EdgeOfHuman (33 page)

Holden bent down to pick up the gun. And realized his mistake immediately. When his head went below the level of his heart, the amped-up wave of blood dizzied him. To blackout: he fell, fist grasping tight around the gun's handle.

On the spinning earth, he could feel the gun sweating against his palm. He managed to lift his head for a moment; the edges of his gaze turned red as he scanned the limits of the angular landscape.

Motion against stillness. He'd sighted Deckard; even better, he saw that there was no place farther to which the replicant and ex-blade runner could get to. Deckard had traversed enough of the rubble-strewn ground to hit smack against the abandoned freeway, turned onto its side by the long-ago earthquakes. A blank wall trisected by lane divider dashes reared up against the night sky, with a humanlike figure small against its base. Another figure appeared, running, quickly eating up the distance between Deckard and itself. The shock of white hair was enough to identify Batty.

"Don't bother, Deckard-you're not going anywhere!" Batty's gloating call cut through the night air.

As Holden watched, vision wavering, the figure in the long coat started climbing, hands clawing at cracks in the freeway's vertical surface, boots scrabbling at crumbling projections of cement or ends of metal reinforcement rods. Deckard had already worked himself up to the center lane by the time Batty sprinted across the last few yards.

"Don't . . . kill him . . ." Holden's voice came out as an agonized whisper. "You've got to keep him . . . alive . . ." Gun in hand, he pushed himself up from the ground, to his knees.

That was his last effort. Holden sprawled forward, seeing nothing. Feeling only the cold weight of the gun under his fingertips and the razor-edged stones pressing against his face.

Into his eyes fell dust and grit, knocked loose from above by Deckard's progress toward the freeway's upper edge. Batty reached for the next hold and pulled himself up, threads of blood trickling from his abraded fingertips to the tautened cords of his wrists.

Against the clouds that had shrouded the night sky, he'd momentarily lost track of Deckard; only when he got his hands onto the top edge, scrabbling one knee and then the other up onto the horizontal surface, did he catch sight of him again. As Batty crouched, he spotted Deckard running along the narrow ribbon. The freeway's understructure had broken away during the original quake, leaving a sheer drop into darkness on either side of a meter-wide span.

Batty saw a dark space open up before the figure in the long coat. A section of the freeway wall had previously disintegrated, leaving an abrupt cliff front on either side of the gap. Deckard halted, nearly toppling from the crumbling brink; he glanced over his shoulder at Batty, then drew back for a running leap.

That hesitation was enough; Batty dived, one outstretched hand grappling Deckard's foot just as it lifted from the edge's flat surface. They fell together, Batty's shoulder hitting the concrete as he crooked his gun arm around Deckard's knee. Rolling onto his back, Deckard shoved the butt of his hand against Batty's forehead, pushing him back and toward the edge's limit.

From beneath them came snapping and grinding noises. The impact of their bodies was more than the freeway section could withstand; the network of cracks along the vertical surface suddenly widened, boulders of cement crumbling away from the mesh of rusted metal beneath. Batty felt the gulf open beneath, the dark air made tangible with the grey dust filling his mouth and nostrils. The collapse of the freeway section yanked Deckard's ankle from his grasp; he rolled onto his shoulder, his arm desperately reaching, hand locking on to an angled stub of rebar sticking out from the ragged precipice above him. Twisting his neck, he saw the concrete and interwoven metal tumbling to the ground below with a crescendoing, bass-heavy roar.

Batty held on, his other hand reaching up and grasping the freeway's narrow edge. He pulled himself onto it, chest scraping across the rough surface. The collapse of the middle section had peeled with it another layer of the remaining vertical wall, leaving a tightropelike span only a few inches wide. Kneeling, with one hand gripping the edge for balance, he looked across the now wider gap as the dust sifted out of the moon's thin radiance.

He could see that Deckard had managed to hold on as well, catching on to the far edge of the gap and scrambling up onto the ribbon of horizontal, empty space falling away to either side. He watched as Deckard got to his feet, one behind the other, arms outstretched to darkness, carefully backing away from the gap, then halting.

There was nowhere else for Deckard to go. The section of freeway edge on which he stood was less than two meters long, a narrow island rearing up from the rubble and ancient debris below. He looked over his shoulder at the sharp drop behind him, one heel right at the crumbling rim, then back across the unbridgeable gap between himself and his pursuer.

Another rumbling noise moved through the air, the monsoon clouds gathered so low as to almost press upon Batty's shoulders. He could taste the electricity discharged and crackling in the atmosphere.

"Don't go away, Deckard-" A shout, and then a smile that Batty knew would be even more disturbing to the trapped figure opposite. "I'll be right there."

Dragging himself up the side of the crevice, after the vertical wall had given way beneath him, left Deckard gasping for breath. His pulse hammered in his throat as he looked across the breach of empty space, toward the figure on the opposite freeway section. A few drops of rain, warmed to the temperature of the blood in his veins, spattered against his face as he watched Batty take a few careful steps backward.

He can't . . . impossible
. Fragments of thoughts were all that Deckard's brain produced.
It's too far
--

Batty stripped off his leather jacket and tossed it away. The sparse, hot rain mingled with the sweat on his shoulders and chest; the smile diminished as Batty's gaze narrowed, seeking out and locking on to Deckard's. The face was still ancient, lined and chiseled by time, even as the revealed body seemed to grow larger, the corded and veined muscles swelling with some deep vital influx. The drops of water collected in the hollows beneath Batty's cheekbones, then curved along the angles of his jaw and into his throat as he leaned forward, one hand reaching before him, as though the untremored fingers could grip the humid air itself.

Thoughts dissolved to wordless memory flash inside Deckard's skull, as he saw Batty running toward him. Another time, another place. In the city's depths, far above its darkly luminous streets; another vault of empty space carved out of the night by the lashing rain. The past merged without seam into the present as he watched, his own breath lodged fistlike in his throat, as the glistening form, human yet not, sprinted along the concrete ribbon. A last footfall at the crumbling rim, then Batty launched himself across the dark gap.

The past moment and the present, and none at all, time halting with Deckard's pulse. Sudden lightning lit up the heavy undersides of the storm clouds, the blue-white illumination transforming Batty into an angel of steel and diamond, held aloft from the dull earth's gravity by its own fierce, eternal falling.

Deckard shook himself from the image's spell, scrambling backward, one foot misplaced and slipping off the edge. Pebbles of cement pattered down the wall as he caught himself hard on one knee, both hands clutching at the horizontal surface beneath his chest.

"Got you-" Batty's voice sounded from above him; at the same moment the other's hands grabbed the front of Deckard's shirt. Rain oozed from the wadded cloth and ran over the knuckles of Batty's fists as he lifted Deckard from the narrow concrete. He smiled, his bright gaze shining up into Deckard's dazed eyes. "You weren't expecting that." Batty jerked his arms, wrists pressed against each other, his doubled fists knocking Deckard's chin back. "Am I right?"

He made no answer, but rammed one knee against Batty's gut, hard enough to break the hold at his throat. Batty staggered backward, arms flailing, catching himself just before the crevice gaping behind him.

Deckard twisted as he fell, his spine hitting the edge of the concrete, shoulders leaning back onto empty air. Before he could scrabble away, Batty was on top of him.

"Good job-" The words slid through Batty's clenched teeth. "You know . . . you really are one of the best." His hand gripped tight on Deckard's throat. "I hate to have to kill you."

Blindly, Deckard clawed at the concrete edge pressing into his back. A stone weight fell into. his fist; he whipped his arm up in a roundhouse arc, the chunk of cement slamming into the corner of Batty's temple.

The blow rocked the other man back, his grip loosening on Deckard's throat. He took one hand away and touched the rain-diluted blood streaming down the side of his face. Batty nodded appreciatively. "That . . . really hurt . . .

Deckard managed to push his shoulder blades a few inches farther along the edge. He cradled the cement chunk in his fist, warily eyeing the figure crouching above him. The realization had rushed upon him. "You're . . . you're the sixth replicant . . ." He saw it now; there must've been two Roy Batty replicants among the escapees. "Aren't you? You'd have to be . . ."

The oozing blood leaked into the corner of Batty's smile. "No . . ." He slowly shook his head. "I don't think I am."

"But . . . the way you jumped . . ." Raising his head, Deckard pawed the rain away from his eyes. "It was too far. That was the way
he
did it . . . the other Batty. The one . . . that died." He peered closer at the face, the white hair plastered onto its wounded brow. Impossible to tell if the appearance of age had been a shuck, something to lull his quarry into complacency, or whether a deep reserve of energy and will had surged up inside Batty, transforming him to some ancient, maddened glory. "So you must be another replicant . . . just like it was . . ."

"No." Another shake of the head. "It's like I told your friend. I'm just very,
very
good at what I do. That's why I was hired for this job." Batty's smile faded. He turned his head, gaze shifting toward the dark. "Besides . . . if I were a replicant . . ." His voice grew low and brooding. "That would mean . . . that certain people had lied to me.

That they had been lying to me all along. And I wouldn't be at all happy about that." He looked back around at Deckard. One sly corner of the smile reappeared. "It doesn't matter, anyway. Whether I'm the replicant . . . or
you
are. I'm still going to kill you. Then I'll turn you in-what's left of you-and get paid." He leaned forward, hand reaching for Deckard's throat. "That's all there is to it."

Deckard whipped the cement chunk toward the side of Batty's head; the other blocked it with his forearm, the impact dislodging the stone from Deckard's grasp and sending it clattering down the wall of the abandoned freeway. At the same moment the sharp ridge beneath them crumbled; Deckard slid a few inches farther out into empty space, with Batty's fists locked onto his throat.

"Go ahead, Deckard!" Batty had shot a glance down to where Deckard's hands had shoved themselves against the top of the wall. A push from his braced arms would send them both toppling toward the jagged ground below. "Maybe I'll make it-" A mad spark flared in Batty's eyes. "But you won't!"

The other's grinning face wavered behind a haze of red as Deckard's throttled breath swelled to the bursting point in his lungs. He could feel his own hands pushing at the crumbling stone, the tiny stones and grit digging into his flesh. His spine scraped raw across the edge, trapped blood rushing into his skull as he dangled backward . . .

Rain spattered on the roof of his mouth as the night's air suddenly rushed into his lungs. Batty's grip had loosened on his throat. The blinding haze faded; above him, the fierce intent in the other's eyes had been replaced by un comprehending wonder. Red seeped through Batty's eyebrows, spidering out from the concave ruin of his shattered forehead. From a black hole, its diameter that of a high-caliber bullet, a finger of blood reached down and gently touched Deckard between his own eyes. The echo of the gunshot was swallowed by the rumbling thunder of the clouds masking the sky overhead.

Batty fell, his body collapsing on top of Deckard, then tumbling, arms outstretched, down the freeway's wall. Deckard scrambled to grab hold of the edge of concrete, to keep from being pulled after the dead thing.

Gasping in exhaustion, Deckard crawled full-length onto the narrow horizontal space. With his chest and the side of his face flat against the concrete, fingertips dug tighter holds. Sheets of rain lashed across his back.

One of the corpse's heels had caught in an angle of rusted steel, leaving it dangling a few feet above the sideways world's rubble-strewn surface. Batty's arms flopped back in an inverted crucifix, the face gaping upward so the rain could sluice the blood from the head wound, pink rivulets thinning upon the ground beneath.

Holden lowered the gun, bullet heat seeping from the metal into his hand. The artificial heart staggered in his chest; he drew one cautious breath after another, trying to keep from passing out again. He'd barely been able to make it this far, creeping and stumbling from where he'd fallen in front of the empty apartment building. He knew he'd almost been too late; it had taken nearly all of his strength to wrap both hands around the gun and lift its crushing tonnage above his head. The rain had pounded into his face as he'd sucked in his breath, aimed, and fired.

He heard other noises now; he looked up again and saw Deckard slowly clambering down the cracked and gouged surface of the freeway.

With the gun's weight dragging his arm, he hobbled over to where the other man now stood.
Looks worse than me
, thought Holden. That sonuvabitch Batty had really worked him over.

"Deckard . . . I heard . . ." Holden gulped air into his wheezing bio-mechanical lungs. "I heard . . . what you said up there." He nodded, his own wet shirt collar rubbing against his neck. "You're right-Batty was the sixth replicant. He had to be . . ." It all seemed so clear to him now. "That's how he was disguising himself . . . trying to get away with it. As somebody else hunting down the sixth replicant . . ."