K. Jeter - Edge Of Human

"The farther north," said Deckard, "the better. But anything'll do. I've gotten over being fussy."

She handed him a small glass, its contents the same as the one she kept for herself. "Your health."

"Wouldn't have thought you were concerned about it." He knocked back the shot in one toss. Every blade runner she'd ever seen drank in the same manner, as though trying to put out a small fire in the gut. "I was fine where you found me. L.A. doesn't agree with me nearly as well."

She nodded slowly as she reflected upon his words. "So I suppose I'd better make you a pretty good offer. To compensate for your… inconvenience."

He reached for the bottle and poured out another quarter inch. "I don't think you can. There wouldn't be one good enough."

"Let's find out." She carried her glass back toward the bureau plat and sat down. She gestured toward the chair opposite. "Make yourself comfortable. We have a lot to talk about."

He brought the single-malt bottle with him. "Such as?" He sank low and resentful in the chair, legs sprawled out in front of himself.

"As I said, I want to make you an offer. A job offer. I want you to find someone for me. Some thing, actually. That's what you're good at, isn't it?"

"I was at one time. I'm a little rusty now." He slowed his intake to a mere swallow. "Maybe you should hire somebody else. With current experience."

"You're uniquely qualified." She let herself smile, one corner of her mouth lifting. "For what I want done."

"There are other blade runners. Real ones. The kind who like doing it." Deckard rubbed his thumb across the rim of the glass. "There's an ex-partner of mine who's pretty sharp. Guy's name is Holden, Dave Holden. Give him a call — he might be out of the hospital by now. He'd need the work more than I do — he's probably got bills to pay."

"That's very interesting. Your recommending this Holden person to me." She leaned back in her chair. "It's not the first time you've done that. Not to me… but to your old boss Bryant."

"Maybe." Deckard shrugged. "I wouldn't remember."

"Oh, I can prove it." She pulled open the bureau plat's drawer. Beside a small folding knife was a remote control box. She took it out; a single button push, and a section of the paneled wall retracted. "Take a look."

Sarah didn't need to see what appeared on the video screen; she had seen it enough times already. Instead, she watched Deckard as he turned his gaze toward the dimly illuminated shapes, summoned from the tape and the past.

She heard the voices.

Give it to Holden. He's good.

Deckard's voice. Then Bryant's.

I did. He can breathe okay, as long as nobody unplugs him — With another button, she froze the tape and the images on the screen. "Now do you remember?"

"How'd you get your hands on that?" He looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and grudging respect. "That's LAPD property. From the watchcams in Bryant's office."

"As has been said before, there are ways. The relationship between the police and the Tyrell Corporation is not quite as antagonistic as some, people are likely to believe. Or at least, not all the time. There are some things that we an cooperate on. Or to put it another way — I can always I Ind cooperative people inside the police department." Her thin smile didn't change. "People who can do things for me. Who can get me things. Like this."

"I bet."

"Would you like to see more?"

He shook his head. "Not really. I didn't enjoy it that much the first time around."

"Perhaps this time, you can take a more… detached point of view. Watch." With the remote, she backed the tape up. To the point where the image of Deckard was still standing just inside the office door.

Bryant's recorded voice: I got four skin jobs walking the streets …

"Did you get that?" Sarah froze the tape. "When Bryant gave you the assignment — when he told you about this batch of escaped replicants being in L.A. — what did he say, about how many there were?"

"I don't.." Deckard shrugged, as though annoyed. "I don't remember exactly what he said. But it was probably four. It had to have been. That's how many I went hunting."

"Very well. So listen to what he told you a minute or so later." Another button, the tape fast-forwarding, then dropping into play. "Carefully."

A different room on the monitor screen, but still one that she knew Deckard recognized. Both his image and Bryant's were in the little screening room behind the shabby office. Along with Bryant's bottle of scotch.

Monitor within monitor — on the tape, Bryant and Deckard were watching the recording from the interview Dave Holden had gone through with the replicant Kowalski at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters.

I already had an IQ test this year… Close-up on Kowalski's slope-jawed face. I don't think I ever had one of these…

"The data retrieval system's set to bring up whatever's the most recent image of the subject." Sarah pointed to the screen. "Holden was the last one to get a good fix on Kowalski. Alive, that is." She brought up the volume. "Now catch what he told you, about how many replicants escaped from off-world and came to Earth."

Bryant's rasp of a voice again. Six replicants… three male, three female…

"Six." Deckard gazed in puzzlement at the screen. "Now I remember

… he told me that there were six escaped replicants." He slowly shook his head, as though struggling to make sense of this remembered datum.

"You're catching on." Sarah kept her own voice soft. "And then Bryant, on this tape, goes on to tell you about five replicants. One that he doesn't name, who got fried in the security barriers around the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, when they first tried to break in here. And then he showed you the pictures; he gave you the names and the rest of the data on the other replicants. You should find this interesting."

She played the rest of the tape, the parade of faces, the ID scans on Bryant's monitor. A glance from the corner of her eye; Deckard was scowling at the screen, and the smaller one within it.

"Do the count," said Sarah. She blanked the screen to a pure blue rectangle. She held her small fist up in front of it. "The dead replicant — the one who got fried on the Tyrell Corporation's fence. That's one." Thumb stuck out. "Then Kowalski, the one who shot Holden. And then the females, the one named Pris, and the brunette Zhora. Plus the Roy Batty replicant." A finger for each, resulting in her hand lining spread out before the monitor's glow. "That makes five. Not six."

The muscles across Deckard's shoulders had visibly tightened, at the mention of Roy Batty's name. The last of the escaped replicants; the one who'd nearly cost him his life. "Maybe… Bryant made a mistake. When he was first talking to me." Deckard made a dismissive gesture at the empty screen. "Five, six… who knows? Hell, the man drank like a fish. So he got his numbers messed up."

"There were six," said Sarah quietly. "Bryant didn't mess up… at least, not then. There were six replicants who escaped and got to L.A.; the original transmission from the off-world security agencies — I've got access to that as well — confirms it. Plus, one of the times that Bryant pulled up the data bank file with the replicants' ID scans, that was so he could purge one of the sets. That was where he screwed up; he left a hole. The scans are in numerical order, as they were logged into the file. The one that got fried was never entered, since he wasn't a problem anymore. But the Kowalski replicant was number one in the file, then Batty was number two; the females Zhora and Iris were logged as numbers four and five. That leaves the gap in the middle, where the other replicant's ID scan and info used to be. Bryant wasn't smart enough to clean up the hole in the file, or he just didn't care."