EdgeOfHuman (6 page)

"You don't need to hear the details." Voice level, cold. "If there's problems -- deaths -- then the U.N. and the off-world colonists brought it all upon themselves. They demanded a higher quality of slave labor. They want replicants that are closer and closer to actually being human, to having that level of intelligence. And emotion." Colder, and with contempt. "And not because it's any more efficient or productive than ordinary dumb robots would be. Our old Nexus-1 models were more than adequate for the task."

"Then why?"

"You blade runners really are like children. Murderous children." She gazed pityingly at him. "You can kill, but you don't understand. About human nature. Why would the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It's simple. Machines don't suffer. They aren't capable of it. A machine doesn't know when it's being raped. There's no power relationship between you and a machine. That's been the U.N.'s whole pitch about the attractions of the off-world colonies all along. The big human thrill. For a replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions." A corner of her lip curled. "When Bryant told you about the Nexus-6 models, he was conning you and he knew it. The replicants' emotions aren't a design flaw. The Tyrell Corporation put them there. Because that's what our customers wanted."

"Sounds like they got more than they wanted."

"They got
exactly
what they wanted; they just don't want to pay the price for it. Nobody ever does. The price for having slaves who can suffer is that eventually those slaves will rebel. Someday, somehow -- if they get the chance -- they'll put a knife to their masters' throats." She smiled, as one savoring the bleak wisdom of the universe. "Let's face it, Deckard, it's just
human
nature. And that's what we re-created with the Nexus-6 replicants. That's what the U.N. authorities, the ones in charge of the off-world colonies, have gotten into such a sweat about. Only they can't come right out and admit that they screwed up, that their entire for making the colonies attractive to potential settlers is a disaster, that it leads to garrison states, like ancient Sparta armed to the teeth against its own
helots
-- or else fields of bones on other planets, if the replicants manage to pull off a successful rebellion and the U.N. has to send in a military unit to sterilize the place, keep the infection from spreading. There's all kinds of things happening out there in the colonies that the authorities aren't telling the people here on Earth. It wouldn't exactly make good recruiting propaganda, would it?"

On the other side of the
bureau plat
, Deckard remained silent. She could almost see the slow meshing of gears be-to lid his eyes. "I think . . ." He stirred slightly in the heir. "I think I can guess where you're heading with this. You're going to tell me that the U.N. authorities and the police have gone in together. On a conspiracy to make it look like the problems with the replicants are the Tyrell Corporation's fault. And not theirs."

"You're forgetting something, Deckard. It's not just a conspiracy against the Tyrell Corporation. It's a conspiracy against the blade runners as well. Or more accurately, a conspiracy
using
the blade runners. Using their deaths, that is. The U.N. authorities have to make it appear that the Nexus-6 replicants are even
more
dangerous than they really are, more capable of passing as human . . . and more capable of evading the system that was put into place to detect and eliminate them. That's you, Deckard, you and the other blade runners. What better way to make that happen than to set all of you up to take a fall, the way they set up Dave Holden? They'd just have to make it look as if the blade runners were no match against the Nexus-6 replicants, and they'd have all the justification they needed for shutting down the Tyrell Corporation. For good. No more corporation, no more replicants; the off-world colonies, the ones that are left, would have to find some other way of getting along."

"Maybe." Deckard looked unimpressed. "Or at least until you figured out how to get the company back into business. Maybe with some other replicant model, one that wasn't quite so smart and dangerous."

"Oh, no, it wouldn't work that way." This one as well, Sarah had anticipated. "If the Tyrell Corporation gets shut down -- the way its enemies would like to -- it won't be going back into business. Ever again. This whole complex . . .' She gestured toward the walls of the office suite and by extension, all of the headquarters buildings beyond. "For us to get a look on the U.N.'s business, to be the exclusive suppliers of replicants for the off-world colonies, this entire setup had to be built according to U.N. specifications. All the corporation's research and design facilities are here, along with the manufacturing units, every inch of the assembly lines that put out replicants ready to ship. Even the Tyrell family living quarters are here; that was part of the U.N. requirements as well. The shape of the buildings, the way they're arranged facing each other, everything. It was all done so that when the red button is pushed -- when the built-in self-destruct sequence is initiated -- the results are absolute annihilation to the Tyrell Corporation, with minimal damage to the surrounding area of the city."

Deckard's eyes opened a fraction wider. " 'Self-destruct'? What're you talking about?"

"Don't get nervous on me. It's not likely to happen while you're sitting here." She gave a small shrug. "But it could. That's what it was designed to do, from the beginning. All of the Tyrell Corporation's headquarters complex -- everything around us -- was built with enough explosive charges in the substructure and imbedded in the walls, all of them linked by a programmed timing chain, to reduce it to smoking dust."

She had trained herself to speak of these things dispassionately, by reciting them inside her head. Late at night before she fell asleep, like a bedtime story. "There might be a few pieces big as a man's fist in the pile. There might even be a few pieces of
me
, if I'm here when it happens. Though I don't think that anybody would be bothered to come and look. Everything's designed to implode, to fall in upon the center; that's why the towers are slanted toward each other. It'd be a thoughtful sort of apocalypse; nobody else would get hurt. So you see, Deckard, if the Tyrell Corporation goes out of business -- if the U.N. authorities are able to justify pushing that red button, starting up the self-destruct sequence -- it won't be going back into business any-time soon."

"And that's what you believe they want?"

"Rather than admit their own mistakes? That they were wrong about how they've managed the off-world colonization program?" Sarah leaned her head back for a quill hollow-sounding laugh. "Of course. That's another part of human nature. We always murder rather than apologize."

Silent, Deckard appeared to be contemplating the empty glass in his hand, holding it by the faceted base. "Am I supposed to think . . ." His murmur was almost too soft to hear. "Am I supposed to think that if the Tyrell Corporation gets blown up into little pieces, that it'd be some kind of tragedy?"

"I don't care what you think. You can think whatever you want. But I'm not going to let the Tyrell Corporation be destroyed. It's mine." She turned to look out the window behind her, at the towers glazed dark red by the setting sun. "I don't expect you to be as concerned about the fate of the corporation as I am. I just want you to do the job for which I brought you here."

"Like I told Bryant, a long time ago . . ." He leaned forward and set the empty glass down on the bureau plat, beside hers. "I don't work here."

"You will. For me."

"Don't bet on it." His gaze narrowed. "I don't even know what you'd want me to do."

"Isn't it obvious? There's still an escaped replicant -- a Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 model, to be precise loose somewhere in the city. I want you to find it and -- what's the word? --
retire
it. Before whatever's the next stage of the conspiracy can be set in motion. Before the Tyrell Corporation, and everything that my uncle worked to bring into existence, can be destroyed."

"Like I told you . . ." Deckard slowly shook his head. "I don't regard that as a tragedy."

"I can see that." She touched the rim of each of the empty glasses in turn. "So . . . I'd have to make it worth your while, then."

"You don't have enough money to do that. Nobody does."

"Perhaps not. But . . . there are other things I could offer you. Things you value. Say . . . the woman you love . . ."

Deckard straightened up in the chair. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She stood up from the
bureau plat
and went over to the suite's high windows. "Come here." With a single motion of her hand, she turned the glass dark, an artificial night. "I have something to show you." The sun's glare burned through the photochrome layers, like the end of a severed vein.

For a few seconds he looked at her without moving, then got to his feet. As he walked toward her, she reached behind and loosened the binding of her hair.

"You did that once already." Deckard placed himself right in front of her, watching as she shook the dark wave of her hair free, across the tops of her shoulders. "You don't have to do it again. I can see the resemblance."

"It's not resemblance." Sarah brushed one hand through it, letting it fall again. "It's identity. You know that, don't you? No matter how many times you tell yourself otherwise . . . she and I are the same. When you love Rachael . . . it's me you love."

He closed his eyes. One of his hands raised, as though to take her by the arm, then halted.

"I'm the original. Rachael's the copy." She brought her voice down low. "You have to remember that . . ."

The hand trembled, caught between his will and his desire. Her presence -- she knew, could see it -- radiated through him, hot and bright as the sun piercing the muted windows.

She laid her own hand against his chest, to balance herself as she brought her lips close to his ear. "You know . . ." A whisper. "You know that it's me . . . always . . . '

"No . . ." He shook his head, eyes still closed. "You're not . . .

Her own eyelids shut out the little light remaining. All she felt was the brush of her lips against the side of his face. "She's dying. She's dead . . . that's the only difference." A whisper.

"Why should you love the dead?" Soft as her breath. "When you can love me?"

He made no reply. But his hand flew up and caught hers at his chest, locking tight upon the wrist's fragile bone.

The past was on tape, but she knew she didn't have to play it for him. Words that had been spoken beside another window, in another room, that had been caught by his own hidden cameras. The place where suspicion, a blade runner's occupational hazard, intersected with longing. The tapes had been left behind in Deckard's own apartment; they had been found and brought to her. So she knew what had been said in that other place, that other time, that other world.

She drew back a few inches from him. "Say . . . 'Say that you want me . . ."

As though caught in dreaming, he turned his head. Listening.

"Say it." Her whisper a command now.

He spoke, the words slow on his tongue. "Say that you want me . . ."

Time folded around them. His past, this present; his words, and the words Rachael had spoken. Long ago. "I want you . . ."

His hand let go of her wrist, but only so that it could sink into the darkness of her unbound hair, his other hand grasping her arm tight, drawing her toward him. Crushing her against him. The unspoken words in the kiss, the past that opened around them, that had never ended.

With a sudden convulsion he pushed her away, hard enough to snap her head back, as if he had struck her. Her breath trembled at her parted lips. Dizzied, she saw him turn his head back toward her, his eyes narrowed in the glare of one who has woken from a betraying vision. From the remembered past, into this world, and unsure for the moment which was the hallucination into which he'd fallen.

Another movement of her hand, and the window returned to an unfiltered transparency.

The smoldering light from outside washed over them, an ocean of luminous red. She returned his gaze with one steady and unflinching. Though she wondered what he saw in her eyes, as naked as that in his. Some other human quality, the one that would probably kill him. Irrational and faithful. No, she told herself.
Fate
. . .

"All right." Deckard wiped his mouth with the flat of his hand. "I'll take the job. I'll find your sixth replicant for you."

At least he hated her; she could see that in the ice and steel at the center of his eyes. She knew she could have that much of him.

"Why?" She was surprised by the single word. Her voice had spoken it.

She watched as he poured himself another shot from the bottle on the
bureau plat
. He knocked it back, then turned and looked at her.

"You reminded me." Voice flat, drained as the glass in his hand. "Of her. I had almost forgotten."

I won
. She gazed unseeing at the light fading to black.
I must have
. The edges of the towers blurred, and she tasted salt at the corner of her mouth.

Deckard's voice came from behind her, from somewhere in the great empty space that had held the two of them. "You're the quickest way. Back to her. To Rachael." She heard the hollow note of the glass as he set it down. "That's my price."

"What's your plan?" Andersson -- if that was really his name -- glanced over from the spinner's controls.

Deckard shrugged. "I've got my methods." The spinner swooped in low enough to the Olvera Street souk that Deckard could see the animal dealers packing up their wares, business done for the night. The zooid merchandise had to be gotten under tarps before the day's heat fried their synaptic circuits; the rarer and more expensive real animals needed water and temp-controlled cages to survive. "I think I've hunted down enough replicants to remember how it's done."

He kept his eyelids lowered partway. When he'd seen the city again, as Sarah Tyrell's agents had taken him in to his meeting with her, gouts of fire had flared into the dark sky, subterranean gases ignited as they seeped up through the trembling earth beneath L.A. Now those shouting torches were lost in the sun's advancing glare.