K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

Holden felt a chill lock on to his vertebrae, climbing upward one by one. "What're you talking about?"

"You were never human, Holden." The smile, the pitying gaze. "You're the one who's a replicant. You've always been one."

"All right, all right; now I know you're bullshitting me." Holden felt both weary and disgusted. "You told me part of your brain was wired in backward, and now I believe it. You got a sense of humor that could only come from a couple of fritzed lobes."

"Bullshit, it's not." Batty folded his arms across his chest. In the space bound by the equipment shack's corrugated-steel walls, the monitor's glow laced an icy blue through his colorless hair. "I'm not joking with you. Why should I? About something like this? Trust me. You're a replicant."

"Trust you… yeah, right." The guy was either yanking his chain, figured Holden, or really was as crazy as the frequent smile and weird cast to his gaze indicated. "Give it up, Batty. I don't know what the hell you think you're accomplishing with all this fun-and-games line, but I'm not falling for any more of it."

"Aw, man, the games haven't even started. Let's go back over to the medical unit." He reached over and switched off the monitor. In darkness, he headed for the dim rectangle of the door and the starlit night outside. "You want proof I'm not jerking you around, then come on. Got something else to show you."

Outside the larger building, the disheveled doctor looked the same as he had when he'd wheeled Holden's gurney into the operating room. He couldn't tell if any of the blood spots on the white coat were his own. The hot night air had pulled darker crescents of sweat under the man's arms.

"Hey, can I bum one of those off you?" The doctor didn't wait for permission, but plucked the cigarette pack from Holden's breast pocket. "Thanks." He flicked the match away, a miniature comet, inhaled, and coughed. "You shouldn't be walking around, you know." With the same hand, he rubbed his watering eyes and used the cigarette to point toward Holden. "I didn't put all that gear inside you that long ago." He looked over at Batty. "You wear this guy out and he pops a seam, it's not going to be that easy to fix, man."

"Don't worry about him. He's one of those big, bad blade runner types." Batty held out his own hand, palm upward. "Give me the keys to the ice room. You know, the slab farm."

Scratching his unshaven chin, the doctor fidgeted through the white coat's pockets until he came up with a ring of keys. "I want those back when you're done. I don't want to find any more of those grease monkeys trying to take naps in there. I don't care what the weather's like. Bad enough, keeping their sixers in there."

"Relax. This'll only take a minute." Batty twirled the keys on one raised finger. "Come on, Mr. Skeptic. Prepare thyself to be blown away."

Holden followed Batty inside and to the rear of the building. The door-lined corridor was crowded with abandoned gurneys and wheelchairs, nests of catheters and trusses, a crutchless Lourdes. He spotted the black attache case he'd worn strapped to his chest, now tossed onto a collapsed scarecrow of chrome IV-drip stands.

"In here." Batty unlocked the last door, pushed it open. "All the proof you could ever want." The room exhaled a chill draft. "At least in this world."

"Great," said Holden as he looked around. "A morgue." He'd been in enough of them in his time. This wasn't one of the best maintained he'd ever seen; daggers of frozen condensation had formed on the rows of metal drawers that made up one wall. "This is it?"

Batty stepped over to the single table, underneath the light fixture dangling from the ceiling. "You know, I don't know why, but I just had a feeling that this would come in handy. Good thing I asked 'em to keep it around." He grabbed the corner of the sheet and pulled it partway back. "Take a look."

Standing at the table's chrome edge, Holden gazed down.

And saw himself.

Not a mirror. The eyes were closed. As though asleep — so far down that there was no breath to raise the chest beneath the sheet. Unscarred — this body hadn't caught any rounds to the sternum. No wonder I look so peaceful, he thought.

"Nice, close match, huh?" Hands on hips, Batty nodded as he admired the corpse on the table. "Say what you want about those Tyrell people being a crew of bastards, you gotta admit they do nice work setting up a production line. They get tolerances down to a gnat's foreskin. There's probably not a freckle's difference between you and this baby, or any of the rest of this model. You're all identical. With some… minor variations."

With one fingertip, Holden reached down and touched the forehead of the body. The coldness of the flesh, flesh the same as his, tingled up his arm like a small electric shock.

"Who…" The morgue smell, the refrigerated suspension of decay, sat heavy in his mouth. "Who is this?"

"Hey. What does it look like? Maybe it's the twin your mother forgot to tell you about. Slipped her mind." Batty's amused gaze peered closer at him, waiting for a reaction. "Isn't it obvious? It's another David Holden replicant, just like you. It's amazing you haven't run into one before. It may not have been the most popular model that the Tyrell Corporation ever made, but there are still quite a few of them out there."

Holden drew his hand back, rubbing his fingertip against the front of his jacket, as though to wipe off some residue of his own death. The initial shock, that of seeing his own face attached to a body on a morgue table, had passed; now he looked at it with a measure of distaste. "Where did this thing come from?"

"You're sure not displaying much family sympathy. Especially for somebody who came out of the same factory as you." Batty spread his hands above the corpse with Holden's face, as though in benediction. "This 'thing,' as you put it, originally came out of the Tyrell Corporation just as you did. That's where it died, too. Dust to dust, meat to meat. But between those end points, it went far, far away-to the off-world colonies. This Dave Holden replicant was one of the group of six that escaped and came back here to Earth, back to L.A. and Tyrell. The bunch that your boss Bryant told you to track down and retire. Except that this one was already dead by the time Bryant gave you the assignment. This is the one that got fried in one of the Tyrell Corporation's electrical-field security devices, when they all tried to break into the corporation's headquarters." Batty lifted the sheet corner higher. "There's some burn marks farther down on the abdomen. Do you want to check them out?"

"No, that's okay. I'll take your word on it." He felt oddly relieved that the replicant had gone out in a relatively quick and painless way; the kind of security devices that were used in places like the Tyrell Corporation had neural-interrupter capabilities, knocking trespassers unconscious before killing them. Better that way-the thought of that face, identical to his own, taking a blade runner slug to the forehead wasn't pleasant, either. He started to turn away. "I've seen enough."

"Actually, I don't think you have." Batty pulled the sheet completely away from the table. "Look a little closer."

Holden glanced over his shoulder. And nearly fell, surprise triggering a hiccup in his new heart.

The corpse on the table had breasts. Small, an athlete's, but definite. And farther down, the genitalia of a female.

"Great," muttered Holden. He'd recovered some of his composure. "They make a double of me, and it goes out and becomes a transsexual."

"Not quite." Batty re-draped the sheet over the table, as though respecting the dead's modesty. "She was created this way. Another Dave Holden replicant-just like you but with one small difference, the chromosomal selection for a female rather than male. The Tyrell Corporation can do that. It's easy enough."