EdgeOfHuman

by Unknown

  No sooner had he gotten the freight spinner hidden than he'd spotted the next visitor. She must've been there all the time, waiting for me to leave -- lying on his stomach, elbows braced against the ragged concrete edge, Holden trained the binoculars on the woman as she went into the sideways apartment building. Too late to get a glimpse of her face, but the sleek arrangement of her dark hair, and the fur coat-in this heat? It must've had one of those cryonic linings-all spoke of money. Like I'm surprised, he thought bitterly. It would be just like that weasel Deckard to have belatedly learned the art of selling out to the highest bidder.

  He'd searched through all the bins and equipment caches of the freight spinner's cockpit, looking for some kind of long-range microphone, something he could've used to eavesdrop on what was going on inside the safehouse apartment, but had come up empty-handed. It would've taken powerful, professional quality gear to get anything, he knew; when the place had been taken over for use by the blade runners, with no connection to the LAPD, they'd all chipped in to trick out the windows and exterior walls with sound-deadening insulation. So creeping up and laying his ear on the building wouldn't have done any good, either.

  They're up to something in there. Frustrated, Holden rolled onto his back, setting the binoculars on his chest and trying to get the mechanical heart's pulse back down by sheer force of will. It wasn't obliging. "Goddamn," he muttered aloud, glaring at the empty sky. He might've strained the equipment, perhaps irrevocably; he felt worse now than when he'd left the Reclamation Center out in the desert with Roy Batty. Miserable cheap gizmos-he wondered what bargain-basement gear the LAPD had requisitioned for cases like this. For all he knew that quack doctor-cum-garage mechanic had implanted a rusting tin can and a couple of balloons left over from some kid's birthday party.

  Taking deep breaths, he managed to get the black spots wandering in his sight-bad warning sign of anoxia, brain strangulation-to fade to grey and even disappear. Mostly. He turned back onto his elbows and swept the binoculars' view toward the other spinner, the one the woman, whoever she was, had arrived in. She'd left it in plain view on the other side of the apartment building.

  The bar code on the spinner's fuselage came into focus. He tripped the binoculars' reader function; a few seconds later the LED display flashed the minuscule words SECURED REGISTRATION; NO INFO AVAILABLE ON THIS VEHICLE. He wasn't surprised; a late-model, high-thrust job like this one had to belong to somebody who could buy the pull to keep it off the databases.

  Invariably a way; words of wisdom. Holden dialed in higher and higher rez levels, until he was looking right into the intake manifolds of the expensive after-market turbos that'd been mounted on the spinner. The sunlight slanted into the curved titanium mouths, just enough for the binoculars to pick out the manufacturer's serial numbers. Repeating the string to himself, he slithered back to the freight spinner and keyed up the control panel's computer. A moment later he had the info he'd wanted: the after-market gear had been purchased with the appropriate U.N. acquisition order by Ad Astra Transport Services. He didn't need to look them up; he knew that the company was the shipping wing of the Tyrell Corporation. Its logo, a tacky Soviet Realist image of a stylized male figure lifting a ribbon-tied package to an anonymous planetoid, was on the sides of all the container trucks taking sleep-frozen replicants to the San Pedro docks, for delivery to the off-world colonies.

  So, Tyrell . . . that's interesting. Holden tried to dredge up what he could from his own, pre-Kowalski memory banks. Eldon Tyrell was dead-Bryant had told him that while he'd been in the hospital, bubbling and gurgling away-but wasn't there a daughter or something, who would've been his heir? No, a niece: that was it. Maybe this was Ms. Tyrell, the new head of the replicant-manufacturing industry, who'd zipped out here in the company spinner to talk with Deckard. She'd known where Deckard was; so he must've gotten in touch with her and told her to meet him here, or she'd met him before. No way she would've been able to find the hiding place by herself.

  So that meant this woman-and by extension the Tyrell Corporation itself-was in cahoots with Deckard. Who was supposedly an ex-blade runner, or at least had previously been represented to be a blade runner-Holden wasn't sure anymore about that. The Tyrell Corporation and the blade runner unit had always been two mutually antagonistic forces, inasmuch as the corporation was always engaged in creating replicants that were increasingly closer to passing for human-how much longer would it have been until there'd been Nexus-7 or Nexus-8 models running around? - and the blade runners were just as dedicated to finding them and exposing them as replicants. One of those locked-in predator-and-prey relationships, where each side could take turns being either the wolves or the sheep. So what's Deckard up to now? wondered Holden. Sleeping with the enemy?

  His musing was cut short by a sound he didn't need high-powered eavesdropping equipment for, loud enough to penetrate through the safe-house apartment's acoustic insulation. He ducked instinctively as the gunshot reverberated over the concrete rubble on all sides of the freight spinner. One shot, then silence again; Holden cautiously raised his head above the level of the cockpit panel and looked out toward the toppled building in the distance.

  Even more interesting-he speculated as to who had shot whom. Deckard didn't have a gun, he was fairly sure, but that didn't matter. He could have gotten whatever weapon the woman had been carrying away from her. Unless she'd come here with the specific intent of plugging Deckard, and had just done so. Conspirators falling out? -- it wouldn't be the first time.

  Whatever had gone down inside the safe-house apartment, he knew the smart thing for him to do was to lie low and go on watching. There was somebody walking around in there with a loaded gun. He had one as well, but in his present physically depleted state, he wasn't sure he'd be able to lift it up and get a shot off without a disastrous wobble to his double-handed grip. Even the binoculars seemed to weigh a ton, as he crawled back out to the top of the ridge and aimed them at the building.

  What the . . . He peered harder into. the eyepieces, as he spotted two figures coming out. Deckard and the darkhaired young woman he figured was the new owner of the Tyrell Corporation. Neither one had shot the other-they both looked reasonably intact. What the hell did that mean? Still conspirators? Hard to tell from the habitually sour expression on Deckard's face what the degree of cosiness between the two people was . . . though the woman looked somewhat satisfied with herself. Deckard had taken on the appearance of his old self, a memory flashback to his days of officially being a blade runner, having changed from that ratted-out cop uniform to plainclothes, including another one of those long coats he'd always been so fond of.

  He watched through the binoculars as Deckard and the Tyrell woman got into the hot-rodded spinner and took off. The temptation hit him, to scramble into the freight spinner and tail the other craft, but he thought better of itthey'd have spotted him right off.

  For a moment longer he watched the spinner, a black speck at the head of a fiery trail, fading from view above the mirror-radiant towers of the city. The Santa Ana winds had died away, leaving the atmosphere still desert-hot, but hushed with an almost subliminal, subcutaneous trembling, as though charged with some urgency beyond verbalization.

  Balancing himself with one hand against the ground, Holden got to his feet, then straightened up. And immediately regretted it; a wave of dizziness washed across him, as unsettling as if another earthquake had struck the zone. Artificial heart pounding in his chest, he bent over, palms against his knees; something had lodged in his throat, around which he could barely breathe. It seemed to take the last of his strength to cough it up. When he opened his eyes, he saw a wet red spot on the concrete rubble in front of him.

  "Goddamn . . ." Tentatively he poked at his breastbone with the fingertips of one hand, trying to determine if he had broken something loose on the implants inside him. He swallowed the salt taste in his mouth rather than risk spitting it out. Everything seemed to be working; he could breathe, and the heart
was still beating. He tried to remember whether a particular loose, rattling noise was something he was imagining, or whether it had always been there and he just hadn't noticed it before.

  One thing was certain. He felt weaker than before, closer to the edge of collapse. Great timing, he thought bitterly. What he needed to do-what his stressed-out body told him he should do-was go lie down in some dark quiet place, until his new heart and lungs had finished knitting themselves into his corporeal fabric. But there was no time for that. Things were happening too fast for him to take a break, no matter how badly he required one. The spinner carrying Deckard and the Tyrell woman had vanished from sight, taking them to another locus of conspiracy. Maybe they'd finished up here, the two of them having cooperated on the shooting of some third party in the safe-house apartment . . .

  He forced a deep breath into the lungs' machinery, trying to get his brain clear and functioning again. Work it out, he commanded himself. Who had Deckard and the Tyrell woman killed in there? The only other human being had been that little geek with all but one of his limbs sawn off-Holden tried to remember the guy's name, but couldn't. Granted, the triple amputee had seemed to be an annoying little bastard, but that by itself wouldn't have been sufficient motivation for icing him. There must've been another, more compelling reason. What?

  The little guy had worked for the Tyrell Corporation; that much he remembered for sure. Doing . . . bioengineering. Holden nodded, as if he could suddenly see the guy's entire police file in front of him. Specifically, replicant design. Even more specifically: work on the Tyrell Corporation's Nexus-6 models. That was it.

  So he must've known something. Not just something, but a lot. The little one-limbed guy had been up to his weepy-looking eyeballs in the design and production-every detail-of the Nexus-6 replicants. Knowing too much about something like that-something that other people wanted to remain a secret-was always a good way of getting yourself eliminated.

  It came to him then, a sudden illumination, as though the dark clouds he'd seen massing over the Pacific had sent down a sudden bolt of lightning. Of course, thought Holden. That's what the little guy in there knew. And that's why they had to kill him . . .

  The problem was, the realization didn't do him any good if he was in no shape to act upon it. Another realization, not quite as welcome, shoved aside his other thoughts. He needed help; he couldn't go it alone, as much as he would've wanted to.

  Holden glanced upward. The sky was empty again, the spinner with Deckard and the Tyrell woman long gone, its red trail evaporated. He turned and walked toward the freight spinner, carefully and slowly, husbanding his strength for the confrontation he'd already set his mind upon.

  14

  "Come on, fellas." He gazed around at the empty rooms, the spaces that were silent now but had held as much of a real life as he'd ever known. "We should be just about all packed up now." He and the others, the companions left to him, had done what they could to clean up the blood smeared on the angle of the walls and the remainder of the mess caused by his true love's death. Her second one, Sebastian reminded himself. That made him even sadder, thinking that poor little Pris had had to go through all that twice. It wasn't fair; she'd never hurt anyone, or at least not much.

  Right now, he didn't even know where she was. He hadn't had the heart to pull the batteries from Pris's braindamaged corpse, shut off the various switches and relays that had kept her moving feebly around. She must've crept away, he thought sadly. Out into the zone's rubble, to lie down with the other broken and unfunctional things, debris among debris. Whatever blind spark that had remained inside her would die out in the ashes and rags and splintered, scrappy bones of the world.

  Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar came back over to where they had left him in the sideways apartment. They bent down low, their faces coming close to his; he had to turn his own slightly away, to avoid getting poked in the eye by Squeaker's elongated nose. He knew what they were doing. With every sense organ he'd built into them -- mainly optical, though the teddy bear's round, fleece-lined ears were more finely tuned than a human's, and Squeaker actually did have some extra olfactory receptors built into that thing-they were trying to assess what condition he was in, physically and mentally. They knew some great tragedy had occurred, devastating every fiber of his being. He felt as though the one appendage he couldn't sacrifice, his heart, had been scooped out of his frail chest. Squeaker and the Colonel were aware that death had visited them in their home, she'd come swaggering in on spike heels, and with a big noise had removed one of their number, from the world of the living to that other place where all one's batteries were run down flat and the light behind one's button eyes went out. They were worried and fearful that that was where he was going, too.

  "It's okay." Sebastian reached up and scratched behind the teddy bear's ears. Squeaker was less given to intimate body contact; he knew that for him to come this near, the circuits inside the spiked helmet must be in a considerable state of distress. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine."

  He had to wonder where they'd gotten that behavior from; it wasn't anything he'd programmed into them. From the beginning, they were supposed to have been jolly little fellows, happy creations, rays of sunshine in his gloomy life. He'd wired in logic paths by which the teddy bear and the toy soldier were able to learn new aspects of their environment and modify their behaviors based on that data-a basic feedback loop-but all this tenderhearted fussing and crooning was something different. Or was it? He'd have to think about that, when they got to wherever they were going to next.

  Squeaker helped strap him into the papoose carrier on Colonel Fuzzy's back. Food and batteries and other survival necessities had already been piled into the drag sling they used for scavenging the welfare drops.

  "Wait a minute, fellas. I gotta leave a message."

  The teddy bear, impatient to start traveling before dark set in, stamped its feet. "Just hold your horses," soothed Sebastian. "This'll only take a minute."

  He had the colonel back up toward the biggest bare wall in the apartment. That would make a nice canvas, he'd decided; those other folks were so busy and rushed, coming and going and killing other people, that he didn't want to risk having his words overlooked. Using the black spray can from a Chaka Signature Model Li'l Graffitster Kit, part of the art supplies that'd come in a drop several months ago, he carefully spelled out what he had to say.

  DEAR MR. DECKER . . . That was what he'd overheard the woman calling the man.

  Biting down on his tongue, Sebastian sprayed out the next words. MY FRIENDS AND I ARE MOVING ON. THERE ARE TOO MANY PAINFUL MEMORIES FOR US TO STAY HERE. That was putting it mildly. He flinched every time the tape ran through his thoughts again, of poor Pris flying through the air with her head shot open. THANKS FOR NOT KILLING US AS WELL. As soon as he saw those blurry-edged words on the wall, he regretted them. The logic seemed a little whacked; people should try not to kill you, just as a matter of course. There wasn't time to do the message over; the teddy bear was getting restive. He hurried to finish up. I HOPE YOU FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. VERY BEST REGARDS, SEBASTIAN.

  That would have to do; the spray can was nearly exhausted. He'd gotten some of the black paint on his single hand; tossing the can aside, he rubbed the smear against his coveralls with its pinned-up sleeve and trouser legs.

  "Okay, okay. We're ready to leave now." He jounced up and down in the papoose carrier as Colonel Fuzzy hurried for the door. "Take it easy, you're gonna shake my head off!"

  Outside, the three friends headed east, their shadows racing before them. Sebastian glanced over his shoulder as the teddy bear marched along. In the distance he could just make out the skyline of Los Angeles, the sunset bleeding red light around the dark towers. He supposed things had worked out fifty-fifty for him in this corner of the universe. He'd found true love, his heart's desire, but had had it taken away from him again. Still, he thought. Least I had it for a little while.

  He turned
away, setting his cheek against the back of the teddy bear's head. Closing his eyes but not sleeping. Not for a long while.

  Darkness and life; both had begun again, the city moving into the nocturnal portion of its cycle. When everything comes crawling out, thought Holden, looking down from the freight spinner's cockpit at the lights carpeting the earth.

  He'd decided, when he'd left the sideways zone, upon the general outline of his course of action. Circumstances-his own failing strength; the overtaxed artificial heart and lungs inside his chest had begun to sputter and wheeze alarmingly, complete with fuzzy-edged blackout dots hitting his sight like negative snowflakes-dictated that he needed assistance. Not later, when events had settled out, but now. So they would be determined as he wished, as an active agent in the historical process, or at least this little part of it, and not some breathing vegetable strapped by tubes to a hospital bed.

  A terrible vision had come to him as the freight spinner completed another circle above LA's downtown core, of his bio-mechanical innards reaching their stress limit and going into some half-powered, partially shut-down mode, just enough to keep him alive in the pilot's seat, but not conscious. Even worse off than he'd been in the hospital. No longer human, a thing kept alive by pumps and artificially inflated bladders, wearing his face and his clothes, riding around forever in the sky on the course he'd set when his brain had still been functioning. Through the rotation of day and night, the progress of the seasons, the manifestations of dry and monsoon beating against the transparent cockpit dome, the curved glass shielding his blank, unseeing eyes . . .