Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to his name. Anyway, it happens to those who’ve had an operation, too. One day they look in the mirror and one of their eyes is halfway down their cheek.”
    “You’re exaggerating.”
    “No way. Moreover, all those identical plastic faces don’t relieve us humans of our fear, of the terror, and our absolute lack of confidence in that stranger, our own body. Because one of those times that you look in the mirror and see that your mouth is deformed, it turns out it’s not old age but a stroke, a tumor, the devastating explosion of a heart attack. An illness that will mutilate you, leave you handicapped, rob you of life as you knew it up to that point, maybe even kill you.”
    Bruna stopped applying the synthetic skin stitches and looked at the old archivist. “Yiannis, you’re seventy years old, dammit. Stop complaining. You infuriate me. You humans live for a hundred years.”
    “I know. I know it irritates you, but what sort of state do we live in all that time? Well, if you can’t afford very expensive medical insurance, a horrible state. Bruna, we humans live in deadly fear. Fear is the only experience common to everyone.”
    “To dogs, too. And Omaás. And technohumans,” said Bruna darkly.
    “Absolutely true. Everything that lives fears death. But believe you me, you are all safe from that menacing, mutating, heartbreaking demolition that is old age. You should appreciate that there are also certain advantages in the tragedy of your short life.”
    Yiannis smiled, and his lined face wrinkled like a piece of gathered material. He was the only old man Bruna knew who hadn’t had an operation, apart from a few very marginalized old tramps. Even in the Zero zones people stuffed their cheeks with cheap plastic. Well, Lizard hadn’t had surgery either. True, he was much younger—forty-three—but he already had wrinkles. As far as Pablo Nopal, her memorist, was concerned, his physique was perfect. If they’d used a scalpel on him, it must have been work of extraordinary quality and extremely expensive.
    “By the way, did you call Lizard? Did he help you trace the girl?”
    The old man continued to smile and stack up all the folds in his wizened face. Bruna asked herself at which stage in his hormonal fluctuations he might be: Was that anguished reflection on old age and death generated by a high or low level of endorphins?
    “No. I didn’t call him.”
    There were other fears in life apart from death.
    “What are you going to do with Gabi, Bruna?”
    “Send her back.”

6

    B runa’s arm continued to throb despite the analgesic. She knew that the human mouth is full of bacteria and that bites tend to become infected, but even so she’d committed the ultimate idiocy of not going to the doctor and trying to close the wound herself without having cleaned it properly. No doubt she was irritated by the whole process, and now she would have to show the bite and recount the whole story; a wound like that had to be explained, and she didn’t really have a good explanation. So she had let it run its course, and within three days her arm was so bad that they had to go to the hospital. An entertaining Sunday afternoon in the emergency room. The doctors had decided to run some tests on the girl to see if she might have transmitted any other pathogens, a specific disease together with the infection. The results hadn’t come back yet. The rep smiled: the nurses who had taken Gabi off had treated her with the same suspicion and precautions as they would a mad dog. The only thing they hadn’t done was muzzle her.
    A boy of about fifteen was coming down the corridor. He was moving with difficulty on a clumsy prosthesis with wheels, something like a small metal cart attached to his legs, which were amputated above the knees. He rolled past where Bruna was sitting and continued down the long, otherwise-empty corridor, squeaking and wobbling like a defective device. The rep congratulated herself yet again for having