Edge Of Human b-2

by K. W. Jeter

  "No, you don't." Batty pushed him up higher against the wall. "You and I have talked plenty already. I'm so on your pitiful wavelength, I don't have to talk to you anymore. I knew you were going to come back here, looking for me. Once you figured out that you're too screwed up to get by on your own." A shark's grin floated into Holden's fuzzed vision. "So you see. I know what you're going to say before you do."

  A thread of oxygen flowed down his throat. The other man was tiring, not visibly so, but detectable by the slight weakening of his arms, the weight dragging them down. The black spots in front of Holden's eyes, that had interposed a drifting polka-dotted veil between his face and Batty's, faded a little.

  "Look… it's important… ' The words scraped through his constricted larynx. "I wouldn't have come back here… if I just needed help…"

  "Yeah, right." Batty followed the words with a scornful grunt.

  "Really… I figured it out…" He tugged at the other's wrists. "I figured out… who the sixth replicant is… "

  Batty tilted his head to one side, studying the pinned figure in front of him. "What're you talking about?"

  "Put me down… and I'll tell you…"

  Through narrowed eyes, Batty regarded him for a moment longer. "All right." He lowered Holden to the floor, letting go of the front of his shirt. Batty stood back, arms folded across his chest. "This better be good."

  Holden doubled over, gasping to fill his lungs, head level with his artificial heart to increase the passage of blood between the two organs. Weakly, he straightened back up, balancing himself against the wall with one hand. He stumbled toward the apartment's living room, with Batty following after.

  "It's simple. Really." He flopped down into one of Deckard's overstuffed chairs. With his foot, he nudged aside the toppled piano bench, so he could stretch out his legs. "Once you think about it." The numbness in his limbs had changed to prickling as his circulation rattled back to normal. Or what passed for that. "The sixth replicant

  … the one that's still missing. It's Deckard."

  "You idiot." Batty looked down at him with contempt. "I'm the one who told you that." He sat down heavily on the padded bench, his elbows knocking two atonal chords from the piano as he leaned back against the keyboard. Disgusted, he shook his head. "Jesus Christ. I can't believe this. If you've been worrying about whether that new pump of yours is starving your brain of oxygen-and you should be; I can hear it wheezing all the way over here then you don't have to worry anymore. Your brain's obviously gone to mush."

  Unruffled, Holden smoothed his hands out along the rounded arms of the chair. He managed a smile. "Sure you said something about Deckard being the sixth replicant. But I know how your mind works. You'd never have made it as a blade runner. You're too sloppy. The whole modus operandi of someone like you is to kill someone else, and then if it turns out to have been the wrong person, do another. Until you finally get it right." He paused for a moment, to regain his breath. "Blade runners, on the other hand, try to be a little more precise about who we kill."

  "Piss off."

  He knew he'd nailed him. Holden leaned forward, relishing the small measure of control he'd gained, the shift of power between himself and the other man. "There; you see?" It'd been worth coming back here, taking the risk, just to screw with Batty's mind. In the best way possible, by feeding his own words back to him. But with a difference. "You know I'm right. When you said Deckard was the sixth replicant, that was just an idea you had. You didn't know for sure. Did you?"

  Batty shifted uncomfortably on the piano bench, but made no reply.

  "Whereas I can say that Deckard is the sixth replicant — and I can prove it." He leaned back into the deep upholstery. In triumph.

  "Go ahead." Batty had reassembled his own composure. "I'm listening."

  "There's a safe-house apartment, out in the sideways world-you know, all that toppled-over seismic zone-that Deckard and myself and some of the other guys in the blade runner unit set up. Without any departmental connection; we used it for stakeouts, remote operations, all that sort of thing. That's where I knew Deckard would go. And I was right." Holden forced down a deep breath. "After I took care of you, I went out there and found him, talked to him-"

  "You should've plugged him. And if you were so friggin' smart, you wouldn't have left me where I could get hold of dental floss and a razor blade. Those handcuffs ain't shit, when you know what you're doing."

  Holden rolled past the comment. "At any rate, I didn't get very far with him. I'd figured that between the two of us, he and I could locate the sixth replicant and retire it but Deckard wouldn't buy into that plan. Turned me down flat. So I left… but I didn't go away. I kept an eye on the place, from outside. And sure enough, Holden had a visitor. A woman-"

  "Oh?" Batty raised an eyebrow. "Young, dark-haired? Expensive-looking?"

  "Pretty much." He nodded. "I figured that it was the one who owns the Tyrell Corporation now-"

  "Sarah Tyrell. Good guess."

  "They were both inside the safe-house apartment for a while, then there was a gunshot. Then both Deckard and the woman came out, climbed into a Tyrell Corporation spinner, and flew off. The person who didn't come out of the apartment was this little weird guy, who was also there. Used to be one of the corporation's top bio-engineers, name of Sebastian."

  "Yeah, I know about him. Big involvement in the design of the Nexus-6 models. I met him when they were putting together the prototypes for the Roy Batty replicant model."

  "That's my whole point." The artificial heart in Holden's chest revved with excitement.

  "Deckard and this Sarah Tyrell iced one of the few people-hell, maybe the only one left-who could identify the Nexus-6 replicants. Why would they do that, unless they wanted to make sure that there wasn't anybody around who could put the finger on the missing sixth replicant? And who'd be more concerned about that then the sixth replicant itself? So it has to be Deckard. All that stuff about him having run off up north, that was all a ruse, an alibi to make it look like he wasn't on the scene down here. But he was, and he was busy taking care of anybody who could identify him. Like Bryant. It's obvious-Deckard killed the one guy who'd seen the original escape report from the off-world authorities, after Bryant had already purged the info on him from the police files. Just goes to show what a thorough bastard Deckard is; he's not leaving any loose ends."

  Batty musingly stroked his chin. "Why didn't Deckard kill you? Out at this safe-house apartment."

  "Because I had a gun, and he didn't-at that time. The Tyrell woman must've brought out the one they shot Sebastian with."

  "Huh." Slowly Batty nodded. "That makes sense, I guess." He gave a shrug. "Look, I'm glad you've come around to my way of thinking about this-"

  "'Thinking,' hell."

  "All right, all right." Batty held both his palms outward. "I admit I operate more on instinct than reason-so sue me. But what you've come up with just confirms what I'd felt was the case about Deckard. So it must be true, right?"

  Holden relaxed a bit. He'd managed to push the other man into a mellower portion of whatever manic cycle he. operated on. Like a mollified wolf, it struck him. Important to not display any fear, to show the wild animal who was really in charge.

  "Now that we know," said Holden, "who the sixth replicant is, we just have to calculate what we're going to do about it…"

  He leaned forward, as Batty did the same from the piano bench, bringing their heads closer together. Breathing together; a back part of his mind recalled that that was what the word conspiracy meant.

  Fires at night put some people in a holiday mood. Or some creatures, he corrected himself. The one below him had actually broken into a little stubby-legged jig, more enthusiasm than dance skill, at the sight up ahead, flickering incendiary glow and sparks threading through mounting columns of smoke.

  "Whoa!" Sebastian clung to the teddy bear's neck, to keep himself from being jounced out of the papoose carrier. "Steady on there, will ya? You're goin
g to make me seasick."

  Squeaker Hussar had spotted the fires as well. "What's that? What's that?" He jumped up and down, pointing. "What the heckety-heck is that, Sebastian?"

  "I don't rightly know." A pirate-style brass telescope was packed somewhere in the gear that the animated teddy bear and the toy soldier had been dragging along between them. Out here in the dark, he didn't feel like rooting around for it. "People, I guess." He let himself slip back down into the papoose carrier. "A lot of 'em, actually. I can see their shadows and all."

  "Hmmm…" Subdued, Squeaker tilted his nose into the air, as though trying to sniff out the nature of the unseen others. "Gotta think!"

  The toy soldier didn't really think, not on a deep analytical level-Sebastian hadn't programmed him for that-but he did a good imitation of the process, something he'd probably picked up from observing his maker. Sebastian knew he'd have to do the thinking for all three of them, as he'd always done before. Not that I ever did such a good job at it. Maybe it was time to give Squeaker and Colonel Fuzzy a crack at these necessary tasks. Once, just a little while ago, he'd done the thinking for a group of four, counting in Pris; though even when she'd been alive, really alive, she hadn't been the sort of girl for whom thinking had been a preferred mode of making one's way through the rigors of existence. And all that his thinking had accomplished, at least for her, had been death, utter and final. And his own, inasmuch as he was now a one-limbed, withered husk-like thing; the core of his life having been extinguished along with Pris's feverish, constantly scanning red eyes. A toy soldier with a Pinocchio nose couldn't screw it up any worse.

  He waited, but Squeaker didn't say anything more. Colonel Fuzzy looked over its shoulder at him, the expression held in its button eyes apprehensive.

  "Okay…" He sighed, aware that they were depending upon him. "Let's figure it out. Out here, at night, the things you gotta be afraid of are the ones you can't see Right?" The teddy bear and the toy soldier nodded. "These folks, whoever they are-" He pointed to the radiant distance with his one hand. "They don't seem to care if we see 'em. I mean, they built those fires and stuff. So it seems only logical that we shouldn't be afraid of them. You follow?"

  "Maybe they're savages!" Eyes wide, Squeaker had already spooked himself. "Cannibubbles!"

  "Oh, shoot. That's only in bad movies. Post-apocalypse tootie-frootie jive." Sebastian had found his own logic convincing enough. He urged Colonel Fuzzy forward. "Come on, let's go check 'em out. Maybe they got a barbecue going. Welfare weenies and marshmallows-you guys like that, don't you?" They didn't actually eat, but they enjoyed using their ceremonial dress swords to hold things in the flames.

  That notion motivated his companions. They left their supplies, food and water and batteries, tucked into a crevice they'd be able to find later. Clambering over the flank of a Neutra-derived retail pavilion, they made their way toward the fires.

  Even before they could clearly make out the human figures, they heard the single raised voice, loud and stentorian. Colonel Fuzzy's round ears twitched at either side of his head; Squeaker looked genuinely perplexed. "Sounds like church!"

  The toy soldier's notions were derived from old televangelical broadcasts, but he was right; it did sound like that. Sebastian couldn't make out the words, not until they had actually come through the line of wavering shadows and near enough to feel the heat of the fires against their own faces.

  "'With this wisdom, enlightened disciples will be able to master every inordinate desire!'" A man dressed in a white jumpsuit-one of the sleeves was torn, and there were black char marks across the front, as though he'd wandered too close to the fire, or been in some kind of explosion-stood on a box, reading from a battered old paperback book. "'Every kind of living creature, whether hatched from an egg, grown in a womb, evolved or brought forth by metamorphosis, whether it has form or knowing, whether it possesses or lacks natural feeling-from this constantly shifting state of existence, I command you to seek deliverance!"' The man's voice grew stronger and more fervent. "'Then you shall be released from the sentient world, a world without number or limit. In reality, no sentient world even exists; for in the minds of enlightened disciples, such arbitrary notions have ceased… '"

  Perhaps a couple dozen other people stood around in a circle, listening; regular, full-size humans, not like what he'd become. They were all a little on the ragged side; in this territory, it was impossible to stay exactly spiff. A few curious faces turned toward Sebastian and his diminutive pals.

  "Sorry." He raised an apologetic hand above the teddy bear's head. "Don't let me interrupt you." The sermon, if that's what it was, had ended; he didn't know whether it was supposed to have or not. "Just go ahead."

  The man stepped down from the box and walked over toward them. He looked to be some kind of spiritual leader; he had the sort of craggy, God-haunted face for it, complete with a straggly, greying beard, also slightly singed.

  "Have you come to roust us?" The evidently holy man leaned down to peer into Sebastian's face. "Perhaps you are an advance scout of the law-enforcement agencies, specifically those in charge of stamping out heresies such as represented by our little group. Would that be the case?"

  "Um, no…" He shrank back from the other's piercing gaze. "We're more like private-individual types."

  "I see." The man straightened back up. A number of the others had collected behind him, following the discourse. A sigh came from their leader. "In some ways-many ways-that's a pity. Inasmuch as the doctrines of our faith invite martyrdom. The final sacrament, as it were. Without which, many of our activities, if not all, seem to be in vain."

  "Well…" He didn't know what to say. "You gotta hang in there, I suppose."

  "Easy for you to say. Come here." The bearded leader took one of Colonel Fuzzy's mittenlike paws, as though it were an actual extension of Sebastian's body, and led him toward the center of the circle of fires. Where the rest of the people were-he shifted uneasily in the papoose carrier, aware of having become the focus of their attention. "That is the purpose of our gatherings out in the open air, in fields and pastures as it were. Similar to the early freethinkers, those who had rejected the wicked doctrines of the ruling elites, Of their time. Though, of course, wickedness is an eternal thing, the great deceiver merely shifting from behind one mask to another."

  "Oh." With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sebastian realized he had stumbled into a nest of lunatics. Just my luck, he thought glumly. When things started going bad for you, they went on that way for a long time. That was the real nature of the universe.

  "The better to oppress the righteous." The leader sank into the ongoing currents of his own thoughts, though he continued to speak aloud. His frail shoulders slumped inside the white jumpsuit, like an insect folding itself into a semi-resting posture. "Though in reality, the Masked One, the deceiver and oppressor, does the righteous a service through its cruelty. A paradox. Inasmuch as it is only through the experience of oppression, of suffering, that one becomes human. Through suffering, one becomes the object of compassion. You know all this, don't you? That is how the one who sees only suffering, the Eye of Compassion, becomes aware of your existence; she sees no other thing, is blind to all except those who suffer."

  The leader ran elongated, skeletal fingers through his beard, the undertones of his voice skewing toward the speculative. "Once, humans-humans such as us-suffered; that was the bread and salt of our existence. That was a long time ago. Now we have become that which causes suffering-not on an individual basis, but as a species; we have become one of the masks behind which the great deceiver and oppressor manifests itself in this universe. The question then becomes…" One of the others, a young man, hollow-checked and febrile, stood nearby, transcribing the leader's words into an old-fashioned manual steno pad. "Whether the Masked One, by causing suffering, acts as a necessary precursive agent of its compassionate opposite?" The bearded man looked round from the corner of his eye.

  The glance, and
its accompanying expectant silence, made Sebastian nervous. "I wouldn't know." He tightened the hold of his forearm around Colonel Fuzzy's shoulder.

  "Are you sure," the leader inquired hopefully, "that you're not with the police?"

  "Positive."

  "Well… we shall 'hang in there,' as you advise. For the sake of those more human than us. Those blessed ones."

  It suddenly dawned on him who these people were. Hell's bells, thought Sebastian. They're rep-symps. He'd heard rumors, before he'd first come out to the sideways world, that certain congregations of the true believers frequented the zone. Living a basically reclusive life, he hadn't encountered them before.

  "Look, it seems to me that you're going about it all wrong." He could afford to be helpful; he had nothing against them. He let go of the teddy bear long enough to wave off the smoke that was getting into his nose and making him sneeze. "If you want to get busted by the police, you oughtta go where the police mainly are. It's no good being out in nowheresville. The cops probably don't even want to bother with you, long as you stay someplace like this. You should go into the city-"

  "We've done that." A younger, darker-bearded version of the leader spoke up. He had fanatic eyes, whites showing all around the pupils. "We have our uses for the city." A dirty word, the way he spat it out. "And we have taken our message there. Not just in words, but in deed as well. We brought down in flames one of the voices of the deceiver, and upon its carcass we gave forth our testimony."

  "Gosh." It sounded scary, even though he had no idea of what the man was exactly talking about. Though he was pretty sure it involved criminal activity of some kind; these people were religiously obsessive types, after all, capable of anything. Morally, if not in terms of actual accomplishment. He was beginning to have second thoughts about keeping company with them; the police might come all the way out here, to kick ass and take names, as the saying went. If they'd been sufficiently provoked.