Behind a low rise of concrete rubble, he’d stashed the freight spinner safely out of sight.
Inside the apartment, his former partner Deckard probably thought he’d gone on, winging back into the center of L.A. His pissed-off-andshouting behavior, that’d concluded their little conference, had been at least partially an act, designed to make Deckand believe that all he wanted to do was lay down as much distance as possible between the two of them. He wasn’t through with Deckard yet, not by a long shot. And from the looks of it, neither were some other people.
No sooner had he gotten the freight spinner hidden than he’d spotted the next visitor. She must’ve been there all the time. waiting for me to leave-lying on his stomach, elbows braced against the ragged concrete edge, Holden trained the binoculars on the woman as she went into the sideways apartment building. Too late to get a glimpse of her face, but the sleek arrangement of her dark hair, and the fur coat—in this heat? It must’ve had one of those cryonic linings-all spoke of money. Like I’m surprised, he thought bitterly. It would be just like that weasel Deckard to have belatedly learned the art of selling out to the highest bidder.
He’d searched through all the bins and equipment caches of the freight spinner’s cockpit, looking for some kind of long-range microphone, something he could’ve used to eavesdrop on what was going on inside the safehouse apartment, but had come up empty-handed. It would’ve taken powerful, professional quality gear to get anything, he knew; when the place had been taken over for use by the blade runners, with no connection to the LAPD, they’d all chipped in to trick out the windows and exterior walls with sound-deadening insulation. So creeping up and laying his ear on the building wouldn’t have done any good, either.
They’re up to something in there. Frustrated, Holden rolled onto his back, setting the binoculars on his chest and trying to get the mechanical heart’s pulse back down by sheer force of will. It wasn’t obliging. “Goddamn,” he muttered aloud, glaring at the empty sky. He might’ve strained the equipment, perhaps irrevocably; he felt worse now than when he’d left the Reclamation Center out in the desert with Roy Batty. Miserable cheap gizmos-he wondered what bargain-basement gear the LAPD had requisitioned for cases like this. For all he knew that quack doctor-cumgarage mechanic had implanted a rusting tin can and a couple of balloons left over from some kid’s birthday party.
Taking deep breaths, he managed to get the black spots wandering in his sight-bad warning sign of anoxia, brain strangulation—to fade to grey and even disappear. Mostly. He turned back onto his elbows and swept the binoculars’ view toward the other spinner, the one the woman, whoever she was, had arrived in. She’d left it in plain view on the other side of the apartment building.
The bar code on the spinner’s fuselage came into focus. He tripped the binoculars’ reader function; a few seconds later the LED display flashed the minuscule words SECURED REGISTRATION; NO INFO AVAILABLE ON THIS VEHICLE. He wasn’t surprised; a late-model, high-thrust job like this one had to belong to somebody who could buy the pull to keep it off the databases.
Invariably a way; words of wisdom. Holden dialed in higher and higher rez levels, until he was looking right into the intake manifolds of the expensive after-market turbos that’d been mounted on the spinner. The sunlight slanted into the curved titanium mouths, just enough for the binoculars to pick out the manufacturer’s serial numbers. Repeating the string to himself, he slithered back to the freight spinner and keyed up the control panel’s computer. A moment later he had the info he’d wanted: the after-market gear had been purchased with the appropriate U.N. acquisition order by Ad Astra Transport Services. He didn’t need to look them up; he knew that the company was the shipping wing of the Tyrell Corporation. Its logo, a tacky Soviet Realist image of a stylized male figure lifting a ribbon-tied package to an anonymous planetoid, was on the sides of all the container trucks taking sleep-frozen replicants to the San Pedro docks, for delivery to the off-world colonies.
So, Tyrel1 . . . that’s interesting. Holden tried to dredge up what he could from his own, pre-Kowalski memory banks. Eldon Tyrell was dead—Bryant had told him that while he’d been in the hospital, bubbling and gurgling away—but wasn’t there a daughter or something, who would’ve been his heir? No, a niece: that was it. Maybe this was Ms. Tyrell, the new head of the replicant-manufacturing industry, who’d zipped out here in the company spinner to talk with Deckard. She’d known where Deckard was; so he must’ve gotten in touch with her and told her to meet him here, or she’d met him before. No way she would’ve been able to find the hiding place by herself.
So that meant this woman—and by extension the Tyrell Corporation itself—was in cahoots with Deckard. Who was supposedly an ex-blade runner, or at least had previously been represented to be a blade runner—Holden wasn’t sure anymore about that. The Tyrell Corporation and the blade runner unit had always been two mutually antagonistic forces, inasmuch as the corporation was always engaged in creating replicants that were increasingly closer to passing for human—how much longer would it have been until there’d been Nexus-7 or Nexus-8 models running around?—and the blade runners were just as dedicated to finding them and exposing them as replicants. One of those locked-in predator-and-prey relationships, where each side could take turns being either the wolves or the sheep. So what’s Deckard up to now? wondered Holden. Sleeping with the enemy?
His musing was cut short by a sound he didn’t need high-powered eavesdropping equipment for, loud enough to penetrate through the safe-house apartment’s acoustic insulation. He ducked instinctively as the gunshot reverberated over the concrete rubble on all sides of the freight spinner. One shot, then silence again; Holden cautiously raised his head above the level of the cockpit panel and looked out toward the toppled building in the distance.
Even more interesting-he speculated as to who had shot whom. Deckard didn’t have a gun, he was fairly sure, but that didn’t matter. He could have gotten whatever weapon the woman had been carrying away from her. Unless she’d come here with the specific intent of plugging Deckard, and had just done so. Conspirators falling out?it wouldn’t be the first time.
Whatever had gone down inside the safe-house apartment, he knew the smart thing for him to do was to lie low and go on watching. There was somebody walking around in there with a loaded gun. He had one as well, but in his present physically depleted state, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to lift it up and get a shot off without a disastrous wobble to his double-handed grip. Even the binoculars seemed to weigh a ton, as he crawled back out to the top of the ridge and aimed them at the building.
What the . . . He peered harder into. the eyepieces, as he spotted two figures coming out. Deckard and the darkhaired young woman he figured was the new owner of the Tyrell Corporation. Neither one had shot the other-they both looked reasonably intact. What the hell did that mean? Still conspirators? Hard to tell from the habitually sour expression on Deckard’s face what the degree of cosiness between the two people was . . . though the woman looked somewhat satisfied with herself. Deckard had taken on the appearance of his old self, a memory flashback to his days of officially being a blade runner, having changed from that ratted-out cop uniform to plainclothes, including another one of those long coats he’d always been so fond of.
He watched through the binoculars as Deckard and the Tyrell woman got into the hot-rodded spinner and took off. The temptation hit him, to scramble into the freight spinner and tail the other craft, but he thought better of itthey’d have spotted him right off.