Replicant night br-3

by Kevin Wayne Jeter

  “But you knew it would be.” The briefcase spoke softly, almost kindly. “Didn’t you?”

  Deckard wasn’t sure. He gazed broodingly at the dark-filled viewscreen. Temper displays weren’t the only things that had problems attached to them. Needing money, being desperate for it, the way a drowning person craved oxygen in his lungs—that brought along its own raft of difficulties, the things that screwed up the rational functionings of one’s brain. “Anything can be believed,”

  Deckard mused aloud. “If you have to.”

  “And that’s how you fell in with that Urbenton creep?” Batty’s voice prodded at him. “Not a good call on your part, Deckard. That guy’s slime. I could tell, just from hearing him.”

  “You’re a good judge of character.” Deckard tilted his head back against the top of the pilot’s seat. “Believe me, I’m sorry I got hooked up with the little sonuvabitch.”

  “I take it you must’ve been pretty hard up for cash.”

  Deckard made no reply. The briefcase’s statement was dead on the mark. Money was even more necessary than oxygen, at least in the hovels of the U.N. emigrant colonies. Breathable air, smelling of glue and recycling filters overdue for changing, was at least furnished free of cost by the U.N.’s own blue-helmeted Environmental Maintenance teams, along with the basic ration loads of algae-derived carbos and proteins. Money, on the other hand, the emigrants had to provide for themselves—either from the savings they’d brought with them from their former lives on Earth, or what they hustled in the colonies’ black market and/or other officially tolerated, unsanctioned free enterprise zones. All of which, the savings or the hustling proceeds, only served to stave off bankruptcy, destitution, and death for a little while. Any emigrant could lie on the bunk in his hovel, fingers laced together between the back of his head and the thin pillow, and feel his life seeping away, like the sour air hissing through a leak in the plastic Quonset roof above him. And not even care any longer.

  He’d just about reached that point—or would have, if he hadn’t locked a vow into the pit of his soul, a vow with both Sarah Tyrell’s and Rachael’s names stamped in smoldering, ashen letters upon it-when the smug little video director Urbenton had shown up at the hovel’s pneumatic-sealed door.

  Travelling incognito, or travelling at all, being able to come to Mars and then leave again—that had been impressive evidence of Urbenton’s pull, some kind of cozy arrangement between his Speed Death Productions company and the cable services provider that effectively called all the shots in the colonies.

  The cable company was the arbiter of life and death, the ruler of the emigrants’ pocket universe; in a low—or even zero-stim environment like Mars, the cable feed into the hovels was the true sustaining pipeline, one that people continued to shell out for long after their cash reserves had dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford edibles beyond the U.N.’s meager rations.

  So when Urbenton had appeared, with his greased-smooth dealer’s smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, fhere was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colony’s marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he’d moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more breathable air that the annual monsoon rains managed to scrub to a lower toxicity level.

  “Let’s have a little talk, Mr. Niemand—” When Urbenton had used Deckard’s alias, the smile on the video director’s face had widened, like that of some reptile unhinging its jaws to swallow an entire goat in one mouthful. “By ourselves, all right?” They’d left Mrs. Niemand—she didn’t even pretend to call herself Rachael anymore—sleeping on the hovel’s narrow bed, or perhaps gazing up at the dark memorial vistas that played out behind her eyelids. It had been a long time since Deckard had pretended that he knew what went on inside Sarah Tyrell’s head. He’d pulled the hovel’s airseals shut and followed Urbenton—and the scent of money that the man had exuded.

  Now, sitting in the skiff’s cockpit with the talking briefcase beside him, Deckard slowly nodded. “That’s why I did it.” As if it really needed any explanation. “The guy just smelled like money.”

  “That’s a powerful attractant.” The voice of Roy Batty sounded amused. “More so than all those pheromones of sex and love and pride, all that corporeal stuff that yanks people around so well. Excuse me for waxing philosophical. I have a slightly more . . . disinterested viewpoint these days, as you might be able to tell.” The voice’s tone sharpened. “Just how much did Urbenton offer you?”

  “A lot.” Deckard recited the raw numbers. “That was just for starters, what was in the production budget. Residual payments would probably have come to more, once the video went out over the wires.”

  “Not bad.”

  It wasn’t. Or wouldn’t have been, Deckard corrected himself. If I would’ve gotten it. Free money, or as close to that ideal state as this universe allowed—there had been virtually nothing he had to do in order to get the payment from the dead on the mark. Money was even more necessary than oxygen, at least in the hovels of the U.N. emigrant colonies. Breathable air, smelling of glue and recycling filters overdue for changing, was at least furnished free of cost by the U.N.’s own blue-helmeted Environmental Maintenance teams, along with the basic ration loads of algae-derived carbos and proteins. Money, on the other hand, the emigrants had to provide for themselves—either from the savings they’d brought with them from their former lives on Earth, or what they hustled in the colonies’ black market and/or other officially tolerated, unsanctioned free enterprise zones. All of which, the savings or the hustling proceeds, only served to stave off bankruptcy, destitution, and death for a little while. Any emigrant could lie on the bunk in his hovel, fingers laced together between the back of his head and the thin pillow, and feel his life seeping away, like the sour air hissing through a leak in the plastic Quonset roof above him. And not even care any longer.

  He’d just about reached that point—or would have, if he hadn’t locked a vow into the pit of his soul, a vow with both Sarah Tyrell’s and Rachael’s names stamped in smoldering, ashen letters upon it-when the smug little video director Urbenton had shown up at the hovel’s pneumatic-sealed door.

  Travelling incognito, or travelling at all, being able to come to Mars and then leave again—that had been impressive evidence of Urbenton’s pull, some kind of cozy arrangement between his Speed Death Productions company and the cable services provider that effectively called all the shots in the colonies.

  The cable company was the arbiter of life and death, the ruler of the emigrants’ pocket universe; in a low—or even zero-stim environment like Mars, the cable feed into the hovels was the true sustaining pipeline, one that people continued to shell out for long after their cash reserves had dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford edibles beyond the U.N.’s meager rations.

  So when Urbenton had appeared. with his greased-smooth dealer’s smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, there was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colonys marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he’d moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more breathable air that the annual monsoon rains managed to scrub to a lower toxicity level.

  “Let’s have a little talk, Mr. Niemand—” When Urbenton had used Deckard’s alias, the smile on the video director’s face had widened, like that of some reptile unhinging its jaws to swallow an entire goat in one mouthful. “By ourselves, all right?” They’d left Mrs. Niemand—she didn’t even pretend to call herself Rachael anymore�
��sleeping on the hovel’s narrow bed, or perhaps gazing up at the dark memorial vistas that played out behind her eyelids. It had been a long time since Deckard had pretended that he knew what went on inside Sarah Tyrell’s head. He’d pulled the hovel’s airseals shut and followed Urbenton—and the scent of money that the man had exuded.

  Now, sitting in the skiff’s cockpit with the talking briefcase beside him, Deckard slowly nodded. “That’s why I did it.” As if it really needed any explanation. “The guy just smelled like money.”

  “That’s a powerful attractant.” The voice of Roy Batty sounded amused. “More so than all those pheromones of sex and love and pride, all that corporeal stuff that yanks people around so well. Excuse me for waxing philosophical. I have a slightly more . . . disinterested viewpoint these days, as you might be able to tell.” The voice’s tone sharpened. “Just how much did Urbenton offer you?”

  “A lot.” Deckard recited the raw numbers. “That was just for starters, what was in the production budget. Residual payments would probably have come to more, once the video went out over the wires.”

  “Not bad.”

  It wasn’t. Or wouldn’t have been, Deckard corrected himself. If I would’ve gotten it. Free money. or as close to that ideal state as this universe allowed—there had been virtually nothing he had to do in order to get the payment from the mysterious financial backers to whom Urbenton had constantly referred.

  Basically, Deckard knew, just as Urbenton had made it clear, that Speed Death Productions had only wanted to be able to list him as the technical adviser on the video-something to keep the money people happy, a touch of authenticity for the whole project. The video was supposed to be a dramatized re-creation of Deckard’s life, or at least that little bit of it when he’d been going through his last assignment as a blade runner, the job that Inspector Bryant had leaned on him to undertake after he’d already quit the department in disgust. According to Urbenton, that hunt—with half a dozen or so Nexus-6 models on the loose in the wilds of Los Angeles, including the group’s highly dangerous leader, the replicant version of Roy Batty, and only Rick Deckard out there to round them up and ice them—had already achieved some sort of legendary, even mythic, status. Enough detail had leaked out to transform it from urban folktale to big-deal saga. Or so Urbenton said—Deckard hadn’t cared as long as there was a payday at the end of the process. If Speed Death Productions figured that there was an audience for watching some poor bastards of escaped replicants getting blown away, that was probably a correct assessment—it tied in with Deckard’s own feelings about the innate charm of the human species.

  “All I had to do,” said Deckard, “was sit on my can at the edge of the set and keep my mouth shut. Urbenton wasn’t exactly hiring me for my creative input.

  Then get paid off and go home.”

  “Well, you’re going home at least. Or at least back to whatever’s as close as somebody like you gets.” A pitying smile inflected the briefcase’s voice. “Too bad you couldn’t pull off the part about keeping your mouth shut. You spend your whole life being the silent type, killing without a word, and then the one time it counts, you can’t resist spouting off.”

  “Tell me about it.” Whatever adrenaline had been left in his system, the rush from seeing death at close quarters and then letting his own anger come out like an uncorked flamethrower was dissipated now, leaving the flat dregs of self-loathing. “Silence might not be a virtue, but at least it would’ve been profitable.”

  “You know, I was a little surprised—” Batty’s voice turned thoughtful. “When I was told you were up at that Outer Hollywood station. And that was where Holden and I were going to track you down, make our little delivery. Me, that is.”

  “I don’t recall ordering any luggage with some dead guy’s personality wired into it.”

  “Well, you didn’t.” Whatever was inside the briefcase sounded stung by Deckard’s words. “It’s supposed to be a surprise, smart-ass. If you’d known it was coming, you probably would’ve screwed it up somehow. As it was, poor old Holden got himself iced trying to make contact with you.”

  “That’ll teach you.” Deckard settled farther back into the pilot’s seat, folding his arms across his chest. “Send yourself airmail next time.”

  “Real funny, Deckard. You may have given up being a blade runner, but you’re still a cold bastard.” If the briefcase had had a human form, it would’ve nodded. “That’s what I like about you.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, why shouldn’t I have been at Outer Hollywood? If that’s where the money is.”

  “You were supposed to be long gone by now,” replied Batty’s voice. “Wasn’t that the plan? Holden told me all about it, what you’d decided when you were still back on Earth. You were going to get yourself and Sarah Tyrell some new identities, then hightail it out to the U.N.’s far colonies. Out in the stars, Deckard; not in some dumpy Martian transit squat. Then you and Sarah—or were you still calling her Rachael?—then the two of you would be nice and safe. A cozy domestic couple.”

  “Believe me—” Deckard could hear the sour weariness in his own voice. “That last bit was never part of the plan.”

  “Wouldn’t have believed it, if it had been. Nevertheless; the stars. That’s where you were supposed to be going. Or already have gone. So what happened?”

  Deckard closed his eyes for a moment, trying to conserve his waning strength.

  “What happened.” He didn’t feel like telling his life story to the briefcase. “What happened is why I needed the money in the first place, why I took this joke gig as technical adviser on Urbenton’s crappy little video production. The U.N. transit colonies on Mars are a total bottleneck. People on Earth—even the living ones-don’t know that.

  The U.N. keeps a tight lid on information about what’s going on there. The emigration program they’re so hot on would collapse if it got out that when you leave Earth, you don’t go to the stars, you just wind up in some cramped, dingy hovel on Mars, glued to the cable feed or going slowly crazy from stimulus deprivation.”

  The briefcase took pains to sound unimpressed. “There’s been rumors.”

  “None that I’d ever heard. Not that it would’ve changed my mind. There was no way I was going to stay on Earth.”

  “Why?” Genuine puzzlement sounded in Batty’s voice. “You can die there as well as anywhere else. Believe me; I’d know.”

  Deckard slowly shook his head. “I had other plans. Ones I didn’t tell Holden.

  He didn’t need to know.”

  “Plans? Like what?”

  Deckard let his eyelids draw down to slits. “You don’t need to know, either.”

  Fatigue crept up his knotted spine and down into his limbs, turning them into leaden weights. “But since you asked, that’s why I was hustling for the money.

  To buy our way off Mars.”

  “Money’s always good,” said the briefcase. “It might not be able to do that, though.”

  “Worth a shot.” Deckard didn’t feel like arguing the point. “There haven’t been any transports leaving Mars for the far U.N. colonies in the last two or three years. Some kind of problem going on out there. But there’s rumors—there’s always rumors-of travel starting up again. It’ll have to; there’s hardly any room left to cram people into at the Martian colonies, and the U.N. still keeps bringing them out from Earth. Something’s got to break.

  And if anybody’s leaving, it’s going to be me and Sarah Tyrell. That’s what the money was going to be for.”

  “But there isn’t any money, is there? You’re kind of screwed on that one, Deckard.”

  “I’m screwed.” It wasn’t an unusual condition for him. “That’s the way it goes.”

  “Bad luck for you.” The voice of Batty, emerging from the briefcase’s concealed speaker, held an equally familiar smile. “Good luck for me, though—and the people who sent me out to you. Now you might be a little more receptive to the offer we’re going to make you.”
/>   “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What? What’re you talking about?” Batty’s voice went up a notch. “ ‘Don’t want to hear it’—listen, Deckard; I didn’t get sent all this way just for you to cop an attitude. You can be all burnt out and cynical on your own time, and this isn’t it. There’s things-important things—that have to be done.”

  With his arms still folded on his chest, Deckard opened one eye wider to gaze upon the briefcase beside him. “And that’s why you’re here? Dave Holden brought you out just so you could tell me about these ‘important things’?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Deckard let the eyelid sink shut, as though of its own weight. “Like I said—I don’t want to hear it.”

  Silence held in the skiff’s cockpit. For a few seconds, Deckard heard only the motion of his own blood sliding through his veins, the tick of random air molecules at his eardrums. Then the cockpit’s other inhabitant spoke again.

  “You’re a cool customer, Deckard—you know that?” Whatever parts of Batty had been encoded and placed inside the briefcase, his snake-twisting mind and sharp-eyed perceptions, now sounded impressed despite himself. “Nothing fazes you. You’ve reached some kind of weird point where nothing surprises you anymore, but you’re still walking around as if you’re alive somehow. That’s a hell of an achievement.”

  Deckard shifted in the thinly padded seat, trying to find some comfort for his bones and muscles. “What am I supposed to be so surprised about?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Deckard—I’m in a fucking box. With a handle and two chrome-plated locks and a decent grade of simulated leather on the exterior.” Annoyance permeated the briefcase’s speech. “Shit—you mean you didn’t notice?”