by K. W. Jeter
"That's when you wake up," said Deckard. He nodded slowly, remembering what had been said to him a long time ago in a rubbish-strewn, rain-soaked alley in Los Angeles. By the Kowalski replicant that he'd been hunting, the one that had caught him instead: Wake up! Time to die.
"I know what you mean." The briefcase spoke softly. "Nothing like coming that close to your own corpsehood to put everything into perspective. Anyway, that's the deal. Like the old myths about the last thing a dying man sees being imprinted inside his eyes. Your face, Deckard, got imprinted a lot deeper than that-right down into my brain. When the rep-symps scraped me off that broken freeway and loaded my cerebral contents into this thing, there you were, right on the top level. That's a pretty powerful linkage-so what could make a better key than that? Especially since you're a key that's good for more than just opening this lock and decoding Isidore's list. You're walking and talking and scheming your little head off, aren't you? God knows, for what. But you've still got a lot of your old cop skills; you're not so screwed up as to have dropped those. If anybody can get me out to the stars-to the insurrection-you can, Deckard. You're the only way."
"It'd be easier for me to decrypt the Isidore data out of you right now, find some means of getting it down to the repsymps on Earth. Or out to the insurrection, if that's what the replicants want. Rather than lug you all over the universe."
"Nyet on that, pal. I may be the lock and you may be the key, but I'm not exactly a passive participant in this game. I've got some choice in the matter, still. I can choose the moment when the key can turn in the lock, when the data from Isidore can be decrypted. And believe me, I've already chosen. It's not going to happen, Deckard, until you've gotten me safely out of the reach of the U.N. and the LAPD and any other security agency that would just love to dump me in the incinerator. That would take care of a lot of their problems. And yours, too. But I'm not hanging on to the same kind of death wish as you might be. I may be stuck in this box right now, but if it's what I've got, I'll deal with it. And who knows? We get off Mars and out to the insurrection, give the replicants the information they want . . . they might show a little gratitude. Beyond just keeping me around, that is. Maybe they could download me into some spare replicant body. That'd be a trip. Then you'd have a real hard time trying to figure out if I were human or not. Or what part of me might be."
Deckard sorted through the briefcase's words. "You're still missing something," he said. "You may have some kind of motivation for this job, for getting you and this list of Isidore's out there-but what about me? Seems like a lot of hard work. Why would I want to?"
"You tell me." The briefcase sounded wryly amused again. "Maybe you've developed a conscience, or something like that. Kind of a human thing; it's been known to happen, even to blade runners. Look at poor old Dave Holden. That's what happened to him."
"Right. And he's dead."
"All the way," agreed the briefcase. "And there won't be any coming back for him, the way there was for me; no one there to download his cerebral contents into a handy little container. Lucky bastard. Shows there's no justice in this universe. Or maybe there is; maybe Holden had redeemed himself that much. I'll have to think about it."
Deckard shook his head. "I'm not looking for that kind of redemption."
"Obviously. Got your own agenda, don't you? So here's why you should do the job, why you should carry me on out to the insurrection." The briefcase was silent for a few seconds, then spoke again, softer. "Because that's the way you were heading. Isn't it? Out there. To the stars. Or to put it another way... as far from Earth as you could get. And you were taking Sarah Tyrell with you. That's the plan. I'm right, aren't I?"
No need for an answer, or even an attempt at denial. "How do you know that?"
"Come on, Deckard. I'm not the only one plotting your trajectory. Do you really think you got away scot-free, that you got even this far without other people knowing what you were up to? Your little disguise-this whole Mr. and Mrs. Niemand trip-how many people do you think you fooled with that? Your cover was blown before you even lifted off from the San Pedro docks. If you got away here to Mars, it's because the U.N. and the LAPD wanted you to get away. Probably just to see who you might hook up with, who you're working for-you know how they like to keep track of people. They got some long leashes that they string people out with-and that's what you've been on. Not just with the police, but with the rep-symps as well. They've got enough connections in the right places to have kept tabs on you."
"They're not the ones I'm worried about."
"Of course not-they're the ones who want to keep you alive, at least long enough for you to do this little job for them. The police, though-they might be just about ready to reel you in. Now that they know you've got me and all the dangerous information I've got inside."
Deckard reached down and tapped a finger on the briefcase. "In which case, I should just get rid of you. Since you're not exactly a good thing to keep around."
"You know it doesn't work that way, Deckard. The cops never let anyone off the hook. The only way off is with a bullet. The mere fact that you came into contact with me-that's enough reason for them to figure you're better off dead rather than running around, stirring up more trouble for them."
One more thing the briefcase was right about. "Even so-if they're going to be hot on my ass, I should still dump you rather than drag you around with me and have you slow me down."
"That would be one way of handling the situation." Batty's voice was unfazed. "But it'd be the stupid way. You don't have a chance on your own, Deckard. You need me. And the other things inside me, besides the Isidore data. If you're going to track Sarah Tyrell down, find out where the hell she's gone off to-believe me, I've got some notions on that score-and take her off with you to the colonies. Though why you'd want to is beyond me . . . but hey, that's your business. Work out your obsessions however you want, pal. But frankly, it's just one more sign of how fried your brain is. Whereas mine-at least in this condensed form-is working overtime. You got the legs, the moves, Deckard-you can get around-but I've got the smarts. I know stuff. And I can figure out the rest."
Got me there, thought Deckard. The cop skills that he'd had for so long, the sniffing and analyzing abilities that had made it possible for him to survive in L.A-he wasn't sure of those anymore. He had the sick feeling that he was only alive and breathing on sufferance, just as long as the invisible forces watching him were amused to let him be. The leash to which he was attached had a collar that could be tightened to the choke point at any moment.
And if that happened-if his own death moved from possibility to probability to actuality-then all the planning and scheming that had gotten him this far had been for nothing. Not his plans for himself-nothing like that had ever mattered-but for Sarah. What had to be done with her. That promise Deckard had made to himself, deep in that empty space where the image of Rachael had once resided .
He'd already decided what he was going to do. Or had had it decided for him. It didn't matter.
Deckard sat down in the empty chair and pulled it up to the table. He rested his face in his hands for a long moment, fingertips pressing at the corners of his eyes. Then he leaned back and regarded the briefcase again.
"What was that you said?" Some of Batty's words had puzzled him. "Something about ... the other things inside you ..."
"They put them in," said the briefcase. "The rep-symps did. When they loaded in the encrypted Isidore data. Just one other thing, really. Something they thought you might be able to use."
"Like what?"
"Check it out for yourself." With two sharp metallic clicks, the briefcase's chrome locks snapped open. "Go on. You have to open my lid-I can't do that myself."
Deckard reached one hand over and tilted the briefcase's lid back. He pulled the briefcase toward him so he could see its contents.
It was empty. Nothing inside-or so Deckard thought, until the hovel's dim light allowed him to spot the one small, flat rectan
gle in the center of the briefcase's faux watered-silk lining.
He picked up the object, his broken fingernails sliding under its edge. It weighed hardly anything; it might have been empty. Rubbing the slick paper surfaces under his thumb, he detected a loose, shifting substance filling, like dust, one end of the packet.
That was what it reminded Deckard of-a seed packet. From some childhood memory, deeply buried and dimly recalled, of his mother or an aunt, and a tiny garden, holes dug in black earth beneath a yellow sun, a trickle of water from a green, snakelike hose...
But not a seed packet. Or not exactly so; the right size and shape, perhaps three by five inches. But the contents would be different. He had seen things just like this right here on Mars, in the darkest, narrowest reaches of the emigrant colony's illicit markets. Back where the most desperate, the ones with the least to lose and the most to find, went in search of a transcendent commerce. To find God, or something like Him.
The packet that Deckard held was blank, at least on the side he could see. He turned the packet over and found one word. A name, in simple black letters-
SEBASTIAN
7
"Everything that is buried," said Wycliffe, "must be watched."
"'Or with his claws, he'll dig it up again.'" Hands deep in the pockets of the fur-collared coat, Sarah still felt the cathedral's chill seeping from the ancient walls into her bones.
"What?" Both of the die-hard Tyrell loyalists appeared puzzled. "Who's 'he'?"
"Never mind." She shook her head. "Nobody-it's just a quote. A scrambled literary allusion." She knew she was dealing with corporate creatures-neither one of them had probably ever read anything other than the Tyrell employees' manual. "Just go on. Tell me all about it."
From farther away, up by the abandoned altar at the end of the cathedral's stone nave, came the sound of a chugging power generator. It had been started up, with much tugging and fussing at the cobwebbed controls, by Wycliffe and Zwingli right after the yacht had settled into the bare fields at the edge of the little town. Or what used to be a town, Sarah corrected herself. The word town implied the presence of people, and there were none here anymore. Just the three of them now, strangers on any land not roofed by money. The bare incandescent bulbs, laced along a dangling black cord at the cathedral's peaked ceiling, flickered and swayed in the ice-crystal wind needling from outside. Small black waves dashed against the shingle of the protected harbor.
"These are all the monitoring devices." Wycliffe had already pulled back the rotted tarpaulins that had covered the gauges and dials. Spiders and larger creatures scurried away, across the circles of broken or dust-clouded glass. He tapped a finger against one device, and a thin black needle jumped and quivered; a row of blue LEDs blinked and ran out a row of numbers, a date twenty years in the past. "They're not on the generator-they're kept charged by the field polarity, out in the Flow."
It struck Sarah as odd that a place of such stillness should be called that. The correct name being Scapa Flow-the body of North Sea water encircled by the Orkney Islands. North to the Shetlands, south to the Scottish mainland, all depopulated as here; a long way to reach any of the densely imploding, expanding urban centers that had sucked up everything that moved on two legs. Or on wheels; the cobbled streets of Kirkwall, the little town at the Flow's edge, were littered with motorized wheelchairs, toppled onto their sides and left to rust, toggle switches and control sticks mired in the grey, puddling rain. Sad relics, as if the feeblest of Time's carriages had ceased functioning, their spoked wheels frozen by the same non-Time that brooded beneath the water's surface.
The diehards' ship, at the end of its journey from the Martian emigrant colony, had come in low to the west. From the wall-sized viewscreen in the lounge, Sarah had been able to see the broken cliffs at the islands' rim, the rock columns standing as mute sentinels. Abandon all motion-that was what she would have carved into their sides. All things come to a halt here. Hence, probably, the abandoned wheelchairs. Their owners just hadn't needed them any longer.
"Do you know how this works?" Wycliffe's voice broke into her dark reverie. "What's going on here?"
She said nothing. Better to let him talk, so as to delay the moment she knew was coming. Even in places of stopped time, the bad things still approached and then arrived, inevitable. Just my luck, thought Sarah glumly. Christmas gets canceled, the oral surgery appointment's still on.
"This location-not the cathedral, I mean; I'm referring to the Orkneys in general and Scapa Flow in particular-has become a temporal anomaly." Wycliffe slipped into a lecturer's dry, efficient tone. "Indications are that it was that way to begin with, even before it started being used as a dump zone for time-depleted stellar drives."
"That's why," said Zwingli, "these islands have such a high concentration of neolithic monuments. Stone circles, megaliths, standing stones, burial mounds-that sort of thing." The eyes behind the square-rimmed glasses grew brighter, as if the topic were some special enthusiasm for him, artifacts of the dead being more interesting than anything to do with the living. "The highest concentration in Europe, and thus in the whole world. Primitive tribespeople must have recognized the area's . . . umm . . . unique qualities."
"Whatever." Wycliffe looked annoyed at his partner's speech. He turned an identical owlish gaze back toward Sarah. "All that's possible, I suppose. Though I personally believe that the Flow's suitability for its present use was triggered by the scrapping of the Imperial German Navy at the end of the First World War."
"The word, I think, is scuttling." Zwingli again. "The Imperial German fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow."
A pulse of irritation ticked at the corner of Wycliffe's brow. "The battleships were deliberately sunk and sent to the bottom. Out there." He gestured with one hand, heavily gloved against the cold. At the great wooden doors of St. Magnus, the ravens peering in, black and glitter-eyed, took flight with wings blotting out whole sections of the cloudroiled sky. "So they form the bottom layer, at least as far as modern history is concerned-there's no telling what might have been sunk and buried, for whatever reasons, before then. Viking boats, perhaps." His gaze grew distant, as though focussed on a scene not visible in present time. "Hollowed-out logs, woven coracles ... who knows? But if the Flow hadn't been a temporal anomaly before then, the insertion of such potentiality-laden material might well have created one, or exacerbated an already existing situation past a certain critical threshold. So that the first signs of the field's presence were picked up shortly after the turn of the millennium. Then, when the problem arose of the safe disposal of the early depleted stellar drives, this solution was acted upon." Wycliffe peered more closely at her. "Is any of this making sense?"
Sarah nodded. "More than." She knew what the two men were talking about; she had been briefed on the history of Scapa Flow, and the details of its present use, back when she had assumed control of the Tyrell Corporation. The company, while under the directorship of her late uncle, had bought a controlling share in the consortium running the facility-or dump, a more appropriate word. And as had been the usual mode with Eldon Tyrell's business operations, the other partners had been squeezed out one by one, or had wisely abandoned their interests in whatever went out beneath the grey surface of the Flow. Why worry about the dead-and dead machines, at that; nothing more-in their watery cemetery? Better to let the Tyrell Corporation be the keepers of whatever secrets might still be trying to swim up to the light.
"It's not as if anybody had wanted to do it this way." Wycliffe sounded apologetic. His hand brushed across the dials, clearing some of the dust. "There was just nothing else that could be done. It's always better to forget, to destroy the past-"
"Oh, you're right." She regarded the man as though some beam of light had broken through the clouds and the cathedral's roof, revealing some previously unseen aspect of him. Perhaps he was wiser than she had thought. "You're absolutely right."
A moment of hesitation, then Wycliffe slowly shook his head. "I
just meant ... technologically; that's all. If there had been a better way of dismantling the old, first-generation interstellar transports, and of getting rid of their depleted drive units ... but there wasn't. The consortium, before it settled on abandoning and scuttling the transports here, had even contemplated firing them off-planet and into the sun. But there was no guarantee of the results with that method; the sheer amount and nature of the energy lodged in the drives might have triggered some cataclysmic solar reaction; there was just no way of telling."
"Better to be safe." Zwingli nodded sagely. "Bad P.R. if the sun had gotten blown up."
Wycliffe ignored the comment. "Sinking the old interstellar transports in Scapa Flow was undoubtedly intended just as a stopgap measure, until a means of safely disposing of the depleted drive units had been found. The temporal anomaly that had been found here kept the drives' unwanted effects safely bottled up, at least for the time being. But as we know, what starts out as temporary has a way of becoming permanent. Especially after the new drives were invented, the ones in use now, that can operate without the buildup of toxic aberrational effects. The old drive technology was abandoned; no more of those first-generation interstellar transports were built and put into service, so there was no need to find another way of disposing of them. The dump here at Scapa Flow hadn't reached its limit. So why invest any further research funds into a less-than-critical situation?"
"That was my uncle's decision." Sarah had read the memoranda in the Tyrell Corporation files, the nonpublic areas. Typical of his thinking. Skinflint bastard, she mused grimly. Even when the company had been in the trillion-dollar-profits level, Eldon Tyrell wouldn't have spent a nickel on anything that hadn't brought another dime into his pockets. "He didn't care whether it was critical or not," she spoke aloud. "That was part of the research he canceled." The memos had had his initials at the bottom; she had touched the scrawled letters with her fingertip. "The crews working out here had still been in the process of determining whether it was safe to leave all those transports underwater, or whether the drives' toxic effects were still building to an explosive level."