“One who should know, who must know . . . but may not even know that she does.”
“That doesn’t sound too smart.” The box’s catch was rusted tight; Sebastian frowned at it.
“She was but a child,” the old man spoke softly, “when the revelations were made. A child in the stars, a little girl . . . poor thing.” He shook his head. “The things she must have seen, that she could not understand. Perhaps it was best that she couldn’t. Her mother and her father . . . I helped carry their coffins from the ship. They died from too much knowledge. Too much of the light.”
“Knowledge, huh?” Sebastian wedged the box against the rim of the papoose carrier and jabbed his thumb at it. “What about?”
“That way in which things change, in which they become other than what they were.” The old man lifted his rheumy gaze toward the sky. “That which was human shall not be. And that which was not . . .” His voice sank to a whisper, before he turned and looked again at Sebastian with a wan smile. “It’s all very confusing. Perhaps she will remember one day . . . those things she saw as a child. The revelations. That which she has forgotten. And then she will tell us of them.”
Sebastian didn’t bother asking who she might be. He had finally managed to pry the first-aid kit’s lid open. The various little bottles and ampules, simple disinfectants and antibiotics, looked dried-up and innocuous; he supposed there wasn’t much risk in carrying the thing around. And he didn’t want to hurt the old man’s feelings. “Um, thanks.” He snapped the lid shut and held up the box. “For this, and all.”
“Go in peace.”
Back where they had left their things, he had Squeaker stow the box away in the wrapped-up supplies. The repsymps’ distant fires had died down, leaving Squeaker to redo the bungee cords by starlight.
And not much of it. Sebastian looked up and saw the blunt fingers of silver-tinged clouds moving eastward. He wondered what that meant.
15 . . . . .
I’ll need transportation.” Deckard tilted his head toward the vehicle they’d left on the Tyrell Corporation’s landing deck. “Your spinner will do.”
“All right.” Sarah gave him a knowledgeable smile. “After all . . . you can’t just go walking around on the streets, can you? As we’ve learned.”
He turned away from the view of the city’s lights spread out below the headquarters complex. “You’re the one who put me out there. You knew that was what that Isidore person would do.” He studied her reaction. “I can’t figure out why you’d want that to happen.”
Her smile deepened. “Let’s just say that we both learned something. That we might not have, otherwise. You survived, didn’t you? So now I can be certain that finding our missing replicant won’t be beyond you.” Sarah’s manner became brusque, businesslike. “Go ahead and take the spinner—I figured you’d need it, so I had it . . . prepared for you. Don’t try to leave, to get out of the city. That wouldn’t be advisable. The spinner has a perimeter choke. A circle with its center here.” She didn’t need to make a gesture; Deckard knew she meant the Tyrell Corporation headquarters itself. “Try going farther and you’ll get a red warning light on the instrument panel. Keep going, and you’ll fall from the sky in little flaming pieces.”
It had been pretty much what he’d expected. Why should she trust him? A small, irrational hope flicked off inside him. If the spinner had had no spatial limit, he would’ve hotfooted it straight north. To Rachael, sleeping and dying and waiting for him. Screw L.A. and Sarah Tyrell and any missing sixth replicant.
“Don’t worry,” said Deckard. “I’ll return all your company property to you in good shape. Except for the sixth replicant. It might be a little beat-up when I dump it at your feet.”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad to see you showing such . . . enthusiasm for your job.” Sarah turned away and began walking toward the elevator that would carry her down into the corporation’s bowels. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll be waiting. I had you coded through the security systems. So you can come straight in . . . when you’re ready.”
He called after her. “Is that it? I thought you wanted to talk about something.”
“Please . . .” She pressed the control and the silvery doors parted. “Let me have a few pretenses, Deckard. I just wanted to see you. That’s all.” Sarah stepped inside the elevator and with the palm of her hand kept its doors from closing. “You were on my mind. Perhaps I just wanted to find out if I were on yours.” She pulled her hand away; the doors slid shut, and she was gone.
A moment later Deckard traversed the night sky, the bright pinprick carpet of the city’s lights rolling below him. To either side, police spinners shot by on their own errands, either not picking him up on their radars or getting a VIP readout on their computer screens high enough to keep them sailing past.
The city’s towers were well behind him. Deckard looked out the side of the spinner’s cockpit and down, and saw darkness, more complete than the cloud-mottled sky. The sideways world, with its fallen buildings and edge-tipped empty freeway, seemed to be within the spinner’s circle. That made it easier; he still needed some place where he could pull his act together, think everything through—as he’d been doing before Sarah Tyrell had shown up and spirited him away, for no good reason other than to lay the spinner on him. Off in the distance, a red glow shone, a flickering apparition; somewhere else in the zone, a fire apparently had broken out.
Just beyond the knife blade of steel and concrete that ran a diagonal through the sideways world was the familiar aspect of the safe-house apartment’s toppled building. He brought the spinner down low, hovering and then descending vertical into the small cleared space beside it. Once he’d gotten out, boots crunching into the cement fragments and bits of rusted metal that constituted the zone’s surface layer, he activated all the spinner’s security devices, sealing the cockpit down tight. Parts scavengers were always active at this dark hour, along with randomly motivated vandal types; he didn’t want to come back out here and find his transportation stripped. He pocketed the small remote that Sarah had given him, and headed into the unlit apartment building.
The safe-house apartment still smelled like death, an odor that connected with receptors off the olfactory net. A reverse seepage into the walls, like electrical service shut off for failure to pay the bill. That was more or less what’d happened to Pris; not even retired, that bad-faith euphemism, but forcibly unplugged. All the batteries removed, or a new one put in the socket above her eyes, a cold shiny one that sucked up pseudo-life rather than bestowing it. That image weighed on Deckard’s thoughts; it made him feel as if he’d spent his whole blade runner career as more of a sinister electrician than anything else.
Former blade runner, he reminded himself as he straightened back up after ducking beneath the apartment’s front doorway. That hadn’t changed, despite his having been recruited for one more job. He reached behind himself and lifted the door closed. The resistance to becoming a murderer again was even more final than when Bryant had put the pressure on him. Plus there wasn’t a big open-ended prospect ahead, of searching and killing and searching and killing, until he’d gone through the whole list of escaped replicants. There was only the one to deal with. And I already know, thought Deckard, standing still to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Who it is.
He stepped through the apartment, hand outstretched to find any of the generator-powered lights. That little geek Sebastian and his friends. had moved everything around; Deckard supposed they had as much right to do it as anyone. He halted, as the sound of something beside his own breathing and stumbling progress hit his ears.