by K. W. Jeter
'You know, you're really losing your capacity to surprise me.' Iris put her hands on her hips. 'I already watched one of your movies. There at the blimp, that other grungy hangout of yours. Just because you've dragged me into this pile doesn't mean I'm in the mood for another one.'
'Ah, but that other one was a live feed. That was so you'd know what was going on with the owl, and who had it then. What I've got here for you is real cinema, something historic. Higher production values. So it's a lot better than mere reality.'
As if Id know anything about that, thought Iris, anymore. The rabbit-hole feeling embraced her again; she felt the weight of the Tyrell Corporation's rubble pressing down upon her, as though the ruins were ready to extinguish the small, charmed bubble of existence inside it. Somewhere, in the wandering through the maze that had led her here, the thread leading back to the outside world had been broken; she didn't know if she would ever find her way out again. Or if that other world out there even still existed. Or if it ever had.
'You win,' said Iris. She knew she didn't have a choice about the matter. Even if she did emerge from the ruins' depths, she would eventually crawl back into them, just to find out what it was that Vogel had wanted to show her. Not out of curiosity, but the fear of not knowing. 'Where do we go for -this flick of yours?'
'Follow me.' Vogel picked up one of the floor-standing candle racks and carried its pool of light with him to a farther section of the rooms. 'Here we go.' He pushed open a door concealed in the wood panels, revealing another dust-covered, expensively furnished chamber. 'Eldon Tyrell's private theater. He didn't use it much — more of a book guy, you know?- — but it had all the amenities. Or at least enough of them for our purposes.' Vogel gestured toward a pair of vintage leather wingchairs. 'Have a seat.'
Real leather; Iris could tell the difference between the stuff and her own jacket as she leaned back in the chair and rubbed her hands along the fatly padded arms. The way Tyrell had gone through the endangered species of the world, converting scraps of them into personal luxuries, there eventually wouldn't have been anything left alive on the planet, except rats and replicants.
Behind her, Vogel fussed about with some ancient-looking machine on a rolling stand. Leaning around the side of the wingchair, Iris watched him threading a thin strip of something black and shiny through cogs and sprockets, from one spoked double-wheel to another above it. 'What the hell's that?'
'Film,' said Vogel. 'Pre-digital technology. Like they use at that movie theater, where we had our little party.'
'Okay . . .' Iris recognized the stuff now; there had been coiling masses of it on the floor of the theater's projection booth. 'But those were old movies. Nobody produces anything on it anymore. And you said that this was something recent.'
'Very recent. But Tyrell had discriminating tastes; nothing but the best. Which for him meant no cheap-ass digitized mass of pixels, like everybody else in the world has gotten used to watching — mainly because they don't know any better. So if whatever he wanted to watch wasn't on film to begin with, he'd have his guys in the lab do a cross-media conversion on it, using the old equipment and hoard of film stock that he'd stashed. Then they'd strike a one-off print like this, just for his eyes. Though this is one movie Tyrell never got to see. Since he gets killed in it — really killed — he wasn't around to see the final edit, and all the top-drawer technical work his employees did on it. Which is too bad, from a cinephile viewpoint, because they really did a good job — right up there with the rest of them.'
'The rest?'
'In Tyrell's private archive. In the vault next to this theater there's racks of film cans stored away. This particular movie was the last to be logged in, after Tyrell's, shall we say, sudden demise. But like I said, they're all top quality. That's film for you, though — most people can't tell the difference; the percept systems in their brains have been degraded to the point that they think a bunch of dots is the same thing as reality. So an analogue medium such as this is just no big thing to them. Maybe you'll be able to tell, though.'
She couldn't. When Vogel turned out the lights and set the clattery machine running, a horizontal cone of light sprang from its bright lens, filling the screen in front of her. Points of light showed, a nighttime vista of some sprawling city. When gouts of flame burst into the sky and a police spinner streaked past, she realized that the city was LA itself. It looked real enough to her, but no different from any digital depiction ever had. The knowledge made her uncomfortable, as though some subtle test had been put before her, like the trick questions used with the standard-issue Voigt-Kampff machine. And she had failed the test.
'When's the good stuff start?' Discomfort had turned to irritation. 'This looks pretty artsy so far, but not important. At least, not to me.'
'Keep your shirt on.' Vogel had made himself comfortable in the matching chair. 'It'll be worth it. I promise.'
With the projector softly clicking in the background, the film's angle changed from its elevation above the city to a tracking shot, zooming forward on a vaguely pyramidal building. Vogel leaned over the arm of his chair and pointed to the image on the screen. 'That's the Tyrell Corporation headquarters,' he whispered. 'What you're sitting inside right now. Before it went up.'
Then a room inside the building, with a ceiling fan lazily stirring the smoke from the cigarette held by a cop; Iris didn't recognize him, though it was clear he was supposed to be a part of the blade runner division. She didn't like the guy's style, too sneering and cold; it was no surprise to her when the interview, with some hulking low-intelligence type, didn't go well, and the cop wound up getting shot from under the table. The bullet's force smashed him back through the wall behind, as though it were so much pre-fab fiberboard.
'Who's this?' Iris nodded toward the screen. The claustrophobic office from the pre-ruins Tyrell Corporation building had been replaced by a nocturnal, outdoor shot, the city's constant monsoon-season rain battering a streetside noodle bar. A gaijin with dark, close-cropped hair, not quite as buzzed-down as Vogel's, was having a hard time getting his order; a lot of irritated pidgin and sign language went on between him and the noodlista behind the counter. 'Somebody else I should recognize?'
'Maybe not,' said Vogel. 'But you've heard his name before. That's Rick Deckard. So now you know what he looks like.'
'No.' Iris glanced over at Vogel. 'That's an actor playing Deckard. According to what you told me, at least, about this being a video reconstruction. Right? So I still haven't seen his face.'
'Wrong. That is Deckard's face up there. As docudrama reconstructions go, this is a high-class job; very thorough. The producer and director, somebody named Urbenton, is a real fanatic for detail. So he had his special-effects crew do some basic CGI texture-mapping and real-time animated tracking; they dubbed in the faces of all the major characters — the real people involved; no big deal to get that kind of identity data — over the faces of the physiology-matched actors Urbenton used. So what you wind up with on the screen is indistinguishable from what you would've gotten if you had been right there on the spot, taping as the actual events were happening. And in some ways . . .' Vogel shrugged. 'This is better than mere reality would have been. Inasmuch as it contains all the information available in reality — the faces, the places — but in an enhanced, editable form.'.
Enhanced, my ass. Iris slumped down in her wingchair, watching the film roll on. She didn't feel that her life had been improved by being able to see this Deckard person's real face; he wasn't that interesting-looking. Plus, she already had the feeling, as she watched the film's Deckard character get pressured into going out hunting escaped replicants once more, that he was going to screw up the job. Big time, thought Iris. Tracking down and retiring replicants wasn't a career for the reluctant; the way she figured, you either put your heart into it or you might as well 'retire' yourself.
A few more minutes of screen time went by. And she knew she was right.
Way big. Iris shook her head as th
e images continued to flicker past. She felt both disgust and pity, watching Deckard go about his botched-up hunt. If he was alive at the end of the film, she'd be amazed.
11
She was wrong, as it turned out.
'What are you looking so pissed about?' Vogel had gotten up from his wingchair to switch off the film projector and relight the candles on the stand he'd brought into the private theater. The bright, empty rectangle disappeared from the screen. 'It wasn't that bad a movie.'
'It was okay, I guess.' Iris slumped down in the wingchair, still feeling annoyed with herself. 'But usually, I can call 'em better than that. I had a bet going with myself that Deckard would be iced by the end. And I lost.'
'So you did. I could've told you that Deckard's alive. Both in the movie and in reality. Real reality, that is.' Vogel fussed with the machine again, extracting the tail end of the film and winding it onto the take-up reel. 'He's not here in LA anymore, but he's alive. Just far, far away, is all.'
Iris wasn't sure how she felt about that. She went on gazing at the screen on the wall, dark now, where the last images had been of Rick Deckard and the Rachael character, the replicant who had thought she was human, furtively extracting themselves from Deckard's apartment and getting into the building's elevator. What happened to the pair of them after that, however they had fled from their pursuers both real and only feared, had been left to the imagination. If Vogel wanted to her to think that Deckard and the replicant he'd fallen in love with were still alive, on the run somewhere, that was fine with her. I was half right, decided Iris. He did screw up the job. The way Deckard had gone about normal blade runner operations, it would've been a matter of sheer dumb luck if any escaped replicants got caught and retired. If she'd ever had any doubts about being the best in the business, they were dispelled. The CGI'd face of Captain Bryant, down to his ugly yellow teeth, had been dead accurate; to have seen him cajoling and threatening a loser like Deckard to get back into harness as a blade runner had been somewhat baffling. Bryant could've brought the job, the whole business with the group of escaped replicants led by the charismatic Roy Batty, to her; he would've had a lot better chance of having gotten it taken care of, efficiently and without so much guff from the reluctant Deckard. At that level of incompetence, it was no great wonder that Bryant had managed to get himself iced, right in his own office, the one Meyer had been cleaning out when he'd given her the owl-tracking assignment.
'I don't know,' mused Iris aloud, 'just how much got explained. I mean, I know how Dr Tyrell got killed — not that his personal security measures were anything to brag about — but there wasn't anything in there about how these buildings got blown up.'
'Oh, this was only the first movie.' Vogel pulled the projector's electrical cord from its wall socket and coiled it into a loop. 'There was actually a sequel, called The Edge of Human. That explained a lot more.'
'God help us.'
'It's not that bad; technically very good, actually. The same guy — Urbenton — made it.'
'You're not going to play it now, are you?' Iris warily regarded Vogel. 'I mean . . . I don't know if I have time for it. Not in this life, at least.'
'Not right now, no.' Vogel laid the loop of electrical cord on the metal shelf beneath the projector. 'Eventually, though, you'll have to get up to speed on it. There's a lot of stuff you don't know yet that you're going to have to know. Or else . . .'
The way Vogel's words trailed off didn't sound good to Iris. 'Or else what?'
'Or else things won't go any better for you than they did for Rick Deckard. Possibly, they might even go worse.' Vogel sat down on the arm of the empty wingchair, facing Iris. 'Of course, that depends on how far you want to go with this. You still have the option of quitting now, of cutting your losses. Getting bounced off the blade runner division isn't the end of the world. You are, after all, still alive. That counts for a lot, even in a town like LA.' His thin, humorless smile showed again. 'Or better yet, outside of it. You could go on the run, like they did.' Vogel pointed to the empty screen. 'If you're worried about staying alive — and somebody in your position should be worried, given that you're no longer protected from your enemies by the LAPD — your chances would be improved, just about anywhere else.'
'You might think that's an option –' Iris's words grated in her throat. 'But I don't. I'd die if I ever left LA. You may as well cut off my air supply.'
'That's either a commendable loyalty to the place, or plain fear. About what's outside.'
'No.' Iris shook her head. 'It's just me.'
'Then you don't have a lot of choices left. Which is why you're here, isn't it?'
'Right now,' said Iris, 'I'm not really sure why I am. I was following a lead, that's all.'
Vogel's smile widened. 'Still looking for the owl? But you've been taken off that assignment, haven't you? It's not your problem anymore. There's a certain luxury that comes with screwing up a job as thoroughly as you have. Now you've got all the time in the world – or at least until what you're afraid of actually does happen to you.'
'It already has,' said Iris glumly. 'I liked being a blade runner. It suited me down to the ground.' Her mood darkened rapidly, no longer under her control; she felt as if the sheer tonnage of broken concrete and steel massed above her had given way, burying her in a lightless, airless tomb. 'That's why I was looking for that stupid owl. And following whatever worthless lead I could scrape up. I figured that maybe if I found it—'
'You could buy your way back into the department's good graces with it? A vain hope, sweetheart.' Vogel regarded her with true pity. 'You know the LAPD doesn't work that way. You get one chance, and one chance only. That's what was so hinky, to use the cop lingo, about Bryant leaning on Deckard to come back to the division and take on the job with the Roy Batty group of escaped replicants. Deckard should've known it was a set-up, that there was more going on than what Bryant had told him about – but you don't know about that part yet. That's in the sequel, which you haven't seen. But there's plenty of clues about it in the first movie. I mean, that whole business with the first cop you see, the one named Holden, the one interrogating the big ugly replicant named Leon – when Holden winds' up getting blown away, it's obvious that he was set up to take the hit. Bryant had ID photos of all the escaped replicants in the Batty group; why didn't he give them to Holden in the first place, rather than send him here to get killed?'
'You're right,' said Iris. 'That seemed exactly hinky to me, while I was watching it.'
'Which proves my point, among other things, about the department not handing out second chances – not even when it says that's what it's doing. People like Bryant and your ex-boss Meyer . . . they're all liars.' Vogel's smile had long vanished. 'Believe me, I know. So when I tell you that you don't have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of getting back in with the department, even if you did manage to find the owl for them, you can believe it. They're not going to trust you again, now that you showed you don't really trust them – which is what you showed when you didn't take the owl straight in to Meyer, when you did have it. You see what happened? What you did to yourself?' Vogel's penetrating gaze sharpened to a knife's point. 'You became one of them. As sneaky and suspicious and double-dealing as anyone else in the department.'
'But I didn't have a choice about that.' Iris's protest raised her voice a notch. 'Like you said, they're all liars and cheats. Everybody in the world is – or at least in LA. You're toast if you don't match them at their own game.'
'Yeah, but you didn't, sweetheart. You wouldn't even have been in the game if it hadn't been for me.' Vogel tapped his chest with the forefinger of his good hand. 'You'd still be wandering around the souk, asking dumb questions, if I hadn't stepped in and bailed you out. So what'd you do then? You screwed me over, then held out on your boss and wound up getting your sweet ass fired from the police department. And you didn't even get anything out of it.' His hand gestured wide. 'Where's the owl? Huh? Tell me that, you're so clever.'
'I don't know.' Defeated, Iris slumped lower in the wingchair. 'If I knew that, I obviously wouldn't be here, getting reamed out by you.' The buried feeling came over her again; the private theater of the late Dr Eldon Tyrell was a like a candlelit bubble in an ocean of stone, the larger version of that which had encased her heart. 'I don't know anything.' Self-castigation rarely happened with her, but once started it couldn't be stopped; the entire gestalt of her usually confident personality flipped its polarity. 'The most basic stuff about the assignment; no wonder I wound up blowing it. I still don't even know why anyone wants the damn bird so badly. I mean . . . it's an owl. So what?'
'Maybe,' Vogel hinted darkly, 'it's a little more than that.'
'Yeah, probably, but if so, I don't know what that is. Maybe if I had figured out just what makes this owl so valuable, I wouldn't have been caught flat-footed by whoever took it off me. Waking up in the hospital, with my nervous system fried, wasn't exactly a treat, you know. But I was concerned about Meyer and some LAPD thugs showing up, and I wound up getting sandbagged by somebody — God knows who it was — who'd obviously been way ahead of me, with a phony chat already inserted into my apartment set to blow up in my face.'
'Now you're getting smart.' Vogel nodded in approval. 'It's not enough just to go looking for something; you have to know why you're looking for it. Why somebody wants it. If you don't know that, then you're blundering around in the dark. Anybody who does that in LA is going to find some pretty dark places, all right. And then you'll wish you hadn't.'
'Too late,' said Iris. 'At least for me.' She felt worse now, and closer to death, than when she had dragged herself out of the hospital, trailing tubes and wires behind her. 'Way too late.'
'No, it's not.' Vogel reached over and lightly placed the fingertips of his good hand on her knee. 'You're being too hard on yourself. You're making more progress than you realize.' He leaned back, pulling his hand away. 'You've already found out some stuff that you didn't know before.'