The scornful expression had changed to one of desperation. “I still don’t believe it. That photograph could’ve been faked—”
“Maybe so. But the things that happened aboard the Salander 3—the things you saw when you went there again, when you saw the past-those things couldn’t have been faked. It really happened—that your father killed Ruth, that he would have killed you and your sister, Rachael, as well, if she hadn’t managed to protect you.” Deckard folded his arms across his chest.
“There’s only one possible explanation for all of that. The replicant named Anson Tyrell wouldn’t have gone insane-murderously insane—for no reason. But the reason he did had been programmed inside him. By Eldon Tyrell. As a fail-safe protection in case it turned out that replicants could be made capable of reproducing themselves. He wanted to make sure that that knowledge was suppressed, so he built into Anson’s brain a whole destructive sequence, a ‘stepfather syndrome’ based on primitive behavior patterns. And it worked; your father would’ve killed both you and your sister, Rachael, if he had been able to get to you. As it turned out, it was still enough to destroy both your mother and your father. That was enough; Eldon Tyrell could cover up or get rid of the other evidence about what had happened out there, what it meant. The only thing he didn’t do was go ahead and have the two children destroyed, the daughters of the replicants he’d sent out on the Salander 3. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was something else . . . but he let you live. Rachael went on sleeping in the transit chamber on board the ship, and you became his niece. Even you believed it—and why shouldn’t you have? You thought you were human; you thought you were the original, the template, for the replicant Rachael that Eldon Tyrell created later.” Deckard tilted his head back, letting the rain strike his eyelids, then looked over at Sarah again. “You just didn’t know that that Rachael, the adult one, was a copy of a copy. A replicant of a replicant. Just because she wasn’t a human that doesn’t mean you’re one.”
Sarah’s gaze had fastened upon her hand, the one holding the gun, as though she were seeing it for the first time. “Who She spoke falteringly. “Who told you . . . all this.”
“Does it matter?”
“Whoever it was . . .” Her teeth clenched with anger. “They were lying.”
“Sarah . . . Her name,” his voice low, the syllables as kindly said as possible.
“You know it’s true. You might not have known all the details, but the truth . . . you knew that all along. At least from the time you went back to the Salander 3. And you found her. The little girl; your sister. The first Rachael. She was real, and you knew it. You knew you weren’t crazy; you knew you weren’t suffering from some hallucination. Yet you kept on saying that you were, saying that she wasn’t real, she didn’t exist. Even though you knew she did.” He drew a deep breath, the damp air filling his lungs. “You wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t realized what it meant that that child should be there at all. And you knew somehow—you felt it—that she was your sister. That she was the same as you.”
The words had had an impact on Sarah. She closed her eyes, swaying slightly where she stood, the gun’s weight trembling in her hand. After a moment, she nodded slowly. “Yes Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. “I knew .
“You knew,” said Deckard. “But you did not believe. Because you didn’t want to.”
She said nothing. There was nothing more for her to say.
“Now what do you want?” He watched, pitying her now.
“I don’t know.” Sarah looked at the gun in her hand. “I suppose I could just go ahead and kill you.” She sounded close to crying, a broken thing. “Since you don’t love me. You never did.”
“I never did. I never could.”
She looked at him, eyes pleading. “Is that what I should do?”
“Maybe.” Deckard shrugged. He felt tired, at the end of his own words. “But if you do that . . . remember He looked up at the video cameras watching them.
“That’s what they wanted you to do.”
“You’re right.” Sarah nodded, her gaze focussed on some deep interior vista.
“That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never even known what I wanted.” She looked up at him. “But now I do.”
He knew what she meant. He knew what would happen next. “Are you sure?”
Sarah nodded. “It was always going to come to this. You win, Deckard.”
“No He shook his head. “You do. Because now you get what you want.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Exhaustion sounded in her voice, as though from the long journey it had taken to reach this place. She managed a smile, a fragile turn of her mouth. “Could you She lowered her hand, letting the gun drop to her side. “Could you kiss me? The way you kissed her?”
No words. Deckard took her in his arms, feeling the warmth of her body through his own rain-soaked clothes. She turned her face, eyes closed, up to his.
Time stopped. Memory took its place. But even that had to end.
She was kind to him. She took care of herself.
The gun fell to the rooftop, a black shape surrounded by a thin, rippling mirror. Even as the echo of the shot rolled against the studio walls, the night city’s false horizon. She fell then, and was still beautiful. He looked down at the crumpled form, something that might have once been human. The blood from her shattered temple flowed and mingled with the pooled rain.
Deckard looked up at the cameras. “How about that?” His furious shout battered the empty lenses. “Was that good enough? Did you get what you wanted?”
As though in answer, the observing spark died inside all the video cameras.
The artificial rain had already stopped; now the lights came up, dispelling the false night. The taping was over. Deckard stood in the center of the building set’s roof, a dead woman at his feet, one that had the face of someone he’d loved, now wrapped in the same sleep, the one from which there was no waking. The one he envied.
He still had a job to do. He left the gun where it lay, a few inches from Sarah Tyrell’s hand, and walked back toward the stairs.
The Rachael child had fallen asleep at the table, her head upon the old leather-bound book. Deckard touched her shoulder; she sat up, blinking and frowning. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “I’m kind of hungry,” she announced.
“That’s all right.” Deckard took the child’s hand and helped her from the high-backed chair. “We’re going home.”
The girl looked up at him as he led her toward the door, past the silent toys.
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know,” said Deckard. “I guess we’ll find out.”
After
“Niemand—your papers are a mess.” The U.N. bureaucrat looked at the documents spread across his desk and shook his head. “Do you really think you can get off this planet with your affairs in this condition?”
“I don’t know,” said Deckard. He leaned back in the uncomfortable chair that had been provided to him. “I don’t much care, either.”
The bureaucrat glanced up at him with small eyes filled by officious hatred.
“You have an attitude problem as well.” All the authority of the U.N.’s emigration program sounded in the man’s voice. “Don’t you?”
Deckard made no reply. The office, a tiny cubicle in the central administration building of the Martian emigrant colony, smelled like photocopy toner and the adrenaline of small-fry bullies. Deckard had no particular wish to be here at all; they had sent for him. The announcement of the resumption of travel to the far colonies had gone out a couple of weeks ago, but he hadn’t bothered to make an application. Let them come find me, he’d decided.
And they had. The uniformed security men had shown up at the hovel, asking for him by pseudonym. He’d told the Rachael child to wait for him, that he’d be back before too long; then he’d pulled the door shut and had gone off with the grim-faced men on either side of him.
“Your original entry visa—”
The bureaucrat flipped through a passport. “Shows that you came here with your wife.” The mean little eyes raised from the leatherette-bound booklet. “Where’s Mrs. Niemand?”
Deckard didn’t even bother to shrug. “Why don’t we just say . . . that she and I had domestic troubles.”
The bureaucrat laid down the passport. “There’s also nothing in the Niemand family documents about having a little girl with you. When you came to Mars, you were childless.”
This time, he shrugged. “The domestic troubles didn’t start right away.”
“Obviously. From what our sources tell us, this child . . . The small eyes glanced at another sheet of paper. “Reportedly named Rachael . . . is ten years old.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Mr. Niemand.” The bureaucrat touched his fingertips together in a cage. “You haven’t been on Mars for ten years.”
“Then it’s a mystery, isn’t it”—Deckard looked straight back into the man’s eyes—“how these things come about.”
“No, it’s not.” Through his steepled hands, the bureaucrat regarded the figure on the other side of him. “Why don’t we just cut the crap? We know who you really are.”
Another shrug. “Good for you.”
“We’ve gotten our orders . . . Mr. Niemand.” The bureaucrat’s lip curled as he spoke the alias. “From the top levels. We’re to put you and the little girl on the next transport heading to the outer colonies. You wanted to emigrate?” He gathered the passport and other documents into a pile. “Then you’re ready to go. Cleared, approved, expedited—you’re out of here.”
Deckard picked up the booklet on top of the rest, opened it, and looked at the rubber-stamped markings on the pages. “What if I don’t want to go now? What if I’ve changed my mind?”
The eyes narrowed down to pinpricks. “It’s not up to you.”
He regarded his own hologram photo at the front of the passport, then laid it down. “You say you know who I am.” Deckard kept his voice level, emotionless.
“But what about you? Who are you?”
The bureaucrat’s gaze shifted uneasily. “That doesn’t matter. Mr. Niemand.”
“It matters to me.” Deckard leaned forward. “I don’t know who the hell you are. You could be anybody.” His voice grated harder. “You could be the U.N.
You could be the cops; maybe you’re really working for the LAPD. You could be the rep-symps; I don’t know how far they’ve infiltrated the authorities. Maybe He studied the other man’s round, insignificant face. “Maybe you’re the Tyrell Corporation . . . that shadow of it. I just don’t know.”
“Let’s face it.” The bureaucrat showed an unpleasant smile. “Your track record on this sort of thing isn’t the greatest. You can’t even tell if I’m human or not.”
“You’re right. I can’t even tell about myself anymore.” Deckard slowly shook his head. “And I don’t know why you want me to go out there. To the stars.”
“You’re not important,” said the bureaucrat. Or whatever he was. “You don’t matter at all. It’s the girl. You know that much, don’t you?”
Deckard kept his silence. The other man was right again. That was about all he knew for certain. He’d known it since he’d come back with the child from the Outer Hollywood station. She’d been born out there. Far away, he mused. And strange. The first replicant child, the beginning of that other species’ inheritance. Of all that had once been considered the exclusive province of human beings.
There had been other things he’d agreed to carry to that place he’d never seen. And he’d lost them. For good or ill, he didn’t know. But he still had the child with him. A child bearing his dead love’s name, and her face with those dark, quietly watching eyes. Rachael . . .
That much he had also known. That whatever else happened-whatever he had to do, however it was made possible; whatever would come about when they reached that destination—he would take her there. That was the job he had, the job that he’d accepted.
“All right,” said Deckard. He gathered up the other documents and held them with the passport in his hands. “I’ll go.” He pushed the chair back and stood up. “How much time do I have?”
The bureaucrat looked up at him. “The transport leaves in twelve hours.” The small eyes were almost kind. “You’re doing the right thing, Mr. Niemand.”
“I don’t know that.” Deckard tucked the documents inside his jacket. He turned and grasped the knob of the office’s thin door, then glanced over his shoulder at the other man. “And neither do you.”
“It’s not up to us, Mr. Niemand.”
“Probably not.” He pulled open the door. “Maybe out there I’ll find out who does decide. And then I’ll know.”
The bureaucrat nodded. “Perhaps.”
Deckard shut the door behind himself and headed down the narrow corridor.
There was no hurry; the few things he had to pack for himself and the little girl wouldn’t take long.
Whatever else they might need, he supposed, would be waiting for them at their journey’s end.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 2d86297e-3465-4439-9b98-1509ac0c2db3
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 19 November 2011
Created using: FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
OCR Source: Scan, OCR - Pete256, Proof - asp_id
Document authors :
asp_id
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Replicant night br-3 Page 35