“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 recreated 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 strategy 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 behind his eyes. “I think . . .” He stirred slightly in the chair. “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 lock 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 areas 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 anytime 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 quick, 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.”