K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

Out of the darkness behind his eyelids, a memory flash. Not that long ago — I saw her. He saw her again now, the face in the rep train, that other darkness beneath the central police station. Huddled with the other replieants, the discards of the industrial process that had created them. Weeping with a terror that'd had no way of expressing itself except the trembling of her naked shoulders, the tears leaking salt into the corners of her mouth. So there were others like her, like Rachael. There had to be. If what he'd seen was true, and not just some fevered vision drawn from his own exhaustion and fear.

"So what's it going to be, Deckard?" A knife or Sarah's voice. "Shall we talk?"

He opened his eyes. And looked at her. Or at Rachael, or the one who had wept behind the locked gates of the rep train's rattling freight car. The memory overlays faded, one veil after another. Until he saw clearly again.

"No…" A sigh, indicator of the weariness that had wrapped itself around him again. "I don't have time. I've got a job to do." Behind him, he sensed Sebastian's and the others' presence, the various living and not-living forms, the dead tucked close in its lover's embrace. "We don't have anything to talk about."

"You're wrong. We have everything to talk about. At last." She regarded him with the same fiat, level gaze. "I'm trying to make it easier for you, Deckard. I want you to come with me, right now. Outside, to my spinner. As charming as the hospitality here has been, I'd really prefer to have our little discussion elsewhere."

"Why should I?"

"Because you don't have a choice." Head tilted against her coat's fur collar, Sarah Tyrell regarded him. "You come with me now, or I leave by myself. And I notify the police of where you're hiding out. I could do it from the phone in the spinner-it wouldn't be more than a few minutes until they got here." She glanced at the figures on the other side of the room. "I imagine they'll clean up the rest of this mess here as well."

"Come on." He returned her gaze with distaste. "This poor bastard hasn't done anything."

"That doesn't matter. He can be picked up and screwed with until he might as well be guilty. You know how it works, Deckard; you've done the same. Of course, if you don't want that to happen…

She had him, and he knew it. The time when he would've been able to tell her to go to hell, when the threat of bad shit happening to other people wouldn't have mattered to him that was long past. She's trading on that fact, thought Deckard. He could almost admire the accuracy of her perception. She knew that he'd already become less of a blade runner… and more of a human being. Which made him, to her, more exploitable.

"All right." He glanced over at Sebastian, then decided against saying anything to him. There wasn't anything. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of the long coat. "Let's go."

Holden had rummaged through the freight spinner's cockpit until he'd found what he wanted, needed, had known would be there. The gun had been the first find, and the best; it'd come in handy talking with that idiot bastard Deckard.

I should've killed him, thought Holden. Right then and there. That had been his original intention; disgust at what a pussy Deckard was being had overwhelmed him, though. Plus, there'd been others inside the safe-house apartment, like that sawed-off Sebastian, riding around on the back of his wind-up teddy bear. Who knew whether the little basket case might be packing something? Holden shook his head; he knew he'd still have to be extra cautious, at least until he got his full strength back.

And his regular gun. The one he'd found in the freight spinner was all right for now. It was smaller and didn't weigh as much as the big black cannon that served as standard blade runner equipment. Which was a good thing; he'd started to feel a little weak and breathless, as though the implanted heart-and-lungs set was crapping out under the load he'd been putting it through. All this running around, adrenaline jazz, couldn't be good for a man in his condition. His old gun would've pulled him over like an anvil strapped to his shoulders.

The other handy thing he'd found, underneath the pilot's seat, was a pair of Zeiss binoculars with resolution-enhanced optic-feedback circuits. The help screens at the upper right corner of the vision field had all been in German, but he'd still managed to get the device up and running. And focused on the toppled building that contained the safe-house apartment.

Behind a low rise of concrete rubble, he'd stashed the freight spinner safely out of sight. Inside the apartment, his former partner Deckard probably thought he'd gone on, winging back into the center of L.A. His pissed-off-and-shouting behavior, that'd concluded their little conference, had been at least partially an act, designed to make Deckand believe that all he wanted to do was lay down as much distance as possible between the two of them. He wasn't through with Deckard yet, not by a long shot.' And from the looks of it, neither were some other people.

No sooner had he gotten the freight spinner hidden than he'd spotted the next visitor. She must've been there all the time, waiting for me to leave — lying on his stomach, elbows braced against the ragged concrete edge, Holden trained the binoculars on the woman as she went into the sideways apartment building. Too late to get a glimpse of her face, but the sleek arrangement of her dark hair, and the fur coat-in this heat? It must've had one of those cryonic linings-all spoke of money. Like I'm surprised, he thought bitterly. It would be just like that weasel Deckard to have belatedly learned the art of selling out to the highest bidder.

He'd searched through all the bins and equipment caches of the freight spinner's cockpit, looking for some kind of long-range microphone, something he could've used to eavesdrop on what was going on inside the safehouse apartment, but had come up empty-handed. It would've taken powerful, professional quality gear to get anything, he knew; when the place had been taken over for use by the blade runners, with no connection to the LAPD, they'd all chipped in to trick out the windows and exterior walls with sound-deadening insulation. So creeping up and laying his ear on the building wouldn't have done any good, either.

They're up to something in there. Frustrated, Holden rolled onto his back, setting the binoculars on his chest and trying to get the mechanical heart's pulse back down by sheer force of will. It wasn't obliging. "Goddamn," he muttered aloud, glaring at the empty sky. He might've strained the equipment, perhaps irrevocably; he felt worse now than when he'd left the Reclamation Center out in the desert with Roy Batty. Miserable cheap gizmos-he wondered what bargain-basement gear the LAPD had requisitioned for cases like this. For all he knew that quack doctor-cum-garage mechanic had implanted a rusting tin can and a couple of balloons left over from some kid's birthday party.

Taking deep breaths, he managed to get the black spots wandering in his sight-bad warning sign of anoxia, brain strangulation-to fade to grey and even disappear. Mostly. He turned back onto his elbows and swept the binoculars' view toward the other spinner, the one the woman, whoever she was, had arrived in. She'd left it in plain view on the other side of the apartment building.

The bar code on the spinner's fuselage came into focus. He tripped the binoculars' reader function; a few seconds later the LED display flashed the minuscule words SECURED REGISTRATION; NO INFO AVAILABLE ON THIS VEHICLE. He wasn't surprised; a late-model, high-thrust job like this one had to belong to somebody who could buy the pull to keep it off the databases.

Invariably a way; words of wisdom. Holden dialed in higher and higher rez levels, until he was looking right into the intake manifolds of the expensive after-market turbos that'd been mounted on the spinner. The sunlight slanted into the curved titanium mouths, just enough for the binoculars to pick out the manufacturer's serial numbers. Repeating the string to himself, he slithered back to the freight spinner and keyed up the control panel's computer. A moment later he had the info he'd wanted: the after-market gear had been purchased with the appropriate U.N. acquisition order by Ad Astra Transport Services. He didn't need to look them up; he knew that the company was the shipping wing of the Tyrell Corporation. Its logo, a tacky Soviet Realist image of a stylized male figure lifting a ribbon-tied package to an anonymous planetoid, was on the sides of all the container trucks taking sleep-frozen replicants to the San Pedro docks, for delivery to the off-world colonies.