Replicant Night (27 page)

"The briefcase," said Deckard. "If that's what you mean."

"That's the one. You know that's Batty in there, don't you? Of course you do-it's not like he's ever exactly quiet about it. Not the one I first met-the replicant who came here-but the other one. The original, the human templant."

"He was the one who told me to come here. He gave me the packet with your name on it; it was inside him, inside the briefcase." Deckard glanced toward one of the windows as though some change in the night's darkness might have indicated the passage of time. "And to get the stuff to mix it up. He had all the instructions. They must have briefed him pretty well."

"In a lot of ways," agreed Sebastian. "Those rep-symp guys they're pretty sharp. Psychologically, I mean. They knew you'd take some convincing."

"I still do."

"They thought you'd trust me." Sebastian's guileless, ingratiating smile appeared again. "Do you?"

Deckard shrugged. "I don't know that, either. Depends on what you tell me."

"All I can do is tell you the truth. Or at least as much of it as I know about."

"That'd be a novelty." Deckard didn't bother to smile. "The truth, I mean."

"Well..." Sebastian fiddled nervously with one of the screwdrivers he took from his coveralls pocket. "You can start with this. Batty wasn't lying-the Batty box, I mean; the briefcase-when he was telling you what the deal is. Whatever he told you about . . . what was the fella's name? Something Holder?"

"Holden. Dave Holden."

"Yeah, that's the guy. He's probably dead now, huh?"

Deckard gave a short nod. "Pretty much."

"It was kind of a risky job they stuck him with. Taking the Batty box out to you. He must've known what the chances were." A troubled expression shaded Sebastian's face. "I don't think the rep-symps would've lied to him about that."

"If that's who he was working for."

"Oh, no..." The teary eyes went round. "You don't need to have any doubts about
that
. That's one of the true things I'm supposed to tell you about. Convince you and everything. That's what you came here for, isn't it? For me to tell you that, so you'd know it's true-you believe me, don't you?"

"I'm not sure." He wasn't going to admit any more than that. "You could be telling the truth. I just don't know."

"But you've
got
to believe me!" Sebastian's voice went up in both pitch and anxious trembling. "Your old partner, that Mr. Holden-he'd gone over to the side of the rep-symps, and the insurgents out in the colonies, and all those people. He'd decided that was the right thing to do. Just like you did, when you quit the police department. When you stopped being a blade runner."

Deckard barked a quick laugh. "When I quit the department, I didn't exactly go out and sign up with a bunch of psychotics and traitors who're all out looking to get themselves iced by the U.N. security squads."

"Maybe you would've, if you had the chance then."

A shrug. "I'm past caring about that. So what about Batty?"

"What about him?" Sebastian looked puzzled.

"He's with the rep-symps as well, I take it."

"Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, we all are. Your old partner David Holden certainly was-and that's the truth." Both of Sebastian's hands rose in an appeal. "Why would I lie to you about something like that? Jeez, Mr. Decker, I'm way out of the loop now. I don't even exist anymore, at least not in the world you do. So it's not like I've got something at stake in getting you to believe this. I'm, like, a disinterested party. Sort of, anyway. I mean, I care what happens and all. So you could say I'm on the rep-symp side, too."

"You know Deckard laughed again, softer and more ruefully. "The funny thing is, I'd really like to believe you."

"You should! I'm telling you the truth!" Sebastian's hands quivered. "Look, you did me a favor just now. When you told me about why Pris wasn't here, and about where she might be. That . . . that gives me hope, Mr. Decker. That I didn't have before. I was going to give up, just let this whole place disappear. And me with it-I can do that if I want to. I don't
have
to exist. Here or anywhere else. But I've decided to stick around-because of what you told me." He stepped forward and grasped Deckard's arm. "So I owe you one. I do, really. I wouldn't lie to you, especially not about the stuff you came here to find out. David Holden brought the Batty box out to you because he believed in the rep-symps' cause; he died for it. Now it's up to you-it's your decision-about whether you should find a way to get the briefcase, and the information that's inside it, to the replicant insurgents out in the colonies."

Deckard regarded the other man. "What do you know about the data in the briefcase?"

"Not much. Just that it's important that the insurgents get it. If they're going to have a chance of winning and being free and all. Or even being allowed to live."

"The U.N. would wipe them out? Exterminate them?"

Sebastian nodded vigorously. "You bet. In a second, if they could. And they might be able to-things really aren't going that well for the insurgents. At least, that's what I picked up from the rep-symps. So there's a lot at stake in getting you to carry that briefcase out to the replicants. In some ways. He let go of Deckard's arm at the same time his voice dropped. "There's a
lot more
at stake than just the fate of the replicants out in the colonies and their rebellion. That's just . . . just the least little bit of it!" A fervent gleam appeared in Sebastian's eyes. "It's not just the replicants; it's humans it's everybody..."

The sudden intensity of the other's voice pushed Deckard back. "What're you talking about?"

"They told me you weren't supposed to know..." Sebastian squeezed his pale hands together. "I wasn't supposed to tell you..."

"About what?"

"I promised them I wouldn't tell ... but..." The little man was growing more visibly agitated by the second. "Like I said, I owe you one. I owe you everything..." Sebastian's voice suddenly began to grow fainter and fainter. "It's like this. The stuff the rep-symps didn't want me to tell you-it's all about the difference between humans and replicants. If there is any-remember what Dr. Tyrell used to say?" The voice had diminished to the level of a whisper. "The Tyrell Corporation motto? 'More human than human.' He didn't know how true that was..."

"Hey-what're you doing?" Deckard had leaned closer to the other man, trying to hear the words being spoken. "Sebastian-" He realized that he could see through the other's image; the details of the scattered toys and dolls, even the cracked plaster of the far wall, had begun to show. Layers of transparency: each object, Sebastian object, seemed to be turning to clouded glass, or mist contained in the outlines of what had been solid. "You're fading out on me-"

"Huh?" Sebastian's gaze refocussed as he pulled himself from his monologue. His partial image looked as though he was shouting, but the sound that emerged was barely audible. "Mr. Decker-where are you going? You can't go now-"

Deckard reached for the other's arm, as though he could drag Sebastian back into perceived reality. His fist closed on nothing. Sebastian's image wavered and grew fainter.

"It's not me, Mr. Decker-it's you!" Sebastian's faraway voice became more frantic. "The stuff you took, that activated colloidal suspension stuff-it's wearing off. It's going out of your system; you're not here anymore-"

"Goddamn-" A wave of vertigo rolled over him. The indistinct walls and ceiling had exchanged places.

From somewhere above him, Sebastian's voice called out. "Wait! There's still things I gotta tell you!" The ghostly form grabbed an object from the table and hurriedly thrust it toward Deckard's hands. "Here-take this-"

A small metal box; it felt light and hollow, but real, against Deckard's palms as the rest of Sebastian's pocket universe lost its substance. He suddenly found himself toppling backward, balance lost as the floor beneath him thinned out of existence.

Distance and direction vanished with all the other aspects of that world. He fell into the rapidly enfolding dark.

"Miss Tyrell! Over here!" A voice came out of the darkness, the words barely distinguishable against the howl of the wind and the lashing of the rain. "We're coming-"

The water, salt of the Flow mixed with ice crystals driven from the dark roil of clouds above, stung beneath Sarah's eyelids. She shielded her face with one hand, holding on to the edge of the shaft's doorway with the other. The triangular structure bucked on the surface of the water, storm waves lifting and dropping the platform beneath her feet. The shaft itself, leading down to the
Salander 3
, strained with the violent motion as though it might snap free, like a rope stretched to its breaking point. All the way up from the sea-buried ship, as the tiny elevator had carried her toward light and air, she had wondered if that would happen.
If it does
, she had told herself,
I'll drown like a bug in a soda straw
.

That some kind of atmospheric turbulence was pounding Scapa Flow had been no surprise to her. The clouds had been gathering, growing more ominous and heavy-laden, when she had first stepped onto the Orkney mainland, in sight of the old stone cathedral stuffed with its bogus monitoring equipment. And if the storm's fury had been unleashed while she was locked away in a little bubble of stilled time, that made sense as well. Given what Sarah had witnessed, the things she had seen, the past made visible and tangible-given all that, it would have been little wonder to her if this world's sun and moon had crashed together, with wormwood and the stars tumbling into the ocean like hot coals.

"Just hold on!" The call came from the boat careening on the Flow's dark, churning surface. She could just barely make out the silhouette of Wycliffe standing braced at the prow, while Zwingli behind him manned the oars. "We'll be there in a second!" A wave mounting as high as Wycliffe's chest slammed into the boat, nearly toppling him overboard. Zwingli's frantic rowing clawed helplessly at the raucous water.

Just my luck
, thought Sarah; the phrase had become the obvious refrain to the events around her.
I would've been safer back down below
. She knew that wasn't strictly true; as it was, she had barely escaped from the
Salander 3
with her sanity intact. There was no way she wanted to see those things again; once had been more than enough.

The foam-crested waves struck the platform, a hammer seemingly more solid than liquid. Her fingers gripped tighter to the doorway as the impact tore at her, then passed, the shaft's tension snapping it down into the trough that came after.

"Here! Catch this!" Wycliffe had mounted into the boat's prow again, a heavy rope coiled around his arm, one end of the rope fastened near Zwingli. He managed to synchronize his throw with the Flow's swell; a knot and ioop sailed through the rain.

Sarah took one hand away from the shaft's entrance; her hand missed the rope, but she pinned it against her side with her arm. It slithered like a coarse, wet snake, but she hung on to it, gripping and maintaining her balance as the platform rolled and tilted beneath her. She looped the rope over the projection of the doorway's broad hinge, just above her shoulder, then used her weight to draw the line taut to the boat.

"That's it-" A crevice had opened up in the storm clouds overhead, enough to let a thin sliver of moonlight onto Wycliffe's face. Rain coursed across his brow and eye sockets, then into his open mouth as his chest labored with the unfamiliar exertion. His fanatic loyalty to the Tyrell Corporation and its human emblem was all that kept him standing in the small boat, his hands tugging at the rope. Behind him, Zwingli had pulled the oars alongside himself, turning where he knelt and grasping his partner around the waist, securing him against the next wave to hit.

The boat swung around and hit the edge of the platform broadside. Wycliffe leaned down and forward, catching the raised metal lip with his fingers, straining to hold the boat tight against the force of the water drawing it back. "Miss Tyrell-" His drenched face looked up at her. "You must-" The words came out as gasps. "Jump-"

She let go of the rope, getting to her knees and then half falling, half scrambling into the boat. A smaller wave tilted it; her back struck the other side, sending a quick stab of pain up her spine.

"Are you all right?" Zwingli had grabbed her forearm and pulled her next to him.

Sarah nodded. "I'm fine." She pushed her sodden hair away from her face. "Let's go-"

"Wait a minute-" Kneeling at the prow, Wycliffe still grasped the rope in one hand; the knot at the far end had snagged against the hinge of the shaft's doorway. "There's somebody else there. Look!"

A glance over her shoulder, and through the sheets of rain Sarah was able to make out the small figure standing just inside the entrance to the shaft, clinging to the edge. The little girl's face was filled with both awe and terror at her glimpse of the outside world's unlimited size and violence.

"Who's that?" Wycliffe looked back at Sarah. "Who came up with you?"

"Wait a minute." She turned her gaze from the child to the man at the boat's prow. "What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me . . . that you see her, too?"

"Right there." A puzzled expression crossed Wycliffe's face before he pointed to the doorway. "Of course I see her; she's right there."

"So do I," piped up Zwingli. He leaned forward, from where he crouched beside Sarah. "I can see her. Who is she?"

Sarah laughed, head thrown back, throat exposed to the rain. Even after all that had happened down in the
Salander 3
, the things she had seen both before and after her father's murderous apparition had shown itself to her, it still struck that this was a weird place to be having a conversation like this.
Stuck out on a boat
, she thought,
in the middle of a storm that's going to drown us all. And these two idiots want to debate the existence of an unreal thing, a total hallucination
. The laugh died when another realization struck her; she gazed slit-eyed at the man beside her, then at the other one. She wondered what they were trying to pull, what scheme was being forwarded by their claim of seeing the little girl.
She's my hallucination
-they had no claim on the child.