Eye and Talon

by K. W. Jeter

  Carsten, gun poised in one hand, pulled open the heavy door. Bright sunlight didn't pour in; Iris realized that she and the old man had been down there for hours, long enough for evening to have set in above, in the real world. There was enough dim light from outside to silhouette another figure in the doorway, just past Carsten.

  Should've let me do it, thought Iris; a measure of her former hardcore professionality returned as she saw what happened next. Carsten's reaction time was too slow; even with the gun already raised into position, he wasn't able to get a shot off in time. A snarling flare burst from the silhouetted figure's automatic rifle, braced against his hip; the impact of the bullets was enough to lift Carsten's slight form off the floor and send him flying backward into the chamber. Before he landed, the clenching of his fist upon the gun he'd taken from Iris sent a single bullet upward; it hit one of the bare fluorescent light fixtures. With a sparking sizzle of electricity, the entire chamber was plunged into darkness.

  With the first shots, Iris had scrambled behind the row of suspended-animation chambers. Crouching down, she watched as the figure in the chamber's doorway switched on a flashlight; its beam swept across the space, illuminating the eyes floating in their gelatinous liquids, then passing on. The figure stepped over Carsten's body and walked cautiously past the lab benches.

  Silently, Iris crept farther behind the row of coffins, away from the armed figure's approach, until she was hidden by the first container Carsten had opened. The flashlight beam swept across the row, then settled on the coffin at the far end, the one holding her own double.

  With his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, the figure held the flashlight directly above the far coffin, then leaned forward to examine the dead female replicant it held. Enough of the beam caught his own face, and Iris was able to recognize him. Meyer, she thought. My old boss. Somehow, she found herself unsurprised.

  It took only a few seconds' examination for Meyer to assure himself that the female replicant in the coffin was dead. Switching off the flashlight, he turned and strode toward the exit, the doorway illuminated by what was left of the fading twilight outside and above the trench in which the chamber was buried.

  Iris slowly crept forward, so she could keep an eye on Meyer for as long as she could. She ducked behind the corner of one of the workbenches when she saw another figure outside the doorway.

  The second figure said something she couldn't catch, though she thought she could recognize the voice. But Meyer's words, as he was still inside the chamber, were plain enough.

  'Yeah, I found her.' With a tilt of his head, Meyer pointed toward the unlit interior. 'I worked with her long enough when she was alive; I should be able to tell.'

  The other figure started to make some protest, but Meyer cut him off

  'I don't care what happened to her. Just that it did.' As Iris watched, Meyer pulled the automatic rifle up into firing position, braced against his hip. 'You earned your pay.'

  Another quick burst of rifle fire sounded, then Meyer stepped across the corpse sprawled outside the doorway.

  Iris waited until Meyer had climbed out of the trench, then she crept forward and found her gun beside Carsten's outstretched, motionless hand. She picked the gun up in both her numb hands, holding it close against herself as she listened to the distant sound of spinners lifting from the desert's surface. The vehicles' jet exhausts snarled, then faded in the night sky above.

  Enough stars had come out that, in their cold blue radiance, Iris was able to look down at the face of the corpse outside the chamber doorway, and recognize the sharply etched features of Vogel. Her capacity for surprise was exhausted; she stepped over the body and out into the trench. Looking up, past the hole's crumbling rim, she could discern the luminous scars of the spinners' trails, heading to the west. Toward Los Angeles.

  They did a good job, thought Iris as she walked across the bare sand of the compound. Very thorough. She appreciated their work on a coldly craftsmanlike basis: the area around the low buildings and rusted earth-moving equipment was littered with the bodies of the committee's operatives, most with their own automatic weapons inches away from their outflung hands. The peacefulness of dead things, their agendas terminated, lay over the star-illuminated patch of desert like a benediction.

  She found her guard, the one who had given her both water and her gun, face down outside the main building. Stepping around him, Iris pushed the door of the building open. No lights — the raiders, whoever they had been, had apparently taken out the chugging generator on which the compound had been running. She had already taken a flashlight off one of the corpses outside; she switched it on and sent its beam across the building's interior.

  Thorough, all right. This time, disgust tinged her estimation as she saw the dead owls scattered across the building's floor, their feathers raddled with blood, looking like unfortunate stuffed toys that had been dragged through the machinery of some slaughterhouse, She turned away and walked back outside.

  A shadow, a moment darker than the blue night, passed across her.

  Iris looked up and saw tiny sections of starlight blinked out; as something flew above. Something much smaller than a spinner that moved in silence and swooping curves, thrust by the beat of its widespread wings. She swept the beam of the flashlight up into the night sky, and caught, for a fraction of a second, the reflected glow of two golden eyes. That was all it took for her to recognize the owl, the same one she had hunted and captured before.

  The owl flew out into the open expanse of the desert, toward the jagged shapes of the far hills. Her own eyes had become so adjusted to the partial spectrum laid down by the stars that she could follow the creature's rapid shadow across the flat landscape. In the distance, beyond a broken, flattened section of the fence ringing the compound, she saw the owl dart down toward the ground. The figure of a man, barely discernible, stood waiting for it, one forearm raised. The owl's wings flared outward to brake its plummet, its talons reaching for and catching upon the perch of the man's arm. Once settled there, the owl wrapped its wings close against itself.

  As Iris watched, the man started walking across the luminous sands toward her; the owl remained on his raised arm. When the dark figure had approached only a few yards closer, Iris realized that there was someone else with him, a smaller figure walking at his side; a child.

  Both figures, separate now in her gaze, strode unhurriedly toward her. When they reached the toppled section of fence, the man had to stretch his free hand toward the child and help her across; Iris could see that it was a girl, with dark hair drawn back into a single braid. With the gun dangling loose in her hand, Iris waited as they crossed the interior of the compound, past the inert machinery and the corpses face down in the sand.

  'You won't need that,' said the man. 'The gun - it's not necessary.'

  The bright gold eyes of the owl regarded her without blinking. From where the owl perched on his raised arm, its eyes were at the same level as his. Eyes, and a face that Iris had recognized, even before he spoke.

  'You're Deckard.' A statement, not a question. 'The blade runner.'

  'Sure.' He didn't even have to nod to let her know she was right. 'You should know. You saw the movie.'

  Deckard looked older than he had in the movie, the close-cropped hair flecked with wiry gray stubble at his temples. His face, with the tiny scar on the chin, was creased and weathered, but definitely the one that the female replicant in the movie had fallen in love with.

  He and the girl had stopped a yard or so away from her. The gaze of the dark-haired girl was nearly as unblinking as that of the owl; she still held onto Deckard's hand. 'And my name,' she announced in a quiet voice, 'is Rachael.'

  'Of course.' Iris didn't know what else to say. 'Of course it is.' What she couldn't say, but knew in her heart with absolute certainty, was that she was looking at the child that the woman in the movie, the one also named Rachael, had once been. There was no mistaking the resemblance between the child and
the adult.

  Or, Iris also had realized, between the child and herself.

  'You've come a long way,' said Deckard. 'Farther than you realize. But in some ways' - the same lopsided, ironic smile from the movie showed on his face - 'you haven't gone anywhere at all.'

  'I don't know what you mean.' Fatigue had washed across her again, like some invisible tide across the desert, the surge of its waves bearing her on the surface, without will of her own. 'Really . . . I don't.'

  'You will. Everything gets revealed, eventually. Whether you want it to or not.' Deckard let go of the child's hand and took hers. 'Come on.'

  'Wait a minute.' Iris resisted the pull of his hand. 'You were the one, weren't you? You had to have been.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The one who took the owl from me,' said Iris. 'When I had it in my apartment. I can tell. When you're standing this close to me, I can tell.'

  Deckard waited a moment before replying. 'It was necessary,' he said finally. 'And it was for your sake as well. If I hadn't taken the owl from you . . .' He glanced at the golden-eyed creature perched on his raised arm, then back to Iris. 'You wouldn't be alive right now.'

  'Maybe not.' She couldn't decide whether that would have been better.

  She let the blade runner and the child lead her across the compound, toward the fence. In the distance, out where the owl's shadow had led her gaze, she saw now an unmarked spinner parked in the hollow of one of the dunes.

  'Where are we going?' After all that had happened, Iris knew she had no way of stopping anything else from overtaking her. 'Back to Los Angeles?'

  'Don't be silly,' said the little girl, trudging beside Iris. 'How could we? It's not possible.'

  'Why not?'

  Deckard kept walking, leading her toward the spinner; he had let the owl fly ahead, the beat of its great wings audible in the desert's silence. He glanced over at Iris. 'You can't go back to LA - not the real LA - if you've never been there in the first place.'

  'What do you mean?' Iris stopped in her tracks, pulling her hand away from his. She had tucked the gun inside her tattered jacket, its weight against her ribs. 'What're you talking about?'

  'She doesn't know,' said the girl Rachael. 'You have to tell her. Everything.'

  'Soon enough,' said Deckard. He raised his hand, pointing up to the night sky. 'Look. Take a good look. Those aren't the stars you see from Earth.'

  Iris tilted her head, gazing up at the disordered constellations. None of which she recognized; in the farther corners of her memory were the bright images of other stars, other wordless patterns that she had never put a name to. But maybe I never saw them, thought Iris. There had always been the clouds and the rains, in LA. In some LA.

  'That doesn't prove anything,' said Iris. She could hear the desperation in her voice, the attempt to hold onto at least one thing she had thought was true. 'It doesn't—'

  'Nothing does.' Deckard started walking again, with the little girl beside him. He didn't look back. 'Then you find out for yourself.'

  Iris waited a moment, feeling the desert winds slide through her jacket and across her skin. She glanced up at the unfamiliar stars once more, then lowered her gaze and followed after the man and the girl, toward the waiting spinner.