“Now I know you’re bullshitting me. False memories in replicants are implanted at their incept dates. When the replicants are created. The phony memories are part of them from the beginning.”
“You’re wrong, Deckard. Or puh-partly so. The incept date is when the Tyrell Corporation shoves in whatever false memories they want their replicants to have. But it’s not the only time it can be done. The neural access pathway is hard-wired into the replicants’ neocortices. In fact, the bandwidth of the data channel is one of the design features of the Nexus-6 line; I could show you the schematics. It was so the corporation could cram more stuff into their heads before they sent them off the assembly lines. But the access to the memory areas is still there, like a door without even a lock on it. You juh-just have to know where to look for it. And then use it.”
“And that’s what you did. Supposedly.”
“Oh, yeah.” A look of dreamy triumph moved behind Isidore’s glasses. “No ‘supposedly’ about it. It’s my job. I’m very good at it. And when I’m done . . .” His gaze sharpened once more. “Some of the people you thought were humans, they were actually replicants and they didn’t even know it. You’d be surprised to learn who they were. And are.”
The room seemed suddenly smaller, as though the walls had snugged up against his shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like I said, Deckard . . .” The other’s voice was as smooth and piercing as a hypodermic. “You’d be surprised. Very, very surprised.”
5 . . . . .
As the search party topped the last big rise, a fifty-floor office tower now laid out on the ground like a cubist obsidian snake, the first smoky flush of dawn crept over the horizon.
Gonna be a hot one—Sebastian could already feel the sun’s blistering kiss on his face. Until the monsoons came back, every one was a hot one.
Up above, stars were still set in blackness, the atmosphere scoured raw by the Santa Ana winds rolling over the desert. During the trek back, three lines of fire, evenly spaced, had cut across the sky. From the north and veering downtown—he’d twisted around to watch the distant spinners, wondering who the hell was in them. Somebody important, he’d figured. But none of his business. He’d laid his check against the back of Fuzzy’s head, conserving his own dwindled strength.
When they reached home, he made his two pals wait out in the corridor. He crawled over the frame of the nest’s tilted doorway. his one hand pulling him laboriously forward. “Hey, Pris? Sweetheart? I got something special for you.” With a string knotted around his wrist, he dragged behind him one of the candy boxes from the welfare bundle. “Where are you, honey?”
His eyes took a long time adjusting to the room’s darkness; the metallic curtains stapled over the windows, including the one that the building’s fall had turned into a skylight, shut out all but a thin trace of the advancing light. In the corner a mop of dead-white hair rustled. A face, more wrinkled and deracinated than even Sebastian’s ancient one, lifted from bent knees clutched to flattened girl-chest. Eye sockets, blind but for thermal scans, turned toward the legless, one-armed supplicant.
“Look—” He knew Pris, or what was left of her, couldn’t look, not really. But acting like she or it could was good enough. Under these circumstances. Sebastian reeled the box into his hand, then held it out. “I brought you this—”
An inaudible shriek, leathery jaw hinges yanked wide, as the Pris-thing sprung from its crouch. Its bone hand slapped the box from Sebastian’s grasp; the chocolate-covered cherries spattered gooey wounds across the inverted walls and ceiling. A rattling hiss, a remnant scream, came from its throat as it reached down, grabbed, and threw him across the room.
“Yes . . .” Tears of pain and joy filled his eyes. From where he’d landed, he watched as that which he loved jerked in spastic tantrum, arms flailing pinwheels as it lurched away. He nodded slowly. “Yes . . . I love you, too.”
The teddy bear and the hussar peeked over the doorway’s edge at him. Then clambered down to lift up and tend to his ancient, partial body.
“That’s an old joke.” Deckard actually felt sorry for the little man on the other side of the desk. Another cat had wangled its way onto Isidore’s lap; this one was without flesh on its steel bones. “Sarah Tyrell had me brought all the way over here just so you could run that creaky number on me?”
Isidore petted the mechanical cat, as if unaware of the difference between it and the tabby he’d held before. The contraption purred and closed its eyes in contentment; or at least polyethylene membranes slid down over the glass replications. One of Isidore’s forefingers scratched where the cat’s ears should’ve been. “I don’t run any nuh-numbers. On anybody.”
“Yeah, right.” Deckard shook his head in disgust. “What’s with all the heavy hinting, then? All that stuff about how surprised I’d be to find out who’s really a replicant passing as human. Passing because the person doesn’t even know he’s really a replicant. And then you give me the big, significant look. Shit.” He fixed the other man with his own hard glare. “You think that isn’t one of the first things a blade runner starts thinking about? Hey, maybe I’m one of these replicants. Maybe the cops set mechanical cats to catch mechanical rats. It’d be just like them —believe me, blade runners know the LAPD’s mind-set better than you civilians do. And since we’re too familiar with the empathy tests to use them on ourselves—then we have to come up with some other way of knowing for sure that we’re not replicants.”
“And wuh-what’s that?”
“It’s the Curve. It’s always the Curve. That whole ‘index of self-loathing’ trip.” He could feel his own eyes narrowing, as though he were contemplating the soul underneath his breastbone. “Blade runners wind up so sick of themselves eventually—realizing they were replicants would be a relief. But that never happens. Loathe thyself—blade runners pretty much have the ultimate in self-knowledge. So don’t bother trying any of these retread mind games on me.”
“Well . . . it duh-doesn’t matter, anyway.” Isidore shrugged. “Whether you’re really human or not . . . that’s the least of your worries now.”
“Right now, I’m not worried about anything except retiring some escaped replicant. And then getting back to where I was before I got yanked back down here. Up north. Somebody’s waiting for me there.” At the back of his mind, all the while this weird person had been haranguing him: the black coffin in which he’d left Rachael sleeping, dying. It could run for itself, awhile at least, but soon enough it would need his loving hand moving underneath the control panel’s metal skirt. “You’re big on moral condemnation, pal, but let’s face it, it’s kind of wasted on me. I’ve already got enough to spare. So why don’t you just tell me what it is that I should be so worried about?” He nodded toward the door. “Then maybe you won’t mind if I just walk out of here.”
“You know, duh-duh-Deckard . . .” In Isidore’s lap, the steel-skeletoned cat raised its head, gaze parallel and equal to the one above. “Like most things about you, your whole load of self-loathing is pretty much a shun-shuck. As long as your skin’s intact, you don’t really care what happens to anyone else. So that’s why I know this is going to be right up your alley.” He leaned forward, the cat held tight against his chest. “This job you’ve taken on—there’s always one more job, isn’t there?—it’s not going to be so easy.”
“Skip the warning. I’ve had one already.”
Isidore went on. “You’re not going to be able to just wuh-walk out of here and start hunting. You screwed up, Deckard. Big time. From before. Tell me: what’s the final—the ultimate—absolutely accurate way of determining whether somebody’s a human or a replicant?”