by K. W. Jeter
A desiccated, blood-temperature wind rolled across his back. He managed to stand up, the rags of the stolen police uniform gaping over his torn and abraded flesh. Slowly, his feet stumbling against the oil-covered rocks between the tracks, he began walking.
Not north, where his unreasoning heart wanted to start for. But someplace where he knew he could hide.
For at least a little while…
11
She ascended to the appointed place, at the appointed hour. Without effort, almost without will-thermal sensors had registered her presence within the small space, a disembodied voice had asked if she'd wanted to go up to the building's roof, far above the dense weave of structure and light that formed the static ocean of the city. All Sarah had had to do was say yes.
Thus we rise, she thought as she closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against the wall of the elevator's vertical coffin. Not as angels, transparent to gravity, buoyant in God's sight, but as inert, gross cargo, hauled aloft by cable and winch, like stones and dust in a box.
What machine would clasp her in its embrace when her death came, bearing her aloft the way the elevator did now? Nobody, she thought glumly, self-accusingly. Everything she did, everything she was about to do, was designed by her own intent to bring about that exact lonely result. Fate as programmed as a train's iron rails-she figured she'd wind up like her uncle Eldon, isolate in glacial splendor, brooding over a chessboard like an owl watching for mice to scurry across the forest's dead leaves and twigs. Unless…
Unless what? She raised a hand, pressing thumb and forefinger against her eyelids, blue sparks wriggling inside her head. Unless every not-living thing quickened and breathed, all the earth's graves burst like ripe seed pods, and the drowned rose with seaweed hair and pearls in their mouths. It could happen — neither thought nor belief, but what she would have believed if she were still capable of that. Her own resurrection, or the simulation that was as much of one as she could hope for, pushed light through her hand and into her eyes as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open.
He was waiting for her. On the building's executive landing deck, the private one that had been reserved for Eldon Tyrell, but rarely used. She stepped out of the elevator and strode toward the unmarked spinner and the figure lounging against its flank, his arms folded across his chest.
"How did it go?"
Andersson shrugged. "Oh… pretty much as I expected. He didn't put up a struggle or anything. Not that it would've made much difference if he had."
"My." She let herself smile. "You're such a professional. Aren't you?"
"I'm paid to be."
"Whatever you indicate will happen, happens. Like pushing a button
… on the elevator over there." She nodded toward the closed doors, the brushed stainless steel raked by the sun's fierce glare. She turned her own gaze away from the man. The light and heat would siphon away any possible tear. She felt genuinely sorry about Isidore; the poor little geek's neck, with its wobbling bespectacled head on top, would probably have fit inside one of Andersson's fists. Perhaps that was how he'd done it, like twisting and pulling the knobbed cork out of a bottle of Dorn Perignon. More likely, the obliging Isidore had volunteered, soon as he'd figured out what was wanted of him. Wuhwould you like me to kuh-kill myself? Huh-huh-happy to.
"You're the one who pushes the buttons."
"Am I?" That still seemed an odd concept to Sarah Tyrell. "I suppose so." She remembered being a three-year-old child and looking up at her uncle-the doors of the Salander 3 had unsealed and popped open; a nurse hack led her down the ramp, with the long boxes holding the remains of her parents following right after-and seeing his thick glasses, the lenses shaped like the computer monitors that had been her windows aboard the starship, the cold eyes behind them scanning and assessing, calculating. He had reached down and touched her hair, rubbing a lock of it between his thumb and forefinger, as if gauging its suitability for some new industrial process…
"What're you doing?" Her voice, sharp' and startled; she felt her spine go rigid, every muscle tensed for flight or attack. The reverie into which she'd sunk had been translated into this reality, the rooftop landing deck of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, right now. Her uncle's touch had become Andersson's; the man, still leaning back against the spinner, had reached out and stroked the stray wisp of fine brown hair at the nape of her neck. His fingertip stayed there, a fraction of an inch away from her tremulous skin. "What… I don't… "
"Yes, you do." He leaned forward and kissed her.
Kissed and fell to the landing deck's hard surface, both his hands upon her, as they had been before. She turned her head and saw the undercarriage of the spinner, the extruded landing gear, the vents and air intakes: she could smell the sharp reek of its fuel and the condensation of steam, mixed with the closer scent of his sweat as he reached between them and undid the front of his jumpsuit; she couldn't tell the mingled odors apart anymore, or whether they came from him or the machine. It didn't matter to her.
She closed her eyes. That was part of the payoff, the regular arrangement between herself and Andersson, that kept him working for her, plus the checks drawn upon the Tyrell Corporation's black operations account and made payable to an electronics supply warehouse in Mexico City. The arrangement must have been satisfactory to Andersson: she had lost track of which installment this was. Easy to forget that she wanted this, wanted everything, as much as he did..
Something else to be sorry about. That the arrangement had come to an end; she knew it, even if he didn't yet. At the edge of her awareness, she felt her hand remove itself from his back and reach inside her coat pocket, for the object she had taken from the drawer of the bureau plat down in her uncle's office.
Andersson gasped-too soon, at least for him; she could feel the shock wave run through his body. He pushed himself back from her, his spine arching. One hand clawed at his back, fingertips smearing through the bright red that had burst open there.
"Goddamn…" He'd rolled onto his side, finally having managed to pull out the knife she had inserted, point first, between his shoulder blades. Andersson shook his head ruefully. "I knew you were going to do this. I knew it…" The knife clattered on the hard surface of the landing deck. He managed to push himself up into a sitting position, propped up against the spinner. His blood shone on the black metal. "It's not like…" Voice weaker. "… it's unexpected…
"Please don't ask me why." She kept her own voice formal, polite. She had gotten to her feet and was now putting her own disarrayed clothing back in order, reaching down to smooth the skirt of the dress over her knees. "I'd find it tiresome to explain." Sarah straightened up, noticing a spot of his blood on the front of her blouse. Silk, and thus ruined.
He managed to laugh. "Don't bother…" He gazed at her, almost admiringly. "It's pretty much… the nature of the business…"
Checking the time, as much by glancing up at the sun as looking at the slender watch on her wrist. And waiting; as always, Sarah hoped he wouldn't take too long.
A few minutes later she succeeded in dragging his body to the low parapet surrounding the landing deck, her shoes leaving a triangle and dot pattern in the thin pool of his blood. She was surprised at how light he seemed when dead; she had unexpectedly little trouble in lifting the corpse high enough to topple it over into the empty space at the center of the Tyrell Corporation's slanting towers. Adrenaline, she thought; some little surge in her own bloodstream, unnoticed by her cognitive processes, had perhaps given her the extra strength required,
Andersson's body fell of its own accord, arms and legs splayed out in air. Hands braced against the parapet, she watched until it was lost to sight; the corporation's employees, working in the replicant manufacturing units that formed the base and core of the complex, had no doubt already had the surprise of the corpse smashing into one of the reinforced skylights above their heads.
Business to take care of — Sarah straightened up and took her
cell phone out of her coat pocket, punched in the security division. "There's been an accident." She smoothed her hair into place as she spoke. "It can be taken care of on an internal basis. There's no need to call in the police." She gave a few more details, some of them true, then disconnected. The corporation's own security people were drones, without Andersson's initiative; she could count on them to do no more than what she wanted. Even the mess up here on the landing deck-they'd all keep their silence, and their jobs.
She started to turn away, to walk back toward the elevator doors, then stopped. A shudder ran through her body; dizzy and nauseous, she had to lean against the spinner for balance. The adrenaline, and whatever other hormones had been released, now seemed to evaporate from her veins. She closed her eyes, her pulse scurrying faster, breath quick and shallow. "I'm sorry," she spoke aloud. As if there were anyone to hear her, as if it would have done any good if there had been. She resisted the impulse to lie back down upon the deck and curl up with her trembling fists and elbows tucked close against herself.
The attack passed. Breath slower and deeper again-she took the few steps back to the parapet and looked across the vast space, to the three other towers of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. A city in itself, surrounded by the larger compressed mass of Los Angeles. The four towers slanted in toward each other and the truncated pyramid in their midst, like the petals of a cubist flower that hadn't fully opened yet. When she had come back from Zurich, with the corporate minions who now worked for her, she'd been given the grand tour, through all the sectors of the complex, the areas that she'd never been allowed to enter while her uncle had been alive. It'd taken days to complete. They had told her everything, all the secrets. Including what they had called the red button, though there wasn't any red button, but an overlapping series of commands that had once been keyed to Eldon Tyrell's voice pattern, but hadn't been keyed over to hers. The one thing beyond her control-even as the minions had been telling her about what would happen if she could have spoken those magic words, a vision had come to her. That had made her heart swell with a fierce gladness.
She looked out now across the landing deck's parapet, that vision overlaying the solid, slanting towers. Fire and force, this world she owned riven by its own private apocalypse. The explosions would start at the base of the structures and continue upward, following the Wagnerian sequence of the programming that had been built into them from the beginning…
Brennt das Holz heilig brunstig und hell, sengt die Glut sehrend den glanzenden Saal…
"'If the wood catches fire,'" she murmured, eyes closed, "'and solemnly, brightly burns, then the flames will destroy the glorious hall…'"
Wagner had that much right, at least. Not programming; she knew that was a stupid word for it. Fate was the true word.
Der ewigen Gotter Ende dammert ewig da auf…
"'The eternal gods' last day then dawns… '
Sarah opened her eyes. The vision had faded, leaving the parallelogram towers of the Tyrell Corporation still standing.
She turned away and headed for the elevator, to go back down inside the building's heart.
He'd made his decision. Or, at least, the next step in his rapidly evolving plans.
What do I need this loony sonuvabitch around for? Dave Holden glanced over at Batty, sitting beside him in the cockpit of the freight spinner. They were flying west, returning from the Reclamation Center out in the desert, to the sprawl of the city. The same harsh sunlight that darkened the curved glass's photochrome membrane heated the brown stew of pollutants hanging in the air above L.A.; he could see it up ahead, like an old, frayed edge wool blanket spread over the simmering buildings. Batty's hands moved across the controls, manually piloting the craft. When he was busy doing something, he didn't look quite so maniacal. But that didn't change the situation.
The question didn't need an answer — Holden had decided that part a while back. But there were other questions that did.
"So, uh, exactly what is your interest in all this?"
"I told you." Batty turned his cracked smile on him again. "The sixth replicant. The one that's still missing."
"What about it?" The smile still had the capacity for making him nervous. "You just want to shake its hand or something? Get an autograph?"
"Don't want anything from it. Except to find it and kill it. And take back the evidence to the people who hired me that I've completed this little job for them."
"And who's that?"
"Can't tell you." Batty's eyes shifted. "It's… a secret."
"Bullshit." His inner radar, his honed blade runner senses, flashed on the other's momentary unease. "I can tell you're soamming me." He peered closer at Batty. "You don't know who hired you, do you?"
"Well… I got my suspicions about it." Batty gave a minute adjustment to one of the controls. "Might be the LAPD, Or it could be a gov agency. Possibly the feds, maybe even the U.N. — bad replicant business can call down some pretty high-level heat. Whoever it is, they're working outside the official channels, so we're talking cover-up. Ultraspook stuff; I got the job details and my up-front money through a double-blind courier service, no trace possible on who sent them my way."
"How'd they find you? In the yellow pages?" Probably under Cannons, Loose — the thought gave Holden a twist of smug amusement.
"The fact they found me at all just proves these guys're up there. Man, I'd pretty much figured if I was going to be retired against my will, then I was going to be retired all the way-I'd taken every dime I'd saved up, from when those bastards over at the Tyrell Corporation had been still paying me my royalties on their line of Roy Batty replicants, and I'd dug myself in tight into a nice, safe little conapt in one of the Cracow ex-pat zones. I was gonna do nothing but drink gin and listen to Mahler's Second for the rest of my life." He shook his head. "You know, I don't have to kill people to have a good time."
"But it helps."
Batty shrugged. "Speak for yourself. I didn't need to take this job-"
"You did, though." Holden's turn to show a thin smile. "So now you gotta go through with it. If these people you're talking about are such heavyweights, they wouldn't like you crapping out on them."
"Tell me about it." His face appearing suddenly older, expression glum. "I've worked these kinds of gigs before. Perform or die's the general rule. Even so," muttered Batty, "I got half a mind to pull the plug on the whole operation. Dealing with an ungrateful little jerk like you-"
"What'd I do?"
"It's what you didn't do." Glum to resentful. "I arrange for a whole new heart and lungs to get slapped inside you, and you don't even say thanks."
"Christ… give me a break." Holden shook his head. "All right, you have my sincerest appreciation. Satisfied?" He looked ahead to the city approaching on the horizon, then around to Batty again. "Not as if it was all selfless altruism on your part, though, is it? You had some reason for busting me out of the hospital and all."
"True. That's what pisses me off. I need you."
Holden raised an eyebrow. "For what?"
"Come on." A big sigh from Batty. "I've been out of the game for a while now. When I took you out of that hospital, that was the first time I'd been in L.A. in years. It's a whole lot bigger and uglier than when I left it. I need somebody who knows his way around. Otherwise, that sixth replicant could be hiding out in there, and I'd have fuck-all chance of finding it."
"Oh, sure." He gave a snort of disbelief. "So buy a map, already."
"It's not just the lay of the land, pal. It's the connections. You got'em and I don't. When I took off from L.A., I cut all my ties, all my sources of info, my whole network. I expect that most of the people I used to deal with are dead now, anyway. Places where they were at, things they were into — longevity's not much of an issue there." A shrug. "Wouldn't be such a problem if I'd done anything to replace them. But I. don't have time to do that. Replicant number six has gotten a real jump on getting himself safely out of sight. I can't screw around a
ny longer finding it-I need somebody who's already got their systems up and running. Blade runner-type systems. That's you, Dave. That's why you're here."
He didn't say anything in reply. If Batty wanted to believe he was so valuable, he wasn't going to do anything to dissuade him from the notion. A mixed bag regarding the state of his own connections, though. He'd been flat on his back, zoned out on the hospital's IV drip, for the better part of a year; that was a long time to be off the scene, especially in L.A. Batty didn't have a clue about how fast things changed now, compared to his day. Plus he was on the lam himself-his old boss Bryant, and God knew how many other people, had put him on ice for their own reasons, and they weren't likely to be too overjoyed about finding him walking around again. Though maybe that's a positive, mused Holden. If I got taken out by a conspiracy against the blade runners, the rest of them will be on my side. They'd have to be, for reasons of their own survival. At least the smart ones will be, he thought. Which meant that Batty's assessment was correct; he did have resources that he could call upon. The best kind, right inside the LAPD itself, right under the noses of Bryant and the others who'd set him up.
The residue of doubt evaporated, leaving the hard stratum of a blade runner's self-confidence. He still had the edge that came with being human. The spinner had reached the L.A. suburbs, sections of a maze homogenous with that of the city's tight, imploding center. Somewhere in there was the answer, walking around with someone else's face. Whose?
I'll find out soon enough. Holden glanced over again at the figure beside him. The same question went through his mind, assessing how much further use he had for Batty. Or whether he'd be better off without him, going out on the hunt alone.
"All right," said Holden. "I'll help you out. After all… it's only fair."
Batty looked up from the spinner's controls. "We got a little partnership going, then."
"Oh… we sure do." And smiled right back at him.
Deckard knew where he was going. He just didn't know how to get there.