Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (29 page)

“
I’m going to talk with
the black guy,” he whispered to Ringo. “He’ll take us to Terry.
Watch out, just in case.”

Ringo nodded. He seemed to be paying full
attention to the drug dealer who was approaching and to his
companions who were watching from the bench. Padovani smiled at the
black man and offered him his hand. When the other man took it,
Padovani jerked it hard.

“
You son of a bitch!” he
shouted. “You sold me shit!”

He tangled his leg between
the drug dealer’s and pushed him until he fell with him. They
rolled around on the sand together, holding each other. The other
man was stronger. Padovani couldn’t last much longer and covered
his face to avoid being hit. He felt himself being picked up and
punched in the stomach. Ringo took out his gun and began to shout,
“Let me go!” while he pointed the gun at one of them, then another.
Padovani took the opportunity to shout himself.

“
Police!”

The black men let him go
and everyone, including him, began to run toward the bench. The
Indian jumped over it to hide in the trees as fast as he could. The
drug dealers were ahead of him. He tried to follow them because he
thought they were headed toward an exit. They had to be used to
running from the police. But they were faster, and he lost them. He
paused in a clearing next to the park fence. He looked back and
didn’t see Ringo, but he seemed to hear Leidi’s booming
voice.

He took off his jacket,
and protecting his hands with the cloth, he climbed the bars of the
fence. His chest was going to explode. With great effort he rolled
the jacket over the lance points on top of the fence so he wouldn’t
stab himself as he went over. He hung from the other side and
jumped to the street.

He remained squatting, hidden behind the low
wall at the base of the fence, trying to catch his breath and let
his head clear. The palpitations in his chest seemed more and more
irregular.

He began to walk toward
the Puerta de Alcalá in shirt sleeves. It was still hard to breathe
but he couldn’t wait any longer. No one was following him. He
thought about grabbing a taxi parked near Cibeles, and he realized
that he had forgotten the money inside the jacket hanging on the
fence.

“
Shit.”

He paused a moment to
think. He didn’t need that much money. He could get by without the
wad of bills. It really wouldn’t be hard to steal a tourist’s
wallet —one of those “antiquated analog travelers who still used
airplanes,” according to the contemptuous terminology of the
FarmaCom advertisements— in the Puerta del Sol. But he didn’t want
to try his luck and get stopped by the police.

He looked again at the
stretch of street behind him. He didn’t see Ringo or Leidi
anywhere. They were probably searching for him inside the park. If
he was careful, he could go back without being seen and get his
jacket. He decided to try it, at least, with all his senses alert
and his reflexes ready to run. He’d never been faster than a
bullet, but he had gotten old with a biography like his, and that
had to mean something.

He turned around and hid
behind a building so he could see the place where he had escaped
from Retiro without being seen. He stuck close to the wall and put
his head out around the corner. A woman who was going past walking
her dog was startled to see him. But that didn’t bother Padovani:
what did was seeing Ringo inside the park right under his jacket.
He hid again fast.

He hasn’t seen
me
, he thought. He leaned his head out
again, the minimum possible to be able to scrutinize the enemy.
Ringo was talking on the same mobile phone the Northern Group
driver had given him. He was gesturing a lot and sometimes pointed
at the jacket, which was still rolled up on the lance points. Even
from far away Padovani could see his anger. On the other hand, it
was impossible to guess how Leidi felt, waiting at his side,
because she did nothing besides wipe the sweat from her face. But
then she fell face down on the ground.

“
Fuck.”

A sudden faint. Padovani
watched Ringo’s reaction, which was lightning fast. The little wall
at the fence didn’t let him see well, but Ringo appeared to be
trying to reanimate Leidi on the ground. Maybe mouth to mouth
resuscitation, maybe heart massage, or both. Whatever it was, after
a minute, Leidi stood up again with his help. Then the big man
began to hit Ringo.

The Indian shuddered. He
felt the same confusion that he saw on Ringo’s face. Leidi had
grabbed him by the neck and was trying to throw him on the ground.
What the hell was happening? A horrible idea struck Padovani: the
fat body didn’t contain Leidi anymore. How? When had she taken the
vacating pill? Who’d given it to her? He reviewed the last few
hours, terrified. He was sure he hadn’t eaten or drunk
anything.

Ringo escaped Leidi’s arms
—or whoever’s they were— and began to run away. The big man must
have immediately understood that he couldn’t catch him because he
didn’t even try. Padovani saw him holding himself up on the fence.
With every breath, his body trembled. When he finally recovered his
breath, he felt through his clothing until he found the
tranquilizing gun. Holding it, he followed Ringo. The jacket with
the money was in the same place. The Indian waited a little longer
in case one of the two returned. No one appeared.

Impatience wouldn’t let
him wait any longer. He didn’t want to fight with any cheap thief
for the jacket. He crossed the street and climbed the bars. He got
as far as he could, stretched his fingers, and caught the sleeve of
the jacket. He pulled on it until he managed to get it
off.

He let it fall to the
ground with his loot. He was exhausted. The lining of the jacket
had ripped a little but the money was still in the pocket. Holding
onto the little wall, Padovani stood up. He remained upright until
the dizziness passed. He put on the jacket. He had to find Terry as
soon as he could. He was worried about what had happened to Leidi.
He wasn’t going to be as foolish as to take any pill, but... is
that what had happened?

Then he heard voices. On
the other side of the street some black men who he recognized in an
instant had just seen him. They took off toward him in an attitude
that didn’t promise friendship. Padovani decided that the trick of
shouting “police” wasn’t going to work with this group.

He started running in the
direction of Gran Vía with the hope that a crowd might dissuade the
Africans before they caught up. He didn’t know what speed his
client’s body could reach —and maintain— but he would find out
soon.

IX

He entered a flower shop panting. The clerk
gave him a look, noticing the tails of his shirt. Padovani tucked
them back into his pants, dried the sweat on his forehead, and with
a trembling voice asked for three roses. The florist stopped paying
attention to his clothes.

“
What color would you
like?”

The Indian leaned with a hand on the counter
and swallowed before he answered. The air was heavy with the odor
of flowers.

“
Gray... like a
flagstone.”

He took the last bill of one hundred euros
from the pocket of his shirt. The rest he had thrown in the air as
he ran to entertain his pursuers. He had also dropped the
jacket.

“
Can you change this bill
for me?” He paused to breathe and touch his chest. “I couldn’t get
change for it. Please.”

It seemed like a
reasonable request, but he was afraid the clerk wouldn’t want to
help him. He felt like a student who had memorized everything
except the question that happened to be on the test. He looked at
the man on the other side of the counter whose physical appearance
seemed on the frail side. The florist took the bill with a tired
air, put it in the cash register, and returned the Indian his
change, including all the necessary coins. Padovani grabbed the
bills and coins, dropped what he didn’t need, and put seventeen
euros and eighty-nine cents on the counter.

This was the exact code to contact Terry:
one, seven, eight, nine. No doubt there were a lot of others. But
the French Revolution belonged to his old comrade.

He saw the owner of the flower shop count
the money.

“
You’ll have to wait a
little,” the man said. “You can take that seat.”

Padovani closed his eyes and fell to the
floor.

He dreamed he had his neck
in the stocks of a guillotine. He recovered consciousness, tied
hand and foot to a dentist’s chair. He saw double. He tried to
focus his sight on the strap that held his right arm. He struggled
with it.

Then he realized that he
was not alone. A man dressed in a green surgeon’s scrubs seemed
intent on moving around a variety of sharp metal objects that
rattled on a tray on a side table. It took a few seconds for
Padovani to recognize him. He had uncombed thin white hair,
glasses, and seemed a lot heavier. The years had changed his body.
But not as much as mine, Padovani thought.

“
Terry.”

“
Who are you?”

“
It’s me....” His tongue
was asleep, as if he had been anaesthetized. “The Indian
Padovani.”

Terry raised a plastic
glass to Padovani’s mouth, who drank the liquid on one swallow. He
had thought it was water, but it had a bitter aftertaste. He closed
his eyes and sighed.

“
I thought you’d changed
back. That’s why I tied you to the chair.”

It was hard for the Indian to keep his eyes
open.

“
Could they do that if I
didn’t take the vacating pill? Untie me, please.”

Terry returned to the side table and left
the plastic glass there.

“
The vacating pill is a
FarmaCom fiction.... They need to make the European Commission
believe their drugs are necessary, but the IPv12 hardware does the
work. We’ve known that for years. Europol knows it, too. In fact we
learned it thanks to them, although that’s another
story.”

That explained what happened to Leidi.

“
They exchanged someone
who escaped with me. They brought the client back without the
pill....”

“
The client?” Terry shook
his head. “I don’t think that’s what happened. When you escaped
from the nursery, FarmaCom lost control over you, which is good,
but it has a bad side: the police network takes over. They’re
supposed to have to ask for a judicial order to change a body, but
in practice they do it whenever they want. They have people
prepared for this kind of exchange. Your friend is probably now
inside the body of a Europol staffer, and probably they’re
interrogating him right now.”

“
And the
client?”

“
The client won’t even
find out. He’ll still be happily on vacation, then he’ll go back to
his body, interchanging his mind with the staffer who has it now,
without noticing a thing. It’s three-ball billiards.”

Padovani felt so deflated
that he was surprised that the straps that held him down weren’t
too big. He didn’t understand why Terry wouldn’t let him go, but he
didn’t have the strength to insist. But he had enough for a new
question.

“
Why haven’t they
exchanged with me?”

“
No idea. They have some
reason. But they’ll do it at the best moment for them, and you
can’t stop them. Except....” He grabbed some long tweezers from the
side table and smiled. “Except if you’ve had the inhibitor
installed. For now you should stop thrashing and stay tied
down.”

Padovani woke up at once. The end of the
tweezers held some kind of little metal spider.

“
What are you going to do
with that?”

“
Poke it up deep in your
nose. Don’t worry, I gave you an anesthetic dissolved in the
water.

“
A pill....”

Terry laughed.

“
Trust me. I’m not paid by
FarmaCom.” He scratched his head with his free hand. “Although I
admit I bought the drug from them.... But it’s not a vacating pill.
Or it is, and I don’t know about it.... Well, what does it matter?
It’s only a painkiller. Stay still.”

Padovani couldn’t believe
he’d been so careless. At the first opportunity, he’d let someone
drug him. Just what he’d promised himself to avoid when he got to
Europe. He felt pain in his chest. His heart was beating fast again
but crazy, skipping one out of every three beats. Terry said he
didn’t work for FarmaCom, but he could be working for
Sink-Tooth.

“
Do you stay in touch with
our old comrades?”

“
Hmmmm.... No. Although I
read the news. Lately they’ve mentioned us a lot.”

The doorbell rang. Terry turned.

“
Shit. Someone’s at the
door.”

Padovani stretched his neck to look in the
same direction as Terry. He recognized Ringo in the little
closed-circuit monitor.

“
That’s one of the people
who escaped with me.”

“
Did he follow
you?”

“
No!” Padovani was
drenched with sweat and his chest burned. “He told me... he told me
he wanted to pass some information on to you. I don’t know how he
found us.”

“
He followed you. I don’t
like this. Let’s finish this right away.”

“
Please....”