Replicant Night (16 page)

They run toward death
. The bleak truth. And Death, in the form of Rick Deckard or Dave Holden or any other blackgunned official assassin, ran toward them as fast, or just simply waited for them to come and be killed. What did it matter anyway to creatures with four-year life spans? To-morrow or the next day, or the day or the year after that, they would be iced just as surely by the flaws that Eldon Tyrell had designed into them.

Maybe
-the thought had crept through Deckard before-
maybe it was a relief.
For them, if not for himself.

"All right," said Deckard, pulling himself from his grim musings. "But you didn't answer your own question. If Isidore kept a list of all the escaped replicants he'd disguised, and that list was still around after he was offed-why wouldn't the police want it?"

"What would be the point? Come on, Deckard, use your brain." The briefcase's voice struggled to remain patient. "The police get a list of names; so what?
They're human
-or they might as well be. They can't be shown to be not human with the Voigt-Kampff machines and the empathy tests. They don't know themselves that they're escaped replicants. So what's the danger in just letting them live? They'll all drop dead pretty soon anyway, thanks to that four-year life span Tyrell built into them. They're no threat to anyone-so why not just let the poor bastards live, at least as long as they're going to? The police and the U.N. would just be making trouble for themselves by hunting the disguised replicants down-what kind of public relations is it to blow away people that everybody around them thinks are as human as they are? Do enough of that kind of shit, pretty soon you'd have real humans-whatever that means-worrying about whether they were going to be next. And then it would be the police who'd be in trouble."

"So who does want it?" Deckard leaned back and regarded the briefcase. "I sure as hell didn't-why send it to me?"

"The replicants, of course. Not the ones on Earth, the disguised ones-but the ones out there. Out in the stars; the insurrection. Isidore's work at the Van Nuys Pet Hospital has a big payoff for them. Because of it, the insurrection has a 'fifth column' on Earth-replicants just like themselves, perfectly disguised, infiltrated through all levels of society. The only problem is that the disguised replicants don't know that's what they are. That's where the list-the list that Isidore kept, the list that's inside me-that's where it comes in." Batty's voice turned smug, as though pleased at the show of its own logic. "The replicants' insurrection already has a division of its own behind the enemy lines, right there on Earth. The insurrection just has to find them. Find them and tell them what they really are. Not humans as they thought, but replicants. And on the side of the insurrection."

"Maybe." Deckard shrugged. "Or maybe not. There might be some of these disguised replicants who like believing that they're really human. They might not react too well to being told they're not. If they believe this little revelation at all."

"Different ones will react different ways." Batty's voice sounded unperturbed. "Some might even just kill themselves rather than face the truth. Because they'll know that it is the truth. The records that Isidore kept include not only the disguised replicants' new identities but their old ones-who and what they were out in the colonies, before they escaped and made their way to Earth. And something even better-or at least more powerful-than that. The data on each disguised replicant includes the
anamnetic trigger
for that individual-a code phrase that Isidore planted into their new artificial memories that'll bring the replicants to full, true consciousness. Once that trigger gets pulled-when a disguised replicant hears the big word-then the truth can't be denied. That sucker'll know just what he or she really is. They'll all know. And they'll know what side they should be on. Human or replicant." The briefcase laughed, short and harsh. "It'll be like what those last old die-hard Maoists used to say. One of their quotes from their little red book-you remember? 'Give up illusion-prepare for struggle.' Those poor bastards on Isidore's list won't even have any illusions to give up."

Deckard remembered that line; he'd heard it a long time ago, back when he'd spent his time in the student warrens beneath Los Angeles.
Or something like it
, thought Deckard. The alternate, preferred version being "Give up struggle-prepare for illusion." A holdover from the same historical epoch as the Maoists, the other war, the one that had gone on inside people's brains and central nervous systems. Resulting in the private opiocracy, the chemical dictatorship that half the city's population pledged allegiance to. He'd gone through the mandatory three-month detox wring-out when he'd climbed up skinny and starving from below and signed on with the LAPD, getting the departmental regs laid down to him, that the only acceptable intoxicants came in bottles and tasted like numbing fire down your throat.

The words stayed true, though. Old jokes made for bad realities. Struggle was the proverbial mug's game, a nonprofit enterprise for chumps who still believed . . . in what?
Doesn't matter
, thought Deckard. The result was still the same. They'd be lucky if they had any illusions left to fall back on. He didn't.

"So that's the deal, then." Deckard tapped one finger against the table, a soft dead sound. "The replicants out in the colonies, the insurrection-they want this list that Isidore kept, all this data about the disguised replicants on Earth. So they can contact them, flip their triggers with the magic words, tell them that they're actually replicants and not humans, get 'em fired up and working against the U.N.
Viva la revolución
. That's it, right? I take it that the insurrection would already have some way of getting in touch with these disguised replicants, once they know who they are?"

"Of course," Batty replied. "The rep-symps-the ones who put me in this box and loaded me up with Isidore's data- they're in contact with the insurrection. Once the replicants out in the colonies get the information-once you deliver me to them-then they can relay it back to the rep-symps. Who can then go out and find the disguised replicants, reveal their true identities and natures to them, and get them moving with the insurrection's plans. A lot of those disguised replicants are Nexus-6 models, like the Roy Batty replicant that was modeled after me. They can cause a lot of troublehell, you should know that better than anyone."

"Still doesn't make sense." Fighting the fatigue he'd brought with him to this world, Deckard shook his head. "This list of Isidore's, this information about the disguised replicants-it's only of any use back on Earth. If it's inside you, why bother having me drag you to the colonies out in the stars? Even if I could find a way of getting out there-right now, there's no long-range transit off Mars, remember? Just little skiffs, like the one I used to get to the Outer Hollywood station. So why shouldn't I just take you back to the rep-symps and hand you over to them, if you're the information they need?"

"One," the briefcase said sourly, "because you're a dead man back on Earth, or as good as. You show up there, toting me or not, you'd be spotted and iced before you could deliver me to anyone, let alone the rep-symps. And two-"

"Wait a minute." Deckard lifted his hand. "The rep-symps had this data already, loaded it into you, then had Holden bring you to me, just so I could go on carrying you out to the insurrection in the colonies? So the data could somehow be sent
back
to the rep-symps on Earth?" He shook his head. "They must be even more screwed up than I am."

"Dig it." The briefcase's voice turned even harder and blunter. "The data, the information that Isidore kept about the disguised replicants-it's encoded. Encrypted. Deep, bad, and unbreakable. It's got algorithms wrapped around it that the U.N's cryptology divisions haven't even seen the tail end of. There's not enough computing power in the universe to bear down on the data that got loaded into me. Isidore did that, too-he was a smart bastard all around. So the information, the list, is unusable to the rep-symps in its present form; it has to be unlocked before it can be read out and made functional."

"Who's got the key?"

"Correction, Deckard. It's not who has the key. It's who is the key."

"So it's a person." He could sense the answer that was coming, but asked anyway. "And that person is..."

"It's you," said the briefcase. "Who else? It's always been you."

Deckard sat silently for a few moments, then pushed the chair back and got up from the kitchen area table. He crossed the small space of the hovel to the door. Pulling it open, he looked out into the narrow, rubble-filled corridor beyond. The low-ceilinged public area had gone temporarily depopulated, as though a scouring wind had moved across the dunes of yellowing paper scraps and black-tinged garbage. The stimulus-deprived and the still functional, idiot hunger and the fragile containers of a dwindling sanity, had disappeared alike, leaving him with an illusion of physical isolation comparable to what he felt under his breastbone. Outside the permeated, decomposing walls of the transit colony, the same wind separated grains of red sand from each other, rolling them like desiccated atoms into mine shafts of ancient iron and the razor-slashed, tearless eyes of what once could have been human children.

There wouldn't be time to think about that kind of stuff anymore. Or to even see it. The trap had shown its teeth and snapped onto his leg; he could almost imagine the blood trickling down to his ankle.

"Why me?" Deckard had come back to the table; he turned the briefcase toward him. "Why should I be the key?"

"Because I'm the lock. It's as simple as that." Batty's voice softened to, if not pity, a recognition of their common fate. "Think about it. Remember. When I died, you were the last thing I saw, Deckard. I had my hands around your throat, and my eyes were locked onto your face, with your eyes about to burst and your teeth gritting, and you were the one who was going to die . . . and that's when I got it. Funny, huh?" The short, humorless laugh sounded again. "Just when you least expect it. That's when it's all over."

"That's when you wake up," said Deckard. He nodded slowly, remembering what had been said to him a long time ago in a rubbish-strewn, rain-soaked alley in Los Angeles. By the Kowalski replicant that he'd been hunting, the one that had caught him instead:
Wake up! Time to die.

"I know what you mean." The briefcase spoke softly. "Nothing like coming that close to your own corpsehood to put everything into perspective. Anyway, that's the deal. Like the old myths about the last thing a dying man sees being imprinted inside his eyes. Your face, Deckard, got imprinted a lot deeper than that-right down into my brain. When the rep-symps scraped me off that broken freeway and loaded my cerebral contents into this thing, there you were, right on the top level. That's a pretty powerful linkage-so what could make a better key than that? Especially since you're a key that's good for more than just opening this lock and decoding Isidore's list. You're walking and talking and scheming your little head off, aren't you? God knows, for what. But you've still got a lot of your old cop skills; you're not so screwed up as to have dropped those. If anybody can get me out to the stars-to the insurrection-you can, Deckard. You're the only way."

"It'd be easier for me to decrypt the Isidore data out of you right now, find some means of getting it down to the repsymps on Earth. Or out to the insurrection, if that's what the replicants want. Rather than lug you all over the universe."

"
Nyet
on that, pal. I may be the lock and you may be the key, but I'm not exactly a passive participant in this game. I've got some choice in the matter, still. I can choose the moment when the key can turn in the lock, when the data from Isidore can be decrypted. And believe me, I've already chosen. It's not going to happen, Deckard, until you've gotten me safely out of the reach of the U.N. and the LAPD and any other security agency that would just love to dump me in the incinerator. That would take care of a lot of their problems. And yours, too. But I'm not hanging on to the same kind of death wish as you might be. I may be stuck in this box right now, but if it's what I've got, I'll deal with it. And who knows? We get off Mars and out to the insurrection, give the replicants the information they want . . . they might show a little gratitude. Beyond just keeping me around, that is. Maybe they could download me into some spare replicant body. That'd be a trip. Then you'd have a real hard time trying to figure out if I were human or not. Or what part of me might be."

Deckard sorted through the briefcase's words. "You're still missing something," he said. "You may have some kind of motivation for this job, for getting you and this list of Isidore's out there-but what about me? Seems like a lot of hard work. Why would I want to?"

"You tell me." The briefcase sounded wryly amused again. "Maybe you've developed a conscience, or something like that. Kind of a human thing; it's been known to happen, even to blade runners. Look at poor old Dave Holden. That's what happened to him."

"Right. And he's dead."

"All the way," agreed the briefcase. "And there won't be any coming back for him, the way there was for me; no one there to download his cerebral contents into a handy little container. Lucky bastard. Shows there's no justice in this universe. Or maybe there is; maybe Holden had redeemed himself that much. I'll have to think about it."

Deckard shook his head. "I'm not looking for that kind of redemption."

"Obviously. Got your own agenda, don't you? So here's why you should do the job, why you should carry me on out to the insurrection." The briefcase was silent for a few seconds, then spoke again, softer. "Because that's the way you were heading. Isn't it? Out there. To the stars. Or to put it another way... as far from Earth as you could get. And you were taking Sarah Tyrell with you. That's the plan. I'm right, aren't I?"

No need for an answer, or even an attempt at denial. "How do you know that?"

"Come on, Deckard. I'm not the only one plotting your trajectory. Do you really think you got away scot-free, that you got even this far without other people knowing what you were up to? Your little disguise-this whole Mr. and Mrs. Niemand trip-how many people do you think you fooled with that? Your cover was blown before you even lifted off from the San Pedro docks. If you got away here to Mars, it's because the U.N. and the LAPD wanted you to get away. Probably just to see who you might hook up with, who you're working for-you know how they like to keep track of people. They got some long leashes that they string people out with-and that's what you've been on. Not just with the police, but with the rep-symps as well. They've got enough connections in the right places to have kept tabs on you."