by K. W. Jeter
It appeared that the job might be easier than he'd originally expected. The loud confrontation down on the set- Deckard's shouting, with the others standing around and trying to mollify him-ended with Deckard's storming away, leaving a small bespectacled figure with clipboard far behind in his wake. The look in Deckard's eyes-even from a distance, Holden was able to intercept a quick spark of it-was one of murderous rage. Or if not murder, at least serious asskicking; the hunched set of his shoulders indicated that he was going off looking for someone with whom he had a score to settle.
"Come on-" Holden had got into the habit of speaking that way to the briefcase, even though he knew it had no independent means of locomotion. "We can catch him over there." He started walking again, picking up his pace as he skirted the video set, staying in the shadows beyond the range of the lights.
The sound of someone pounding on a door came to Deckard's ears. And a voice shouting-he looked down the long hallway, determining from behind which door the noise was coming.
"Hey! Anybody!" The voice was Urbenton's, pitched even higher with overexcitement. "Come on, this isn't funny-let me out of here! You're all going to be fuckin' fired! I'm supposed to be on the set!"
Deckard halted when he saw one of the doorknobs futilely rattling. The adrenaline pumping through his system hadn't ebbed-he'd lost none of the anger over the replicant's murder during the taping. He took a step backward, raised one leg, and kicked straight out, hitting the door's keyless lock.
The impact knocked over the person on the other side as the door wobbled to a stop, one hinge torn loose from the surrounding frame.
"Jeez-" The pudding-y director scrambled to his feet. Urbenton's face, already starting to settle into jowls despite his relative youth, shone with sweat. "You could've killed me!"
"Believe it-I still could." Deckard completed the other man's standing-up process by reaching down and grabbing Urbenton's jacket lapels in his fists, then pulling and lifting. The video director hung in Deckard's grasp, the same way the actor had hung in the grasp of the now-dead Kowalski replicant. "You sonuvabitch-I thought we had an agreement." The last words rasped out of Deckard's throat.
"What're you talking about?" Urbenton's feet kicked futilely in midair. "You gone nuts or something? What agreement?"
"Don't bullshit me. You know what I mean." He set the director down, but kept the lapels wadded in his grip. "When you brought me here-before even, when you came to Mars and talked me into this nonsense-you said that nobody would get hurt. Nobody-not even replicants."
"Hey, come on Urbenton tilted his head back from Deckard's fierce glare. "You gotta be practical, man. When you're on a video shoot . . . there's just accidents that're going to happen. That's just the way it is; we live in an imperfect universe. There's a lot of heavy equipment here-all it takes is for a lighting unit to fall on somebody's head, wham, they got a concussion. Or a camera dolly rolls over somebody's foot-"
"We're not talking accidents here." Deckard felt himself towering over the smaller man like some wrathful avenging deity. "What just happened on the set wasn't an accident. It was planned that way."
"How the hell would I know?" An indignant pitch shrilled in Urbenton's voice. "I wasn't even near the set. I've been locked in here the whole time."
"Right. Very convenient."
"Convenient, nothing-" The director managed to pull himself free. He brushed down the front of his jacket with offended dignity. "It's my shoot. I'm in charge here-at least, I'm supposed to be in charge." Urbenton's wide face turned to a mottled pink, as though he were contemplating active injustices. "There's been some funny stuff going on around here, though. From the beginning. The money people, the ones putting up the financing for the production-they've had some of their thugs hanging around since the shoot began. And they really give me the creeps-"
"My heart bleeds." Deckard had no intention of letting the fat little weasel off the hook. "But as you said, you're in charge. It's your shoot. So if somebody gets killed on the set-if even a replicant gets killed-it's because you ordered it to happen that way."
"What?" Urbenton blinked in puzzlement. "I don't get it. What do you mean?"
"Killed. Dead. A bullet through the back of the skull and out the front, brains all over the pavement. What the hell do you think I mean?"
"You're out of your mind, Deckard." Repulsion filtered through the director's voice and face. "I knew it was a bad idea to hire you for this project. Any time you bring civilians around a video shoot, they get these weird ideas about what's going on. People like you just don't understand the nature of the industry."
"What I understand," grated Deckard, "is that there's a corpse lying on your set. If your crew hasn't cleaned it up by now."
Urbenton sighed wearily. "Whose corpse?"
"The replicant you had for that last street scene. The Leon Kowalski replicant-"
The director's round shoulders lifted in a shrug. "We've got more than one of those here."
"How many of them were you planning on killing off? All the Kowalskis?"
Another shrug. "Well, we could if we wanted to. I mean, it'd be legal. They're only replicants-hell, they're not even covered under the law regarding the treatment of animals in video production. Now, if we'd brought a real snake up here-you know, for that scene in Zhora's dressing room, in that club-and anything had happened to it, the authorities would've been all over our asses. You need a major permit just to take a living animal up out of the Earth's atmosphere." A thin smile formed on Urbenton's lips. "Different situation with replicants, though. As long as you got all your security precautions in place, so they're not going to escape or anything, you can pretty much do what you want with them. Inasmuch as they're technically classified as manufactured products, and not really living things. Not like you and me."
"So you were planning on killing them." Deckard's gaze narrowed on the other man. "Just to make your goddamn video."
"I keep telling you. Nobody's getting killed on this shoot. Jeez." Urbenton shook his head. "You were the one who insisted on all these conditions, just so you'd come here at all. I didn't want you as a technical adviser on this production; it was the money people who laid that on me. Believe me, I could do without you hanging around, griping about the things that happen to what should be some perfectly expendable production items. For Christ's sake, Deckard, on a video shoot, replicants are nothing but fancy-shmancy props, that's all." He rolled his eyes, lifting his short-fingered hands in a gesture of defeat. "But you've got some hair up your butt about 'em, so fine; that's why I agreed we weren't going to harm any replicants on this shoot. For your tenderhearted sake, I should compromise my artistic vision-but who am I, right? I'm just the director." Urbenton emitted a dramatic sigh.
"Spare me." Deckard leaned closer in to the other man. "Just tell me why, if our little agreement's in place, you've got a replicant with his head drilled open lying at your lead actor's feet."
"You sure about this? Come on." Urbenton peered skeptically at him. "Like I said, you're not exactly hip, video production-wise. I've got some awfully good special effects people on the crew. Not just digital postproduction stuff, either; these guys do real-time." The director smiled appeasingly. "You know what? You probably saw a squib go off on this Kowalski replicant's forehead, a makeup load went splat hey, it's supposed to look realistic."
"He went down. And he didn't get up."
"The big lug probably fainted." Urbenton shook his head. "The crew probably didn't tell him ahead of time what was going to happen. Hell, I didn't even know that was what they had planned. There's some real practical jokers around here. That's why I wasn't worried-at first-when I got yanked off the set just when the tape had started rolling. Supposed to've been a call from the money people, down on Earth; you take those calls, no matter what. Then somebody, I didn't see who, slammed the door on me and I found myself locked in here. Until you came along-"
"Can it." Deckard had had enough of the director's rattling on. "
The Kowalski replicant didn't faint. I don't need to know about video production to see what happened to him. I'm hip to death." His voice lowered to a grim frequency. "That was my job ... for a long time. I know what a dead body looks like."
"Hip to death.' That's a good one." Urbenton nodded in a show of appreciation. "I like that. Maybe I underestimated your potential; you might have a real talent for this sort of thing. I think you're down for getting some kind of screen credit out of this gig; maybe you could parlay that into some kind of scripting gig. Additional dialogue, that sort of thing."
"You're not answering my question. I want to know how that Kowalski replicant got killed. If you didn't plan on it happening, who did?"
"I'm beginning to think ... you're not kidding about this." From the corner of his eye, Urbenton studied him uneasily. "It happened just now? On the set?" The pink flesh turned pale. "A real bullet, and everything?"
Deckard made no reply. He didn't have to.
"That's weird." Urbenton slowly shook his head. "Because that'd be real bad news. Not just for that poor bastard replicant His voice spookily softened as his gaze shifted away from Deckard. "But for all of us ..."
By the time he got past the doors through which Deckard had vanished, there was no sound of the others' footsteps. Or of any voices; the area was acoustically sealed off from the soundstages out in the station's main area. Holden could detect the faint buzzing of the fluorescent panels lining the narrow corridors, and nothing else.
"Well, he's gotta be around somewhere." Holden looked down the double row of featureless doorways. A fine layer of dust had drifted onto their sills. He tilted back his head, trying to catch a scent trace of his quarry; he'd quit the department, but still prided himself on keeping his quasi-extrasensory cop skills.
The briefcase had its own version of them. "There's somebody coming," it announced. "I can feel them. But it's not-" The briefcase suddenly clammed up.
"What're you doing here?" Another voice, not Deckard's.
Warning from the briefcase had given Holden the quarter second he needed to assemble a front. He glanced over his shoulder at the figure standing in the just-opened doorway behind him. A big sonuvabitch, possibly security; he had on an ID badge with a name he didn't bother to read. "I got called over to the set-" Holden kept his voice modulated down to a level of disarming self-assurance. "Beats me, what for."
The other man stepped forward and peered more closely at him. "Okay The man gave a slow nod. "They must be talking about the office setup. The interview scene-it's not on the list for today, but what the hell..." A disgusted shrug. "This whole shoot's so screwed up." He clamped a hand on Holden's shoulder-the guy was at least a head taller-and steered him down the hallway. "Man, I don't even know if they're trying to make a movie here." His glance went down to the briefcase dangling from Holden's grip. "Is that supposed to be it? The whatchacallit . . . the Vogue-Kafka. Or whatever."
"Voigt-Kampff." It didn't take even a split second for him to respond. "Sure," lied Holden. You got it-the other man was obviously operating on the assumption that Holden was connected to the video production in some way. One of the actors? He wondered if there was supposed to be a Holden as well as a Deckard in this thing. Whatever. He wasn't about to contradict the guy and get his cover blown. "That's what it is, all right."
"Doesn't look the way I thought it would." The other man frowned at the briefcase in Holden's hand. "But it'd be typical of them to tell the props people to just throw something together on the cheap."
He's buying it, thought Holden. All that was necessary now was to keep the guy bulishitted, then find a way of giving him the slip and continuing to search for Deckard. This was the security that he'd been so worried about running into? The briefcase's voice could've skipped all the dire forebodings.
"In here." The other man pushed open one of the hallway's doors and walked Holden through it. "This is the set you're down for-they wouldn't need you out on the big one."
As his eyes adjusted to the dim space, Holden found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a small office, with a couple of high-backed chairs facing each other across a table. Something fluttered above his head; he looked up and saw the blades of a ceiling fan turning lazily in the room's air. Beyond the fan and the narrow plank on which it was fastened was nothing but the studio's empty reaches, studded with gantrys and walkways, lights extinguished as blind eyes.
"Stay put." The other man turned back toward the door. "I'll go get the rest of the crew."
"Maybe I should go along." Holden lifted the briefcase with both hands against his chest. "Instead of just waiting here." A sudden, irrational panic had sped up the bio-mech heart in his chest; he could feel his pulse bouncing off the briefcase's leatherette flank. "Maybe-"
"Forget that." The other man's voice turned harsher. "I don't want you wandering off while I'm trying to round up everybody else. Just sit down and relax. Won't be a minute."
When the other man had left, the briefcase spoke up. "Way to go." The voice was tinged with a familiar sarcasm. "Door's locked, isn't it?"
Holden gave the knob a futile twist, but didn't bother to give an answer. Hefting the briefcase onto the table, he pulled back one of the chairs and lowered himself into it. From the corner of his eye, he saw letters imprinted on the headrest; his vision had adjusted well enough that he could also see them on the empty chair. They spelled out TYRELL CORP.
A memory stirred uneasily in the darker space inside his head. From a long time ago, back when he'd had a real fleshand-blood heart and lungs ticking and sighing under his breastbone. The room, even with its nonexistent ceiling and switched-off video-cams peering in, seemed familiar to him, in a way that made the machine-pumped blood crawl in his veins. He drew a blank on it, but knew that it wasn't because he was unable to remember. More likely, he didn't want to. The memory sat obstinately at the back of his skull, refusing to show itself in even the room's partial light.
Two chairs that said TYRELL CORP on them . . . and a slowly revolving ceiling fan. There was smoke, Holden remembered. Cigarette smoke, drifting blue, hanging like some semitransparent snakeskin in the air; from the cigarette that'd been in his own hand. He'd still been smoking then; he'd given it up some time after he'd gotten the new heart and lungs. The doctors had told him that his system had reached its limit-if anything happened to this set, there'd be no chance of putting another one inside him. And there had been something sitting on the table in front of him not a briefcase, but an actual Voigt-Kampff machine, regulation LAPD issue, just like the big black guns that blade runners carried around with them. The Voigt-Kampff had been opened and activated, its batwing bellows compressing and expanding, breathing in microscopic traces of sweat and fear; the tracking lens on its antennalike metal stalk ready to focus on the dilating pupil of anyone who'd been dropped down in the chair opposite him ...
Where am I? The incomplete, unwilled memory had claimed him so hard that for a moment he had lost track of his location, whether Earth or the Outer Hollywood orbital studios. The bio-mech heart stumbled in sudden panic. What place, what time . . . Holden gripped the edges of the table with fear-rigid hands.
"All right-" The claustrophobic set's door had swung open again, admitting a voice louder than the ones inside Holden's skull. The man who'd led him into the room had another, even taller figure in tow. "The director asked me to get your blocking down before we tried running tape."
Holden looked up and saw the face behind the other man's, and recognized it. Another piece from the memory that had wrapped around him.
"So what is it you want me to do?" From the chinless, brutal face of a Leon Kowalski replicant-another from the same batch as the dead one that Holden had glimpsed lying on the L.A. street set-small eyes peered with apprehensive suspicion. All the Leon Kowalskis were just bright enough to be mistrustful of humans . . . but not bright enough to do anything about it.
So then, how'd you wind up getting iced by one of them? Holden's
unspoken voice chided him. The rest of the memory regarding the room with two Tyrell Corporation chairs was starting to come clear, whether he wanted it to or not.
"You know your lines?" The other man glanced sharply at the burly replicant.
"Yeah ... kind of."
"Sit over here." The man pointed to the empty chair at the table. "How about you?" He glanced over toward Holden.
The apprehension transmuted to certainty. "Of course-" It took a couple of seconds for Holden to find his voice, to squeeze it past the constriction tightening around his artificial lungs. I know this room. And what had happened in it. "Yeah ... I know what to say."
"Dynamite. You guys are a couple of real professionals." The man pulled something dark and heavy out of his jacket and handed it to the Kowalski replicant. "Here, use this. It's the same one you'll have when we're taping."
The replicant examined the gun with small eyes narrowed even further, as though some personal anti-Kowalski trap might be hidden inside it. He finally wrapped both fists around its handle and levered it underneath the table.
Oh no, thought Holden as he watched the preparations. I know what comes next...
"All right. Let's try it." The other man stood back against the set's doorway, arms folded across his chest. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, as if the scene before him had already been found pleasing. "Take it from where you ask him about his mother."
"M-my mother?" The Kowalski replicant looked over his shoulder at the man.
"Don't worry about it. It's not for real." The man's voice turned kindly.
"It's just a video, okay? And it's not even that right now. Just for practice, that's all. A little rehearsal." He glanced over at Holden. "Come on, buddy; we don't have all day. Just say your line."
The fluids that his bio-mechanical heart moved around in Holden's body had congealed-even the breath in his lungs felt thick and heavy as stone. Underneath that crushing weight, part of him struggled to push his legs beneath the chair, to stand up and walk out of the re-created room pressing tight around his shoulders .
