Replicant night br-3

by Kevin Wayne Jeter

  Deckard looked at the hand in distaste. “You must be joking.”

  “Not about this.” The man shrugged and pulled his hand back. “You’re a tenderhearted soul, aren’t you? It’s not as if you hadn’t ever killed any replicants.”

  “I never went around bragging about it.”

  “Ah . . . I see. The money was enough for you.” Marley appeared even more amused. “Well, Deckard, you don’t have to like me. You just have to . . . shall we say? . . . do business with me.”

  The constant, self-assured smile irritated Deckard. “What kind of business?”

  Marley didn’t answer; he looked up to the nearest video screen. “You’re right, you know; this isn’t too interesting.” Some kind of sporting event that involved oxygen masks and a medical triage staff at each end of the playing field was on. “That’s all right, though.” He turned the smile back toward Deckard. “There’s something better coming on in a few minutes.”

  “I’m not interested in the cable schedule,” grated Deckard. “Just tell me what you want from me.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, pal. It’s what you want from me. I spent a great deal of time and effort tracking you down, just so I could offer you my help.”

  Deckard didn’t return the man’s smile. “I don’t need it.”

  “Oh, I think you might,” said Marley. “You’ve got a big job ahead of you.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  The other man shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Or maybe the whole thing. You’re trying to put together some travel plans, aren’t you? For you and the little girl here. And someone else. Or should I say some thing? I guess it depends on how you regard that briefcase you’ve been toting around. Is it human enough for you to think of it as a person?”

  “Hey!” Batty’s voice sounded from beneath the table. “Fuck you, pal!”

  Deckard gave the briefcase a kick. “Shut up. Let me handle this.”

  “You tell him,” said Marley. “That old bastard’s out of the loop now. He’s luggage. Too bad you can’t just wrap him up, stick the postage on, and mail him out to the far colonies.”

  “Who says that’s where we’re going?” Deckard wondered just how much the man sitting across from him was clued in on. “I could be taking him and the little girl anywhere. Maybe back to Earth, for all you know.”

  “But you’re not.” Marley’s smile broadened. “And I do know. I know all about the job you’ve undertaken. I know that’s what you’re racking your brains over, trying to figure out how you’re going to get off-planet with that thing, how you’re going to deliver it to the replicant insurgents . . . the whole bit.”

  Deckard coldly regarded the other man. “You know an awful lot.”

  “More than you do. I know what’s really in that briefcase.” The smile faded, the man’s face turning hard and serious. “And I know who the little girl really is.”

  “Somebody who knows things like that . . . or somebody who even claims to Deckard looked straight back into the other man’s eyes. “Chances are good it means that person’s a cop. So who are you working for? U.N. security? LAPD?”

  “I’m not with anybody like that.” Marley glanced up at the video screen. “You should think of me as your friend. Like I said, I’m here to help you.”

  “And like I said, I don’t want—”

  “Hey, just hold on a bit.” Marley held up his hand, palm outward. “We can talk some more in a little while. But this—” He pointed at the video screen a couple of yards away. “This is going to be a good program. I really want you to take a look at it. I think it’s something you’ll get a bang out of.”

  Beside him, the Rachael child had sat forward, trying to get a better viewing angle. Deckard looked over at the screen. The sports event, whatever it’d been, had apparently ended; the cable monopoly’s logo, all swirling colors and state-of—the-art abstract graphics, danced and shivered its pixels. He knew it wasn’t going to be a news show; there weren’t any. The cable’s feeds were all entertainment, or what passed for it in this captive market.

  “You know,” said Deckard, “I’m not really interested in whatever soap opera you might be addicted to. Maybe you should watch this on your own time. I’ve got more important business to take care of right now.”

  “Not any more important than this. Trust me.” Marley gave a nod toward the screen. “This is just about the most important thing in the universe for you.

  Just sit back and watch, all right?”

  The cable logo faded out and was replaced by another one, a stark black-and-white graphic of a stylized skull with wings. Deckard recognized it even before the words SPEED DEATH PRODUCTIONS pulsed into view; the skull image and the video company name had been on the advance check he’d received from that sweating, pudgy director he’d walked out on back at the Outer Hollywood station. It took a moment longer to remember the guy’s name. Urben ton—the recall prompted a slow nod from Deckard. That was it.

  In the bar’s muffled quiet, the sound of a cheaply synthesized sound track, all throbbing bass and disembodied string choirs, oozed out of the video monitors’ tiny speakers. Deckard found himself watching intently, leaning forward across the table, despite his earlier scorn. On the screen, a black night vista was suddenly broken by a leaping gout of fire.

  “That looks good.” Marley nodded admiringly. “Real spooky and dramatic.”

  The title appeared on the screen, blanking out everything but the darkness behind it. Two words: Blade Runner.

  “What the hell.” A surmise weighted with dread started to form inside Deckard.

  A crawl of other words, smaller than the video’s title, moved upward across the screen. Broken phrases lodged in Deckard’s head-based on a true story . . . from actual LAPD case records-with their meanings slowly adding up to the realization of what he was seeing. The final piece locked in when he saw his own name listed in the opening credits as technical adviser.

  Marley pointed to the words. “That was nice of that Urbenton fellow, don’t you think? Considering that you voided your contract with him—he didn’t have to leave your name on there.”

  “This . . . this is the video he was making.” With a sick feeling, Deckard gazed at the screen. “That he hired me to go out there and help him with.”

  “Come on—he hired you for more than that,” chided Marley. “Urbenton bought your life story—or at least that part of it that went down in L.A., when you were tracking that last bunch of escaped replicants. Well, here it is.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the nearest monitor and all the other identical screens mounted in the bar. “This is the premiere showing. Right now, on the entire Martian cable network.” Another smile. “See? I knew you’d dig it.”

  “Shit—” Deckard stared at the video monitor in dismay. The fury of his own thoughts drowned out anything coming from the audio track. “Everybody’s going to see this. Everybody on this entire planet.”

  “That’s right, pal.” Marley’s hands made an expansive gesture, as though in congratulation. “There’s only one channel, and you’re the star. It’s your fifteen minutes, Deckard; enjoy it.”

  Deckard didn’t have time to respond to the other man’s sarcasm. This was something he hadn’t counted on. Now Fm really screwed, he thought. In a few minutes, once the video got past its opening sequence, with all the artsy Los Angeles location shots that Urbenton had faked from the Outer Hollywood street sets-once the story got rolling, Deckard’s own story—then it would be his own face up on the video screens. Not just here in this bar, but everywhere. Nice, big close-ups, all zoomed-in and personal; he had watched Urbenton directing the cameras during the video shoot, bringing them in tight on the actor in the distinctive long coat carrying the police-issue gun through the city’s dark and rain-soaked streets. There had been some full-on shots that would very likely fill the monitor screens. And it’ll be my face, he thought. Not the face of the actor playing me. But my face. That had been the other thing that he’d
sold the rights to, that Urbenton and his Speed Death Productions had bought. Spelled out in precise contractual language: . . . the undersigned contracting party, in consideration of the financial remuneration specified above, grants as well the right to use a full and accurate facial depiction of self—along with any associated physical mannerisms consistent with an identification of the portrayed individual as the former Los Angeles Police Department special agent known as Rick Deckard .

  That was what he’d agreed to, the contract he’d signed, back when he’d still been under the impression that the money from Urbenton would be enough to get him and Sarah Tyrell off Mars and heading out to the U.N.’s colonies in the stars. Deckard hadn’t anticipated being on the run, with Christ only knew what kind of police agencies breathing down his neck. It was a wonder he hadn’t been nabbed already; the suspicion had started to grow in him that the cops were giving him a long rope, seeing if there was anybody else he’d entangle before they picked him up. Eventually, they’d tire of that game, get tired of waiting for him to contact his nonexistent accomplices, and then Deckard would find the rope around his neck, where it’d always been.

  It was going to be a lot easier to tighten that noose now, or as soon as this video had finished airing over every cable-linked monitor in the emigrant colony. When Deckard had been there, at the Outer Hollywood station, orbiting above Earth, Urbenton had even shown him how the special-effects people were going to digitize his face, from the bones up through the web of muscles, to the skin and every whisker stubble and freckle on it, every little detail that made up the world-weary, tired-of-killing but still deadly gestalt that Deckard saw when he looked in a mirror. Standard practice in the modern video business: in postproduction, once the principal photography was done, the techs would lay the digital face over that of the actor who had gone through the paces on the set, who’d hit the marks and had the prop guns fired at him, taken the hits from the other actors, done all the hard stuff . . . and what the audience would see, when the video was broadcast, would be a reconstituted Rick Deckard walking those garish, milling, neon-streaked L.A. streets again, just as the real one had, gun in hand, eyes scanning for his prey.

  That’s what they’re going to see, thought Deckard, right now. The only chance he’d had was based on anonymity, on being able to move through the emigrant colony’s crowds without being spotted, on hiding out in the open, his face hidden in the torrent of other faces. And now that was going to be taken away from him. They’re going to see me. My face.

  On the monitor screens, the video’s opening credits had ended; the camera angle had dropped from the fire-laced night skies above L.A., crossed by the screaming flares of the police spinners, to street level; the reflection of a neon dragon, red tongue darting through a crudely animated sequence, shimmered on the wet asphalt. A figure in a long coat, shoulders hunched with fatigue, was seen from the back. As the real Deckard watched from the booth, the video’s all-seeing eye moved in on his taped double.

  Then a quick cut, the shot going to a front angle, tight on the Deckard figure’s shirt beneath the open coat’s lapels, buttoned to the top with a costume department duplicate of the rough-woven tie he’d always affected back then. The shot moved up to the image’s face, a close-up in good lighting, a noodle bar’s bright fluorescents driving away any concealing shadows; the real Deckard winced, anticipating what he was about to see . . . He didn’t. In the booth, in a cheap dive somewhere in the Martian emigrant colony, Deckard stared in amazement and with an uncomprehending sense of relief-at what he saw on the monitor, echoed simultaneously on the screens throughout the bar.

  “That’s not you,” said a small voice behind him. The Rachael child looked past Deckard and Marley, on either side of her, toward the nearest screen. “I thought this was going to be about you and everything, about stuff that happened to you before. But that doesn’t look anything like you.”

  “No Deckard continued to watch the video image. The Deckard there, the figure reenacting the story of those nights in L.A., had moved away from the camera and into a medium shot; the face was still visible, though. “It’s not my face.”

  “Now that is interesting.” No surprise registered in Marley’s voice. “You weren’t expecting that, were you, Deckard? I was getting kind of a kick out of watching you. Really thought your cover was about to be blown, huh?”

  Deckard said nothing, but just nodded slowly, still watching the image on the screen, the Deckard that didn’t look like him.

  “Something must have happened,” continued Marley. “For that Urbenton fellow to change his plans like that. I know that wasn’t the original deal. They were going to ceegee your face on top of that actor’s; all he had to do was go through the motions and it would wind up looking like you were doing all that stuff all over again. Hunting down those replicants like the bad ol’ blade runner you used to be.”

  “I know.” Deckard felt a measure of tension easing out of his spine. The dismaying prospect that every other face in the bar would turn toward him, connecting him with the image on the video monitors, had vanished. If the police agencies were going to put out the net for him, they would have to do it without the advantage of having every person with eyes doing their spotting for them. “That’s a break.”

  “You figure it’s just luck? The director Urbenton just happened to change his mind?”

  He looked over at the other man. “No—” Deckard shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of luck. If I ever did. Nothing happens without a reason.”

  “For anybody not in the kind of position you are, that would be considered paranoia. For you, Deckard, it’s the beginning of wisdom.”

  Whatever relief he had felt over the broadcast of the video, and the absence of his face from it, was replaced by the suspicions he had for this character.

  “I don’t have to be real wise, buddy, to wonder what it is you want from me.”

  “What do I want?” Marley looked back at him with wideeyed, feigned innocence.

  “Like I said, I want to help you. And the way I do that is by stopping you.”

  “Stopping me from what?”

  “Come on, Deckard. I’m way ahead of you.” The naive mask had dropped from Marley’s face. “I know what you’re up to. You’ve accepted a little job, haven’t you? The fact that you’re carrying around that talking briefcase only goes to prove it. If you had any sense—if all you were interested in was saving your own skin—you would’ve ditched it by now.” Marley tilted his head toward the other occupant of the booth. “Same with the little girl. Nice kid, but she’s only going to slow you down.”

  “That’s my problem,” said Deckard.

  “Oh, exactly.” Marley’s thin smile returned. “It’s your problem because it’s your job. The job you’ve taken on for the rep-symps of getting that briefcase and its data contents out to the insurgent replicants.”

  Deckard stiffened. “If you know all that . . . and you want to stop me . . . then you must be some kind of cop. You’d have to be working for the authorities.”

  “Not at all.” The smile grew wider. “I’m with the repsymps.”

  For a few seconds, Deckard thought that one over, then slowly nodded. “Sure you are. You blow away that Kowalski replicant right in front of me, and then you come and tell me that you’re working on behalf of the replicants. You really think I’m going to believe that one?”

  “Shooting the Kowalski replicant Marley shrugged. “Regrettable, but it had to be done. And not even all that much to be sorry about—he was pretty much at the end of the four-year life span that the Tyrell Corporation had built into that model. So he didn’t really lose that much. And besides, there are other Kowalski replicants.”

  “That’s a pretty cold attitude.” Deckard studied the other man. “At least I had the grace to develop a guilty conscience over what I’d done.”

  “Good for you.” Deckard’s words had left Marley unfazed. “That must be why you got picked for this job you’re doi
ng. Guilty consciences screw up people’s heads, make ’em easy to manipulate. Like you. Otherwise, if you were thinking straight, you would’ve been able to figure out a few things about the situation you’re in.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Work on it, Deckard.” The other man leaned closer across the table. “You think because I’ve said I want to stop you—to make sure you don’t get that briefcase and its data out to the insurgents—you think that must mean I’m with the authorities. Have you ever thought that it’s exactly the authorities—the police, the U.N., whatever-who want you to get that briefcase out to where you’ve been told it’s supposed to be delivered?”

  “Hey!” The voice of Roy Batty piped up from beneath the table. “Don’t listen to this guy! He’s trouble!”

  Deckard glanced over to the monitor screen, where the Deckard of the video, still wearing the actor’s face, was talking to somebody in a set that was supposed to be the LAPD’s high-ceilinged main headquarters. He didn’t hear the characters’ words, concentrating instead on what the figure across from him had just said.

  “Look at it this way,” continued Marley. “The cable monopoly here does whatever the authorities tell it to do—that’s why it gets to remain a monopoly. If U.N. security tells the monopoly to run this video or that one, or that one”—he pointed to the screen—“then it gets broadcast all over the colony. Same way with Urbenton and his little Speed Death Productions company; if he wasn’t in tight with the police before, it wouldn’t take much pressure, if any, before he’d do whatever they tell him to. Especially since he doesn’t owe you any favors. If they told him to cut the computer graphic effects, the dubbing in of your face over the actor who was playing you—he’d do it in a second. Urbenton wouldn’t care if it helped you or hurt you; just the kind of guy he is.”