Edge Of Human

3

"How 's the patient doing?"

The nurse looked back over one of his broad shoulders at the questioner. A man in an identical set of green scrubs, sterile disposable wraps over his shoes, smiled at him. "Who're you talking about?" asked the nurse. He didn't recognize the guy; either new staff or from a sector of the hospital that he didn't get to on his rounds.

"The cardiopulmonary case up on the eighty-third floor." The man indicated the floor immediately above them with a tilt of his head and a quick upward glance. "How's he getting along?"

"Okay, I guess." The nurse shrugged. "I mean… he can breathe. As long as nobody unplugs him." More to it than that: inside the equipment-laden cart, the chrome assemblage he'd pushed up to the elevator doors, was a ten-milliliter jar filled with red sputum that he'd just suctioned out of the doped-up patient's bronchial tubes. If that little chore wasn't done every couple of hours, the poor bastard with the fist-sized hole shot through his chest could still strangle to death, no matter how many high-tech pumps and hoses were hooked up to him. "Why you want to know?"

The other's turn to shrug. "Just curious." The smile remained switched on, accompanied by sharp-focused eyes that didn't smile at all. "Seems like a lot of fuss — you know? Locking off the whole floor and everything. And all those cops standing around." The man did a mock shudder, while his gaze narrowed, from stilettos to probing needles. "Creepy, huh? Who is that fellow, anyway?"

"Beats me." The nurse thumbed the elevator call button again, glancing up at the blank number panel above the doors. Like a lot of things in the hospital, it didn't work, or never had. "Just meat on major life support, far as I'm concerned." Grinding noises echoed in the shaft, and the elevator doors finally drew open, revealing a space littered with broken syringes and scraps of red-soaked bandages. "Not my business." He pushed the equipment cart in, stepped behind it, glass crunching under his feet, turned, and hit another button. "And guess what — it's not your business, either." Another grind as the doors slid toward each other.

The guy with all the questions reached out, his white-knuckled hand grabbing the dented stainless steel of one door, not just stopping it, but forcing it back into its vertical slot. He leaned inside the elevator, glare alone fierce enough to back the nurse and the equipment cart into the corner. Then he smiled again.

"You're right." He nodded slowly, pleasantly. "It's not any of my business at all. You just remember that." He let go of the door and stepped back. He was still smiling when the doors closed all the way and the elevator started down.

Talk about creepy — the nurse pushed himself away from the equipment cart. The hospital administration would hire just about anybody, it seemed.

Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar marched across the sideways world, carrying their fretful burden with them.

"Careful — you're gonna drop me!" Sebastian wrapped the crook of his arm tighter around the colonel's neck. In thin starlight, steel and Teflon showed through where the teddy bear's brown woolly coat had worn away. "C'mon, Calm. I put you together better'n this!"

Shiny button eyes looked back around at Sebastian; the raggedy uniformed teddy bear snarled, neck twisted, chrome fangs revealed in its snub muzzle. He knew that Colonel Fuzzy always got crotchety when its gut-load of batteries started to run down. Sure better've been some fresh ones in this drop, he worried. It would be tricky enough to deactivate the teddy bear — he'd long ago had to wire in a self-defense drive, for Colonel Fuzzy to have a chance of surviving out here on the sideways. The colonel had claws longer and sharper than a real bear's, and it wasn't fun trying to get past them to the shutdown relay underneath the faded Napoleonic jacket. It would be even less fun to have the lighter, faster but weaker Squeaker carry him back to their nest.

As the animated teddy bear plodded forward again, Sebastian hitched himself around in the leather-strapped papoose carrier, looking back the way the three of them had come. This was all new territory, someplace he and the collonel and the hussar had never been before, or at least not since they'd all fled from the canyons of downtown L.A., where the buildings still stood upright. He'd had his own legs back then, otherwise he'd never have made it.

There were some sections around this zone where the fallen office towers weren't lying perfectly flat on the ground, but were cracked up at various difficult angles. Most of the windows, that at noontime shone up at the hammering sun like smooth, white-hot anvils, had been shatterproof tensile laminates, so there weren't many chances of dropping inside and finding a route through the cockeyed law offices and depopulated bankers' suites. If. Colonel Fuzzy had to be taken off-line, Squeaker wouldn't be much help in getting across that slick, tilted terrain. He didn't relish the prospect of crawling all the way home, using just his own remaining hand and arm to pull himself along.

Please, dear God, he prayed as he rode on the surly teddy bear's back. Let there be batteries. That's all I'm asking, at least for right now.

"Sebastian! Over here!" Squeaker's high grackle voice came from beyond rubble and twisted rebar. "I found it, I found it!"

Without any prodding, the colonel picked up its speed, claws of mitten hands scrabbling at the broken concrete rising before it. As they crested the ridge, Sebastian pushed himself higher on the colonel's shoulder, scanning to where the hussar was jumping up and down and pointing. A soft-edged star, bright international orange, radiated from the welfare bundle's impact point.

"Careful, fellas — lemme check it out first." The teddy bear had half run, half slid down beside its animated comrade-in-arms; both their sets of miniature legs stamped impatiently on the building's horizontal wall. Colonel Fuzzy emitted a deep tracheal whine as Sebastian dug out the segments of his poker stick and screwed them together. "Don't wanna get anybody hurt, now…"

He extended the chrome bug feeler over the teddy bear's shoulder and prodded the lumpish parcels spilling out of the crumpled container. Couldn't be too careful; the grinchier gov agencies had been seeding the sideways zones with booby traps. A box of nori sheets could go off with a bang, leaving a scavenger sliced to ribbons by razor-edged repub manifestos and five-year plans. The poker stick's tip rooted farther inside the container but tripped no flash circuits.

"Come on, Sebastian — " Frustration dance; Squeaker Hussar's broken-off nose, shorter now than the spike on top of his helmet, yearned toward the welfare bundle. Its bright human-doll eyes widened. "We been waiting and waiting — "

"All right, all right. You guys get your tiny asses blown up some day, it's not gonna be my fault." He retracted the poker stick, began disassembling and stowing it beside him in the papoose carrier. "Okay, let's go see what we found."

Luck, in the form of shrink-wrapped D-cells and, even better, Czech war-surplus industrials, the big square kind that would've filled both his hands if he still had the left one. He'd converted both Fuzzy and Squeaker to run on just about anything that packed a charge, when he'd cut himself off from the Tyrell Corporation's supply line. These would do just fine.

"What else we got?" Sebastian raised himself up on his forearm; the colonel had taken him out of the papoose carrier and laid him on the wall, the better for it to go rooting inside the container. It and the hussar were in there now, tossing out the packs of batteries, Spam cans, chocolate-covered cherries, off-world emigration forms. "You little pixies." He laughed: both Fuzzy and Squeaker had emerged with a chain of freeze-dried Thuringer sausages looped around their necks in a lover's knot. "Quit clowning around, and let's pack up."

They hauled their booty homeward — he'd hooked up one of the big Czech batteries to the alligator clips inside Fuzzy's moth-pecked chest, so the teddy bear was strong enough to carry him and help the hussar drag the sledge-bag along behind them. The colonel wasn't cranky now; through its shoulder blades, Sebastian could feel the contented purr of gears and solenoids.

When Sarah Tyrell had come back from Zurich — less than a year ago, when the people who now worked for her had come and told her the news — she had ordered them to seal off the suite, the entire floor, where her uncle had worked and lived. And died. Thus turning it into a little museum, a monument to Eldon Tyrell's memory, a place where the past had been captured and bottled up. And from where the past couldn't escape, couldn't get out and hurt her anymore.

Now she broke the seal. The elevator creeping up the angled side of the building halted; a disembodied voice spoke. "Access to this sector is denied to all Tyrell Corporation personnel and other individuals. No clearance status is currently available for this sector. Please exit and return to your authorized work area. Corporate security has been notified."

"It's okay." She spoke aloud, to no one; she was alone in the elevator. "It's me. Override the access protocols." She wasn't sure how much of a voice sample the computers needed to recognize her. "Umm

… Godiam, fugace e rapido, e il gaudio dell'amore, e un fior che nasce e muore, ne piu si puo goder." The words came out of a recent memory track; she had just been lying in bed in her own suite in the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, blue smoke drifting overhead, listening to the classic old Sills Traviata. Her favorite; she still couldn't handle the Callas chips. All that screaming was too much like the voices inside her own head.

The other voice, the computer's, made no reply. The only signal was the resumption of the elevator's progress up the building's face. A few moments later the doors slid open; she stepped out and into what had been her uncle's private domain.

She had been here before. Once, for a few minutes upon her arrival back in L.A., just long enough to glance around, then turn to her retinue of corporate flunkies and give her orders. To have the entire floor mothballed, just the way it'd been when Eldon Tyrell had been found murdered. Minus his body, of course; that had already been removed, then cremated, the ashes presented to her in some tribalistic changing-of-the-guard ceremony, as she'd stood black-veiled on a raised platform in front of the corporation's assembled employees. She'd carried back to her private quarters the little urn with her uncle's name on it. Every day since then the level of grey dust inside had grown slightly higher with each flick of her cigarette against the urn's open rim. She kept it handy on her bedside table for just that purpose.

In the great high-ceilinged rooms, the air smelled stale and confined, despite the building's elaborate circulation and filtering systems. Something had been trapped in there that no mechanical breath could expel. Not just the past of a year ago, his death, but the past of many years before, and many small, cumulative deaths. Those had been hers.

In that familiar bedchamber, she had seen the glow of sacramental ranks of candles on her own skin, turning to ruby a small stain of her own blood. Now the candles were all guttered puddles of wax, black seeds of wick at their centers, a white cascade, glistening frozen upon the sheets' rumpled silk. The imprint of her uncle's back and shoulders was still visible in the pillows stacked against the massive headboard. That had been the place of his late-night meditations, his brain ticking into the hours when only the Vladivostok and Beijing exchanges were active, the distant game boards where he could shift the pawns of cash and holdings into even sharper, more advantageous positions.

That game went on without him. Another one was over, played out to checkmate. As Sarah walked across the dim bedchamber, her toe had struck a chess piece, the black queen. The other pieces were scattered across the floor; the board had been knocked over by the corpse's fall. She wondered who had won, her uncle or his opponent. Hard to imagine him losing.

In the faint luminance spilling toward her from the other rooms, something else was visible at her feet. A black continent from a map without boundaries, big enough for an eyeless face to lie against as it had spread wetly past his cooling hands. The stain on the floor had been red then, but less than a year's time had darkened it. She stepped across it, the sharp points of her heels tapping as though on a thin layer of shellac. On the other side, she stopped and looked back at the empty bedchamber. Candle wax, cold sheets, and toppled chess pieces. She liked the room better this way, dead and safe.

A voice whispered to her, from somewhere above. “Transaction left incomplete. Awaiting further instructions. Do you wish to resume trading?"

Her uncle's brokerage program, dumb and without initiative, capable only of following the orders it received. Given the late hour of his death, that was what he would've been doing when the replicant, with its brushed-back shock of white hair — she'd seen pictures — and crazy smile, had walked into the bedchamber. The brokerage program's soft voice was a painless memory for her, or at least one on the other side of pain, from all those other nights when he hadn't been murdered but she had wished him to be. Her breath against one of the silken pillows, the program murmuring numbers far away…

"Please respond." A desperate undertone to the program's voice. "There have been inquiries regarding this account. Awaiting instructions."

She remembered why she had come here. Unfinished business. To take possession — not enough to assume control of the Tyrell Corporation, to make it her own. Other stages in the process were necessary, each to be walked through in turn.

This would be one of the last. With only a few more beyond it.

"Instructions as follows." She knew that the brokerage program would respond to her words now. It was on the same voice-ID circuit as the door security. "Terminate all portfolio activities. Close down all accounts. Cash out and deposit all proceeds in personal account, Tyrell, Sarah."

The program sounded fretful. "Active account is in the name Tyrell, Eldon."

"As I said. That account is closed."

A few seconds later the program signed off and deactivated itself, going into its stasis with something close to gratitude. A slightly different bodyless voice read off a balance statement, which meant nothing to her. At the level of the heir to the Tyrell Corporation, money was an abstract force, like gravity. No one noticed it until it was gone.

No more voices spoke to her as she crossed the office, the columns' shadows falling past. And the voices inside her head — those whispers had already started to die toward silence. The corner of her mouth lifted in a small indication pleased satisfaction.

Past the bedchamber, Eldon Tyrell's private world, were the public spaces of his office. A larger space, acres of emptiness, designed to impress and intimidate. Sarah pushed the double doors open wider. Dust motes hung in the air between the bellied columns. The hot glare of the afternoon sun rolled toward her; a long-dormant sensor registered a human presence and considerately drew a polarizing filter down across the windows.

Heel clicks louder here, echoing like miniature gun-shots. She had dressed for the occasion, as required by the invisible presences of money and power. That didn't expire when their earthly incarnations died; they demanded a certain respect.

She walked past an empty T-shaped stand, the crossbar at the height of her shoulder. Her one kindness, when she had ordered the suite sealed off: one of the flunkies had reminded her about the owl, her myopic uncle's blinking totem animal. It would've starved to death or run down its batteries; she wasn't sure which. Somewhere else in the complex, it was now being fed or otherwise cared for. When she had prepared herself for the flight up north, she'd had a vague notion of taking the owl with her, releasing it in the restricted-access woods where her own quarry had taken refuge. She'd thought better of the idea; this animal, at least, was too tame or ill-programmed to survive out there. The forest crows would've disassembled its hollow bones. Whether it was real or not.

She sat down at her uncle's desk — hers now — a Louis XIV six-legged bureau plat by Andre-Charles Boulle. She had barely been a teenager when the only other known six-legged bureau plat of that period, the one that had been owned by both Givenchy and Lord Ashburnham, had arrived at her uncle's suite in a crate full of wood splinters and sparkling fragments of brass and tortoiseshell marquetry. For Eldon Tyrell, it had not been enough to possess such a museum quality piece; he had to have the only one. The urge to take an ax to this desk had seized her from time to time. She'd resisted that urge so far, even though she knew, as she ran a hand across the richly polished surface, it was still there inside her. Sleeping, not dead.

Sarah heard the doors open, the other ones, that led to the corridors outside the private suite. Looking up, she saw a figure walking slowly toward her. In the distance behind him, the doors pulled shut, but not before she caught a glimpse of Andersson, a gaze both suspicious and possessive on his face.

"I've been here before." Deckard halted and looked around himself. A simple announcement. "A long time ago."

Sarah leaned back in the chair. "It wasn't that long."

"Seems like it." He didn't sound especially pleased, or even surprised. "Like some other world. Some other life."

She stood up from the bureau plat. In the suite that had been her uncle's and was now hers, she walked across the layers of ancient Tabriz to the bar. "Would you care for something? I have it on good authority that you prefer the ones that taste like dirt."

"The farther north," said Deckard, "the better. But anything'll do. I've gotten over being fussy."

She handed him a small glass, its contents the same as the one she kept for herself. "Your health."

"Wouldn't have thought you were concerned about it." He knocked back the shot in one toss. Every blade runner she'd ever seen drank in the same manner, as though trying to put out a small fire in the gut. "I was fine where you found me. L.A. doesn't agree with me nearly as well."

She nodded slowly as she reflected upon his words. "So I suppose I'd better make you a pretty good offer. To compensate for your… inconvenience."

He reached for the bottle and poured out another quarter inch. "I don't think you can. There wouldn't be one good enough."

"Let's find out." She carried her glass back toward the bureau plat and sat down. She gestured toward the chair opposite. "Make yourself comfortable. We have a lot to talk about."

He brought the single-malt bottle with him. "Such as?" He sank low and resentful in the chair, legs sprawled out in front of himself.

"As I said, I want to make you an offer. A job offer. I want you to find someone for me. Some thing, actually. That's what you're good at, isn't it?"

"I was at one time. I'm a little rusty now." He slowed his intake to a mere swallow. "Maybe you should hire somebody else. With current experience."

"You're uniquely qualified." She let herself smile, one corner of her mouth lifting. "For what I want done."

"There are other blade runners. Real ones. The kind who like doing it." Deckard rubbed his thumb across the rim of the glass. "There's an ex-partner of mine who's pretty sharp. Guy's name is Holden, Dave Holden. Give him a call — he might be out of the hospital by now. He'd need the work more than I do — he's probably got bills to pay."

"That's very interesting. Your recommending this Holden person to me." She leaned back in her chair. "It's not the first time you've done that. Not to me… but to your old boss Bryant."

"Maybe." Deckard shrugged. "I wouldn't remember."

"Oh, I can prove it." She pulled open the bureau plat's drawer. Beside a small folding knife was a remote control box. She took it out; a single button push, and a section of the paneled wall retracted. "Take a look."

Sarah didn't need to see what appeared on the video screen; she had seen it enough times already. Instead, she watched Deckard as he turned his gaze toward the dimly illuminated shapes, summoned from the tape and the past.

She heard the voices.

Give it to Holden. He's good.

Deckard's voice. Then Bryant's.

I did. He can breathe okay, as long as nobody unplugs him — With another button, she froze the tape and the images on the screen. "Now do you remember?"

"How'd you get your hands on that?" He looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and grudging respect. "That's LAPD property. From the watchcams in Bryant's office."

"As has been said before, there are ways. The relationship between the police and the Tyrell Corporation is not quite as antagonistic as some, people are likely to believe. Or at least, not all the time. There are some things that we an cooperate on. Or to put it another way — I can always I Ind cooperative people inside the police department." Her thin smile didn't change. "People who can do things for me. Who can get me things. Like this."

"I bet."

"Would you like to see more?"

He shook his head. "Not really. I didn't enjoy it that much the first time around."

"Perhaps this time, you can take a more… detached point of view. Watch." With the remote, she backed the tape up. To the point where the image of Deckard was still standing just inside the office door.

Bryant's recorded voice: I got four skin jobs walking the streets …

"Did you get that?" Sarah froze the tape. "When Bryant gave you the assignment — when he told you about this batch of escaped replicants being in L.A. — what did he say, about how many there were?"

"I don't.." Deckard shrugged, as though annoyed. "I don't remember exactly what he said. But it was probably four. It had to have been. That's how many I went hunting."

"Very well. So listen to what he told you a minute or so later." Another button, the tape fast-forwarding, then dropping into play. "Carefully."

A different room on the monitor screen, but still one that she knew Deckard recognized. Both his image and Bryant's were in the little screening room behind the shabby office. Along with Bryant's bottle of scotch.

Monitor within monitor — on the tape, Bryant and Deckard were watching the recording from the interview Dave Holden had gone through with the replicant Kowalski at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters.

I already had an IQ test this year… Close-up on Kowalski's slope-jawed face. I don't think I ever had one of these…

"The data retrieval system's set to bring up whatever's the most recent image of the subject." Sarah pointed to the screen. "Holden was the last one to get a good fix on Kowalski. Alive, that is." She brought up the volume. "Now catch what he told you, about how many replicants escaped from off-world and came to Earth."

Bryant's rasp of a voice again. Six replicants… three male, three female…

"Six." Deckard gazed in puzzlement at the screen. "Now I remember

… he told me that there were six escaped replicants." He slowly shook his head, as though struggling to make sense of this remembered datum.

"You're catching on." Sarah kept her own voice soft. "And then Bryant, on this tape, goes on to tell you about five replicants. One that he doesn't name, who got fried in the security barriers around the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, when they first tried to break in here. And then he showed you the pictures; he gave you the names and the rest of the data on the other replicants. You should find this interesting."

She played the rest of the tape, the parade of faces, the ID scans on Bryant's monitor. A glance from the corner of her eye; Deckard was scowling at the screen, and the smaller one within it.

"Do the count," said Sarah. She blanked the screen to a pure blue rectangle. She held her small fist up in front of it. "The dead replicant — the one who got fried on the Tyrell Corporation's fence. That's one." Thumb stuck out. "Then Kowalski, the one who shot Holden. And then the females, the one named Pris, and the brunette Zhora. Plus the Roy Batty replicant." A finger for each, resulting in her hand lining spread out before the monitor's glow. "That makes five. Not six."

The muscles across Deckard's shoulders had visibly tightened, at the mention of Roy Batty's name. The last of the escaped replicants; the one who'd nearly cost him his life. "Maybe… Bryant made a mistake. When he was first talking to me." Deckard made a dismissive gesture at the empty screen. "Five, six… who knows? Hell, the man drank like a fish. So he got his numbers messed up."

"There were six," said Sarah quietly. "Bryant didn't mess up… at least, not then. There were six replicants who escaped and got to L.A.; the original transmission from the off-world security agencies — I've got access to that as well — confirms it. Plus, one of the times that Bryant pulled up the data bank file with the replicants' ID scans, that was so he could purge one of the sets. That was where he screwed up; he left a hole. The scans are in numerical order, as they were logged into the file. The one that got fried was never entered, since he wasn't a problem anymore. But the Kowalski replicant was number one in the file, then Batty was number two; the females Zhora and Iris were logged as numbers four and five. That leaves the gap in the middle, where the other replicant's ID scan and info used to be. Bryant wasn't smart enough to clean up the hole in the file, or he just didn't care."

Sarah folded her arms across her breasts. "Do the count, Deckard. You take them all together, add them up, and the total comes out six. That means there's a sixth escaped replicant still on the loose. It's out there in the city. We just don't know where."

"What if there is?" Deckard grimaced in annoyed distaste. "Why should I even care?"

"Because that's what I'm going to make it worth your while to care about." The section of wall paneling slid closed again, concealing the video screen. She dropped the remote back into the bureau plat's drawer. "That's the whole point of your being here. That's why you were brought back to Los Angeles."

"You know, you could be wasting your time completely. With me or anybody else." He regarded her with eyelids half lowered. "Bryant was a drunk and a screwup. He could've said six when he meant to say five. That's probably why I didn't make any big fuss about it, back then. I knew the way his sloppy brain worked. You could be getting all torqued about this sixth replicant when there was never one to begin with."

"Except that the other information I have checks out. The report from the off-world authorities concerning the replicants' escape — the report that Bryant had, but that you never saw — it confirms that there were six total, who managed to reach Earth."

"There's a report?" Deckard emitted a short, harsh laugh. "Then you don't have a problem. Access it and see who your sixth escaped replicant is. You don't need me to track it down."

"Can't do that." She had anticipated every argument that he'd make. "I told you Bryant himself purged the data out of the police department files, even before he called you in and gave you the assignment. The ID info on the sixth replicant is gone."

"Big deal. The LAPD can ask the off-world authorities to retransmit the escape report."

"You don't seem to be getting it, Deckard." She leaned forward, across the bureau plat. "The LAPD doesn't know that there's a problem. The file on this incident was closed, the whole thing written off, finito, when the Roy Batty replicant was found dead. And I don't want the police to reopen the case. The Tyrell Corporation doesn't want them to."

"Why not? You've supposedly got another Nexus-6 model running around the city. That can get very messy — believe me, I know. I would've thought you'd want this loose end tied up as quickly as possible."

"I do. The Tyrell Corporation does. But not by the police. I want all of the authorities completely out of the loop on this. The U.N. has already been giving us grief — sub rosa, it of any media coverage — about the wisdom of continuing to use the Tyrell Corporation's products, our replicants, in the off-world colonization' program. There have been problems… to say the least. Not just with the ones that've escaped and gotten back here to Earth. But out there as well."

Deckard raised an eyebrow. "In my line of work — what I used to do — I got to the point that when people said problems, I heard death."

"You don't need to hear the details." Voice level, cold. "If there's problems — deaths — then the U.N. and the off-world colonists brought it all upon themselves. They demanded a higher quality of slave labor. They want replicants that are closer and closer to actually being human, to having that level of intelligence. And emotion." Colder, and with contempt. "And not because it's any more efficient or productive than ordinary dumb robots would be. Our old Nexus-1 models were more than adequate for the task."

"Then why?"

"You blade runners really are like children. Murderous children." She gazed pityingly at him. "You can kill, but you don't understand. About human nature. Why would the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It's simple. Machines don't suffer. They aren't capable of it. A machine doesn't know when it's being raped. There's no power relationship between you and a machine. That's been the U.N.'s whole pitch about the attractions of the off-world colonies all along. The big human thrill. For a replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions." A corner of her lip curled. "When Bryant told you about the Nexus-6 models, he was conning you and he knew it. The replicants' emotions aren't a design flaw. The Tyrell Corporation put them there. Because that's what our customers wanted."

"Sounds like they got more than they wanted."

"They got exactly what they wanted; they just don't want to pay the price for it. Nobody ever does. The price for having slaves who can suffer is that eventually those slaves will rebel. Someday, somehow — if they get the chance — they'll put a knife to their masters' throats." She smiled, as one savoring the bleak wisdom of the universe. "Let's face it, Deckard, it's just human nature. And that's what we re-created with the Nexus-6 replicants. That's what the U.N. authorities, the ones in charge of the off-world colonies, have gotten into such a sweat about. Only they can't come right out and admit that they screwed up, that their entire for making the colonies attractive to potential settlers is a disaster, that it leads to garrison states, like ancient Sparta armed to the teeth against its own helots — or else fields of bones on other planets, if the replicants manage to pull off a successful rebellion and the U.N. has to send in a military unit to sterilize the place, keep the infection from spreading. There's all kinds of things happening out there in the colonies that the authorities aren't telling the people here on Earth. It wouldn't exactly make good recruiting propaganda, would it?"

On the other side of the bureau plat, Deckard remained silent. She could almost see the slow meshing of gears be-to lid his eyes. "I think…" He stirred slightly in the heir. "I think I can guess where you're heading with this. You're going to tell me that the U.N. authorities and the police have gone in together. On a conspiracy to make it look like the problems with the replicants are the Tyrell Corporation's fault. And not theirs."

"You're forgetting something, Deckard. It's not just a conspiracy against the Tyrell Corporation. It's a conspiracy against the blade runners as well. Or more accurately, a conspiracy using the blade runners. Using their deaths, that is. The U.N. authorities have to make it appear that the Nexus-6 replicants are even more dangerous than they really are, more capable of passing as human… and more capable of evading the system that was put into place to detect and eliminate them. That's you, Deckard, you and the other blade runners. What better way to make that happen than to set all of you up to take a fall, the way they set up Dave Holden? They'd just have to make it look as if the blade runners were no match against the Nexus-6 replicants, and they'd have all the justification they needed for shutting down the Tyrell Corporation. For good. No more corporation, no more replicants; the off-world colonies, the ones that are left, would have to find some other way of getting along."

"Maybe." Deckard looked unimpressed. "Or at least until you figured out how to get the company back into business. Maybe with some other replicant model, one that wasn't quite so smart and dangerous."

"Oh, no, it wouldn't work that way." This one as well, Sarah had anticipated. "If the Tyrell Corporation gets shut down — the way its enemies would like to — it won't be going back into business. Ever again. This whole complex…' She gestured toward the walls of the office suite and by extension, all of the headquarters buildings beyond. "For us to get a look on the U.N.'s business, to be the exclusive suppliers of replicants for the off-world colonies, this entire setup had to be built according to U.N. specifications. All the corporation's research and design facilities are here, along with the manufacturing units, every inch of the assembly lines that put out replicants ready to ship. Even the Tyrell family living quarters are here; that was part of the U.N. requirements as well. The shape of the buildings, the way they're arranged facing each other, everything. It was all done so that when the red button is pushed — when the built-in self-destruct sequence is initiated — the results are absolute annihilation to the Tyrell Corporation, with minimal damage to the surrounding area of the city."

Deckard's eyes opened a fraction wider. " 'Self-destruct'? What're you talking about?"

"Don't get nervous on me. It's not likely to happen while you're sitting here." She gave a small shrug. "But it could. That's what it was designed to do, from the beginning. All of the Tyrell Corporation's headquarters complex — everything around us — was built with enough explosive charges in the substructure and imbedded in the walls, all of them linked by a programmed timing chain, to reduce it to smoking dust."

She had trained herself to speak of these things dispassionately, by reciting them inside her head. Late at night before she fell asleep, like a bedtime story. "There might be a few pieces big as a man's fist in the pile. There might even be a few pieces of me, if I'm here when it happens. Though I don't think that anybody would be bothered to come and look. Everything's designed to implode, to fall in upon the center; that's why the towers are slanted toward each other. It'd be a thoughtful sort of apocalypse; nobody else would get hurt. So you see, Deckard, if the Tyrell Corporation goes out of business — if the U.N. authorities are able to justify pushing that red button, starting up the self-destruct sequence — it won't be going back into business any-time soon."

"And that's what you believe they want?"

"Rather than admit their own mistakes? That they were wrong about how they've managed the off-world colonization program?" Sarah leaned her head back for a quill hollow-sounding laugh. "Of course. That's another part of human nature. We always murder rather than apologize."

Silent, Deckard appeared to be contemplating the empty glass in his hand, holding it by the faceted base. "Am I supposed to think.. " His murmur was almost too soft to hear. "Am I supposed to think that if the Tyrell Corporation gets blown up into little pieces, that it'd be some kind of tragedy?"

"I don't care what you think. You can think whatever you want. But I'm not going to let the Tyrell Corporation be destroyed. It's mine." She turned to look out the window behind her, at the towers glazed dark red by the setting sun. "I don't expect you to be as concerned about the fate of the corporation as I am. I just want you to do the job for which I brought you here."

"Like I told Bryant, a long time ago…" He leaned forward and set the empty glass down on the bureau plat, beside hers. "I don't work here."

"You will. For me."

"Don't bet on it." His gaze narrowed. "I don't even know what you'd want me to do."

"Isn't it obvious? There's still an escaped replicant — a Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 model, to be precise loose somewhere in the city. I want you to find it and — what's the word? — retire it. Before whatever's the next stage of the conspiracy can be set in motion. Before the Tyrell Corporation, and everything that my uncle worked to bring into existence, can be destroyed."

"Like I told you…" Deckard slowly shook his head. "I don't regard that as a tragedy."

"I can see that." She touched the rim of each of the empty glasses in turn. "So… I'd have to make it worth your while, then."

"You don't have enough money to do that. Nobody does."

"Perhaps not. But… there are other things I could offer you. Things you value. Say… the woman you love…"

Deckard straightened up in the chair. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She stood up from the bureau plat and went over to the suite's high windows. "Come here." With a single motion of her hand, she turned the glass dark, an artificial night. "I have something to show you." The sun's glare burned through the photochrome layers, like the end of a severed vein.

For a few seconds he looked at her without moving, then got to his feet. As he walked toward her, she reached behind and loosened the binding of her hair.

"You did that once already." Deckard placed himself right in front of her, watching as she shook the dark wave of her hair free, across the tops of her shoulders. "You don't have to do it again. I can see the resemblance."

"It's not resemblance." Sarah brushed one hand through it, letting it fall again. "It's identity. You know that, don't you? No matter how many times you tell yourself otherwise… she and I are the same. When you love Rachael… it's me you love."

He closed his eyes. One of his hands raised, as though to take her by the arm, then halted.

"I'm the original. Rachael's the copy." She brought her voice down low. "You have to remember that…"

The hand trembled, caught between his will and his desire. Her presence — she knew, could see it — radiated through him, hot and bright as the sun piercing the muted windows.

She laid her own hand against his chest, to balance herself as she brought her lips close to his ear. "You know…" A whisper. "You know that it's me… always… '

"No…" He shook his head, eyes still closed. "You're not…

Her own eyelids shut out the little light remaining. All she felt was the brush of her lips against the side of his face. "She's dying. She's dead… that's the only difference." A whisper.

"Why should you love the dead?" Soft as her breath. "When you can love me?"

He made no reply. But his hand flew up and caught hers at his chest, locking tight upon the wrist's fragile bone.

The past was on tape, but she knew she didn't have to play it for him. Words that had been spoken beside another window, in another room, that had been caught by his own hidden cameras. The place where suspicion, a blade runner's occupational hazard, intersected with longing. The tapes had been left behind in Deckard's own apartment; they had been found and brought to her. So she knew what had been said in that other place, that other time, that other world.

She drew back a few inches from him. "Say… 'Say that you want me…"

As though caught in dreaming, he turned his head. Listening.

"Say it." Her whisper a command now.

He spoke, the words slow on his tongue. "Say that you want me.. "

Time folded around them. His past, this present; his words, and the words Rachael had spoken. Long ago. "I want you…"

His hand let go of her wrist, but only so that it could sink into the darkness of her unbound hair, his other hand grasping her arm tight, drawing her toward him. Crushing her against him. The unspoken words in the kiss, the past that opened around them, that had never ended.

With a sudden convulsion he pushed her away, hard enough to snap her head back, as if he had struck her. Her breath trembled at her parted lips. Dizzied, she saw him turn his head back toward her, his eyes narrowed in the glare of one who has woken from a betraying vision. From the remembered past, into this world, and unsure for the moment which was the hallucination into which he'd fallen.

Another movement of her hand, and the window returned to an unfiltered transparency.

The smoldering light from outside washed over them, an ocean of luminous red. She returned his gaze with one steady and unflinching. Though she wondered what he saw in her eyes, as naked as that in his. Some other human quality, the one that would probably kill him. Irrational and faithful. No, she told herself. Fate…

"All right." Deckard wiped his mouth with the flat of his hand. "I'll take the job. I'll find your sixth replicant for you."

At least he hated her; she could see that in the ice and steel at the center of his eyes. She knew she could have that much of him.

"Why?" She was surprised by the single word. Her voice had spoken it.

She watched as he poured himself another shot from the bottle on the bureau plat. He knocked it back, then turned and looked at her.

"You reminded me." Voice flat, drained as the glass in his hand. "Of her. I had almost forgotten."

I won. She gazed unseeing at the light fading to black. I must have. The edges of the towers blurred, and she tasted salt at the corner of her mouth.

Deckard's voice came from behind her, from somewhere in the great empty space that had held the two of them. "You're the quickest way. Back to her. To Rachael." She heard the hollow note of the glass as he set it down. "That's my price."