Replicant Night (12 page)

Speculating about aliens with human faces, and what their unknowable lives might be like, had one advantage: it had derailed the even darker reverie into which Deckard had fallen, that pit lined with self-accusation he knew all too well. Now he could put on his own mask, the one that looked just like him but bore the name Niemand, and go home and see what Mrs. Niemand had waiting on the table for him.

God only knows
, thought Deckard glumly as the shuttle slowed down to a crawl, the soft labial flaps of the colony's ground transport airlocks folding over the windows. What Sarah would've gotten up to, decided upon, in his absence-she was as far around the bend, he knew, as he himself was. The married state of the pseudonymous Niemands, the alias he shared along with equal measures of hate and guilt, was as mentally toxic as any sensory void to be found on Mars. No vacuum existed between himself and Sarah; the space between them was filled, and overfilled, with memory and the slow ebbing tide of the past that left things on a common shoreline-old photos, sheet music on an untuned piano, names whispered in that sad moment between sleep and waking, empty bottles overturned by a fumbling hand. Everything that could be picked up, still tear-wet, and studied as it turned to the same ashes in his and Sarah's mouths...

No wonder she was as crazy as he was. How could she be anything else?

"Takes you back, doesn't it?" The briefcase with Roy Batty's voice spoke up as Deckard toted it through the colony's body-dense main corridor, the hubbub of the black-market stalls, customers and purveyors, swirling around them. "Feels like being back at home, doesn't it? Your real home, I mean."

Deckard let his gaze, the hard encompassing cop scan that'd become engrained in his optic nerves, pass over the crowd. He knew what the briefcase meant, what it had picked up on without even having eyes. The city vibration, the inaudible blood-pressure hum beneath all the other shouting and murmuring voices-as he shouldered his way through, the briefcase dangling in one hand's tight grip, its corners catching like a barbed anchor against the press of others' thighs and hips, he saw the same faces he'd seen in his other life, the one spent on Earth. Nothing had changed, at least in its essential sense-identical eyes glittered too bright and hungry, whether they were naked or shielded behind dark lenses or bombardier-style goggles. Other eyes, that he remembered as well, opiated or glazed over with any number of pharmaceutical combinations-the marketplace's recycled air smelled rancid with the receptor-specific molecules exuded through the sweat upon shivering, pallid skin. And those whose eyes were still focussed, but on some point far from here, a deific vision they'd come to the shabbiest stall and overcoated, secret-pocketed vendors to find-Deckard remembered seeing those before as well.

"Just goes to show," he spoke aloud-nobody in the crowd noticed a person talking to himself or having a conversation with the small luggage he carried. "That L.A's not a place. It's an idea. A bad idea."

The crowd thinned out as Deckard got farther from the marketplace's center. He made better time, striding through the colony's residential quarters, his passage marked by the strips of loosened duct tape wavering overhead. Stepping over the crawling forms of the stim-deprived terminal cases, their blank stares swiveling up in his direction, Deckard reached for the knob of his hovel's front door.

The door was unlocked, and slightly ajar; the slightest push of his hand set it drifting into the unlit interior. Old cop instincts held Deckard back, his gaze moving across the revealed angle of motionless space inside.

"What's wrong?" The briefcase had sensed the hesitation.

"Nothing." Deckard drew in a careful breath, as though he could roll on his tongue any stray, captured atoms. "Everything..."

Once he'd had devices to do the work for him, the full array of department-issued gadgetry, the trick units that came out of the LAPD's research labs, down in the deepest basements where the sunless geeks groomed their oscilloscope tans. The voice-controlled espers, the softly breathing Voigt-Kampff machines-now he had to do it the old-fashioned way, firing up the subtle instincts that cops had depended on for centuries.

Something crackled under the sole of Deckard's boot as he shifted his weight. Looking down, he spied the bright glitter of fractured electronics, splinters of metal; a wedge of an autonomic clock face stared back at him, the little dots it'd had for eyes blank and inactive. More bits and pieces of the alarm clock, he saw now, were scattered for several meters near the hovel's entrance. He reached down and picked up a broken corner of a miniaturized circuit board; its edges crumbled as he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. He threw the green-gritted fragment aside, then pushed the door the rest of the way open.

Deckard stepped inside the hovel, aware that it was empty of any other human form. He stood motionless in the center of the room, then slowly set the briefcase down beside himself.

"How does that old song go? Something about another mule in your stall?" Batty's voice sounded smug. Whatever sensors had been built into the briefcase were still as sharp as Batty's had been, in either his human or replicant incarnation. "There were other men here ... just a little while ago, as a matter of fact. You can tell that, can't you?" The silence of a thin smile could almost be heard. "And you know what else? I don't think they were here to check the meters."

"Why don't you shut up," said Deckard in disgust. "As if I care." The truth was that he did, though not for any reasons of jealousy. Whatever sexual or romantic claim he and Sarah Tyrell might have had on each other had long since evaporated in the fierce glare of what they knew about, and had done to, each other. Even the resemblance between Sarah and his long-dead Rachael-close enough to constrict his heart each time he'd looked upon the living face-wasn't enough to evoke any emotion besides hatred. "She can do whatever she wants. We're not really Mr. and Mrs. Niemand, you know."

"Of course not." The briefcase's voice still contained its knowing smile. "That would be too easy-being the same thing inside as you are on the outside. You haven't been that in a long time, Deckard."

"Tell me about it." He gazed around the empty space and toward the dark rectangle of the bedroom door.

"And
of course
she can do whatever she wants. Except walk out on you. Because she's not here, is she?"

He didn't answer. Leaving behind the briefcase-and Roy Batty's mocking, under-the-skin voice-Deckard strode into the bedroom, flipping on the switch beside the door. Low-wattage light, yellow and flickering, seeped through the dusty web of tape and corner-dangling patches on the ceiling. The air seeping through the leaks wasn't enough to draw out the smell of aging laundry and bottoming-out mood swings.

"Mrs. Niemand isn't here." A different voice spoke behind him. "She left."

Deckard looked over his shoulder at the autonomic wall calendar, the companion to the alarm clock missing from the bedside table. "Where'd she go?"

The mountain-filled scene fluttered above the rows of numbers. "She didn't" -the calendar spoke aggrievedly- "choose to inform me of her destination." Its voice darkened. "
She
probably didn't even know."

There'd been a time that he and Rachael had spent out in the wilds in a ramshackle cabin surrounded by a dark cathedral of trees, north of the scene in the calendar photo. A toobrief interval between their fleeing L.A. and his being forced to return. Nights colored silver by moonlight, days blackened by the coffin that he'd sat beside, gazing at the sleeping face of the woman he loved. Sleeping and dying; the coffin, a transport module stolen from the Tyrell Corporation-the glass-lidded device in which replicants were shipped to the outer colonies before their four-year life spans could expire-had been the means of stretching out their stolen hours together. Of sipping half-life moments, rather than watching all time, all Rachael's life, spill out upon the ground and seep away like rain.
I thought I had it bad then
-his grieving station by the slowly dying woman, the silent vigils between the dwindling minutes of her waking. Looking at the picture on the wall calendar, Deckard knew he'd give the rest of his own life, if he could, to be back in the midst of that dark forest, in the yellowed circle of a kerosene lantern, sitting beside the coffin and waiting, waiting forever, in the unending moment between one dream and the next...

"Mr. Niemand?" The calendar's reedy voice tapped at the edge of his thoughts.

He'd give anything. Even the plans he'd made, the decisions and vows he'd sealed down into his heart, about what he'd do with Sarah Tyrell. Her fate, and his.
Even that
...

The calendar tried again, using his real name. "Mr. Deckard? Hello?"

A slow nod, the drawing in of his breath, as he refocussed on the calendar and the flat, meaningless picture on its surface. "All right," he said. "So who was it she went with?"

"I wouldn't know. She didn't tell me that, either." The calendar had an innate dislike for details not being filled in. "There were two of them-I could tell that much. They were talking in the other room, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. I just have this little directional microphone built in, you know. Now, if I had the intercom option, if you'd paid to have that feature activated, then the advantages would be-"

"Yeah, right." Deckard interrupted the sales pitch. A longstanding peeve of his was the way these low-rent domestic appliances were always whining for upgrades. "How long ago did all this happen? When did Sarah leave with these men?"

"You should ask the clock. That's more its department-"

"The clock's dead." Deckard didn't mind saying so. "So you tell me. When did they leave?"

"Um..." A fearful quaver sounded in the calendar's voice. "The clock? She did that, didn't she?" The calendar made an audible effort to pull itself together. "I guess . . . it was about, maybe six hours ago. That Mrs. Niemand-I mean Sarah-that she left with those two men. Gosh..." Its voice faded, then picked up again. "If it's any help, she left a note. Over there on the table."

Deckard walked over and picked up the bullet that had also been left for him. He rolled it between his fingers, then weighed it in his palm. A wordless message, or one that didn't need words to get its meaning across. Sarah had probably bought it, and the necessary gun as well, down in the black-market stalls, where just about anything could be acquired. Thus, she must've iced the nagging clock; on her way out, Deckard figured, with whoever these two men had been.
This one
, he thought, looking down at the bright, tapered metal,
was meant for me
. The kind of homecoming surprise he'd been expecting for a while now; his caution at the hovel's front door had been mainly due to not wanting a hole the size of a baby's fist plowed through his forehead.

He slipped the bullet into his jacket pocket and unfolded the scrap of paper that had been beneath it.

Deckard
-The scrawl was Sarah's handwriting, the big ego-driven letters she'd never lost.
I'll see you later
.

The mute bullet had said as much. A warning, the cold kiss she'd greet him with the next time they met. He crumpled the paper into a wad in his fist, then tossed it into the rubble in the bedroom's corner.

"Off into the ozone?" Batty's voice curled mockingly. The briefcase sat in the middle of the hovel's front room, where Deckard had left it. "They like to do that. Take it from me; I know. They just leave."

He stepped over the briefcase and closed the door. "Not your problem, is it?" He brushed away the dangling strips of peeled tape. "You should mind your own business."

"Ah, but you see-your problems are mine, too." An invisible shrug. "You and I ... we just have so much in common, Deckard."

"I doubt it." He crossed to the hovel's tiny kitchenette. "You're in a box." Leaning over the sink crowded with moldering dishes, Deckard rooted through the top cupboard. "I've still got flesh to worry about." He found the square-sided bottle he wanted, pulled it out, and unscrewed the cap. "So the answers to my problems are different. Like this one."

"That smells like scotch. Or something close to it."

He rinsed out a usable glass and poured a two-finger shot into it. "They make it here." He tossed back the first fiery swallow, gritting his teeth as it rolled acid down his throat. "So it's not anything. Except grain alcohol and food coloring."

"Sounds grim. I'll pass. Even if I could drink."

"Good call." Deckard emptied the glass, feeling his gut contract with the hard liquid shock. He poured another and sat down at the kitchenette table with it, pushing aside more crusted dishes and fog-clouded glasses to make room for his elbows. He laid his head down on his forearms and closed his eyes. Exhaled liquor fumes cut the stale cloy of the hovel in his nostrils, an odor of sweat and pent-up anger that could never leak away through the poorly taped seams.

He knew that he could fall asleep if he let himself; the fatigue would wash over him, an ocean with its leading edge tinged brown by the bottle's contents. He also knew that it would do no good, that it would last only a few minutes at best, the same as it had in the skiff's cramped egg coming back from the Outer Hollywood station. A moment of darkness, then dreaming, then waking, with the border blurred between those two states; the way he used to raise his head and open his eyes, back in his apartment in Los Angeles, with an empty glass smelling of real scotch in one hand, the fingers of his other sunk into a silent chord on the piano's yellowed keys. Looking up at the faces in the old frayededged, black-and-white photos that had drifted across the music rest like dead leaves; looking at them and, for a few seconds, wondering who they were. Until he remembered again . .

"All right." Deckard took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and straightened up in the chair. With his forefinger, he pushed the glass and its murky contents away from himself. The room was small enough that he could twist around, reach back, and pick up the briefcase by its handle from where he had left it sitting in the middle of the floor. He swung the briefcase up onto the table, laying it flat in the space he'd cleared. "Let's hear it. You got something to tell me about, now's the time."