by K. W. Jeter
"But I don't know." He looked hard at the man across from him. "I've heard a lot of talk from you about what's happened to the humans and the replicants out in the stars. And maybe I even believe some of it. But even if it's true that the replicants have started becoming human-that they live as long as humans, and they have children like humans-that doesn't tell me anything about what's inside this box. And about why it should be so deadly to the replicants."
"That's right." Batty's voice broke into the conversation, coming from the briefcase. "Remember that, Deckard. This guy hasn't proven anything. All you know for sure is that he wants to stop you. Just like the U.N. security forces and all the other cops in the universe would like to stop you. He's just got a fancier line."
"Yeah," agreed Deckard, "he does talk a good line. Which makes him a funny kind of cop. I'm used to the kind that solves problems with a bullet." He studied the other man, looking for the clue he needed. "That was the kind of cop I was. And let's face it, Marley-you're not exactly squeamish about that sort of thing yourself. You didn't have any trouble over killing that Kowalski replicant when you thought you had to. So why are you being so careful with me?"
"I'm not being careful at all." Marley smiled at him. "I don't care about you at all. I'm just thorough, that's all. I've got a job to take care of, same as you. So I've got my orders, and they specifically said to leave you alive. Since I'm working for the rep-symps-the real rep-symps, not the phony-ass U.N. collaborators who set you up-I figure they must know what they want. Otherwise, I would've taken care of this whole problem my own way. The same way I took care of that Kowalski replicant back at Outer Hollywood." The smile became wider and meaner. "You know, you cop types are right: a bullet really is the best way. Simple and effective. If I weren't operating under restrictions, you would never even have seen what hit you, and that briefcase would be dismantled to atoms. And I'd be long gone from here."
"Hey! Screw you, pal!" Batty's miffed voice sounded again. "I'd kick your ass-if I could get to it."
Both men ignored the angry words. "So what is the deal?" Deckard pointed to the briefcase. "All that stuff you were talking about a memetic bomb. Some kind of data, pure information. That the U.N. security forces want to get piped to the insurgents. What kind of data would cause that much damage, to make all this worthwhile?"
"You got to remember," said Marley. "The Tyrell Corporation had all sorts of clever ideas. Eldon Tyrell had a knack for looking ahead and imagining the worst possibilities. Like the replicants' getting out from under his and the U.N. 's control. So they built in things like the four-year life span. But that wasn't the only fail-safe mechanism that Tyrell designed into the replicants. There's another one that's specifically re lated to the whole reproductive issue. The only reason it works is that it's a variation on a deeply buried mammalian instinct, some dark coding that's in the primitive layers of the human nervous system. Which is, after all, the basis for the replicant nervous system, so it's in there as well. All that Eldon Tyrell did was to invert part of it, design his own little twist into the replicants." Marley took a deep breath before going on. "The original instinctive behavior is the one by which adult male animals are driven to kill the offspring of other adult males of the same species, thus increasing the ratio of their own offspring in the breeding group; it's sometimes called the 'stepfather syndrome.' Just one of those ugly parts of genetically directed behavior where the gene's own survival and propagation are the only things important to it. Morality doesn't enter into the equation. What Eldon Tyrell did with the replicants he designed was to program in a pair of aberrations to that basic, primitive instinct. The first was to make it much stronger, to the point of being a homicidal obsession; the child-murdering behavior takes over the entire organism, overriding even its own instincts for self-preservation. The other aberration on the basic instinct directs the behavior toward the organism's own offspring. You following me? The organism-the replicant-murders his own children. It's like a breakdown in an extended immune system, one that extends beyond the replicant's own skin. The primitive drive is inverted, so that the individual attacks and destroys the very thing it's supposed to protect."
"I don't get it," said Deckard. "If that's the behavior that's programmed into the replicants, then there's no contest. There's no way that they can win any kind of struggle against the U.N.'s colonists. Because they'll destroy themselves; they'll reproduce, but they'll murder their own children. It's all over for them. They're a biological dead end."
"Not quite. The 'stepfather syndrome' behavior is built into them, but it's buried. It's not activated unless it's triggered. That's where you come in, Deckard. You and the little job you agreed to undertake for the cops and the U.N. security forces that had managed to inifitrate the rep-symp underground. You're carrying the trigger right here in this briefcase. The data that's been imbedded in it isn't any list of disguised replicants on Earth; that was just the cover story to get you to agree to the job. What the people who put this together did was encode the memetic bomb, the trigger to activate the buried behavior pattern, and stick it in here, in this box. Then they wrapped it up, like putting a bow on a birthday present, by imbedding Roy Batty's cerebral contents in there-more to goad you into taking on the delivery job than to actually help you get there. Because in reality, you don't need any help; there's no real effort being made by the authorities to stop you. The U.N. and the police, all of them- they want you to get there. You delivering that briefcase to the replicant insurgents is what their big plan is all about. You'd be showing up on the replicants' doorstep with the trigger to the bomb that's already wired into them. The buried behavior pattern would be activated, and there'd be nothing they could do to stop it. And that'd be the end of the replicants. When they die, there'd be no replicant children to replace them."
"This is crap," growled Batty's voice. "Don't listen to this jerk. He's just playing with your mind, Deckard. He's the one who's working for the authorities."
"I'm afraid our friend here protests too much." Marley rapped his knuckles on the briefcase's lid. "He's hardly a disinterested party in this whole affair, is he? Since his whole existence is bound up with what the two of you have been told about his contents. And why you should go ahead and deliver them."
"There's someone else," said Deckard. "Batty's not the only one. There was someone else who convinced me I should do it."
"Ah, yes. Our transcendent authority in these matters." Marley nodded. "The good Sebastian, who's gone from this mortal realm to a higher if slightly smaller one. It only goes to show that even a deity, albeit a dehydrated one, can be wrong."
"You knew I went to see him? In his little pocket universe?"
"Of course." Marley gave a casual shrug. "The people I'm working for-the real rep-symps-know all kinds of things. The other rep-symps may have been infiltrated and taken over by the police, but it doesn't end there. My bunch has its contacts and moles on the other side. They know what kind of data was imbedded in the briefcase, and what else they put in it. And what they instructed Batty to tell you so you'd go off and get convinced by Sebastian about your holy mission. Your delivery job. The problem is, Sebastian can tell you only what he himself believes to be true; he's not omniscient, at least as far as this world goes."
If he couldn't believe Sebastian-and Deckard had to admit that could be the case, that the little genetic engineer, even in his new transfigured incarnation, could've been lied to and misled-the question became, once more, a matter of trusting anyone at all. This Marley character had at least the advantage of a certain cold logic on his side to carry his arguments. They've made it easy for me, thought Deckard. He glanced over at the video monitor. All it would have taken, a simple thing, was to have let the director Urbenton go ahead and dub Deckard's face onto the actor playing him. A standard production technique. And then I would've been a marked man. Anybody in the emigrant colony could have recognized him and turned him in, if the authorities had, in fact, been hunting him down. But
instead...
"You're asking me to believe a lot," said Deckard. "Not that everybody I run into hasn't been doing the same. But this 'stepfather syndrome' business-this memetic bomb that I'm supposed to be carrying-that seems pretty extreme. Why should I believe you on this one? Got any proof?"
"Mere evidence isn't enough for you." The smile appeared on Marley's face again. "Or logic, what you can figure out about what's happening around you-"
"It's not that." Deckard didn't bother with a smile. "I just don't trust murderers."
One of Marley's eyebrows rose. "So not even yourself?"
"Especially not myself."
"All right," said Marley, exuding an affable calm. "You want proof? Or at least as much as can be gotten in this fallible universe. Fine-you've been carrying it around with you."
"The briefcase?" Deckard laid his hand on it. "I thought that was the whole problem, not the answer."
"Well, maybe you've packed a few extra things inside. Things that might sort out the situation a little bit." Marley pulled the briefcase out from beneath Deckard's palm and turned it around toward himself.
"Get your hands off me-"
Marley ignored the protest that came in Batty's voice. His thumbs pushed back the latch buttons on either side of the handle; a second later, he had thrown the lid back, exposing the lined interior.
"Not a lot in here." He glanced up at Deckard. "You could've made better use of it, you know. Thrown in a change of clothes or something. No matter-there's enough. At least for right now."
Leaning back against the booth's padding, Deckard watched as the other man examined the briefcase. A rectangular packet, one end torn off and then folded down to preserve the contents, was held up before him.
"You held on to this?" Marley looked at the name SEBASTIAN on the packet. "Thought it might come in handy, I guess. Just in case you wanted to talk to him again. Though what more he could tell you, I have no idea. Still, maybe you could just keep it as a little souvenir of your travels." He laid the packet down on the booth's table. The briefcase's lid blocked Deckard's view of the other man's hands rummaging inside. "Or perhaps you just wanted to keep the original package all together, with all the bits and pieces-since the collaborator rep-symps, the ones the cops have taken over, put this in here, you might as well keep it the way it came to you. But this is something new." Marley held up another object. "I know what was in here originally, and this wasn't part of it. You just put this in here since you got back from Sebastian's pocket universe."
Deckard looked across the table and saw a square of white-enameled metal in Marley's hand. The other man turned it slightly, revealing the broad red cross on the small box's lid. The old first aid kit-ancient, perhaps, considering how battered and scuffed it appeared. He had almost forgotten about it; when he had left the hovel, tugging the Rachael child along with him by one hand, the briefcase in the other, he had stopped when he had felt the little metal box slipping out of his jacket. He had popped open the briefcase and thrown the box in there for safekeeping, not even trying to figure out why he was hanging on to it at all instead of pitching it away as a worthless piece of junk.
"You do remember, don't you? Where you got this?" Marley held the white metal box up in front of his smile. "It wasn't that long ago."
"What do you know about that?" The question of just how extensive the other man's sources of information were troubled Deckard again. "You weren't there when it happened."
"No," admitted Marley. "But I knew Sebastian had this. It's a pretty important little item, even if it doesn't look it. So it's worth keeping track of. If Sebastian had it, and now you do, chances are good that you got it from him. Logical, huh? And I'm right, aren't I?"
A nod from Deckard. "So what's so important about it?"
"Well, why don't we take a look?" Marley gave a playful wink. "Shouldn't be too hard for a couple of geniuses like us to figure out. Let's see With his thumb, he pried open the lid; rust in the hinge joint creaked as the flat metal was prodded back by one fingertip. "Not too promising, if you're looking for the secrets of the universe." He glanced up at Deckard. "Old bandages and dried-up disinfectant." The fingertip now pushed around the box's antique-looking contents. "How about these aspirin?" When he pried the lid off one of the tiny bottles, the decayed vinegar smell wafted through the booth. "Hm, I think the expiration date might've gone by already-"
"Cut the crap." Deckard scowled in irritation. "Get on with it."
Marley ignored him, continuing with the routine. "Not much else in here. Hardly seems worth the trouble, does it? You'd have to wonder why anybody would make a fuss over something like this."
"I know what that is." At the back of the booth, the Rachael child had pushed herself forward, hands flat on the table so she could see better. "There were things like that where I came from. Like that box and all that stuff in it."
"Of course there were." Marley turned his smile toward the girl. "You're absolutely right, sweetheart." He glanced over at Deckard. "She knows what the score is-or at least part of it. Because this is a standard-issue item, something that was stocked in all transports going outside Earth orbit. No big deal, just your basic little kit for small emergencies, incidents you didn't need to bother going to the infirmary for. There were probably dozens just like this aboard the Salander 3. But this particular one it's very special. Not because of the bandages and the dead aspirin. But something else."
"It's all old." The Rachael child's brow creased as she studied the box in Marley's hands. "The ones we had, they were new. I mean, they weren't all beat up like that one."
"Sure-" Marley nodded. "That's because those other first aid kits were still there with you, where there wasn't any time. This one fell out-well, it was taken out. Somebody carried it out of the Salander 3. Because they had found out how important it was. So it's been out here, in real time. And that's where things get old and beat-up. Like this." He turned back toward Deckard. "You don't know yet what I'm talking about. But you will."
"I don't know if I want to."
"You don't have a choice, Deckard. Not anymore. Not that you ever did." Marley set the first aid kit down on the table. "If it's not the contents-all this old crap-then maybe it's the box itself. Think that could be?" He didn't wait for an answer. "See the inside of the lid here? What's it look like to you?"
"Paper." Mottled and browned by the same passing of time that had marked the small box's exterior; Deckard didn't see anything remarkable in the thin lining. "That's all. Probably it was some instructions, or a list of supplies." The paper was blank, whatever words that had been on it long since faded. "Standard issue, like you said."
"Wrong on that one, pal." Marley watched as one of his fingernails picked at the edge of the paper. "What was standard on these kits was to have the contents list printed right on the metal. See? Like that." One corner had been peeled away enough to reveal the black lettering beneath. "So somebody must've stuck this in here. For a reason." He grasped the wrinkled paper between thumb and forefinger and tore it away. "Which you shall see."
Something else was behind the paper, a rectangle just as thin but stiffer. Marley pulled it from the hiding place and looked at it for a few seconds before handing it across the table.
A photograph. Deckard held it by the edge, looking into the frozen section of the past that had been caught there.
He was still looking at it and listening to Marley explain what it meant, what it showed-listening and understanding at last-when the first bullet hit.
For a moment, Deckard thought it was something from the video monitor, something that was happening to that other Deckard, the actor playing him in the reenacted past. The noise of the shot was so loud that it pulled his gaze away from the ancient, long-hidden photograph and toward the monitor. That Deckard, with his long coat but without his face, was backed up against a motorized urban trash-retrieval unit; the gun was a gleam of black metal spinning away, knocked out of his hand by the taller figure looming above
him...
A quick scream of fright from the Rachael child, and he realized that the shot had been in this world and not in the one held by the monitor. The bullet had torn into the fiberboard ceiling above the booth, gouging out a ragged trench from which a loop of electrical conduit dangled like a silvery intestine.
The second bullet took out the video monitor a few feet away, sending bright specks of glass across the floor and the table, as though that other Deckard and his small world had been further reduced to their component atoms, a furious energy propelling them from one reality to a larger one.
Deckard's hand, guided by its own instincts, was already pulling the gun from his jacket as his gaze snapped toward the doorway. Black-uniformed figures stood between the bar's darkness and the light outside, their weapons raised and aimed straight toward him.
She saw everything that happened.
They had told Sarah to stay back, out of danger; they would take care of the situation. Right now, she didn't have to do anything except watch.
"These guys are professionals," said Urbenton, standing beside her on the street outside the bar. The area hadn't been cordoned off-no need; the operation wouldn't take more than a few minutes-so a small crowd from the emigrant colony's surrounding alleys and warrens had formed, attracted by the audible stimulus of the gunshots and raised voices. "I wanted to use some of my video crew-I figured they're good enough at faking this kind of thing, they should be able to pull something off in reality, with real guns and stuff. But I got overruled on that account. So we got the heavy hitters on our side."
A glance over her shoulder, and she saw a few more of the uniformed men keeping the gawkers back with well-directed blows of their rifle butts. She looked back toward the doorway of the seedy bar, where all the rest of the U.N-provided storm troopers had blitzed a few seconds ago. "I'm going in there," she said, walking without haste toward the scene.
