K. Jeter: Edge Of Human

"Oh, he loved somebody all right." Her voice and gaze acidic. "It just wasn't me."

The forest's silence seeped through the walls, congealing around every object, living or dead. He decided he didn't want to hear any more about this woman personal problems. He just wasn't sure he'd have that choice.

"How'd you track us down?"

"It was easy. After you made your mistake." She tapped a fingernail against the glass lid. "You'd pretty well disappeared, until you had this transport module stolen. For a cop, that wasn't a brilliant move. Did you really think your thief pals wouldn't be working for the corporation as well? They sold your ass to us two minutes after delivery had been made."

Bound to happen, but he hadn't cared; just something else that there'd been no choice about. Either have the module stolen and brought to what had been their hiding place, or watch Rachael die, the remains of her four-year replicant life span dwindling the way snow melts on the ground.

"That why you came here?" He pointed to the black coffin. "Want your property back? How about doing me a favor and letting me keep it for a few more months. It's not that much longer."

"Keep it forever, for all I care. Bury her in it, if you want." She glanced down for a moment at her own sleeping race. "That's not why I wanted to find you." Her voice was softer, the sharp edge retracted. "I was in Zurich when… everything happened. One of my uncle's little minions flew out and told me that he was dead. I went back to Los Angeles and found out the rest. There were tapes. And people who told me things. They told me about you. About you… and her." She regarded him for a moment, then stepped forward and took his hand, drawing him back with her toward the coffin. "Come here."

Close to her, he watched as she let the coat fall away from her shoulders, revealing her naked arms, a thin gold circle dangling at one wrist. A scent of skin-warmed orchid breathed itself into his nostrils; he could taste it at the back of his throat. Sarah knelt down before him, touching him for a moment at his hips to balance herself. With her knees against the floor's rough planks, she reached behind her neck and undid her hair. With a shake of her head, it came loose, dark and soft against the paleness of her throat.

"You see?" This close, her voice could be a whisper. She raised herself a little bit, just enough so she could lean across the coffin's glass lid, both hands against the smooth surface. She brought her face down against one arm, turning to look up at him. "It's perfect, isn't it?"

He could see her face and Rachael's at the same time, separated by only a few inches. Sarah's gaze pierced him, held him; beneath the glass, the sleeping, dying woman with the same face, eyes closed, lips slightly parted to release an hours-long breath. Both women's hair was the same color, the same substance, across the coffin's pillow or the unmarked glass. He looked down, the world around him collapsed to a space even smaller than the cabin.

"I wanted to know…" Sarah turned the side of her face against the glass, so she could look at her own image beneath. "It sounded so strange… that you could love something… that wasn't real. What could that be like…" She raised her head, her gaze catching onto his again. "Not for you. For her."

"I don't know." Deckard slowly shook his head. "She never told me."

"Well… there's a lot you don't know." Sarah stood up, reaching down to brush the floor's dust from the edge of her skirt. She picked up her coat and folded it around herself. The same chill as before touched her voice. "That's really why I came here — to tell you that. There's a lot you don't know yet. But you're going to find out."

She walked past him, pulling open the cabin's door and stepping out into the darkness without even glancing back over her shoulder at him.

From the small window, he watched her spinner rise into the night sky. It hung suspended for a moment, giving him a glimpse of Sarah at the controls, then swiveled around and disappeared under the pinpoint stars, heading south. Toward L.A.

Other lights were moving up there. He looked up, counting two traces, then a third, coming his way. They must've been waiting, thought Deckard. Then she called them in.

A rational part of his head was almost glad the gun had been lost, knocked from his hand out in the woods. Otherwise, he might have been tempted to do something stupid with it. Like try to put up a fight.

He was sitting in the cabin's single chair when the agents, in their grey, insignia-less SWAT suits, shoved open the door.

"Deckard?" The leader — there were half a dozen behind him, sheer overkill — aimed an assault rifle's short barrel toward his chest. All the men had buzz cuts and hard, machinelike faces; they could've been LAPD elites, but he didn't recognize any of them. Before he could answer, the leader smiled and pointed the weapon toward the ceiling. "Good. You're being smart."

He sighed. These gung ho types had always given him a cramp. "What did you expect?"

"You're coming with us, Deckard."

"Can't." He tilted his head to indicate the coffin beside him. "I've got to take care of her."

"She'll keep." Two of the other agents had stepped behind the chair, yanking him from it by his arms pulled to the small of his back. "This won't take long."

The spinners were unmarked as well. "Are you guys Tyrell?" He studied the team's leader as the canopy swung down into place. On the man's breast pocket was a name, tag that read ANDERSSON.

"You don't need that information." The leader hit the cockpit's PURGE button. The ground fell away.

Deckard leaned back, turning his head to watch the other spinners pull into flanking position. "Where we going?"

"Don't be stupid." The leader didn't take his eyes from the controls. "You know."

He did know. His hands drew into fists. "Why?"

A sharp glance. "You know that, too." And a sneer. "You left too much unfinished business there. That's why." Deckard closed his eyes. He was going home. To L.A.

"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.