idea,” whispered the little girl under the bed.

The rep had the sudden and worrying thought that Gabi would start to cover her body with tattoos of all those objects to which she attached strings for fear of losing them. She shook her head to chase away the image and carried on with her tale.

“At first the very joy of drawing and being able to remember himself together with his beloved prevailed over everything else. But one day the dwarf started comparing one set of scenes with others, one set of memories with others, and it seemed to him that his companion’s affection varied, and that maybe the present was no longer as beautiful as the past had been. Doubt over the love the giant professed for him pierced his heart like a sliver of ice, and a strange disquiet began to grow inside him, a dark uneasiness that caused his chest to tighten and that fluttered around inside him like a trapped bird. Life had darkened, and a small pain started to form inside the moments of pleasure like a worm that grows inside fruit. That distress grew and grew until it flooded the present and saturated it with bitterness; until the anguish became unbearable and a black breath rose up the dwarf’s neck, clawed at his throat, and swirled restlessly over his tongue. Then he couldn’t hold back. His insides were going to shoot out of his mouth, transformed into a torrent of violent sounds. Grabbing hold of the giant’s hair so he wouldn’t fall, the dwarf shouted the first words on Earth: ‘I want you to tell me that you love me!’ At that very moment the heavens opened, Death descended onto life, and a shower of booming rays burned the fields around them. Mice squealed terribly as they burned, the panther devoured the baby goat sleeping by its side, dwarfs fell to the ground from the shoulders of their giants, and, once separated, those double-beings—no longer double—began to fight each other. Springs dried up, serpents became venomous, and the water in the rivers ran red with blood. There was no way to forget those horrendous misfortunes, because time and memory had already made their appearance in the world.”

Bruna stopped talking, amazed at the story she had just told. Where had it come from? Did it bear any resemblance to the story of the dwarf and the giant her fake mother never got around to telling her?

“I don’t like your story,” whispered Gabi from her hidey-hole. “It’s horrible.”

Yes, of course it was horrible. Clearly, the mother of her implanted memory would never have told her son something so frightening. Bruna knew this. She wondered from where a story like this would have emerged, and the fluency, and those words.

“But that’s not the end of the story. We’re going to leave it there for today, but then it gets better,” Bruna said, having no idea where to go from here.

“You’re stupid. Nothing gets better. Ever,” decreed the little Russian.

Bruna did in fact feel very stupid, more ignorant than that human child, who in any event would probably die before she did.
Three years, ten months, and six days.

The rep stood up and left Gabi’s room, angry with herself. When that cold rage invaded her, it was as if she were occupied by another being, as if that child she would never be able to conceive—she didn’t even menstruate; it was an unnecessary organic complication in a techno—had grown inside her in a poisoned embryo. Then in her fury her body would tense, her features would harden, and her lungs would seem to lose half their capacity. The weight of her rage was heavy in her chest.

She made her way to the living room and found Yiannis installed in front of his home screen.

“Have you found anything interesting?” asked the rep, although she wasn’t expecting much from the old archivist.

“Well, if truth be told, yes I have,” the man answered, looking around at her with such an enthusiastic expression on his face, and such an affectionate smile, that he virtually disarmed the explosive device that was Bruna right at that moment. “Come over here. Sit next to me.”

The rep obeyed.

“I have unearthed a mountain of information about the Ongalo mine—bureaucratic, geological, industrial, administrative, strategic, military, whatever you want. All very boring and not very promising. Onkalo, on the other hand, is definitely a gold mine, if you’ll allow me the pun.”

He was excited, extremely excited. Bruna looked at him suspiciously. Had he just had an endorphin hit in his amygdala? The rep had previously confirmed that when he was in his most manic phase, the archivist was not at all reliable.

“First off, there’s not much more on Onkalo online than the standard Central Archive definition that you already know: one, Finnish, danger of death; two, a cursed mythical place in the west of the former Finlandia.”

“Right,” grunted the rep.

“Well, that’s already odd. That there would be so little is very odd. Before the sea level rose and part of that territory was inundated, there was a nuclear power plant nearby and a couple of towns. Even though they were small and remote and sparsely populated, the fact is that there is almost no trace of that past. It’s as if someone had erased the entries in the Archive. As you know, I’m an expert on that.”

True. Six months earlier, when Yiannis was still working at the Central Archive, he had uncovered a huge conspiracy to alter the facts of many articles.

“Although I lost my authorization when I was fired from the Archive, I know the passwords for accessing more restricted levels of information. Of course, the system immediately detects the hack, but I have thirty seconds to skim the content of the first page before the alarm is triggered. Okay, look what happens when I do a search for Onkalo at sublevel one, which is the one for scholars.”

As he was speaking, Yiannis had typed in his details and the word
Onkalo
. Suddenly, the screen was filled with the 3-D image of a skull floating on a black background, a bluish, icy, bloodcurdling skull, even more terrifying because every now and again there was a glimpse of a murky, gelatinous glitter in the darkness of its empty sockets, as if an eye were fighting to materialize. Bruna couldn’t suppress a tiny start. The obligatory credits had also appeared on the screen:

Central Archive, the United States of the Earth.

Version for Consultation by Researchers

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED

AUTHORIZED RESEARCHERS ONLY

Madrid, July 25, 2109, 18:37

ACCESS DENIED

YIANNIS LIBEROPOULOS IS AN UNAUTHORIZED RESEARCHER

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID CODE

QUIT THESE PAGES IMMEDIATELY

ACCESS STRICTLY LIMITED

AUTHORIZED RESEARCHERS ONLY

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE

PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT UP TO A MAXIMUM OF TWENTY YEARS

YIANNIS LIBEROPOULOS, YOU ARE ADVISED TO QUIT THESE PAGES IMMEDIATELY.

ANY ATTEMPT TO PERSIST IN FORCING THE SYSTEM WILL GENERATE AN ALERT TO THE POLICE IN THIRTY SECONDS.

COUNTDOWN TO POLICE ALERT

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The archivist exited the registry.

“The same thing happens at sublevel two, which is for repetition controllers, and at sublevel three, which was my level, the modifiable version.” As Yiannis spoke, he logged into each of the two pages, and both times that menacing dancing skull appeared and seemed to be looking at them. “There are three further security levels, but I never had access to them. So, what do you think?”