The rest of that memory track was not good. The doctors had had to bring him out of a narcotized stupor—that was when he’d first sighted all the machines ranked around his bed, and the tubes and hoses going in where just about everything under his rib cage had once been—so he could be debriefed by a sick-looking crew of investigators from the department. . . .
Now he remembered. That was when he’d seen this guy before. Not smiling in the picture they’d shown him, but still—it was him. The same one.
“Wait . . . a minute . . .” He could hear the machinery in the attach‚ case revving up, to keep pace with the self-generated adrenaline suddenly trickling into his veins. “Who . . . are you . . .”
The man turned his smile, even bigger and crazier, back around at him. “My name’s Roy,” he said, an inflection of almost childlike delight. A good joke. “I’m Roy Batty.”
“Oh . . . shit . . .” Holden scrabbled blindly beside himself, trying to find the cockpit’s exit latch. It didn’t matter that the spinner was hundreds of meters above the city. Everything that he’d been told about this particular replicant, the strongest and most murderous of all the escaped Nexus-6 models, flashed through his mind. But it’s supposed to be dead, he thought in panicked confusion.
“Come on—” The smiling figure grabbed Holden and dragged him back into the seat.
“You’re not going anywhere. Except with me.”
Helpless, he watched as Batty adjusted one of the dials inside the attach‚ case. His pulse slowed, whether he wanted it to or not. Black spots swarmed in front of his eyes, until Batty tweaked the knob a fraction the other way.
“There.” Smiling, both hands back on the spinner’s controls. “Just relax, Dave. I’m taking you someplace special. Someplace . . . you’ll like.”
The ball floated in the valve, trembling with each assisted breath. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the hoses latched to his chest. Or anything else.
Beneath the yellow L.A. sky, the spinner flew on.
6 . . . . .
From one of the bureau plat’s drawers, Sarah Tyrell took out the small tight-cell phone she had known would be there. Turning to gaze out at the strata of smoke and haze obscuring the afternoon sun, she flipped the phone open and pressed the TALK button. A synthesized trill, rising and falling in pitch, sounded at her ear, as the beam sought out and locked on to a secured channel from one of the loworbit satellites over L.A. Punching in the numbers, then waiting, she idly let her hand prowl through the rest of the drawer’s contents, the scarlet ovals of her nails clicking against paper clips and the remote, a Francis Harache gold snuff box, the cheap and nasty folding knife. Somewhere across town, another phone was ringing in sync with the one at her ear.
Then answered. “Speak if you want to.” A man’s voice.
“You know who it is.” Sarah leaned back, the ridge of the chair’s low back cutting under her shoulder blades. “I was just wondering how things went. With our guest.”
“Huh. I imagine Deckard’s just fine. Wherever the hell he is right now.”
She was used to Andersson’s general oharmlessness. She had picked him—not just for this job, but for others as well—for his efficiency. He had been in charge of locating Deckard, up in the Oregon wilds, then bringing him back, even piloting the spinner that had carried Deckard home to Los Angeles. The man’s other machinelike virtue was that of silence, of keeping his mouth shut.
From the office’s high window, she could see across the city’s sprawling maze. Deckard was down there, in there now. “Didn’t you tag, him? So we could trace where he goes?”
“Wouldn’t have been much point in doing that.” He sounded bored and competent.
“Somebody like him, he knows his business. If we put a tag on him, he’d find it and flush it. Next thing you know, we’re running a trace through some sewer line and out to the ocean, and he’s a hundred miles inland. Waste of time.”
She felt a small knife’s edge of apprehension, a flutter of the pulse beneath her ribs. She hadn’t brought Deckard all this way, back into the world he’d tried to escape, just to lose track of him.
“What if he doesn’t turn up again? What if he just . . . disappears?”
“He’ll turn up. He has to. If he’s going to survive.”
In the few moments of silence, as she mulled over what the man had just told her, she could hear faint sounds. Not here, in what had been her uncle’s office, but over in the Van Nuys Pet Hospital. The sounds were animal cries, real or fake. She knew that Andersson had a little corner for himself, tucked at the end of the rows of cages and kennels, where he transacted his own business. Away from Isidore, who might be distressed to overhear some of the things that were going on.
Which reminded her. Other things to be taken care of. “How did their little conversation go? I mean Deckard and Isidore.”
“Pretty much what you expected. That’s the great thing about ideologues. People who really believe stuff. You can depend on them. Isidore raked him over the coals for quite a while; Deckard didn’t look so good when I finally booted him out of here. I’ll send you the tapes; maybe you’ll find ’em amusing.”
She knew that he had wired Isidore’s office, that cramped little cubicle. It smelled like a small zoo, mixed with machine oil and scorched plastic insulation—she’d been there one time, checking out the pet hospital’s owner, getting an intuitive readout on him. She imagined that Isidore knew as well about the bug that had been planted; he wasn’t that much of a fool, that disconnected from reality. Clever enough, actually, to make no attempt to remove the bug. Or, as Andersson said, ideological in nature, nothing to hide—at least from her. Perhaps he’d thought his lectures and stuttering rants would change her mind, settle into her heart. It could happen.
But not now. “Isidore’s done a lot for us, hasn’t he?” She extended her hand, touching the window’s glass, sensing a fraction of the day’s heat through it. The sky reddened from sulphur yellow as the sun moved slowly toward the horizon. “Quite a lot.”
A moment’s hesitation before Andersson’s reply. “I suppose so.”
Redder light leaked through the flesh of her fingertips. “I wonder . . . if there’s really much more he can do for us.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” Andersson’s voice again, breaking into the silence.
“Do I have to tell you?”
“No . . .” He was probably giving a slight shake of his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Good.” The office and the bedchamber beyond had fallen further into shadow. “And when you’re done . . .”
He said nothing. Waiting.
“Why don’t you come by here.” She killed the connection and put the phone back in the bureau plat’s drawer.
On her way out she stopped at the foot of her uncle’s bed. That was hers as well—if she wanted it.
A handful of silk, shimmering against her fingertips as she lifted the edge of the sheet. But with a musty smell, as though it had absorbed a scent of age from the bedchamber’s trapped air. She’d decided to have one of her personal staff come in and strip the bed, change everything for new .
Then changed her mind. She saw something she hadn’t noticed before, a spatter of blood, small dots the color of the larger stain on the floor, a line diagonal up to the pillows.
She let the silk drift away from her hand, falling gentle upon the bed. When it was quite still again, she turned and walked toward the doors.