by K. W. Jeter
"Figure it out." The briefcase's voice continued hectoring him. "If the U.N. could regain control of the outer colonies, then they could continue funneling emigrants to any destination they wanted, rather than letting them stack up here. But to do that, to get that control again, the U.N. would need to have its own off-world military problems squared away- and they can't do that.
They're screwed; the U.N. depended too much on beefing up the ranks with replicant soldiers, like the ones for which they used me for the templant-Nexus-6 Roy Batty models, like that one you were assigned to track down in L.A. Only it just about wound up handing you your ass, didn't it, Deckard?" The briefcase barked another quick, humorless laugh. "That's the problem with the Tyrell Corporation's having put out such a good product. Even if the Batty replicants aren't quite as tough and smart as the human original-me, at least when I was still walking around inside a body-they're still pretty mean customers. If the U.N. thought it could put together an off-world military force out of pieces like that, and there wouldn't be a price to pay, they must've been dreaming."
Deckard slowly nodded; he could get behind that. Dreaming, he mused. That was what most of life had become, for himself and-apparently-everyone else. Lost in it, so that the difference between this world and any other was harder and harder to make out. For Sarah as well, thought Deckard. More for her, perhaps, than anyone else. He had sensed that a long time ago, in the decaying little cabin in the woods, the hiding place to which he and Rachael had fled; when he had seen Sarah look down at her replicant double-at Rachael sleeping in the black coffin of the transport module extending her rapidly dwindling life span-he had detected the envy radiated by Sarah as she had laid her hand on the cold glass, inches away from the mirror image of her own face. Envy of the sleeping, the dreaming, the dying; envy of the dead and the loved. So much so that Sarah had fallen into her own dreaming, a world in which she could at last become Rachael. The real, the original, trying to evolve into the unreal, the double, the shadow . . . the realer than real.
And if somebody as smart, as survival-oriented as Sarah Tyrell could fall into the dreaming trap, then why not everybody else? Right up to the faceless scheming bureaucrats of the U.N.-Deckard couldn't see why they should be immune. What a stupid idea, he thought, shaking his head. Create another race, smarter and stronger and possibly even meaner than human beings, then figure they'll do just fine as slaves, tugging their forelocks and singing choruses of "Ol' Man Ribber" in whatever cotton fields baked under alien suns. There weren't enough bullets in enough blade runners' guns to keep that kind of payback from working its way to Earth.
"You know..." Deckard's nod grew even slower and deeper. "I could almost believe all this..."
"Why would a briefcase lie to you?" The inaudible shrug sounded again in Batty's voice. "The condition I'm in, I've pretty much transcended all mortal desires."
"So tell me something else." Deckard leaned the knots of his spine against the chair. Every muscle in his body had tensed. He felt the trap closing in on him-the sharp points of its teeth were just beginning to show. "Give me the rest of the spiel. The rep-symps-the real ones, not the head cases- they scraped your corpse off the freeway ruins, cracked your skull like a raw egg, and downloaded you into this thing. That's about the size of it, right? That's the line you've been giving me."
"You know it. First time anybody's gotten this much of a handle on me."
"Big question." Deckard studied the briefcase as though it had a face whose secrets he could read out. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"The rep-symps want you in a box, that's their business. But why have Dave Holden bring you to me? What do I need you for?"
"You don't," Batty's voice replied coolly. "You've already shown how ... proficient you are at engineering your own sorry fate. It's the other way around; the rep-symps need you."
"To do what?" Deckard's own voice went tight and harsh. "What's the job?"
"Simple," said Batty. "They need you to deliver something. To the replicants. The insurgents."
"Yeah? Deliver what?"
One word. "Me."
He'd been afraid it would be something like that. "Why," Deckard asked wearily, "would anybody want you delivered to them? Unless they were running short on novelty items."
"You're a sarcastic sonuvabitch, Deckard. Believe me-"The voice coming from the briefcase turned darkly vehement. "If I could walk to where I needed to get to, I would. Rather than put up with your charming manner."
"Nothing says you have to." Deckard shrugged. "There may not be any emigrants going to the outer colonies, but there's still cargo shipments heading out of here. Tell you what-I'll spring for the postage. Cover you with stamps, and you're on your way."
"Unfortunately-" The briefcase emitted a snort of disgust. "You have to come along. You're somewhat necessary to the whole operation."
"Why? What's inside you?"
"It's not what's inside me, Deckard. It's what I am. The rep-symps back on Earth programmed more than just the contents of my skull into this box. They had other information they wanted to cram in here. Specifically, Isidore's list."
Tilting his head, Deckard frowned. "What list?"
"Come on." The briefcase's voice sounded impatient. "You didn't have a whole lot of contact with Isidore back there at the Van Nuys Pet Hospital, before Sarah Tyrell had him iced. He was a little bit on the fussy and meticulous side. He kept records."
"Records of what? How many mechanical cats he changed the batteries on?"
"Get real, Deckard. A cop like you should be able to guess what. The escaped replicants, all the ones that made their way back to Earth and then went through the disguising process at the Van Nuys Pet Hospital-Isidore kept a list of every single one that he worked on, that he made capable of passing as fully human. And their new identities, the aliases that he came up with for them. Everything, all the info. Who they were, who they became, where they are-he kept it all."
"That'd be a handy thing to have." Deckard heard the sourness in his own voice. "If you were the police. Like a shopping list. You could just go out and ice them one by one, without all that tedious work of tracking them down. How convenient."
"Sure-except why would the police be interested at all?" Batty's voice went back into its cool, logical mode. "You should try to remember what I've already told you. The disguises that Isidore gave to the escaped replicants were complete-even to the replicants themselves. You got that, Deckard? The escaped replicants on Earth don't even know that that's what they are. They think they're human-and they might as well be, since none of the police's empathy tests and Voigt-Kampff machines can show otherwise. The escaped replicants' disguises are complete, perfect, and absolute-just the way that Isidore planned it. He was one smart guy, no matter what you might think of him. The way Isidore set it up, the replicants hiding out on Earth can't even give themselves away to anybody who might be trying to hunt them down. And you know-all cops know-that's the number-one way people get caught. They give themselves away. They know who they are-what they are-and it's too much for them to keep bottled up inside. They want to be caught; they do all the little things, the mistakes, the coming out into the open, all that insures that somebody like you will find them. And end the chase the only way it can be ended. By death." The voice lowered. "Even that last batch you hunted down, Deckard, back in L.A-the replicant that was based on me, and the Kowalski replicant, and Zhora and Pris-they knew who and what they were, and it didn't help them. The truth doesn't set you free, Deckard. It dooms you. That batch screwed up, they didn't go to the Van Nuys Pet Hospital and get themselves disguised by Isidore; they had some other agenda going for them, besides their own survival. That's the only reason you were able to find them at all. Not because you were able to tell that they were replicants. But because they still knew."
They run toward death. The bleak truth. And Death, in the form of Rick Deckard or Dave Holden or any other blackgunned official assassin, ran toward them as fast, or just
simply waited for them to come and be killed. What did it matter anyway to creatures with four-year life spans? To-morrow or the next day, or the day or the year after that, they would be iced just as surely by the flaws that Eldon Tyrell had designed into them.
Maybe-the thought had crept through Deckard before-maybe it was a relief. For them, if not for himself.
"All right," said Deckard, pulling himself from his grim musings. "But you didn't answer your own question. If Isidore kept a list of all the escaped replicants he'd disguised, and that list was still around after he was offed-why wouldn't the police want it?"
"What would be the point? Come on, Deckard, use your brain." The briefcase's voice struggled to remain patient. "The police get a list of names; so what? They're human-or they might as well be. They can't be shown to be not human with the Voigt-Kampff machines and the empathy tests. They don't know themselves that they're escaped replicants. So what's the danger in just letting them live? They'll all drop dead pretty soon anyway, thanks to that four-year life span Tyrell built into them. They're no threat to anyone-so why not just let the poor bastards live, at least as long as they're going to? The police and the U.N. would just be making trouble for themselves by hunting the disguised replicants down-what kind of public relations is it to blow away people that everybody around them thinks are as human as they are? Do enough of that kind of shit, pretty soon you'd have real humans-whatever that means-worrying about whether they were going to be next. And then it would be the police who'd be in trouble."
"So who does want it?" Deckard leaned back and regarded the briefcase. "I sure as hell didn't-why send it to me?"
"The replicants, of course. Not the ones on Earth, the disguised ones-but the ones out there. Out in the stars; the insurrection. Isidore's work at the Van Nuys Pet Hospital has a big payoff for them. Because of it, the insurrection has a 'fifth column' on Earth-replicants just like themselves, perfectly disguised, infiltrated through all levels of society. The only problem is that the disguised replicants don't know that's what they are. That's where the list-the list that Isidore kept, the list that's inside me-that's where it comes in." Batty's voice turned smug, as though pleased at the show of its own logic. "The replicants' insurrection already has a division of its own behind the enemy lines, right there on Earth. The insurrection just has to find them. Find them and tell them what they really are. Not humans as they thought, but replicants. And on the side of the insurrection."
"Maybe." Deckard shrugged. "Or maybe not. There might be some of these disguised replicants who like believing that they're really human. They might not react too well to being told they're not. If they believe this little revelation at all."
"Different ones will react different ways." Batty's voice sounded unperturbed. "Some might even just kill themselves rather than face the truth. Because they'll know that it is the truth. The records that Isidore kept include not only the disguised replicants' new identities but their old ones-who and what they were out in the colonies, before they escaped and made their way to Earth. And something even better-or at least more powerful-than that. The data on each disguised replicant includes the anamnetic trigger for that individual-a code phrase that Isidore planted into their new artificial memories that'll bring the replicants to full, true consciousness. Once that trigger gets pulled-when a disguised replicant hears the big word-then the truth can't be denied. That sucker'll know just what he or she really is. They'll all know. And they'll know what side they should be on. Human or replicant." The briefcase laughed, short and harsh. "It'll be like what those last old die-hard Maoists used to say. One of their quotes from their little red book-you remember? 'Give up illusion-prepare for struggle.' Those poor bastards on Isidore's list won't even have any illusions to give up."
Deckard remembered that line; he'd heard it a long time ago, back when he'd spent his time in the student warrens beneath Los Angeles. Or something like it, thought Deckard. The alternate, preferred version being "Give up struggle-prepare for illusion." A holdover from the same historical epoch as the Maoists, the other war, the one that had gone on inside people's brains and central nervous systems. Resulting in the private opiocracy, the chemical dictatorship that half the city's population pledged allegiance to. He'd gone through the mandatory three-month detox wring-out when he'd climbed up skinny and starving from below and signed on with the LAPD, getting the departmental regs laid down to him, that the only acceptable intoxicants came in bottles and tasted like numbing fire down your throat.
The words stayed true, though. Old jokes made for bad realities. Struggle was the proverbial mug's game, a nonprofit enterprise for chumps who still believed . . . in what? Doesn't matter, thought Deckard. The result was still the same. They'd be lucky if they had any illusions left to fall back on. He didn't.
"So that's the deal, then." Deckard tapped one finger against the table, a soft dead sound. "The replicants out in the colonies, the insurrection-they want this list that Isidore kept, all this data about the disguised replicants on Earth. So they can contact them, flip their triggers with the magic words, tell them that they're actually replicants and not humans, get 'em fired up and working against the U.N. Viva la revolución. That's it, right? I take it that the insurrection would already have some way of getting in touch with these disguised replicants, once they know who they are?"
"Of course," Batty replied. "The rep-symps-the ones who put me in this box and loaded me up with Isidore's data- they're in contact with the insurrection. Once the replicants out in the colonies get the information-once you deliver me to them-then they can relay it back to the rep-symps. Who can then go out and find the disguised replicants, reveal their true identities and natures to them, and get them moving with the insurrection's plans. A lot of those disguised replicants are Nexus-6 models, like the Roy Batty replicant that was modeled after me. They can cause a lot of troublehell, you should know that better than anyone."
"Still doesn't make sense." Fighting the fatigue he'd brought with him to this world, Deckard shook his head. "This list of Isidore's, this information about the disguised replicants-it's only of any use back on Earth. If it's inside you, why bother having me drag you to the colonies out in the stars? Even if I could find a way of getting out there-right now, there's no long-range transit off Mars, remember? Just little skiffs, like the one I used to get to the Outer Hollywood station. So why shouldn't I just take you back to the rep-symps and hand you over to them, if you're the information they need?"
"One," the briefcase said sourly, "because you're a dead man back on Earth, or as good as. You show up there, toting me or not, you'd be spotted and iced before you could deliver me to anyone, let alone the rep-symps. And two-"
"Wait a minute." Deckard lifted his hand. "The rep-symps had this data already, loaded it into you, then had Holden bring you to me, just so I could go on carrying you out to the insurrection in the colonies? So the data could somehow be sent back to the rep-symps on Earth?" He shook his head. "They must be even more screwed up than I am."
"Dig it." The briefcase's voice turned even harder and blunter. "The data, the information that Isidore kept about the disguised replicants-it's encoded. Encrypted. Deep, bad, and unbreakable. It's got algorithms wrapped around it that the U.N's cryptology divisions haven't even seen the tail end of. There's not enough computing power in the universe to bear down on the data that got loaded into me. Isidore did that, too-he was a smart bastard all around. So the information, the list, is unusable to the rep-symps in its present form; it has to be unlocked before it can be read out and made functional."
"Who's got the key?"
"Correction, Deckard. It's not who has the key. It's who is the key."
"So it's a person." He could sense the answer that was coming, but asked anyway. "And that person is..."
"It's you," said the briefcase. "Who else? It's always been you."
Deckard sat silently for a few moments, then pushed the chair back and got up from the kitchen area table. He
crossed the small space of the hovel to the door. Pulling it open, he looked out into the narrow, rubble-filled corridor beyond. The low-ceilinged public area had gone temporarily depopulated, as though a scouring wind had moved across the dunes of yellowing paper scraps and black-tinged garbage. The stimulus-deprived and the still functional, idiot hunger and the fragile containers of a dwindling sanity, had disappeared alike, leaving him with an illusion of physical isolation comparable to what he felt under his breastbone. Outside the permeated, decomposing walls of the transit colony, the same wind separated grains of red sand from each other, rolling them like desiccated atoms into mine shafts of ancient iron and the razor-slashed, tearless eyes of what once could have been human children.
There wouldn't be time to think about that kind of stuff anymore. Or to even see it. The trap had shown its teeth and snapped onto his leg; he could almost imagine the blood trickling down to his ankle.
"Why me?" Deckard had come back to the table; he turned the briefcase toward him. "Why should I be the key?"
"Because I'm the lock. It's as simple as that." Batty's voice softened to, if not pity, a recognition of their common fate. "Think about it. Remember. When I died, you were the last thing I saw, Deckard. I had my hands around your throat, and my eyes were locked onto your face, with your eyes about to burst and your teeth gritting, and you were the one who was going to die . . . and that's when I got it. Funny, huh?" The short, humorless laugh sounded again. "Just when you least expect it. That's when it's all over."