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, Tyrell… 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.
For a moment longer he watched the spinner, a black speck at the head of a fiery trail, fading from view above the mirror-radiant towers of the city. The Santa Ana winds had died away, leaving the atmosphere still desert-hot, but hushed with an almost subliminal, subcutaneous trembling, as though charged with some urgency beyond verbalization.
Balancing himself with one hand against the ground, Holden got to his feet, then straightened up. And immediately regretted it; a wave of dizziness washed across him, as unsettling as if another earthquake had struck the zone. Artificial heart pounding in his chest, he bent over, palms against his knees; something had lodged in his throat, around which he could barely breathe. It seemed to take the last of his strength to cough it up. When he opened his eyes, he saw a wet red spot on the concrete rubble in front of him.
'Goddamn…' Tentatively he poked at his breastbone with the fingertips of one hand, trying to determine if he had broken something loose on the implants inside him. He swallowed the salt taste in his mouth rather than risk spitting it out. Everything seemed to be working; he could breathe, and the heart was still beating. He tried to remember whether a particular loose, rattling noise was something he was imagining, or whether it had always been there and he just hadn't noticed it before.
One thing was certain. He felt weaker than before, closer to the edge of collapse. Great timing, he thought bitterly. What he needed to do-what his stressed-out body told him he should do-was go lie down in some dark quiet place, until his new heart and lungs had finished knitting themselves into his corporeal fabric. But there was no time for that. Things were happening too fast for him to take a break, no matter how badly he required one. The spinner carrying Deckard and the Tyrell woman had vanished from sight, taking them to another locus of conspiracy. Maybe they'd finished up here, the two of them having cooperated on the shooting of some third party in the safe- house apartment…
He forced a deep breath into the lungs' machinery, trying to get his brain clear and functioning again. Work it out, he commanded himself. Who had Deckard and the Tyrell woman killed in there? The only other human being had been that little geek with all but one of his limbs sawn off-Holden tried to remember the guy's name, but couldn't. Granted, the triple amputee had seemed to be an annoying little bastard, but that by itself wouldn't have been sufficient motivation for icing him. There must've been another, more compelling reason. What?
The little guy had worked for the Tyrell Corporation; that much he remembered for sure. Doing… bioengineering. Holden nodded, as if he could suddenly see the guy's entire police file in front of him. Specifically, replicant design. Even more specifically: work on the Tyrell Corporation's Nexus-6 models. That was it.
So he must've known something. Not just something, but a lot. The little one-limbed guy had been up to his weepy-looking eyeballs in the design and production-every detail-of the Nexus-6 replicants. Knowing too much about something like that-something that other people wanted to remain a secret-was always a good way of getting yourself eliminated.
It came to him then, a sudden illumination, as though the dark clouds he'd seen massing over the Pacific had sent down a sudden bolt of lightning. Of course, thought Holden. That's what the little guy in there knew. And that's why they had to kill him…
The problem was, the realization didn't do him any good if he was in no shape to act upon it. Another realization, not quite as welcome, shoved aside his other thoughts. He needed help; he couldn't go it alone, as much as he would've wanted to.
Holden glanced upward. The sky was empty again, the spinner with Deckard and the Tyrell woman long gone, its red trail evaporated. He turned and walked toward the freight spinner, carefully and slowly, husbanding his strength for the confrontation he'd already set his mind upon.
14
'Come on, fellas.' He gazed around at the empty rooms, the spaces that were silent now but had held as much of a real life as he'd ever known. 'We should be just about all packed up now.' He and the others, the companions left to him, had done what they could to clean up the blood smeared on the angle of the walls and the remainder of the mess caused by his true love's death. Her second one, Sebastian reminded himself. That made him even sadder, thinking that poor little Pris had had to go through all that twice. It wasn't fair; she'd never hurt anyone, or at least not much.
Right now, he didn't even know where she was. He hadn't had the heart to pull the batteries from Pris's braindamaged corpse, shut off the various switches and relays that had kept her moving feebly around. She must've crept away, he thought sadly. Out into the zone's rubble, to lie down with the other broken and unfunctional things,
