Replicant Night (7 page)

"I know." With an act of will as simple and decisive as pulling a trigger, she swung her legs out of the bed and sat up; the hovel's recycled-plastic floorboards pressed their imitation wood grain against the bare soles of her feet. "Look, I'm up. Okay?" She shook her head. "For Christ's sake Her fingertips prodded through the rubble on top of the small table, in search of any remains of the last packet of black-market cigarettes she had splashed out on. The stubs in the can lid she used for an ashtray were too far gone to be of any service.

The alarm clock skipped nimbly away to avoid Sarah's trembling hand. "All right! Let's get going!" Its bell-like voice radiated maniacal cheer. "Lots to do today!"

Sarah had found one cigarette butt that she managed to ignite; she sucked a stale drag from it. "Like what?" She blew the smoke into the alarm clock's round face.

"Well The small autonomic device comically waved the smoke away with its pointed black hands. "You could make yourself lovely-lovelier than you are, I mean-and get ready for your husband to come home. Mr. Niemand, that is."

She frowned as she ground out the butt in the can lid. "Is he coming home? Is he supposed to be?" She had lost track of time, the passage of days. Which was a bad sign, something the U.N's social workers and mental health professionals were constantly warning the emigrants about. It was one of the first indications-along with the facial tics, the skin plucking, and other obsessive-compulsive rituals-that the toxic effects of the low-stimulus Martian environment were being felt. Madness and death were usually not far behind.
Not that I'm overly concerned
, thought Sarah.

"Not quite," said the calendar on the bedroom's wall. "Mr. Niemand isn't scheduled to return for a few more days yet. But you never know." The calendar attempted to sound hopeful and solicitous of its human masters' welfare. "Maybe he wrapped up his business and is coming home early. It could happen."

"You're right." With both hands, she pushed her tangled hair back from her brow. "As usual."

In the hovel's bathroom, she let the trickle of rust-colored water collect in the basin while trying to avoid seeing herself in the clouded mirror. She didn't want to deal with the issue of whether it was her face or Rachael's that she saw there.

Away from the alarm clock's chatter and the calendar's nagging, her thoughts began to order themselves, resuming a familiar shape and weight. One that she had decided upon the day after Deckard had left, when he'd gone out to that run-down video studio orbiting above Earth. A time-honored tradition, a reverting to old forms of gender-based behavior: the man going out to make money, to bring it home to the basic family unit, the wife tending the fire ...

They're right
, she told herself again.
I do have to be ready for him
. She bent over the sink and splashed the water into her face.

A thump sounded from the bedroom behind her. "Oops," came the clock's voice.

With a trickle of water running between her breasts, Sarah glanced over her shoulder. The alarm clock, in its chugging circuit around the tabletop, had knocked the gun to the floor.

"Sorry ..."

"Don't worry about it." She reached for the threadbare towel. "You know it's not loaded."

She knew what the clock and the calendar didn't. That the gun wouldn't stay unloaded for long. In the dresser drawer, beneath her wadded-up underthings, were two bullets. They had been expensively acquired, black-market items like the cigarettes, in a place like the emigrant colony, where death came constantly and slowly, the means of a fast death assumed a precious status.

One for him
, thought Sarah as she ran the towel across the back of her neck.
And one for me
...

She'd be ready for Mr. Niemand's homecoming.

"I wouldn't have thought that was your kind of gig." The briefcase had started talking again, still with Roy Batty's voice. "Making videos and all that. Not exactly your former line of work, is it?"

"Yeah, well," said Deckard, "it pays."
Or at least it was supposed to
, he thought grimly. Outside the skiff, discernible through the viewscreen over the tiny cockpit's instrument panel, was void interplanetary space, not made any more comforting by the cold light of the distant stars.

"Kind of screwed yourself on that one, didn't you?" Batty, when he'd been in a human incarnation, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, had always displayed a spooky talent for reading others' thoughts; reduced now to a box, he seemed to have retained the ability. "That's the problem with those big temper displays. It's all rush at the beginning-then comes the hangover."

Whatever Batty had been wrong about before-including his lunatic theory that Deckard himself was a replicant-he was nailing this situation. Deckard knew that the disembodied voice was right; inside his head, he was giving his ass a well-placed kick. "That was the whole reason I agreed to do it. For the money." Deckard emitted a short, ill-humored laugh. "And then I didn't even get it. The whole trip was a waste of time."

"But you knew it would be." The briefcase spoke softly, almost kindly. "Didn't you?"

Deckard wasn't sure. He gazed broodingly at the dark-filled viewscreen. Temper displays weren't the only things that had problems attached to them. Needing money, being desperate for it, the way a drowning person craved oxygen in his lungs-that brought along its own raft of difficulties, the things that screwed up the rational functionings of one's brain. "Anything can be believed," Deckard mused aloud. "If you have to."

"And that's how you fell in with that Urbenton creep?" Batty's voice prodded at him. "Not a good call on your part, Deckard. That guy's slime. I could tell, just from hearing him."

"You're a good judge of character." Deckard tilted his head back against the top of the pilot's seat. "Believe me, I'm sorry I got hooked up with the little sonuvabitch."

"I take it you must've been pretty hard up for cash."

Deckard made no reply. The briefcase's statement was dead on the mark. Money was even more necessary than oxygen, at least in the hovels of the U.N. emigrant colonies. Breathable air, smelling of glue and recycling filters overdue for changing, was at least furnished free of cost by the U.N's own blue-helmeted Environmental Maintenance teams, along with the basic ration loads of algae-derived carbos and proteins. Money, on the other hand, the emigrants had to provide for themselves--either from the savings they'd brought with them from their former lives on Earth, or what they hustled in the colonies' black market and/or other officially tolerated, unsanctioned free enterprise zones. All of which, the savings or the hustling proceeds, only served to stave off bankruptcy, destitution, and death for a little while. Any emigrant could lie on the bunk in his hovel, fingers laced together between the back of his head and the thin pillow, and feel his life seeping away, like the sour air hissing through a leak in the plastic Quonset roof above him. And not even care any longer.

He'd just about reached that point-or would have, if he hadn't locked a vow into the pit of his soul, a vow with both Sarah Tyrell's and Rachael's names stamped in smoldering, ashen letters upon it-when the smug little video director Urbenton had shown up at the hovel's pneumatic-sealed door. Travelling incognito, or travelling at all, being able to come to Mars and then leave again-that had been impressive evidence of Urbenton's pull, some kind of cozy arrangement between his Speed Death Productions company and the cable services provider that effectively called all the shots in the colonies. The cable company was the arbiter of life and death, the ruler of the emigrants' pocket universe; in a low-or even zero-stim environment like Mars, the cable feed into the hovels was the true sustaining pipeline, one that people continued to shell out for long after their cash reserves had dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford edibles beyond the U.N's meager rations.

So when Urbenton had appeared, with his greased-smooth dealer's smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, fhere was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colony's marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he'd moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more breathable air that the annual monsoon rains managed to scrub to a lower toxicity level.

"Let's have a little talk, Mr. Niemand-" When Urbenton had used Deckard's alias, the smile on the video director's face had widened, like that of some reptile unhinging its jaws to swallow an entire goat in one mouthful. "By ourselves, all right?" They'd left Mrs. Niemand-she didn't even pretend to call herself Rachael anymore--sleeping on the hovel's narrow bed, or perhaps gazing up at the dark memorial vistas that played out behind her eyelids. It had been a long time since Deckard had pretended that he knew what went on inside Sarah Tyrell's head. He'd pulled the hovel's airseals shut and followed Urbenton-and the scent of money that the man had exuded.

Now, sitting in the skiff's cockpit with the talking briefcase beside him, Deckard slowly nodded. "That's why I did it." As if it really needed any explanation. "The guy just
smelled
like money."

"That's a powerful attractant." The voice of Roy Batty sounded amused. "More so than all those pheromones of sex and love and pride, all that corporeal stuff that yanks people around so well. Excuse me for waxing philosophical. I have a slightly more . . . disinterested viewpoint these days, as you might be able to tell." The voice's tone sharpened. "Just how much did Urbenton offer you?"

"A lot." Deckard recited the raw numbers. "That was just for starters, what was in the production budget. Residual payments would probably have come to more, once the video went out over the wires."

"Not bad."

It wasn't.
Or wouldn't have been
, Deckard corrected himself.
If I would've gotten it
. Free money, or as close to that ideal state as this universe allowed-there had been virtually nothing he had to do in order to get the payment from the mysterious financial backers to whom Urbenton had constantly referred. Basically, Deckard knew, just as Urbenton had made it clear, that Speed Death Productions had only wanted to be able to list him as the technical adviser on the video-something to keep the money people happy, a touch of authenticity for the whole project. The video was supposed to be a dramatized re-creation of Deckard's life, or at least that little bit of it when he'd been going through his last assignment as a blade runner, the job that Inspector Bryant had leaned on him to undertake after he'd already quit the department in disgust. According to Urbenton, that hunt- with half a dozen or so Nexus-6 models on the loose in the wilds of Los Angeles, including the group's highly dangerous leader, the replicant version of Roy Batty, and only Rick Deckard out there to round them up and ice them-had already achieved some sort of legendary, even mythic, status. Enough detail had leaked out to transform it from urban folktale to big-deal saga. Or so Urbenton said-Deckard hadn't cared as long as there was a payday at the end of the process. If Speed Death Productions figured that there was an audience for watching some poor bastards of escaped replicants getting blown away, that was probably a correct assessment-it tied in with Deckard's own feelings about the innate charm of the human species.

"All I had to do," said Deckard, "was sit on my can at the edge of the set and keep my mouth shut. Urbenton wasn't exactly hiring me for my creative input. Then get paid off and go home."

"Well, you're going home at least. Or at least back to whatever's as close as somebody like you gets." A pitying smile inflected the briefcase's voice. "Too bad you couldn't pull off the part about keeping your mouth shut. You spend your whole life being the silent type, killing without a word, and then the one time it counts, you can't resist spouting off."

"Tell me about it." Whatever adrenaline had been left in his system, the rush from seeing death at close quarters and then letting his own anger come out like an uncorked flamethrower was dissipated now, leaving the flat dregs of self-loathing. "Silence might not be a virtue, but at least it would've been profitable."

"You know, I was a little surprised-" Batty's voice turned thoughtful. "When I was told you were up at that Outer Hollywood station. And that was where Holden and I were going to track you down, make our little delivery. Me, that is."

"I don't recall ordering any luggage with some dead guy's personality wired into it."

"Well, you didn't." Whatever was inside the briefcase sounded stung by Deckard's words. "It's supposed to be a surprise, smart-ass. If you'd known it was coming, you probably would've screwed it up somehow. As it was, poor old Holden got himself iced trying to make contact with you."

"That'll teach you." Deckard settled farther back into the pilot's seat, folding his arms across his chest. "Send yourself airmail next time."

"Real funny, Deckard. You may have given up being a blade runner, but you're still a cold bastard." If the briefcase had had a human form, it would've nodded. "That's what I
like
about you."

"Whatever. Anyway, why shouldn't I have been at Outer Hollywood? If that's where the money is."

"You were supposed to be long gone by now," replied Batty's voice. "Wasn't that the plan? Holden told me all about it, what you'd decided when you were still back on Earth. You were going to get yourself and Sarah Tyrell some new identities, then hightail it out to the U.N's far colonies. Out in the stars, Deckard; not in some dumpy Martian transit squat. Then you and Sarah-or were you still calling her Rachael?-then the two of you would be nice and safe. A cozy domestic couple."

"Believe me-" Deckard could hear the sour weariness in his own voice. "That last bit was never part of the plan."

"Wouldn't have believed it, if it had been. Nevertheless; the stars. That's where you were supposed to be going. Or already have gone. So what happened?"