by K. W. Jeter
So when Urbenton had appeared, with his greased-smooth dealer's smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, fhere was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colony's marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he'd moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more breathable air that the annual monsoon rains managed to scrub to a lower toxicity level.
"Let's have a little talk, Mr. Niemand-" When Urbenton had used Deckard's alias, the smile on the video director's face had widened, like that of some reptile unhinging its jaws to swallow an entire goat in one mouthful. "By ourselves, all right?" They'd left Mrs. Niemand-she didn't even pretend to call herself Rachael anymore--sleeping on the hovel's narrow bed, or perhaps gazing up at the dark memorial vistas that played out behind her eyelids. It had been a long time since Deckard had pretended that he knew what went on inside Sarah Tyrell's head. He'd pulled the hovel's airseals shut and followed Urbenton-and the scent of money that the man had exuded.
Now, sitting in the skiff's cockpit with the talking briefcase beside him, Deckard slowly nodded. "That's why I did it." As if it really needed any explanation. "The guy just smelled like money."
"That's a powerful attractant." The voice of Roy Batty sounded amused. "More so than all those pheromones of sex and love and pride, all that corporeal stuff that yanks people around so well. Excuse me for waxing philosophical. I have a slightly more . . . disinterested viewpoint these days, as you might be able to tell." The voice's tone sharpened. "Just how much did Urbenton offer you?"
"A lot." Deckard recited the raw numbers. "That was just for starters, what was in the production budget. Residual payments would probably have come to more, once the video went out over the wires."
"Not bad."
It wasn't. Or wouldn't have been, Deckard corrected himself. If I would've gotten it. Free money, or as close to that ideal state as this universe allowed-there had been virtually nothing he had to do in order to get the payment from the mysterious financial backers to whom Urbenton had constantly referred. Basically, Deckard knew, just as Urbenton had made it clear, that Speed Death Productions had only wanted to be able to list him as the technical adviser on the video-something to keep the money people happy, a touch of authenticity for the whole project. The video was supposed to be a dramatized re-creation of Deckard's life, or at least that little bit of it when he'd been going through his last assignment as a blade runner, the job that Inspector Bryant had leaned on him to undertake after he'd already quit the department in disgust. According to Urbenton, that hunt- with half a dozen or so Nexus-6 models on the loose in the wilds of Los Angeles, including the group's highly dangerous leader, the replicant version of Roy Batty, and only Rick Deckard out there to round them up and ice them-had already achieved some sort of legendary, even mythic, status. Enough detail had leaked out to transform it from urban folktale to big-deal saga. Or so Urbenton said-Deckard hadn't cared as long as there was a payday at the end of the process. If Speed Death Productions figured that there was an audience for watching some poor bastards of escaped replicants getting blown away, that was probably a correct assessment-it tied in with Deckard's own feelings about the innate charm of the human species.
"All I had to do," said Deckard, "was sit on my can at the edge of the set and keep my mouth shut. Urbenton wasn't exactly hiring me for my creative input. Then get paid off and go home."
"Well, you're going home at least. Or at least back to whatever's as close as somebody like you gets." A pitying smile inflected the briefcase's voice. "Too bad you couldn't pull off the part about keeping your mouth shut. You spend your whole life being the silent type, killing without a word, and then the one time it counts, you can't resist spouting off."
"Tell me about it." Whatever adrenaline had been left in his system, the rush from seeing death at close quarters and then letting his own anger come out like an uncorked flamethrower was dissipated now, leaving the flat dregs of self-loathing. "Silence might not be a virtue, but at least it would've been profitable."
"You know, I was a little surprised-" Batty's voice turned thoughtful. "When I was told you were up at that Outer Hollywood station. And that was where Holden and I were going to track you down, make our little delivery. Me, that is."
"I don't recall ordering any luggage with some dead guy's personality wired into it."
"Well, you didn't." Whatever was inside the briefcase sounded stung by Deckard's words. "It's supposed to be a surprise, smart-ass. If you'd known it was coming, you probably would've screwed it up somehow. As it was, poor old Holden got himself iced trying to make contact with you."
"That'll teach you." Deckard settled farther back into the pilot's seat, folding his arms across his chest. "Send yourself airmail next time."
"Real funny, Deckard. You may have given up being a blade runner, but you're still a cold bastard." If the briefcase had had a human form, it would've nodded. "That's what I like about you."
"Whatever. Anyway, why shouldn't I have been at Outer Hollywood? If that's where the money is."
"You were supposed to be long gone by now," replied Batty's voice. "Wasn't that the plan? Holden told me all about it, what you'd decided when you were still back on Earth. You were going to get yourself and Sarah Tyrell some new identities, then hightail it out to the U.N's far colonies. Out in the stars, Deckard; not in some dumpy Martian transit squat. Then you and Sarah-or were you still calling her Rachael?-then the two of you would be nice and safe. A cozy domestic couple."
"Believe me-" Deckard could hear the sour weariness in his own voice. "That last bit was never part of the plan."
"Wouldn't have believed it, if it had been. Nevertheless; the stars. That's where you were supposed to be going. Or already have gone. So what happened?"
Deckard closed his eyes for a moment, trying to conserve his waning strength. "What happened." He didn't feel like telling his life story to the briefcase. "What happened is why I needed the money in the first place, why I took this joke gig as technical adviser on Urbenton's crappy little video production. The U.N. transit colonies on Mars are a total bottleneck. People on Earth-even the living ones-don't know that. The U.N. keeps a tight lid on information about what's going on there. The emigration program they're so hot on would collapse if it got out that when you leave Earth, you don't go to the stars, you just wind up in some cramped, dingy hovel on Mars, glued to the cable feed or going slowly crazy from stimulus deprivation."
The briefcase took pains to sound unimpressed. "There's been rumors."
"None that I'd ever heard. Not that it would've changed my mind. There was no way I was going to stay on Earth."
"Why?" Genuine puzzlement sounded in Batty's voice. "You can die there as well as anywhere else. Believe me; I'd know."
Deckard slowly shook his head. "I had other plans. Ones I didn't tell Holden. He didn't need to know."
"Plans? Like what?"
Deckard let his eyelids draw down to slits. "You don't need to know, either." Fatigue crept up his knotted spine and down into his limbs, turning them into leaden weights. "But since you asked, that's why I was hustling for the money. To buy our way off Mars."
"Money's always good," said the briefcase. "It might not be able to do that, though."
"Worth a shot." Deckard didn't feel like arguing the point. "There haven't been any transports leaving Mars for the far U.N. colonies in the last two or three years. Some kind of problem going on out there. But there's rumors-there's always rumors-of travel starting up again. It'll have to; there's hardly any room left to cram people into at the Martian colonies, and the U.N. still keeps bringing them out from Earth. Something's got to break. And if anybody's leaving, it's going to be me and Sarah Tyrell. That's what the money was going to be for."
"I'm screwed." It wasn't an unusual condition for him. "That's the way it goes."
"Bad luck for you." The voice of Batty, emerging from the briefcase's concealed speaker, held an equally familiar smile. "Good luck for me, though-and the people who sent me out to you. Now you might be a little more receptive to the offer we're going to make you."
"I don't want to hear it."
"What? What're you talking about?" Batty's voice went up a notch. "'Don't want to hear it'-listen, Deckard; I didn't get sent all this way just for you to cop an attitude. You can be all burnt out and cynical on your own time, and this isn't it. There's things-important things-that have to be done."
With his arms still folded on his chest, Deckard opened one eye wider to gaze upon the briefcase beside him. "And that's why you're here? Dave Holden brought you out just so you could tell me about these 'important things'?"
"That's about the size of it."
Deckard let the eyelid sink shut, as though of its own weight. "Like I said-I don't want to hear it."
Silence held in the skiff's cockpit. For a few seconds, Deckard heard only the motion of his own blood sliding through his veins, the tick of random air molecules at his eardrums. Then the cockpit's other inhabitant spoke again.
"You're a cool customer, Deckard-you know that?" Whatever parts of Batty had been encoded and placed inside the briefcase, his snake-twisting mind and sharp-eyed perceptions, now sounded impressed despite himself. "Nothing fazes you. You've reached some kind of weird point where nothing surprises you anymore, but you're still walking around as if you're alive somehow. That's a hell of an achievement."
Deckard shifted in the thinly padded seat, trying to find some comfort for his bones and muscles. "What am I supposed to be so surprised about?"
"For Christ's sake, Deckard-I'm in a fucking box. With a handle and two chrome-plated locks and a decent grade of simulated leather on the exterior." Annoyance permeated the briefcase's speech. "Shit-you mean you didn't notice?"
"I noticed." Deckard couldn't keep a thin smile from lifting one corner of his mouth. "Actually, I prefer you this way."
"Yeah, well, it doesn't suit me at all. They should've left me at least one leg and a foot, so I could kick your sorry ass." The disgust in Batty's voice shifted to its former perplexed condition. "Don't you wonder how this all came about? The last time you saw me, I was dead. I even got shown photographs of how I looked, hanging upside-down on that busted-up freeway. Seeing your own corpse is one of those transformative experiences-"
"Thought you didn't have eyes."
"There's a jack for an optical scanner inside here. Along with some other stuff like that. Besides, why should you care how I saw it? That's not important, Deckard. What you should be worrying about is why all of this is being done. Why drag my corpse off, why download my skull contents into this contraption-the whole trip. Hey, it's all for your benefit, pal. Or at least most of it. If you can't display gratitude, you could at least show some curiosity."
"I don't have to," Deckard said dryly. "I'm sure you're going to tell me all about it, whether I want to hear it or not."
He'd been telling the truth to Batty. Deckard could let an unsoothing but necessary sleep claim him, where he pushed back in the skiff's pilot seat, with little regret. That his old nemesis, a nightmarish figure all glistening with rain and smeared blood over taut muscle and sinew, could come back from the dead in the form of an articulate briefcase-what was there to be surprised about? Stranger things had already happened. Once before, he'd thought Roy Batty was safely dead, only to find out otherwise-or rather, to find out that one Batty was dead, and another, claiming to be the human original from which the replicant had been made, was trying to kill him. And coming close to accomplishing that goal. If it hadn't been for Dave Holden, who put a highcaliber slug between Batty's eyes, Deckard knew that it would've been his own corpse draped over the side of one of L.A's ruined freeways.
And now Holden was dead, with his former partner from the LAPD's blade runner unit fairly sure that he at least wouldn't be coming around again. The corpse on the floor back at the Outer Hollywood studio had appeared more than final; Holden's blanked-out eyes had looked as if they had gazed at last upon and into some soul-quieting vista of peace. Maybe, thought Deckard, that's what he saw when he looked down the barrel of the Kowalski replicant's gun. Fire and thunder, and then the silence beyond ...
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough." Batty's voice seemed to come from miles away, a distance bound by the cockpit's tiny space. "You don't have to worry about that."
That was a mystery almost worth puzzling out. Deckard let the black behind his eyelids deepen and swallow him up. The briefcase with Batty's personality wired in and Deckard's initials below the handle-that's what the now-dead Holden had been carrying, had come all that way from Earth to deliver to him. There'd been a time when Batty and Holden had been working together, trying to kill Deckard, claiming that he was another escaped replicant; that was how wrapped up in craziness the two of them had gotten. Then they'd had their big falling-out, from which only one of them had survived . . . or so it'd seemed at the time ...
Something had hooked the two of them back together, Holden and Batty, or whatever was left of him inside the briefcase. Something that probably wasn't good news.
It was too much for Deckard to try to figure out now, at this point of his exhaustion. As long as the briefcase was quietly sulking to itself, he might as well try to find sleep.
Deckard found himself half wondering, half dreaming, of what reception was in store for him on Mars, how Sarah would welcome him home from his long, futile venturing.
4
A knock at the door.
"Oh, boy!" The alarm clock danced on top of the bedside table. "Daddy's home!"
"Christ-" Sarah laid the back of her hand across her eyes, trying to block out what was left of the day's illumination and any other sensory data coming into her nervous system. As much as she had been expecting, even-in a perverse fashion-looking forward, to this moment, it had still crept up on her without warning. Until now.
"I bet that's him! I bet that's him, all right!"
She wished again that she had spent the money for the third bullet. "Just shut the hell up." Her brain felt both sandfilled and fuzzy from the cumulative toxins of troubled sleep. Sarah pulled herself into a sitting position on the edge of the grey mattress, then watched as the apparent separate entity of her hand fumbled inside the table's single drawer.
"Mrs. Niemand ... excuse me." From the opposite wall of the bedroom, the calendar had caught sight of the bright metal cylinders tumbling in Sarah's palm. "But what exactly are you doing?"
Brass glinted at her fingertips, though the bullets' tapered points were dull leaden in color. "None of your business." She slipped the bullets into the gun from the table, then closed up the chamber. "Don't worry about it."
"Humanity is my business, Mrs. Niemand. Though that was said in other contexts, it applies in this situation as well."
"I don't need the literary allusions." Sarah shifted the gun to her left hand and used her right to smooth her dark, disordered hair back from her brow. Some previous tenants of the hovel, who had either killed themselves or managed to get shipped off the planet while the starbound emigration vessels were still running, had shelled out for the appliances to be hooked up to the library trunk feed. The penurious Niemands had canceled the service, but the calendar had the rudiments of a university education soaked up in its off-line banks. And didn't mind showing it off, all of which had added to the general hell of Sarah's existence. Maybe four, she thought. I should've bought four bullets.
The knock at the door sounded again, blows hard enough to shake the hovel's thin plastic walls. A rain of soft, sneeze-provoking dust drifted down upon the bed.
"Come on!" The alarm clock shrilled even more excitedly. "Let's go see!"
> Sarah placed the muzzle of the gun against the clock's face, at the exact center from which the two black hands radiated. "Let's be real quiet." She pushed the clock back across the table. "So Daddy and Mommy can have a little quality time together. All right?"
"Okay," squeaked the clock. It cowered back against the wall.
"Mrs. Niemand!" The calendar fluttered its pages at her as she walked past. "I implore you-don't do anything you'll regret later."
"There's not going to be a later." The gun's weight dangled at the end of her arm. "So regret's not a problem."
"Sarah!" Using her real name, the calendar cried after her. "Please ... don't ..."
In the front part of the hovel, a space barely wider than what her outstretched arms could have reached across, the percussion on the door was even louder. Enough to start peeling some of the web of silvery duct tape and glue-tacky patches away from the torn seams and other leak points. The hovel shivered and hissed as though apprehending its own demise. Sarah wondered what Deckard was going on about, pounding on the door with that much force. He's that happy about being home? Maybe he had finally flipped out, gone all the way around the bend of that dark corridor that'd always been there inside his head; some bad retro-TV fantasy of domestic bliss had wormed its way into his thoughts and taken over. Some vision of Mr. Niemand coming back here after a long, hard day at work, to be greeted by Mrs. N in a lace-edged kitchen apron and heels, bearing a cold stainless-steel pitcher of gin and vermouth-the life their great-great-grandparents had lived, at least inside their sitcom fantasies.
"Take it easy!" More strips of sealant tape dangled loose, trailing like thick party streamers from the hovel's low ceiling. "You're going to knock the place over-" A muffled voice came from the other side of the door, but Sarah couldn't make out what he'd said. She batted another sticky section of tape away from her face and reached for the door's knob.
