Edge Of Human

16

The wall underfoot ran at enough of an angle that everything loose collected at one side of the safe-house apartment. A few moments of searching yielded the remote for the spinner's security devices; Deckard scooped it up and went back outside the building to the spinner.

He looked out the side of the cockpit as the spinner rose and banked over the wall of freeway, and saw the small figure of Holden, and farther away the dead Batty and Pris. Then they were lost to his sight; the spinner gained speed and altitude, its straight-line trajectory already set. The dark shapes of the sideways world fell behind as the city's bright-specked towers loomed ahead.

As the Tyrell Corporation headquarters approached, the blue-lit rectangle on top of one of the slanting towers flashed on, the landing deck's sensors responding to the spinner's coded signals. The guide beam locked on, bringing him down in the spiral of falling angels.

I should've taken the gun, he thought. Would've been easy to get it away from Holden.

Eyes closed, Deckard leaned his head back against the cold wall of the elevator. Another descent, maybe the last one. But he also knew there had been no need. That anything he had to do here, he could accomplish just as well with his bare hands. The metal doors slid open, revealing the private suite of Sarah Tyrell. The vast, columned spaces stretched out before him, shadows chased into the far corners by the ranks of flickering candles. He didn't know whether she had lit them, or if it was part of some corporate flunky's evening duties, to go around with a sacristan's taper, touching each black wick with the small flame. It didn't matter. There was no one else here now; the interlocking rooms held only her presence. He could feel it, like the shift in the night atmosphere's pressure on his skin.

Deckard stepped out of the elevator, letting the silvery doors close behind him. Stillness so complete that the motion of his breath made the flames of the candles on the nearest wrought-iron stand tremble.

Another's breath; he heard it, a sigh, as of one dreaming. He turned toward the bed and saw her, face against the silken pillow, dark hair loosened along the curve of her shoulders. For a moment his heart stopped between one beat and the next as he gazed down at the sleeping woman, his hand reaching out and then hesitating, fingertips trembling an inch away from her pale cheek…

There was something else on the bed, smaller and darker. A weight of metal, one part molded to fit the human hand, his hand. He picked the gun up, balancing it in his palm. It was either his old one or another just like it. He could tell, just by the few ounces difference, that a full clip was loaded inside. Ready to go.

That was thoughtful of her. Deckard brought his index finger around the thin crescent inside the gun's trigger guard. He straightened his arm, bringing the muzzle's cold circle of metal to the brow of the sleeping Sarah Tyrell…

"Would you really do that?" A voice, her voice, spoke from behind him.

He turned, looking over his shoulder. A different light from the massed candles shone toward him. He saw now that the ornate antique desk from the office suite had been pulled closer, between the columns that marked the bedchamber. Thick cables snaked back from a large-screen video monitor to the wall cabinet that had previously held it. A remote-controlled camera, red dot blinking above the lens, focused on him. On the monitor's screen was Sarah's image, her hair smoothed and bound, a thin smile at her lips as she regarded the scene before her.

He said nothing. But slowly, carefully, drew the gun away from the sleeping woman on the bed. The other one…

"I wasn't sure if you would or not." Sarah's voice came again from the monitor's speaker. "So I thought it best to be careful. You've been through some rough experiences just recently. That could make anybody… unpredictable."

"You brought her here." A simple statement of fact, that which he now saw to be true. "You sent somebody up north, to get her." He looked down again at the sleeping woman. At Rachael, sleeping… and dying. "You shouldn't have taken her out of the transport module." The last time he had seen her, she'd been beneath the black coffin's transparent lid. There, the interval between each breath had been measurable in hours; here, he could see the pulse in her soft throat ticking away the seconds, the minutes. He turned a fierce glare at the mirror image on the monitor screen. "She doesn't have that much time left."

"A relative concept." Sarah's image smiled. "I expect she has more time than I would have, if I'd been so foolish as to make myself physically present during this little conversation. So I hope you'll excuse this contrivance, this… electronic separation between us. As I said, I don't know what you're capable of doing now." She regarded him almost with pity. "We've grown apart, haven't we?"

He knew she was mocking him. The urge to raise the gun, aim, and put a bullet through the monitor was almost irresistible. Anything to silence her. "Why did you do it? Have her brought here?"

"Why are you so angry?" The camera on top of the monitor shifted, the lens focusing on the bed's sleeping figure, then returning to him. "Isn't that what you wanted? To see her again-perhaps I thought that would make you happy. Isn't that the most a woman can do? Really, Deckard… there's no abasement greater than that. Even if she is the exact duplicate of me. It's still not quite the same thing, is it?"

He regarded her image for a moment. "And the gun? What was that for?"

"I didn't know what you'd do… but I wanted to find out. It's important to know these things." One of the image's eyebrows raised. "You've found out quite a few things as well. Haven't you?"

"Everything you wanted me to."

"Oh? Such as?"

He stood in a room lit by candles, with a sleeping woman on the bed behind him, and the same woman's image, phosphor dots and radiant glass, inside a metal box. As though the living and the dying had somehow exchanged places. He had to close his eyes, shut out everything, reassembling the component elements of his thoughts, before he could go on.

"There's no sixth replicant." Deckard opened his eyes and looked straight into the monitor.

"Perhaps." Sarah's image gave a noncommittal shrug.

"There never was. That was just Bryant screwing up, a misfired brain cell. A slip of the tongue, too much alcohol. He couldn't keep track of the nose on his face when he was sloshed."

A shake of the image's head. "What about the information he purged from the police files? The off-world authorities' report about the escape?"

"I never saw those things. You told me about them." He let the gun dangle at his side. "And you were lying. Simple as that."

"Ah." Sarah's image slowly nodded. "If that were the case… it would explain a lot. Wouldn't it? I suppose it's too late, after all I've put you through, to say that I've been completely honest with you."

"You're right. It's too late."

The image gazed sadly, pityingly, at him. "Then it doesn't matter whether I tell you there actually is a sixth missing replicant or not. You won't believe me. About that or anything else."

"Maybe not. But you could start by telling me some other things. Like why you set Dave Holden out looking for your sixth replicant, too."

"That… was someone else's idea. The person I hired before was Roy Batty. The original, the human one, not a replicant-or at least as far as I know. I believe he brought Holden in on the project. But that's unimportant."

"I agree." Deckard glanced over his shoulder; Rachael had stirred in her sleep, but not woken. "Especially now that Batty's dead. Again."

"Of course he is." Sarah's image smiled. "I knew as soon as it happened. I had ways of monitoring the state of his health."

"I bet you did."

The image regarded him. "And is that when you knew?"

Deckard nodded. "I saw him die. It wasn't the same as the other one. I saw right in Batty's eyes. I could tell that he wasn't a replicant… that he was human. And that it didn't matter either way."

"Ah." A smile formed on the image's face. "How very mystical of you. Then what does? Matter, that is."

"Just the question," said Deckard. "Why you've done any of this. With me, or anybody else. And why you killed Bryant.,'

"Yes…" The image nodded, apparently pleased. "I knew you'd figure that out. Let's face it; you've accurately described him just now. An alcoholic, losing track of the details… not very reliable. Not for my purposes, at least. I prefer having my secrets well kept. Bryant was necessary, at one time, to set things up. And then he became… less than necessary. A liability. And he had to be eliminated." Another small shrug. "And I had to do it. Not because it's the sort of thing I enjoy doing. But just because he knew me. His defenses were down, so to speak."

"All right…" Deckard nodded. "I'm not exactly crying for him. Now answer the other question. Why would you put together a conspiracy to eliminate the blade runners? Just to make sure nobody could track down your precious replicants when they get loose?"

The pitying gaze returned to the image's face. "You're not thinking clearly, are you? I've told you before-you just don't know how things work in this world. If the blade runners were eliminated-and it appeared that a mysterious, unidentifiable Nexus-6 replicant had not only eluded them, but had killed them rather than letting itself be killed-then the UN, authorities would shut down the Tyrell Corporation. They'd push that little red button, the one that ensures the destruction of our dangerous technology."

He gave another single nod. "You told me that."

"You were right, Deckard, when you said I'd lied to you. I have to admit that now. I told you I wanted you to track down the sixth replicant, and save the Tyrell Corporation…" The image leaned forward on the monitor screen, its gaze sharpening and fastening tighter upon him. "That was the lie, Deckard. I wanted you to fail. I wanted all of you-Batty and Holden as well-to not only fail, but to kill each other off. What else could you do? With no missing replicant to find, you'd turn on each other. Not just the blade runners, but anyone else capable of tracking down escaped replieants, such as Roy Batty, would be eliminated. And the U.N. authorities would know about it. Not how it happened, but that it did. And that would be enough. For my purposes."

He understood now. "You want them to destroy the Tyrell Corporation."

"I've wanted that for a long time. And before that… I wanted to kill Eldon Tyrell. My uncle. The way he'd killed me; slowly, from the inside out. A little bit at a time. I knew there was still something like a soul inside him. Not much of one, but something that could love and grieve and mourn just a little bit. All that was left inside him… but that would have been enough. He'd loved Ruth-my another-but he'd lost her. To his own brother." A smile that was like a razored wound appeared on the image's face. "Rather biblical, don't you think? At this level of money and power, this world that I've lived in, there are no real complications. Everything is reduced to its simplest elements. The oldest stories. Complications are for little people… like you, Deckard. That's what you were, for Eldon Tyrell. And for me. Nothing more."

"And what were you… you and your uncle… to each other?"

"If I said lovers, that wouldn't be correct. Not really." The voice from the monitor softened. "Perhaps as some euphemism for the mechanics of incest. But I didn't love him… and he didn't love me. He loved the dead… the way you do. Because the dead are memories. Where moth and rust doth not corrupt-isn't that the way it is, Deckard? Look behind you."

He did as the image ordered. He saw the sleeping, dying woman on the bed. The same face as on the monitor screen, but with eyes closed, a flush of pink to the skin across her cheekbones, a line creased in her brow, as though she were fighting off some nightmare evoked by the words tangling in the still air above her head. One of Rachael's hands was closed into a trembling fist upon the pillow.

"You see?" Rachael's voice, but not Rachael's voice; Sarah's voice, a whisper from the monitor. "She's as good as dead. You know that, don't you? All that keeps her here is time… and that's such a little thing, Deckard. And memory is so much… truer." The whisper lowered, gentler, almost a kiss at his ear. "I made you this offer before. I could be for you… what I was for my uncle. Not the real thing… not the woman you loved… not the dead. But close enough."

He said nothing. As if he had heard nothing. He reached down and stroked Rachael's brow, soothing away the bad dreams that had troubled her long sleep. He laid his hand, softly, against the side of her face, and her lashes trembled against his fingertips.

"I knew you wouldn't." Bitterness etched the voice that came from the monitor. "Nothing can change your mind."

"No…" He spoke without turning to look at Sarah's image.

"I knew it would be this way. You prefer the dead to the living, the fake to the real. The memory… to me." The voice became harsher and more grating. "The same as he did. That's why I've had to do these things. Perhaps if I became the dead… if I became a memory… then I'd have a chance."

Another voice spoke. The same, but another. A whisper: "Deckard.. "

He looked down and saw that Rachael had opened her eyes. She gazed at him, calmly and unafraid, as she had done once before, a long time ago. When he had woken her from a deathlike sleep.

Do you love me? Memory, his own words.

I love you…

Do you trust me?

He bent down and kissed her. "Don't worry…" He placed his fingertips against her lips before she could say anything. "We'll be leaving here soon."

I trust you…

"That's very touching." Sarah's voice came from the monitor. "I admire your faithfulness. I'm not lying when I say that. What I wouldn't give…" The voice broke off for a moment, then spoke flat and harsh again. "You're right. It is time to leave. Time to finish.. everything."

Deckard glanced over his shoulder, to the image on the screen. "Where are you?"

"I'm right here in the building with you." She laughed, short and humorless. "I wouldn't miss this for the world. I've waited too long for it."

Outside, visible through the high windows at the far end of the suite, jagged lightning shot down from clouds pressing lower with their own weight. A low rumbling noise, almost beneath the limits of human audibility, trembled through the expectant air.

"Did you hear that?" On the monitor screen, the image looked away, listening.

"It's the thunder." He spoke to both the image and to Rachael near him. "That's all it is."

"Oh, no-" The image looked back at him. Sarah slowly shook her head, eyes widening. As though with delight. "It's starting. The end of everything…"

"What are you talking about?" A cold fingertip touched his spine.

"You never remember. I tell you things… but it seems you just don't want to remember." Pity in the gaze of Sarah's image, in her voice. "The red button… though there is no button, nothing to be pushed. If it were that easy, I would have done it myself… a long time ago. There's a command series, transmitted by the U.N. authorities, to initiate the auto-destruct sequence, the explosive charges that were built into and throughout the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. Right here."

Another low-pitched noise rolled through the building; the candle flames shivered. Deckard reached down, his arm around Rachael's shoulder, pulling her closer to him.

"They must have made their decision." The image spoke as though savoring its own words. "The U.N. authorities have been monitoring your progress all along; not as closely as I have, but enough to be aware of the results. Of yours and Batty's and Holden's futile quests. The fact that none of you were able to track down this missing sixth replicant. That you were, in essence, defeated by it."

"But they also know-they'd have to-that it's all lies." He tightened his grip on Rachael's upper arm. "It was all concocted by you, for your own reasons-"

"That doesn't matter to them. The U.N. has been looking for a pretext to shut down-to eliminate-the Tyrell Corporation. Now they have it. Why it came about is of no concern to them. They'll be able to make the changes to the off-world colonization program that they've wanted to for a long time. No Tyrell Corporation… and no replicants." The image smiled. "As has been shown now-they're just too dangerous. Too much… like us."

A stronger shock wave traveled through the building. He felt the floor buckle beneath his feet as the columns running the length of the suite cracked around their bases. There was no use for the gun now, if there ever had been; he tossed it aside. Rachael made no resistance as he drew 'her from the bed and got her to her feet.

"So now you'll have what you want." Through the far windows, he could see a roiling light, flames, and smokechurning explosions, advancing up the sides of the other slanted towers. "Nothing that Eldon Tyrell created will be left. That should make you happy."

"No…" Sarah's image shook its head. "Not happy. Satisfied, perhaps. In this little time we have left together-"

Harder, and deafening; he was barely able to stay upright, stumbling backward a step, with Rachael pressed close against himself. Columns toppled and crashed to the floor, as the walls were torn apart, raw-edged darkness showing through the chasms splitting wider. Glass fragments sprayed across the rooms as the tall windows twisted in their frames and shattered.

Immediately before him, the antique desk reared and fell, the monitor snapping free of its cables. The monitor struck the floor, the screen bursting into bright shards, the voice struck silent.

"Come on-" Deckard pulled Rachael toward the suite's doors. The carved wooden panels had flown open, hinges wrenched loose, and thick smoke pouring across the ceiling.

The corridor beyond was a racketing hell, alarm sirens shrieking as red light pulsed through the churning black. The elevator shaft gaped open, a torrent of fire leaping from the levels below. As they ran, the floor suddenly tilted beneath them; he landed on his shoulder, skidding and drawing Rachael down against himself. A steel girder, twisted loose of its anchorings, ripped through the ceiling panels like a massive scythe, gouging a ragged trench a few inches away from them.

He couldn't tell if Rachael had screamed in fright and shock; the noise of the explosions climbing through the buildings obliterated his hearing. She might have thought it was part of the same nightmare in which she'd been mired before he woke her-he didn't know. Taking her around the shoulders, he tottered upright, stumbling through the spaxk-laced smoke toward the stairwell door, barely visible at the corridor's far end.

There, below him; Holden could see them, small human figures surrounded by the larger forms billowing toward the night sky's darker clouds. The other towers had already collapsed, their flank torn open by the sequenced charges, steel frames twisting apart section by section, then falling toward the flame-engulfed center of what had been the Tyrell Corporation headquarters.

Rain lashed across the freight spinner's cockpit, the heavy monsoon gouts hissing into steam as they battered wavelike against the inferno that had burst from the city's heart. Holden gasped for breath, the pulse inside himself staggering in the wash of heat, as he leaned against the controls, willing the spinner through the updraft's coiling hurricane.

He had flown straight here from the sideways world, only to find one even more chaotic. Whatever was going on, it looked terminal; even as he forced the freight spinner down, another series of explosions rolled through the remaining tower, bringing it even closer to the point of toppling into the molten center of the compound.

The building's sudden lurch knocked the two figures from their feet-looking out the side of the cockpit, he recognized his ex-partner Deckard, with a dark-haired woman. They had been trying to reach the spinner parked on the roof's landing deck, but the last shock wave had put an end to that: the empty spinner toppled off the tower's brink, pinwheeling down into the flames, then adding another, smaller explosion to the ones already shaking the surrounding city.

With the flat of his palm, Holden hit the control for the cargo hatchway. A nearly solid gust of heat and smoke slammed against his back as the freight spinner's midsection slid open. He could see Deckard, one arm supporting the woman, looking up at him as he brought the craft down closer to them. He punched the autopilot into proximity hover, then pushed himself up from the seat and made his way to the rear section, grabbing one bulkhead strut after another to keep from falling.

"Deckard!" He held on to the side of the hatch, reaching down. "Give me her hand!" The dark-haired woman looked barely conscious, as though asphyxiated by the smoke churning upward. He could hear, through the roar of the flames, his own artificial lungs wheezing for oxygen. Deckard managed to lift the woman, his arm around her waist, high enough that he could grab her by the wrist and elbow, and draw her up and into the freight spinner. She wasn't unconscious; when Holden lowered her to the tilting floor of the cargo area, she was able to grasp the metal ribs and pull herself away from the bottom of the hatch.

He reached back down for Deckard's outstretched hand. Their fingertips had almost touched, when another explosion, the loudest and nearest of all, ripped open the last remaining panels of the roof. Holden saw the surge of glaring light a split second before its impact concussed the spinner; he was thrown backward, catching a flash of Deckard leaping desperately for the hatchway.

The spinner tumbled nose downward. Holden's spine hit the back of the pilot's seat; he twisted about, hands pressed against the controls, a fireball like the interior of the sun welling up to engulf the craft. Over his shoulder, he saw the hatchway door sliding shut; Deckard, teeth clenched in agony, fought to claw his way inside. The woman screamed his name, reached, and grabbed his hand and forearm; the door's edge scraped open Deckard's shirt and the skin beneath as she pulled him toward herself. Deckard got one foot on the doorway's rim and gave a final convulsive push. He and the dark-haired woman slid together against the opposite bulkhead.

In the same moment the fireball was cleft in two by the fall of the last tower. The updraft swung the freight spinner around in a dizzying loop as Holden struggled to keep from being torn away from the controls. Suddenly he found himself looking at the dark storm clouds above, the monsoon's torrents pounding the curved glass of the cockpit; with a single lunge he hit the throttle full-on. He clung to the pilot's chair against the mounting g-forces as the freight spinner shot skyward.

Then stars, a diamond sweep from one horizon rim to the other, and silence, the storm left below. Holden managed to claw his way up to the control panel and pull the spinner's ascent into a level flight.

"Here-let me take over." Deckard came forward from the cargo area. Gasping in exhaustion, Holden watched as his ex-partner climbed into the pilot's seat. The bio-mechanical heart in his chest staggered and lurched, then settled into a slower and more stable rhythm.

The craft banked into a slow turn as Deckard's hands moved across the controls. The rain had plastered his hair black against his forehead, a cut along one cheekbone diluting pink down his throat. The sodden coat hung on him like a wet shroud. Watching the navigation screen, he brought the freight spinner slicing back down through the clouds.

Deckard cut the throttle to a slow crawl as they came directly above the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. Or what had been the corporation; a gigantic square section had been cut from the center of L.A. and transformed into what now looked like the mouth of a ground-level volcano. The wind gusts and saturating Pacific rains drove the flames far enough back to reveal the twisted skeletal girders, the distorted structural webs all that remained of the towers.

Black specks, what humans looked like from this altitude, and the larger shapes of emergency vehicles, clustered around the apocalypse perimeter, the ululating wail of their sirens piercing the night.

Holden gazed down through the snakelike rivulets coursing over the cockpit glass. "What the hell brought all that on?"

Reaching again for the controls. Deckard lifted his hard-set gaze from the scene underneath them. "Bad attitudes." He punched the throttle.

A few minutes later-or hours; Holden had lost track of time, closing his eyes while the freight spinner bad shot above the city-he felt the craft slowing and descending again. To a landing; he looked out and saw a bleak desert landscape, silvered by the moon and stars. The monsoons' seasonal return hadn't extended this far inland yet. No buildings or fences nearby; the Reclamation Center that Batty had brought him to was obviously miles away.

Deckard cut the engines as the freight spinner settled into the loose gravel and sand. The quiet of the empty landscape penetrated the cockpit glass. He glanced over toward Holden. "We gotta talk." He pushed another control and the side panels swiveled open.

As they walked away from the spinner, leaving prints in the sand, Holden dug the gun out of his jacket. "You know… I could take you in. To the police station. And turn you over."

"Sure." Deckard glanced at him. "But you won't."

"I guess not." He put the gun away. "That Batty guy… he screwed up my brain. Right now, I don't know whether I'm a replicant or not." He shook his head, still trying to make the pieces come together. "The way it works out for people like us-it comes with the territory, I suppose-a certain leap of faith is required. To assume that we're human at all."

"It's not just for us." A dark edge moved through Deckard's voice, as though it were the product of long, deep brooding. "That's the way it is for everybody. Human or not."

"Yeah, well… maybe." Holden wasn't sure he understood what his ex-partner was talking about. "Right now, though, what I think I'll do is, I'll turn myself over to the police. Maybe they'll be able to tell me what I am. Not that it really matters, of course."

"Suit yourself."

"What're you going to do?" He stopped and tilted his head back toward the freight spinner. "The woman in there. Is that…"

"Rachael. She's Rachael." Deckard closed his eyes for a moment, then slowly nodded.

"The other one-Sarah-is dead. Back at the Tyrell Corporation. That's what she wanted."

The black clouds had massed higher to the west, blotting out the stars close to the horizon. It wouldn't be long before the storms swept across the desert, all the way to the mountain ranges. And beyond.

"Are you going to try to get away? The two of you?" Holden felt a chill creeping in toward his artificial heart. "If you go north again

… I won't tell them. They'll come looking for you, and they'll find you, but it won't happen because of anything I said."

"No…" Deckard shook his head. "We won't go north. That's not far enough…"

Holden watched him tilt his head back, eyes barely open. A blue needle of light touched the drop of water that inched along the corner of his brow.

"We'll have to go farther…" Deckard's voice a murmur, taken by the wind sifting the desert. "As far as we can…"