Eye and Talon

by K. W. Jeter

  'Hey – you want to think that, fine.' Meyer rubbed the bruise at the side of his jaw. 'I'm glad if it makes you feel better about it. Because there aren't going to be a lot of bright spots in your life after this. And you know what I mean about that, too, I bet. Nobody works as a cop for very long, at least in a city like LA, without making more enemies than friends, both on the streets and inside the department. Believe me; I should know.' He took his hand away from his face and used it to lay a finger on the lapel of his tailored jacket. 'But now there's a difference between you and me.' The finger pointed in Iris's direction. 'I'm still a cop – and you're not. I've still got some protection going for me, at least as long as the department knows that it's a negative morale inducer for the troops to see some other cop get thrown to the street wolves. I might get ripped up pretty good over this owl fiasco, but I'm still on the inside, out of the rain – and in the rain is where you're going to be, when the hospital finally boots you. And that's a cold, wet place to be.' Meyer smiled, humorlessly. 'But don't worry. Ex-cops don't last long there. Your suffering will be over, relatively quickly.'

  Her eyes drew into slits as, she regarded her ex-boss. 'I'll do all right,' said Iris. 'Let's just say that my job skills are transferable.'

  'Sure they are. And you'll be fine.' Meyer shrugged. 'You want to bullshit yourself about your survival chances, then I'm happy to help you. It's the least I can do . . . for old times' sake.' His smile became genuine, and regretful. 'We did some good work together, Iris; killed off a lot of things that look exactly like you and me – or at least close enough to pass as human. That's got to count for something, these days.'

  'Spare me.' Iris folded her arms, dragging the still-attached tubes and wires with them, across the front of the hospital gown. 'If it meant so much to you,' she said bitterly, 'I wouldn't be getting tossed like last night's condom.'

  'Well . . . that's business.' With a sigh, Meyer stood up from the corner of the bed. He stepped toward the room's door – not far – and laid his hand on the metal knob, then looked back at her. 'You didn't trust me, Iris. And you should have. The one time when you really needed to – for both our sakes – and you didn't.'

  Watching him as he stood at the door, Iris found herself with nothing to say.

  'Take care of yourself.' Meyer pulled the door open, revealing the bright-lit corridor beyond, and the murmuring, uneasy silence of the clicking machines and green-lined monitors inside other rooms, beside other beds. 'How about doing me a favor, though? Last one.'

  Iris hesitated a moment, then nodded. 'Name it.'

  'Whatever happens to you out there –' He indicated the city beyond 'the room's blank wall. 'Make sure I don't hear about it.'

  'All right.' She gave another nod. It means, thought Iris, that he really cares. Whatever that was worth. 'It's a deal. I guess I owe you that much.'

  'I appreciate it.' Meyer started to step through the open doorway, then stopped and turned back toward the bed. 'Got something for you.' He dug one hand through his outside jacket pocket. 'A souvenir. Something to remember your last official cop job by.'

  'Like I'd want to?'

  'Your decision.' Meyer shrugged. 'With this, though, you'll be able to say that at least you got your hands on it.' He tossed a small object to her. 'That's something, given the circumstances.'

  She caught it between her palms, then opened them side by side to see what it was. For a moment, she had the bizarre notion that her old boss was proposing marriage to her: a metal ring lay in her hands. But it was too small, and made of some dull, lead-looking metal, rather than gold. As though it were part of some miniaturized bondage gear, a chain of even smaller links dangled from the metal.

  Then Iris realized she had seen it before, on the leg of the owl. The band that had kept the creature tethered to its perch had been pried open at one side, presumably by its present captor, the one who had taken it from her.

  'All that's left,' said Meyer. 'Left behind. Yours to keep now, for ever and ever. Or maybe a little less than that.'

  Whether it was meant as cruel or tender — Iris didn't know. And he doesn't know, she thought. Not about the gift's intent, but the clue it contained, that she had felt when she rubbed her thumb inside the broken band. Something that broke the smoothness of the metal, like tiny microscopic scratches; Meyer could have drawn his thumb across them, and probably had, but hadn't felt them. A woman's touch, thought Iris. That's what it takes.

  She didn't say anything about it, but closed the band and its dangling chain inside her fist. 'Thanks. I'll treasure it. Always.' A slow nod of her head. 'You don't know how much it means.'

  'Don't go overboard,' said Meyer. 'And sarcasm's wasted on me. Like everything else.' He stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him.

  As soon as the sound of his footsteps had faded away, Iris was out of the bed, blanket and sheets thrown back, the tubes and wires yanked off her skin. Barefoot, she tugged open the closet tucked into the corner of the small room, beneath the unlit television on its wall-bracket, and found her clothes hanging inside. Even the leatherite jacket, with its bullet-torn sleeve; the paramedics must have scooped it up, along with her unconscious body. That was a lucky break, the only real one she'd had in a long time.

  Adrenaline, and the effort of getting dressed before anyone discovered what she was doing, left her dizzy; she had to lean her shoulder against the wall until the dancing black spots disappeared from in front of her eyes. Then she was out the door, and down the corridor as silently as possible, past the beds. Nobody at the nurses' station looked up as she passed by them.

  In the elevator, Iris had just enough strength left to punch the ground-floor button, then keep herself upright, slumped against one corner, as the machine descended to the dark city streets.

  10

  When she went looking, she found ruins.

  Jesus Christ, thought Iris, impressed despite herself. One never had to go far in a city such as LA to come across the broken and monumental evidence of the past; the city's present incarnation was an unsuccessful retrofit, exposed wiring and ventilation ductwork snaking across the exteriors of the shabby buildings like so many sinews and tracheae exposed by God the Vivisectionist's scalpels. At some point — Iris didn't know when; it wasn't the kind of thing she thought about — the notion of the future, of things being new, had been abandoned. In LA, the future and the past had become one intertwined substance, like the gnarled roots of dead trees.

  But what she saw now was different. And worse, because she had never seen anything like it before.

  The dark, cloud-heavy night sky rolled above her as she stood at the edge of the cleared space, broken concrete shrapnel and tiny bits of heat-scorched metal beneath her bootsoles, that surrounded the ruins. Intact buildings towered behind her, separated by the streets and transit lanes by which she had reached this point; even before she had arrived at her destination, she had been able to see the hole in the skyline, the absence of a man-made structure somehow more imposing than any physical shape could have been. The other thing that Iris had observed as she approached the spot had been the street crowds thinning out, the density of massed human forms dispersing like oxygen molecules into a vacuum. So much so that in the last few blocks she had been alone, walking in the building's night-shadows, a few scraps of sodden, yellowing paper dragged by the wind against her ankles, then tumbling and dying in the debris-clogged gutters. A few slanted rectangles of light, gray-dimmed by low mists, had fallen upon her from above; she had looked up and seen faceless silhouettes regard her in anonymous silence. Then they had turned away, as though already mourning her passage, and the high windows had remained empty.

  Dread had emptied the streets around the ruins, the primeval fear of those places where holy violence had been visited upon the earth. The monsoon rains, hot and nocturnal, started up again; the drops collected and trickled down to Iris's jaw and neck as she stood and looked up at the still-imposing bulk of shattered walls and t
wisted inner network of rusting steel girders. Must've been, big, thought Iris, already- realizing how simple-minded that thought was. The bigness of whatever the structure had been was obvious; even in this post-destruction state, the remains towered nearly as high as the surrounding buildings. If the structure hadn't been designed or forced to collapse inward upon itself — Iris had enough experience and departmental training to recognize the tell-tale signs of high-powered core charges — it would have taken out and leveled everything around it as well, perhaps for as far as a half-mile.

  'Pretty impressive, huh?'

  The voice startled her; Iris turned and saw a familiar face smiling at her. Too familiar, she thought.

  'Why,' said Iris flatly, 'am I not surprised to see you here?'

  Vogel shrugged, in an awkward, one-shouldered manner; his other arm was held by a sling to his chest. 'We have a common destiny, sweetheart.' The smile on his angular face widened. 'At least for the time being. Whither thou goest, so goest I.'

  'Great.' Iris shook her head in disgust. 'I thought I got rid of you.' This time, Vogel laughed aloud. 'You almost did. And after all the help I'd been to you.'

  'That's the kind of girl I am. You can't trust me.' Iris pointed to his immobilized arm. 'Maybe you'd better leave before something worse happens to you.'

  'What?' Rain darkened Vogel's buzz-cut scalp and the upper part of his nondescript coveralls. 'And miss the fun?'

  'Believe me — I wish I could.' Iris's mood turned even bleaker. 'Just about all your "help" accomplished was to nearly get me killed. And then it did get my ass fired from the police department.'

  'Yeah . . .' Vogel nodded. 'I heard about that.'

  Iris gave him a harder look, but didn't bother asking how he would have known. He'd either lie about it, or she wouldn't believe him. What was the difference?

  'But you're not laying that one on me,' continued Vogel. 'There are some things being done to you, and then others that you've brought on yourself. Like right now. I'd still be as friendly and helpful as before, if you hadn't left me to get iced back at that movie theater.'

  'Doesn't seem to have happened, though.' She nodded toward the arm in the sling. 'Except for that little bit.'

  'It's the thought that counts, sweetheart. And believe me —' Vogel waggled the arm slightly, like a pinioned wing. 'It took some doing to get away with only this much damage. Good thing for me, that I have fast reflexes. I would've hated to have missed this special moment with you. Right here and right now.' His smile showed again, lazily insinuating. 'But then . . . it was meant to be.'

  In the distance, up in the night sky and through the steady, blood-temperature rain, the soft shriek of a police spinner vehicle was audible. Iris turned and looked over her shoulder at the streak of light, converging with others like it on some point at the city's edge. Searchlights, blurred by the layers of mist, swept downward like the attentions of predatory birds. Some other poor bastard, thought Iris, is in trouble. It was like LA's monsoon-season weather, always ready to descend upon and envelop someone.

  Iris turned back to Vogel, standing beside her. 'How did you find me?'

  'I can always find you,' replied Vogel. 'Better question: how did you know to come here?'

  'This.' She reached into her jacket pocket, underneath the bullet-torn sleeve, and pulled out a scrap of interlinked metal. 'My boss my former boss — gave it to me.' She held, it out on the flat of her palm.

  'Meyer?' With one finger, Vogel poked at the metal band and bit of chain that had once been fastened to the owl's leg. 'Why'd he do that?'

  'No good reason. Not really.' Iris gave a shrug. 'He wanted me to have a souvenir — that's what he called it. He didn't know what it had inside.'

  'Which is?'

  Something in the tone of Vogel's words disturbed her, even more than the mere fact of his physical presence. It struck Iris that his questions were all of things to which he already knew the answers somehow; he knew, but had to ask her anyway, as though it were part of some barely perceivable ritual through which he was leading her. To where, she had no idea.

  'Data. Information.' Iris decided to play along once again, with whatever game this mysterious figure had initiated. 'Nothing too esoteric; there was some GPS coding micro-incised on the inside of the owl's leg-band. I figured it must've been put there by the owl's original owners — either the Tyrell Corporation, when it was still functioning, or maybe Dr Eldon Tyrell. Like a "Return if Found" message, only with the geophysical location co-ordinates instead of an address.'

  'And that's why you came here?' Genuine amusement showed in Vogel's smile. 'You don't have anything to return to anybody. You lost it, remember? And' — he glanced over at the monumental ruins before them, then back to her — 'there's nobody here to return it to. Is there?'

  'Right,' said Iris irritably. 'I can see that much.' The guy was getting on her nerves again, with his smugly mocking attitude. Her only regret about leaving him to get killed by the mercenaries at the movie theater was that the putzes hadn't been able to pull it off. 'I'm not blind, you know.'

  'Maybe not.' Vogel gave a slow, judicious nod. 'But you're pretty much in the dark, though. You don't even know why you came here. Do you?'

  'It was a lead. A clue.' Her own voice sounded sullen to her. 'Sure, I didn't know what I'd find, but I had to come here and look. That's my job.'

  'No, it isn't. You keep forgetting things. You don't have a job anymore. You're not a blade runner now; Meyer fired you. You're on your own.' The edge of Vogel's sharp gaze seemed to peel back a layer of her skin. 'So whatever you do, you're doing it for your own reasons. You just don't know what they are yet.'

  'And you do?'

  'Maybe,' said Vogel. 'After all, there's all sorts of things I know that you don't. Important things. And not only about owls and stuff.' The hand that he could still use reached out and laid a fingertip on her rain-damp brow. 'Things about you.'

  'Prove it.' Iris slapped his hand away from her face. 'Otherwise, I've got stuff to do.'

  'You don't have anything more important than this.' Vogel's hand gestured, with exaggeratedly slow grace, toward the ruins. 'This means everything to you.'

  'Are you kidding?' She sneered at both him and the mountains of rubble. 'I don't even know what this place is.'

  'Exactly,' said Vogel. He turned his head slightly, peering closer at her. 'Don't you think that's strange? I mean — your not knowing about this place. It's a big surprise to you, isn't it? You've never seen it before.'

  'No.' Iris shook her head. 'I haven't.'

  'Yet look at the size of it.' Vogel turned and gestured expansively, with his one good hand. 'It's huge. Before its fall, it must have been the largest building complex in all of Los Angeles.'

  'Maybe.'

  'Trust me on this one. It was. And here's what's left of it, right in the heart of LA, and you don't know anything about it.'

  'It's a big city. I can't be expected to know every square foot of it.'

  'For a city girl, you've got some interesting gaps in your geography,' Vogel said. 'But never mind. Come on. I'll show you around.' He started walking toward the jagged floes of steel-reinforced concrete, like an Arctic explorer heading toward the jumbled forward edge of glacial ice. When Iris didn't follow, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder at her. 'What's the matter? You got a lot out of the last time. Why are you scared now?'

  She didn't know. But he's right, she thought. I'm terrified. It was a new feeling for her, one so intriguing that she felt she could almost step outside her own skin and study it, like a close examination of her image in a mirror. She took her focus from her trembling soul and laid it upon the mounted ruins beyond the taunting Vogel. The rain had increased its slanting fury, the monsoon's leading edge having given way to the heart of the storm; both she and Vogel were drenched to the skin. Her eyes had adjusted to the fractional blue streetlight seeping out from between the intact buildings behind her; it glistened upon the crumbling edges of the broken mass,
rivulets collecting and trickling from one irregular form to the next, spiraling down ridged loops of rebar and burst phone and electrical cables. The shadows deepened in the ruins' crevices, more lightless than the night sky tinged orange by the sudden gouts of flame, high above.

  Gazing upon the storm-lashed ruins, Iris realized at least one reason why it so frightened her. It was the first empty place she had ever seen in LA; empty as in unoccupied by any human presence, real or artificial. Everywhere else in the city someone could be sensed, even if not visible: some low-level empathic reaction picked up on the slight noises of respiration, breath and heartbeat, so quiet as to be under the threshold of normal hearing, or on the soft electrical tides of catecholamines inside the skull. But there was always someone, watching or listening in turn. Except here, thought Iris. Even in as crowded a locale as LA, with its teeming streets and mingled human exhalations, with every possible hole inhabited, somehow these ruins had been left abandoned. Whatever the reason, it probably wasn't a good one.

  'So what's it going to be?'

  Vogel's words snapped her out of the dark reverie into which she had fallen. She looked up, taking a moment to reassemble the image of his face into something recognizable.

  'You're going to have to make up your mind.' His voice turned sharper. 'I don't have all night. You know, you're not the only one with things to do. If I don't take care of my business with you involved, then I gotta get busy and find somebody else.'

  It wasn't the first time that something said by Vogel had made her wonder exactly what his agenda was. The same disturbing perception struck her, of questions and answers planned in advance, like the catechism of some obscure, vaguely threatening religion — plus all the other ritual steps that had to be gone through, as though the ruins before which they stood were just one more point on the stations of the cross that had been laid upon the night streets of LA.