Read Online Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky Book 2) by Rosa Montero - Free Book Online

artificially implanted into Bruna’s brain. Every technohuman received a set of childhood memories. Although they knew that these memories were false, it had been demonstrated that having a biography to tell consolidated and stabilized a technohuman’s personality. The standard set of memories written for reps by professional memorists were more or less cheerful, simple, and conventional. Each set contained five hundred scenes. It was assumed that five hundred scenes were sufficient background to give you a rich sense of life. But Bruna had received a special memory, a much broader, tougher, and more complex one, because her memorist had decided to implant his own personal memories into her. So this beautiful, powerful mother whom Bruna was now remembering was the mother of Pablo Nopal. Bruna still resented him for this. Her memorist had turned her into a monster among monsters, a being totally different from all others.
    “A story? Okay. Fine. A story for a sandwich.”
    Bruna delved into the delight of her memory to retrieve that story her mother used to tell her again and again night after night, nonexistent and yet so real. She knew it by heart, and its repetition was one of the magical aspects of the tale, one of the conditions that turned it into a talisman. She’d tell it to the little Russian just like that, with the same inflections, the identical words, with the seductive eloquence of that mother who was never her mother. It was easy. How did it begin? It was the story of the giant and the dwarf. Yes, that was it. The giant and the dwarf.
    “Once upon a time there was a giant and a dwarf . . .”
    How did it go? What came next? By the great Morlay, how could she possibly not remember? She was seeing her mother, that silhouette edged with light; she was feeling the weight of her eyelids, the gentleness of sleep enveloping her. She was hearing the words; she was sensing the syllables slipping through her mother’s lips! She was hearing the words, but she wasn’t understanding the story. It was like trying to catch a slippery fish. She was glimpsing the shimmer of its scales through the water’s foam, but she was unable to visualize the entire fish. A giant and a dwarf, a giant and a dwarf, a giant and a dwarf . . .
    “There was once a giant and a dwarf,” she repeated uncertainly.
    A curse on all species! It wasn’t there! It wasn’t there! Suddenly, Bruna understood what was happening: she had never known the tale! The story of the giant and the dwarf had never formed part of the memories given to her by her memorist. He’d simply inserted the scene, the emotions, the significance of that moment. But he’d never taken the trouble to tell the story to Bruna. Why bother if the young rep didn’t really exist? A heartrending pain pierced her chest: The heart really does hurt at moments of great sorrow.
    “You tell stories very badly,” said the grumpy voice of the little Russian. “I think the deal’s off.”
    Bruna stopped speaking and focused on breathing, despite the weight she was feeling. She was drenched with cold sweat. “Wait . . . Give me . . . a minute,” she stammered.
    Silence.
    So now what? Now what?
    Now she would invent. Now she’d have to make up something. The giant and the dwarf. Inhabitants of an imaginary childhood paradise. That warm, happy childhood in which there was no death, no loss, no loneliness.
    “Let’s start again, this time for real,” Bruna said, trying to order her thoughts. “Once upon a time there was a giant and a dwarf. And I’m talking about the beginning of time. Before our world began. Before you were born, before your parents were born, before the word before was invented, because in this place I’m telling you about, time didn’t exist. That ancient world was a garden where flowers always bloomed. The sun shone very gently in the same corner of the sky, while in the opposite corner it was balanced by the moon, an icy half slice on a blue