K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

"Okay, okay, I believe you." Deckard held up a hand against the barrage of words. He actually had no idea what the other man was talking about. "Look, it doesn't matter. I didn't come out here to arrest you or anything."

"No?" Sebastian peered closer at him. "I thought maybe you were, because of Mr. Tyrell getting killed, and me breaking in here-I'm sorry about that. I only did it because I found this place with all the locks and everything working, and it didn't look like anybody was living here."

"Don't get into a sweat. You're welcome to it. Just someplace that I used when I was out in the field, hunting down replicants that might've slipped over into this zone. It's nothing special."

"'Hunting down replicants… '" Sebastian's eyes widened in sudden fright. "You didn't come around looking for Pris, did you? Just 'cause I… I saved her? She's already been dead once. You're not going to kill her again, are you?"

He doesn't know, thought Deckard. He still believes she was a replicant. All that talk about the difficulties with the Nexus-6 neurocerebral wiring confirmed that Sebastian hadn't heard the results of the bone marrow analysis tests on Pris; he'd already cut himself out of any Tyrell Corporation-related loop by then. Hunkered down here in the sideways world, he'd have no way of knowing. And no way of finding out-the bone marrow tests were the only way of determining a physiological difference between a replicant and a human.

Weird how things worked out-in the safe-house apartment, Deckard had found himself in the company of the one person who didn't think he was guilty of murdering a human being. The one person who had the most right to think of him as a murderer.

"You must've loved her." He felt sympathy for the truncated man. "Very much. To… put her back together the way you have."

"No…" Sebastian shook his head. "I love her. Right now, the way she is. Nothing's changed. Not for us, at least. And I know, deep down, Pris loves me."

The wraithlike creature, red-eyed and with a blazing corona of white hair, had heard its name spoken, the name it had answered to when alive. It slid into the apartment's kitchen, keeping its back close to the walls and a wary gaze on Deckard. It stepped next to the animated teddy bear, bending down to be as near as possible to Sebastian, its dried-leather face touching his wrinkled, babyish one. Its idiot eyes remained locked on the figure on the other side of the room.

"You see?" Sebastian couldn't keep from bragging about his own cleverness. "It wasn't easy, but I managed to keep the important parts going-she knows who I am and stuff." With his one hand, he tenderly stroked the white hair. "She really is inside here. Even though I had to strip out a lot of the soft tissue from the rest of the body." He spoke matter-of-factly, as though describing the repair of a broken radio. "I had a lot of my tools and spare parts with me already, so I was able to get the sensor-activator relays and the muscle-surrogate motors wired in without too much trouble. But she's still pretty much a high-maintenance item; she can't really take care of herself. She needs me. So when I was done getting her up and running, I did what I had to, on myself."

He looked down at his own body, what was left of it, in the papoose carrier. "The doctors back in the city had told me that this pseudo-progeria I got-accelerated old age, you know? — that it could be slowed down, even halted for a while, by reducing the demands on the core system. It's mainly a progressive collapse of the circulatory and nervous systems. So I had to whittle away at myself, the way I did on Pris. I figured all I really needed was one hand-as long as I had my little pals to help me get around." He patted the teddy bear on its woolly head; it looked over the epaulet on its shoulder and gave him a steel-toothed smile. "We get along all right, don't we, Colonel?"

"Did it work?" Deckard used the empty cup to point to him. "I mean

… on your condition."

"Don't really know." Strapped to the back of his buttoneyed companion, Sebastian gave a lopsided shrug. "But I'm still here, aren't I? Surrounded by the folks who love me." The other of his creations, the miniature soldier with the spike helmet and long nose, had come into the kitchen and pressed itself close to him, forming a family tableau. "That's all that matters, isn't it?"

He supposed it was. There was nothing he could say to contradict the other man. Carved down to a one-armed torso, with a couple of toy dwarfs for companions, and the female creature he was in love with reduced to a murderous skeleton-Deckard envied him. Loving the dead, loving the bits and pieces left behind, even just memory-maybe that was what defined human. For the dead, he wondered, or for us? Deckard didn't know.

For a moment, as he had watched Sebastian with the resurrected Pris, a dim spark of hope had flickered inside him. Maybe Sebastian could do the same for Rachael; not keep her from death, but bring her back in some altered but still recognizable form. Just as quickly, the spark had turned to a cold cinder. Even if it were possible, he knew it was nothing that he wanted, nothing that he could endure. Better to have your memories, and your grief, than to be haunted by an animated corpse wearing a mask of the beloved's emptied flesh. The poor bastard, he thought as he regarded Sebastian. The little man, or what remained of him, didn't even know how screwed up he was. Just as if some crucial perception of reality had been cut away, along with his other limbs. Just things he'd found he could live without.

Though maybe… he could get me off the murder rap. Deckard mused as he sipped the last of the cold coffee. Maybe he could take the Pris-thing, the animated corpse, to the authorities and say that he hadn't killed any human, after all; here it was, still walking around. Or she was, sort of. He discarded the idea. The Pris-thing wouldn't be a very convincing demonstration of his innocence. One look at her, or it-at what she'd become-and they would just take him out and shoot him, throw his body out in the street. From sheer disgust.

He abandoned any more speculations. Deckard supposed it didn't matter, anyway. All that he knew, or cared about, was that he was still a long way from the one whom he loved. And who was dying.

"Here's the deal." The freight spinner swooped in low over the towers of L.A. "First, we find Deckard. We grab him and-"

"What, we have to go all the way up to Oregon?" Holden looked over at Batty in dismay. "What kind of plan is that?"

"Oregon?" The spinner's controls shifted beneath Batty's hand. "What're you talking about?"

He shook his head. More evidence that he was dealing with somebody on the verge of senility. "That's where Deckard went," he explained patiently. "Bryant told me that, while'I was still in the hospital."

"That was then. I'm talking about now." Batty looked down at the city. "Right now, Deckard's here in L.A."

"Bullshit. Why would he come back?"

"He didn't come back, he was brought back. By persons unknown; probably not a police operation. One of my buddies back there at the Reclamation Center heard it on the departmental grapevine and clued me in. Deckard was hauled out of whatever little hiding place he had up north and flown in here."

Holden studied the figure beside him in the cockpit. "Who's got him now?"

"Nobody." The spinner had been put into a big-loop holding pattern; Batty leaned back from the controls. "He either got away or he was let go. One way or the other, we have to find him."

"Why?"

"I thought you were smarter than that." The thin edge of the smile returned to Batty's face. "Haven't you figured it out? Deckard is the sixth replicant. The missing one."

Holden was tempted to say "Bullshit" again, but a thread of doubt slipped into his thoughts. What if Batty was right? "You better give me your logic on this."