K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

Another Nexus-6 looked at him for a moment, her gaze reaching past the other replicants' naked shoulders. Dark-haired, long-limbed… her name had been shaken from his skull, leaving only the vision of another one like this, crashing through one plate-glass window after another, blood between her shoulder blades, the bullet from his gun turning her into a wingless angel, a thing that flew amid bright razor crystals…

"Help…" Deckard couldn't tell if that was his own voice rasping from his throat or the memory of his voice. "Help me…" What he had asked of another one of the replicants. His arm dragged farther from its hold, only the crook of his wrist against the cross-beam keeping him from falling under the wheels clashing sparks from the tunnel's iron tracks.

Another woman huddled in the corner of the freight car. The Tyrell Corporation had given her enough knowledge so that she could be afraid; her face, pressed against the paleness of her arms, was wet with tears. The tangled curls of her brown hair fell across her knees.

"Rachael…" He didn't know if it was her, or if they would have given this one a name yet. He called to her again. "Please…"

The female replicant raised her head and looked at him. And did not know who he was.

He suddenly felt an arm at his back, clutching him and pulling him up against the freight car's side. One of the replicants-he couldn't see which one-had reached through the slats and grabbed him, kept him from falling. He looked down and saw the tracks cutting by, a few inches from his dangling feet.

Brighter light flooded across him, as the rep train burst from the tunnel's mouth and out into the open. The reddish glow of morning slanted across a barren landscape, darkened with years of soot and spattered oil droppings. Abandoned freight cars and rusted-out tankers formed parallel barricades along the rows of tracks to either side.

Deckard managed to get his free hand between his chest and the slats. He pushed himself back against the arm's grasp; the replicant, still unseen by him, sensed what he was trying to do and let go.

He landed on his shoulder, rolling clear of the rep train's wheels. He kept his face down against the stones and rubble, until the noise of the train had passed and faded into the distance. Cautiously he raised his head, enough to see the last of the cars disappearing with its silent cargo.

On his hands and knees, Deckard managed to focus his vision past the tops of the motionless freight cars to his right. The towers and spires of the L.A. skyline carved the advancing daylight into hard-edged segments. He knew that he was out of the city, somewhere in the industrial wastelands ringing its vast sprawl.

A desiccated, blood-temperature wind rolled across his back. He managed to stand up, the rags of the stolen police uniform gaping over his torn and abraded flesh. Slowly, his feet stumbling against the oil-covered rocks between the tracks, he began walking.

Not north, where his unreasoning heart wanted to start for. But someplace where he knew he could hide.

For at least a little while…

She ascended to the appointed place, at the appointed hour. Without effort, almost without will-thermal sensors had registered her presence within the small space, a disembodied voice had asked if she'd wanted to go up to the building's roof, far above the dense weave of structure and light that formed the static ocean of the city. All Sarah had had to do was say yes.

Thus we rise, she thought as she closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against the wall of the elevator's vertical coffin. Not as angels, transparent to gravity, buoyant in God's sight, but as inert, gross cargo, hauled aloft by cable and winch, like stones and dust in a box.

What machine would clasp her in its embrace when her death came, bearing her aloft the way the elevator did now? Nobody, she thought glumly, self-accusingly. Everything she did, everything she was about to do, was designed by her own intent to bring about that exact lonely result. Fate as programmed as a train's iron rails-she figured she'd wind up like her uncle Eldon, isolate in glacial splendor, brooding over a chessboard like an owl watching for mice to scurry across the forest's dead leaves and twigs. Unless…

Unless what? She raised a hand, pressing thumb and forefinger against her eyelids, blue sparks wriggling inside her head. Unless every not-living thing quickened and breathed, all the earth's graves burst like ripe seed pods, and the drowned rose with seaweed hair and pearls in their mouths. It could happen — neither thought nor belief, but what she would have believed if she were still capable of that. Her own resurrection, or the simulation that was as much of one as she could hope for, pushed light through her hand and into her eyes as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open.

He was waiting for her. On the building's executive landing deck, the private one that had been reserved for Eldon Tyrell, but rarely used. She stepped out of the elevator and strode toward the unmarked spinner and the figure lounging against its flank, his arms folded across his chest.

"How did it go?"

Andersson shrugged. "Oh… pretty much as I expected. He didn't put up a struggle or anything. Not that it would've made much difference if he had."

"My." She let herself smile. "You're such a professional. Aren't you?"

"I'm paid to be."

"Whatever you indicate will happen, happens. Like pushing a button

… on the elevator over there." She nodded toward the closed doors, the brushed stainless steel raked by the sun's fierce glare. She turned her own gaze away from the man. The light and heat would siphon away any possible tear. She felt genuinely sorry about Isidore; the poor little geek's neck, with its wobbling bespectacled head on top, would probably have fit inside one of Andersson's fists. Perhaps that was how he'd done it, like twisting and pulling the knobbed cork out of a bottle of Dorn Perignon. More likely, the obliging Isidore had volunteered, soon as he'd figured out what was wanted of him. Wuhwould you like me to kuh-kill myself? Huh-huh-happy to.

"You're the one who pushes the buttons."

"Am I?" That still seemed an odd concept to Sarah Tyrell. "I suppose so." She remembered being a three-year-old child and looking up at her uncle-the doors of the Salander 3 had unsealed and popped open; a nurse hack led her down the ramp, with the long boxes holding the remains of her parents following right after-and seeing his thick glasses, the lenses shaped like the computer monitors that had been her windows aboard the starship, the cold eyes behind them scanning and assessing, calculating. He had reached down and touched her hair, rubbing a lock of it between his thumb and forefinger, as if gauging its suitability for some new industrial process…

"What're you doing?" Her voice, sharp' and startled; she felt her spine go rigid, every muscle tensed for flight or attack. The reverie into which she'd sunk had been translated into this reality, the rooftop landing deck of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, right now. Her uncle's touch had become Andersson's; the man, still leaning back against the spinner, had reached out and stroked the stray wisp of fine brown hair at the nape of her neck. His fingertip stayed there, a fraction of an inch away from her tremulous skin. "What… I don't… "

"Yes, you do." He leaned forward and kissed her.

Kissed and fell to the landing deck's hard surface, both his hands upon her, as they had been before. She turned her head and saw the undercarriage of the spinner, the extruded landing gear, the vents and air intakes: she could smell the sharp reek of its fuel and the condensation of steam, mixed with the closer scent of his sweat as he reached between them and undid the front of his jumpsuit; she couldn't tell the mingled odors apart anymore, or whether they came from him or the machine. It didn't matter to her.