figure lounging against its flank, his arms folded across his chest.
'How did it go?'
Andersson shrugged. 'Oh… pretty much as I expected. He didn't put up a struggle or anything. Not that it would've made much difference if he had.'
'My.' She let herself smile. 'You're such a professional. Aren't you?'
'I'm paid to be.'
'Whatever you indicate will happen, happens. Like pushing a button
… on the elevator over there.' She nodded toward the closed doors, the brushed stainless steel raked by the sun's fierce glare. She turned her own gaze away from the man. The light and heat would siphon away any possible tear. She felt genuinely sorry about Isidore; the poor little geek's neck, with its wobbling bespectacled head on top, would probably have fit inside one of Andersson's fists. Perhaps that was how he'd done it, like twisting and pulling the knobbed cork out of a bottle of Dorn Perignon. More likely, the obliging Isidore had volunteered, soon as he'd figured out what was wanted of him. Wuhwould you like me to kuh-kill myself? Huh-huh-happy to.
'You're the one who pushes the buttons.'
'Am I?' That still seemed an odd concept to Sarah Tyrell. 'I suppose so.' She remembered being a three- year-old child and looking up at her uncle-the doors of the Salander 3 had unsealed and popped open; a nurse hack led her down the ramp, with the long boxes holding the remains of her parents following right after-and seeing his thick glasses, the lenses shaped like the computer monitors that had been her windows aboard the starship, the cold eyes behind them scanning and assessing, calculating. He had reached down and touched her hair, rubbing a lock of it between his thumb and forefinger, as if gauging its suitability for some new industrial process…
'What're you doing?' Her voice, sharp' and startled; she felt her spine go rigid, every muscle tensed for flight or attack. The reverie into which she'd sunk had been translated into this reality, the rooftop landing deck of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, right now. Her uncle's touch had become Andersson's; the man, still leaning back against the spinner, had reached out and stroked the stray wisp of fine brown hair at the nape of her neck. His fingertip stayed there, a fraction of an inch away from her tremulous skin. 'What… I don't… '
'Yes, you do.' He leaned forward and kissed her.
Kissed and fell to the landing deck's hard surface, both his hands upon her, as they had been before. She turned her head and saw the undercarriage of the spinner, the extruded landing gear, the vents and air intakes: she could smell the sharp reek of its fuel and the condensation of steam, mixed with the closer scent of his sweat as he reached between them and undid the front of his jumpsuit; she couldn't tell the mingled odors apart anymore, or whether they came from him or the machine. It didn't matter to her.
She closed her eyes. That was part of the payoff, the regular arrangement between herself and Andersson, that kept him working for her, plus the checks drawn upon the Tyrell Corporation's black operations account and made payable to an electronics supply warehouse in Mexico City. The arrangement must have been satisfactory to Andersson: she had lost track of which installment this was. Easy to forget that she wanted this, wanted everything, as much as he did..
Something else to be sorry about. That the arrangement had come to an end; she knew it, even if he didn't yet. At the edge of her awareness, she felt her hand remove itself from his back and reach inside her coat pocket, for the object she had taken from the drawer of the bureau plat down in her uncle's office.
Andersson gasped-too soon, at least for him; she could feel the shock wave run through his body. He pushed himself back from her, his spine arching. One hand clawed at his back, fingertips smearing through the bright red that had burst open there.
'Goddamn…' He'd rolled onto his side, finally having managed to pull out the knife she had inserted, point first, between his shoulder blades. Andersson shook his head ruefully. 'I knew you were going to do this. I knew it…' The knife clattered on the hard surface of the landing deck. He managed to push himself up into a sitting position, propped up against the spinner. His blood shone on the black metal. 'It's not like…' Voice weaker. '… it's unexpected…
'Please don't ask me why.' She kept her own voice formal, polite. She had gotten to her feet and was now putting her own disarrayed clothing back in order, reaching down to smooth the skirt of the dress over her knees. 'I'd find it tiresome to explain.' Sarah straightened up, noticing a spot of his blood on the front of her blouse. Silk, and thus ruined.
He managed to laugh. 'Don't bother…' He gazed at her, almost admiringly. 'It's pretty much… the nature of the business…'
Checking the time, as much by glancing up at the sun as looking at the slender watch on her wrist. And waiting; as always, Sarah hoped he wouldn't take too long.
A few minutes later she succeeded in dragging his body to the low parapet surrounding the landing deck, her shoes leaving a triangle and dot pattern in the thin pool of his blood. She was surprised at how light he seemed when dead; she had unexpectedly little trouble in lifting the corpse high enough to topple it over into the empty space at the center of the Tyrell Corporation's slanting towers. Adrenaline, she thought; some little surge in her own bloodstream, unnoticed by her cognitive processes, had perhaps given her the extra strength required,
Andersson's body fell of its own accord, arms and legs splayed out in air. Hands braced against the parapet, she watched until it was lost to sight; the corporation's employees, working in the replicant manufacturing units that formed the base and core of the complex, had no doubt already had the surprise of the corpse smashing into one of the reinforced skylights above their heads.
Business to take care of — Sarah straightened up and took her cell phone out of her coat pocket, punched in the security division. 'There's been an accident.' She smoothed her hair into place as she spoke. 'It can be taken care of on an internal basis. There's no need to call in the police.' She gave a few more details, some of them true, then disconnected. The corporation's own security people were drones, without Andersson's initiative; she could count on them to do no more than what she wanted. Even the mess up here on the landing deck-they'd all keep their silence, and their jobs.
She started to turn away, to walk back toward the elevator doors, then stopped. A shudder ran through her body; dizzy and nauseous, she had to lean against the spinner for balance. The adrenaline, and whatever other hormones had been released, now seemed to evaporate from her veins. She closed her eyes, her pulse scurrying faster, breath quick and shallow. 'I'm sorry,' she spoke aloud. As if there were anyone to hear her, as if it would have done any good if there had been. She resisted the impulse to lie back down upon the deck and curl up with her trembling fists and elbows tucked close against herself.
The attack passed. Breath slower and deeper again-she took the few steps back to the parapet and looked across the vast space, to the three other towers of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. A city in itself, surrounded by the larger compressed mass of Los Angeles. The four towers slanted in toward each other and the truncated pyramid in their midst, like the petals of a cubist flower that hadn't fully opened yet. When she had come back from Zurich, with the corporate minions who now worked for her, she'd been given the grand tour, through all the sectors of the complex, the areas that she'd never been allowed to enter while her uncle had been alive. It'd taken days to complete. They had told her everything, all the secrets. Including what they had called the red button, though there wasn't any red button, but an overlapping series of commands that had once been keyed to Eldon Tyrell's voice pattern, but hadn't been keyed over to hers. The one thing beyond her control-even as the minions had been telling her about what would happen if she could have spoken those magic words, a vision had come to her. That had made her heart swell with a fierce gladness.
She looked out now across the landing deck's parapet, that vision overlaying the solid, slanting towers. Fire and force, this world she owned riven by its own private apocalypse. The explosions would start at the base of the structures and continue upward, following the Wagnerian sequence of the programming that had been built into them from the beginning…
Brennt das Holz heilig brunstig und hell, sengt die Glut sehrend den glanzenden Saal…
''If the wood catches fire,'' she murmured, eyes closed, ''and solemnly, brightly burns, then the flames will destroy the glorious hall…''
Wagner had that much right, at least. Not programming; she knew that was a stupid word for it. Fate was the true word.
Der ewigen Gotter Ende dammert ewig da auf…
''The eternal gods' last day then dawns… '
Sarah opened her eyes. The vision had faded, leaving the parallelogram towers of the Tyrell Corporation still
