Edge Of Human b-2

by K. W. Jeter

  "What?" All the joints of his spine tightened at once, as though the cord running through them had been yanked by an unseen fist. Something's wrong-the thinking part of his brain raced to catch up with the instinct, the quick sense that had made it possible for him to be a blade runner.

  On the monitor screen the image of Bryant didn't seem to have heard him. The image went on talking, as though Bryant had started to drift into some private reverie.

  "I knew that bunch was going to be trouble. Escaped replieants always are, but those Nexus-6 jobs had me sweating… "

  That's not Bryant. He knew; he realized that a fake had been switched in on him. The sweat on his arms chilled, beneath the uniform's black sleeves. His old boss wasn't in a quarantine chamber somewhere else; the image on the monitor screen was a persynth, a CGI physiognomen, composited from the hundreds of hours of tapes recorded by the office's watchcams. A real-time response driver, with a branching script protocol, had been spouting the words in Bryant's data-sampled voice. A trap like this indicated a high-priority resource drain on the department; to get one of these ersatz personas up and running without detectable processor lag required mega-crag paralleled hardware.

  One mistake had tripped them up, made it clear to Deckard what the deal was. Bryant wouldn't have said that — he'd heard the inspector spouting off enough times to be familiar with his crude vocabulary. Especially when he'd been drinking, which had been most of the time; whenever Bryant had started into bad-mouthing replieants, instead of just giving one of his squad necessary tracking info, he'd used the words skin jobs, his favorite ugly phrase. Whoever had wired up the physiognomen on the monitor screen had forgotten to cut out the PC loop imbedded in the police department's main computers, the language-scrubbing circuit that kept the LAPD spokesmen from inadvertently broadcasting some of their less attractive public-relations gaffes. The city's taxpayers didn't mind having a kick-ass retro-Gates police force, as long as it talked kinder and gentler.

  The whole analysis ran through Deckard's head in less than a second. They're trying to pump me, he thought. That was why the trap was being allowed to run on, without him being pounced on immediately-the department authorities who'd set this up hoping to get some kind of info from him while he was liquored up and reminiscing about old times with Bryant's video simulation, lulled into a false sense of security. They're watching me right now — which meant they may have caught his involuntary reaction, the jerk upward of his head and stiffening of his spine that would signal his perception of something being amiss. Which meant…

  His gaze shot to one side. Through the blinds over the office's windows, he saw that a wide swath of the station's ground floor had been cleared. A dozen LAPD elites, guns drawn, were running toward him, a few strides and seconds away.

  "Hey! Where you going?" The synthesized image of Inspector Bryant looked puzzled as Deckard jumped from his chair. "What's the deal, pal-" Papers scattered in a white flurry as Deckard grabbed the top of the heavy file cabinet and heaved it over onto its side with a crash of splintering wood. Just in time-the first of the squad hit the door with a body-armored shoulder. The impact of the door's edge against the impromptu barricade knocked the cop back against the others behind him.

  Deckard heard the elites' shouts and curses as he vaulted over the desk, knocking the monitor and its tripod aside. Bryant's synthesized image disappeared, replaced by a quick burst of static, then a solid glare of light spilling across the floor. In that blue glow, he caught a glimpse of what had happened to the real Bryant: an amorphous island of blood, dried into a dark stain, covered the space behind the desk.

  He pushed himself up on hands and knees from the evidence of Bryant's death, as the windows along the side of the office shattered in fire and bright splinters of glass, the blinds flapping like metal-feathered wings, tearing loose from their mounts as a horizontal rain of bullets scoured the opposite wall. The office's contents-the row of other cabinets topped with ancient teardrop-bladed fans and routing bins of yellowed papers and dog-eared manila folders, the desk lamp inset with snaps of Bryant's father's biggame hunting expeditions exploded into sharp-edged fragments, the smaller pieces twisting in the vortex of the bullet's overlapping trajectories.

  The deafening noise covered his actions. Deckard lifted above his head the overturned chair on which the video tripod had been mounted, and hurled it toward the single unbroken window that looked out to the police station's cavernous space. The shards of glass sprayed outward, the chair tangling in the cords of the blind, then tearing it loose and trailing the metal slats to the floor. He followed after, keeping low beneath the continuing gunfire, pushing off from the windowsill's jagged edge. He landed shoulder-first among the bits of glass, then rolling onto his back and drawing the gun from the uniform's holster with both hands.

  "There he is!" one of the cops shouted over the din, pointing. Deckard's shot caught him in the chest, knocking him back with arms flung wide against the others stationed a couple of yards outside the office's door. A burst of assault-rifle fire raked the floor as Deckard spun away; he came up with his own gun aimed and another round squeezed off.

  He heard the rifle clatter onto the floor, but didn't stop to look over his shoulder as he scrambled to his feet. The curved-ceiling stairs leading down to the basement levels were a few yards away; bare fluorescent tubes bounced a sickly illumination from the cracked white tiles. He sprinted toward the arched opening.

  More shots sounded behind him, but he'd already reached the stairs; he grabbed the rusting metal rail and used it to sling himself hard against the wall. He leaned out far enough to brush his pursuers back with another couple of shots. Then turned and ran, taking the steps three at a time, a barely controlled fall toward the depths beneath the police station.

  8

  Isidore looked up at the figure standing in the doorway. "Wuh-what is it?"

  The security agent from the Tyrell Corporation stepped into Isidore's office. So big in his grey uniform with the name tag on the breast that he seemed to take up at least half the available space, his buzz-cut head brushing the ceiling. Andersson looked around, as though seeing the clippings and old calendars on the walls for the first time. "Oh… nothing too serious." The agent turned back toward the owner of the Van Nuys Pet Hospital with a dead, unfeeling gaze. "I just needed to speak with you for a little bit. To tell you that there's going to be some changes made."

  "Ruh-really?" The cat, his favorite, the one without skin or flesh to cover its mechanical bones, slipped in through the open door and jumped up on the desk. "Luh-luh-like what?"

  Isidore picked the cat up and held it against his chest. He stroked its steel, furless head and got a deep thrumming purr in response.

  "Well, I'm not going to be working around here anymore. I've got other things to do."

  "I suh-see." He nodded slowly. "That's yuh-your puhruh-ruh-prerogative. After all, you weren't ever really wuh-working for me. You were always working for her." He watched his hand scratching behind the point where the mechanical cat's ear would have been, if it'd had one. "I guh-guess I'll have to reevaluate the suh-suh-situation, see what the pet hospital really nuh-needs. So I can make other arrangements."

  "You don't have to do that." Andersson looked at him with an almost tender regard. "The arrangements have already been made."

  "Oh." He knew what that meant. And was confirmed in that knowledge when he watched the other man reach inside the jacket of his dark uniform. He knew what would be in the other's hand even before he saw it. "You know, I thuh-thuh-thought this was going to happen. I was kind of wuh-waiting for it."

  "I'm kind of sorry about it, actually." Andersson looked at the black weight of the gun in his own hand. "Not like I ever minded helping you out. But you know how it goes."

  "Sure." Isidore felt sorry for him. "I understand." He stood up from the desk, pushing the chair back, still cradling the cat against himself. "Wuh-would you muh-mind if I went out there?" He nodded toward the office'
s door. "Where the animals are? I'd rather be out thuh-there… when you duh-do it."

  "Hey. No problem."

  A moment later he stood out in the pet hospital's central corridor, looking down the rows of cages and kennels, listening to the barking and smaller noises that greeted his presence. He'd been wondering if he'd be able, at this moment, to tell the difference between the real ones and the fakes. With a sense of relief, he found that he still drew a blank on that issue.

  The mechanical cat in his arms meowed plaintively and rubbed its cold muzzle against his chin. Poor thing-it knew something was wrong, something was about to happen. "Here you go, baby." Isidore leaned down to set the cat on the floor. "I don't want you to get hurt." It didn't go away, but went on pressing its steel and plastic body against his ankles.

  "I'm ready," he announced. He didn't look behind himself, though he could feel the infinitesimal disturbance in the corridor's enclosed air, as Andersson raised the gun.

  Then he flew. That was what it felt like, even as a blow so huge as to be painless struck him between the shoulder blades. Even as he lay between the rows of wire-fronted cages, tossed there by the bullet's impact, he still felt suspended, caught in infinite motion. The concrete against his splayed-out hands felt soft as billowing clouds. But cold.

  This must be what it's like — he could barely hear his own thoughts. He knew he was already dead, inhabiting the last seconds of consciousness, because other sounds came to him, from far away, from right next to him.

  All the cage and kennel doors sprang open, their latches triggered by the signal from the tiny device he'd implanted next to his own heart. He'd known a long time ago that this time was coming.

  Any human creatures left inside the Van Nuys Pet Hospital would have to sort their own problems out. The nonhuman ones, the real and the fake, barking or whooping or emitting their shrill cries, fled toward the outer doors and windows that had also popped open. Isidore could just imagine a bright flurry of parrots wheeling above the crowded streets, the steel-legged greyhound and the terriers sprinting past the traffic-stalled vehicles…

  Blind, he distantly felt a few of the animals nuzzling his face, the mechanical cat climbing onto his chin and shrinking back from the ragged edges of the exit wound.

  "It's okay," he whispered. He tried to raise his hand but couldn't. "Don't worry… about me…"

  They started yowling before he was finished dying. And continued afterward.

  "This… this is great." The sense of happiness permeated Holden's body, as though the bio-mechanical heart in his chest had accelerated to some more euphoric rhythm. His own smile came to his face as he gazed at the monitor screen, at the data he'd had Batty summon up again. The words and numbers formed themselves into a personal message for him. "You know what this means? It means I didn't screw it up with Kowalski. I was set up; I walked into an engineered hit. There was no way i could avoid getting blown out by the replicant. The one person in the world I trusted-the guy whose job it was to look out for me, to keep my ass covered-he betrayed me." Holden placed his palm against the screen, as though to absorb the warmth of its benedictive radiation. "I can't tell you how good this makes me feel."

  "Mazel tov. " Batty shrugged. "Whatever — I'm happy for you. But you should remember, you're not exactly out of the woods. As long as you were knocked out in a hospital bed, with a dope hose running into your veins, nobody was concerned about finishing the job on you.

  Maybe Bryant put out an order to keep you on life support, just because he has a sentimental streak. Or perhaps he would've liked to have pulled the plug on you, but couldn't-or at least not yet. Not with you lying inside a hospital full of doctors and nurses who like to keep their little machines running. But when they hear that you're up and walking, the contract on you becomes effective again. Especially since they can assume that someone like me has filled you in on all the stuff they didn't want you to know."

  "'They… " He pressed his hand harder against the screen, as though he could shatter the glass, reach in and pull out the information he needed. "Who are they? Who's in on it, besides Bryant?"

  "That's a good one. Answer that, and you might have a chance of surviving. The big question is, how far up does this conspiracy go? Bryant didn't come up with all this on his own. How many levels of the police hierarchy above him are involved? Does the conspiracy against the blade runners go further than that, like into the U.N.'s policy-making apparatus?

  Maybe the off-world colonies' administrative offices are in on it-they're the ones most likely to have fabricated the escape that brought the replicants down here to Earth. The only thing you can be sure of is that somebody with major clout doesn't like blade runners."

  "Weird." Holden shook his head. The little jolt of cheer he'd felt had faded now. The holes were filled with darkness, where the missing pieces of the puzzle should fit. "Why would they be doing something like this, anyway? We're just doing our jobs-why try to kill us off?"

  "Pal, it could be any one of a million reasons. Just goes to show what an innocent soul you are, that you'd even worry about why. You haven't dealt with the people up at the top the way I have." Batty's voice and expression clouded with bitterness. "They're just mean bastards. They don't care about little people like you and me. Everything's dollar signs with them. If they want to trim their budget, they do it by cutting it out of your hide."

  The last dregs of that happy sense, of knowing at last that what had happened to him wasn't his fault, ebbed out of Holden's soul. Another emotion replaced it, as in silence he studied the man standing next to him. Now it was his turn to feel pity. He could see more clearly now the lines engraved into Batty's face, the deep creases as well as the finer net across the aged skin. Cheeks hollowed, eyes sunken in the dark crepe of their sockets; as if in the blue glow of the monitor, the man was visibly claimed by time, all the decades catching up with him. He's right, thought Holden. He's been doing this a long while…

  "You didn't quit, did you?" He wondered just how old this guy was, exactly. "Either the Tyrell Corporation or the places before that. They fired you. Put you out to pasture."

  Batty shot him a fierce glance. "Yeah, well, maybe you're just finding out what it's like." An almost childish Bulkiness twisted in his voice. "Maybe the reason Bryant went in on the conspiracy to get rid of you guys is just because he wanted to bring in some new blood. Replace you jerks who've gotten your minds all warped out on the Curve. Useless dildos."

  "The Curve was never a problem for me." Holden set his own gaze hard. "Once I've got the territory scoped out, I can take care of myself."

  "Man, you don't even know. I tell you one thing, that your ass was set up for a fall. and now you think you're a walking encyclopedia." The mean smile showed again. "There's stuff going on, levels of conspiracy, that I haven't even started to bend your head with yet."

  The realization had come to him some time ago that Batty got off on the whole conspiracy notion. "Such as?"

  "Bryant was lying to you from the beginning. To you, and then to Deckard, when he sent you out hunting that batch of replicants." A smug expression showed on Batty's face. "There was one more escaped replicant that he didn't tell either one of you about. A sixth replicant."

  "That doesn't make any sense." Another memory, from when he'd been back there at the hospital. Bryant had told him that all the escapees-all five of them-had been taken care of. Holden shook his head. "Why would Bryant cover up for a replicant?"

  "Ah. There's the mystery, all right." Batty's face showed once more how much he was enjoying this process. "When you combine that with the supposition he was involved in a conspiracy to get rid of the blade runners… makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just whose side Bryant is on."

  Holden fell silent, musing over everything Batty had told him, trying to fit the loose bits and pieces together.

  "A sixth replicant…" He spoke aloud. Something moved deep inside his being, other than his prowling, restless thoughts. "Number six." The old blad
e runner instinct, the desire, that had stirred into life every time he'd gotten an assignment from Bryant. To hunt, to track down and locate, and then to retire the quarry. He'd never really understood why wimps like Deckard and some of the other blade runners bitched and crabbed about this job. To him, it'd always been his whole reason for existing. Like that old high-wire artist had said, long ago-everything else was just waiting. "One more to get.. "

  "Take it easy," said Batty. "I know the idea gets you all revved up, but you still gotta take it easy for a little while. That artificial heart-and-lung implant's still settling in."

  Holden didn't care about that. He knew that bagging the sixth replicant would solve a lot of things. It'd prove, he thought with grim satisfaction, that I'm still on top of the game. He'd been set up by that fat, lying bastard Bryant; that'd been the only way that they — the big they of the anti-blade runner conspiracy — had been able to nail him. It still rankled to think of people hearing about him lying there in the hospital, a limp little bag of fluids hooked up to pumps and aerators, and feeling sorry for him. Now there was the chance to show them all.

  Plus, it seemed logical there must be something special about this one remaining replicant; why else would Bryant have let the others be hunted down and retired, while covering the tracks for number six? When I find this one — Holden already knew he would — I'll have to be careful not to retire it too soon. Not until he'd pumped it for every scrap of information about the conspiracy. The key to why Bryant and those mysterious, unknown others had tried to kill him — he didn't care about all the rest of the blade runners; this was personal — was walking around Los Angeles right now, passing for human, wearing some face that could be just about anybody's.