dropping into play. 'Carefully.'
A different room on the monitor screen, but still one that she knew Deckard recognized. Both his image and Bryant's were in the little screening room behind the shabby office. Along with Bryant's bottle of scotch.
Monitor within monitor — on the tape, Bryant and Deckard were watching the recording from the interview Dave Holden had gone through with the replicant Kowalski at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters.
I already had an IQ test this year… Close-up on Kowalski's slope-jawed face. I don't think I ever had one of these…
'The data retrieval system's set to bring up whatever's the most recent image of the subject.' Sarah pointed to the screen. 'Holden was the last one to get a good fix on Kowalski. Alive, that is.' She brought up the volume. 'Now catch what he told you, about how many replicants escaped from off-world and came to Earth.'
Bryant's rasp of a voice again. Six replicants… three male, three female…
'Six.' Deckard gazed in puzzlement at the screen. 'Now I remember
… he told me that there were six escaped replicants.' He slowly shook his head, as though struggling to make sense of this remembered datum.
'You're catching on.' Sarah kept her own voice soft. 'And then Bryant, on this tape, goes on to tell you about five replicants. One that he doesn't name, who got fried in the security barriers around the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, when they first tried to break in here. And then he showed you the pictures; he gave you the names and the rest of the data on the other replicants. You should find this interesting.'
She played the rest of the tape, the parade of faces, the ID scans on Bryant's monitor. A glance from the corner of her eye; Deckard was scowling at the screen, and the smaller one within it.
'Do the count,' said Sarah. She blanked the screen to a pure blue rectangle. She held her small fist up in front of it. 'The dead replicant — the one who got fried on the Tyrell Corporation's fence. That's one.' Thumb stuck out. 'Then Kowalski, the one who shot Holden. And then the females, the one named Pris, and the brunette Zhora. Plus the Roy Batty replicant.' A finger for each, resulting in her hand lining spread out before the monitor's glow. 'That makes five. Not six.'
The muscles across Deckard's shoulders had visibly tightened, at the mention of Roy Batty's name. The last of the escaped replicants; the one who'd nearly cost him his life. 'Maybe… Bryant made a mistake. When he was first talking to me.' Deckard made a dismissive gesture at the empty screen. 'Five, six… who knows? Hell, the man drank like a fish. So he got his numbers messed up.'
'There were six,' said Sarah quietly. 'Bryant didn't mess up… at least, not then. There were six replicants who escaped and got to L.A.; the original transmission from the off-world security agencies — I've got access to that as well — confirms it. Plus, one of the times that Bryant pulled up the data bank file with the replicants' ID scans, that was so he could purge one of the sets. That was where he screwed up; he left a hole. The scans are in numerical order, as they were logged into the file. The one that got fried was never entered, since he wasn't a problem anymore. But the Kowalski replicant was number one in the file, then Batty was number two; the females Zhora and Iris were logged as numbers four and five. That leaves the gap in the middle, where the other replicant's ID scan and info used to be. Bryant wasn't smart enough to clean up the hole in the file, or he just didn't care.'
Sarah folded her arms across her breasts. 'Do the count, Deckard. You take them all together, add them up, and the total comes out six. That means there's a sixth escaped replicant still on the loose. It's out there in the city. We just don't know where.'
'What if there is?' Deckard grimaced in annoyed distaste. 'Why should I even care?'
'Because that's what I'm going to make it worth your while to care about.' The section of wall paneling slid closed again, concealing the video screen. She dropped the remote back into the bureau plat's drawer. 'That's the whole point of your being here. That's why you were brought back to Los Angeles.'
'You know, you could be wasting your time completely. With me or anybody else.' He regarded her with eyelids half lowered. 'Bryant was a drunk and a screwup. He could've said six when he meant to say five. That's probably why I didn't make any big fuss about it, back then. I knew the way his sloppy brain worked. You could be getting all torqued about this sixth replicant when there was never one to begin with.'
'Except that the other information I have checks out. The report from the off-world authorities concerning the replicants' escape — the report that Bryant had, but that you never saw — it confirms that there were six total, who managed to reach Earth.'
'There's a report?' Deckard emitted a short, harsh laugh. 'Then you don't have a problem. Access it and see who your sixth escaped replicant is. You don't need me to track it down.'
'Can't do that.' She had anticipated every argument that he'd make. 'I told you Bryant himself purged the data out of the police department files, even before he called you in and gave you the assignment. The ID info on the sixth replicant is gone.'
'Big deal. The LAPD can ask the off-world authorities to retransmit the escape report.'
'You don't seem to be getting it, Deckard.' She leaned forward, across the bureau plat. 'The LAPD doesn't know that there's a problem. The file on this incident was closed, the whole thing written off, finito, when the Roy Batty replicant was found dead. And I don't want the police to reopen the case. The Tyrell Corporation doesn't want them to.'
'Why not? You've supposedly got another Nexus-6 model running around the city. That can get very messy — believe me, I know. I would've thought you'd want this loose end tied up as quickly as possible.'
'I do. The Tyrell Corporation does. But not by the police. I want all of the authorities completely out of the loop on this. The U.N. has already been giving us grief — sub rosa, it of any media coverage — about the wisdom of continuing to use the Tyrell Corporation's products, our replicants, in the off-world colonization' program. There have been problems… to say the least. Not just with the ones that've escaped and gotten back here to Earth. But out there as well.'
Deckard raised an eyebrow. 'In my line of work — what I used to do — I got to the point that when people said problems, I heard death.'
'You don't need to hear the details.' Voice level, cold. 'If there's problems — deaths — then the U.N. and the off-world colonists brought it all upon themselves. They demanded a higher quality of slave labor. They want replicants that are closer and closer to actually being human, to having that level of intelligence. And emotion.' Colder, and with contempt. 'And not because it's any more efficient or productive than ordinary dumb robots would be. Our old Nexus-1 models were more than adequate for the task.'
'Then why?'
'You blade runners really are like children. Murderous children.' She gazed pityingly at him. 'You can kill, but you don't understand. About human nature. Why would the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It's simple. Machines don't suffer. They aren't capable of it. A machine doesn't know when it's being raped. There's no power relationship between you and a machine. That's been the U.N.'s whole pitch about the attractions of the off-world colonies all along. The big human thrill. For a replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions.' A corner of her lip curled. 'When Bryant told you about the Nexus-6 models, he was conning you and he knew it. The replicants' emotions aren't a design flaw. The Tyrell Corporation put them there. Because that's what our customers wanted.'
'Sounds like they got more than they wanted.'
'They got exactly what they wanted; they just don't want to pay the price for it. Nobody ever does. The price for having slaves who can suffer is that eventually those slaves will rebel. Someday, somehow — if they get the chance — they'll put a knife to their masters' throats.' She smiled, as one savoring the bleak wisdom of the universe. 'Let's face it, Deckard, it's just human nature. And that's what we re-created with the Nexus-6 replicants. That's what the U.N. authorities, the ones in charge of the off-world colonies, have gotten into such a sweat about. Only they can't come right out and admit that they screwed up, that their entire for making the colonies attractive to potential settlers is a disaster, that it leads to garrison states, like ancient Sparta armed to the teeth against its own helots — or else fields of bones on other planets, if the replicants manage to pull off a successful rebellion and the U.N. has to send in a military unit to sterilize the place, keep the infection from spreading. There's all kinds of things happening out there in the colonies that the authorities aren't telling the people here on Earth. It wouldn't exactly make good recruiting propaganda, would it?'
On the other side of the bureau plat, Deckard remained silent. She could almost see the slow meshing of gears be-to lid his eyes. 'I think…' He stirred slightly in the heir. 'I think I can guess where you're heading with
