The glance, and its accompanying expectant silence, made Sebastian nervous. 'I wouldn't know.' He tightened the hold of his forearm around Colonel Fuzzy's shoulder.
'Are you sure,' the leader inquired hopefully, 'that you're not with the police?'
'Positive.'
'Well… we shall 'hang in there,' as you advise. For the sake of those more human than us. Those blessed ones.'
It suddenly dawned on him who these people were. Hell's bells, thought Sebastian. They're rep-symps. He'd heard rumors, before he'd first come out to the sideways world, that certain congregations of the true believers frequented the zone. Living a basically reclusive life, he hadn't encountered them before.
'Look, it seems to me that you're going about it all wrong.' He could afford to be helpful; he had nothing against them. He let go of the teddy bear long enough to wave off the smoke that was getting into his nose and making him sneeze. 'If you want to get busted by the police, you oughtta go where the police mainly are. It's no good being out in nowheresville. The cops probably don't even want to bother with you, long as you stay someplace like this. You should go into the city-'
'We've done that.' A younger, darker-bearded version of the leader spoke up. He had fanatic eyes, whites showing all around the pupils. 'We have our uses for the city.' A dirty word, the way he spat it out. 'And we have taken our message there. Not just in words, but in deed as well. We brought down in flames one of the voices of the deceiver, and upon its carcass we gave forth our testimony.'
'Gosh.' It sounded scary, even though he had no idea of what the man was exactly talking about. Though he was pretty sure it involved criminal activity of some kind; these people were religiously obsessive types, after all, capable of anything. Morally, if not in terms of actual accomplishment. He was beginning to have second thoughts about keeping company with them; the police might come all the way out here, to kick ass and take names, as the saying went. If they'd been sufficiently provoked.
'If you really want my opinion, I'd say you should rethink just what it is you're going for,' he said. 'This martyrdom thing, and all.' Sebastian wished that he and his companions had just circled around the fires and continued on their way, instead of poking their noses in here. 'I just don't see where it gets you anything.' Except in your crackpot heads, he thought to himself. 'Bringing the heat down on yourselves is not something you should care to have happen. Or any kind of bad shit. Suffering's not all that great; believe me, I should know.'
The assembled people glanced at one another. Significant glances, indicating a measure of worry about the strangers that had wandered into their midst.
'Listen to me.' Sebastian heard his own voice, louder and more fervent. As though he were the one testifying now. 'I know what I'm talking about. Suffering sucks. I just lost the woman I love-again, for the second time. She was shot right in front of me. And she was a replicant, too; or at least she'd been one-'
The bearded leader peered closer at him. 'Yes,' he said after a moment's inspection, during which Colonel Fuzzy had hissed and drawn back. 'I can see that you speak the truth.' He laid a wrinkled, cordite-smelling hand on top of Sebastian's head. 'You have the aspect of the blessed about you. Suffering has given you that. You are nearly human, yourself.'
'Well… thanks. I guess.' What the hell was this old doozer talking about?
'But there is more for you to suffer.' The leader raised his hand in a gesture of benediction. 'For you to complete your journey.'
'Rats.' He didn't even know where he was going.
'Come with me. I have something to give you.'
Mounted on the back of the teddy bear, Sebastian followed after the old man. Squeaker trailed behind, glancing over his shoulder at the other people, his elongated nose twitching with suspicion.
'You can't stay with us.' At the flickering limit of the fires' glow, the old man rummaged through a duffel bag he'd drawn out of a military-surplus canvas tent. 'You have your own destiny. But this might help you. It's a holy relic.' He turned and laid a rectangular object in Sebastian's hand.
Something metal, lightweight aluminum, with a few dents and scratches, indicators of age. Smaller things, of metal and possibly glass, rattled inside as Sebastian turned it around. He held it up so the faint orangish light hit it. On the box's lid was a prominent mark in the form of a red cross. 'It's a first-aid kit.' That could be helpful, actually; he didn't have one in the supplies they'd dragged along with them.
'Look closer.'
He did, nose almost touching the metal. Smaller words, stamped into the surface. Sebastian spelled them out. 'Salamander… no, that's not right.' Sebastian squinted. 'Salander. That's it. Salander 3.' He supposed it was the name of the ship that the kit had come from. It sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe a star ship, one of the old explorer types that'd gone out past the limits of the solar system.
The old man nodded. 'I was there… when it came back to us. Bearing its message. Written in the eyes of its dead.' The grey-streaked beard lifted from the front of the jumpsuit, as he raised his eyes to the night sky. 'They were the first to know. What all shall know someday. They traveled, and returned. They saw. And brought back the message…'
'What message?'
For a moment, it seemed as if the leader hadn't heard him. 'Of our damnation,' he spoke at last. 'Or our salvation.' He turned a wan smile on the figures before him. 'We're still not quite sure yet.'
Maybe you should work on that, thought Sebastian. He didn't look up at the old man, but concentrated on fiddling with the metal box.
'There is one who knows…' The bearded leader's voice drifted into deep musing. '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
