black-market items like the cigarettes, in a place like the emigrant colony, where death came constantly and slowly, the means of a fast death assumed a precious status.
One for him, thought Sarah as she ran the towel across the back of her neck.
And one for me . . .
She’d be ready for Mr. Niemand’s homecoming.
“I wouldn’t have thought that was your kind of gig.” The briefcase had started talking again, still with Roy Batty’s voice. “Making videos and all that . . . Not exactly your former line of work, is it?”
“Yeah, well,” said Deckard, “it pays.” Or at least it was supposed to, he thought grimly. Outside the skiff, discernible through the viewscreen over the tiny cockpit’s instrument panel, was void interplanetary space, not made any more comforting by the cold light of the distant stars.
“Kind of screwed yourself on that one, didn’t you?” Batty, when he’d been in a human incarnation, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, had always displayed a spooky talent for reading others’ thoughts; reduced now to a box, he seemed to have retained the ability. “That’s the problem with those big temper displays.
It’s all rush at the beginning—then comes the hangover.”
Whatever Batty had been wrong about before-including his lunatic theory that Deckard himself was a replicant—he was nailing this situation. Deckard knew that the disembodied voice was right; inside his head, he was giving his ass a well-placed kick. “That was the whole reason I agreed to do it. For the money.” Deckard emitted a short, ill-humored laugh. “And then I didn’t even get it. The whole trip was a waste of time.”
“But you knew it would be.” The briefcase spoke softly, almost kindly. “Didn’t you?”
Deckard wasn’t sure. He gazed broodingly at the dark-filled viewscreen. Temper displays weren’t the only things that had problems attached to them. Needing money, being desperate for it, the way a drowning person craved oxygen in his lungs—that brought along its own raft of difficulties, the things that screwed up the rational functionings of one’s brain. “Anything can be believed,”
Deckard mused aloud. “If you have to.”
“And that’s how you fell in with that Urbenton creep?” Batty’s voice prodded at him. “Not a good call on your part, Deckard. That guy’s slime. I could tell, just from hearing him.”
“You’re a good judge of character.” Deckard tilted his head back against the top of the pilot’s seat. “Believe me, I’m sorry I got hooked up with the little sonuvabitch.”
“I take it you must’ve been pretty hard up for cash.”
Deckard made no reply. The briefcase’s statement was dead on the mark. Money was even more necessary than oxygen, at least in the hovels of the U.N. emigrant colonies. Breathable air, smelling of glue and recycling filters overdue for changing, was at least furnished free of cost by the U.N.’s own blue-helmeted Environmental Maintenance teams, along with the basic ration loads of algae-derived carbos and proteins. Money, on the other hand, the emigrants had to provide for themselves—either from the savings they’d brought with them from their former lives on Earth, or what they hustled in the colonies’ black market and/or other officially tolerated, unsanctioned free enterprise zones. All of which, the savings or the hustling proceeds, only served to stave off bankruptcy, destitution, and death for a little while. Any emigrant could lie on the bunk in his hovel, fingers laced together between the back of his head and the thin pillow, and feel his life seeping away, like the sour air hissing through a leak in the plastic Quonset roof above him. And not even care any longer.
He’d just about reached that point—or would have, if he hadn’t locked a vow into the pit of his soul, a vow with both Sarah Tyrell’s and Rachael’s names stamped in smoldering, ashen letters upon it-when the smug little video director Urbenton had shown up at the hovel’s pneumatic-sealed door.
Travelling incognito, or travelling at all, being able to come to Mars and then leave again—that had been impressive evidence of Urbenton’s pull, some kind of cozy arrangement between his Speed Death Productions company and the cable services provider that effectively called all the shots in the colonies.
The cable company was the arbiter of life and death, the ruler of the emigrants’ pocket universe; in a low—or even zero-stim environment like Mars, the cable feed into the hovels was the true sustaining pipeline, one that people continued to shell out for long after their cash reserves had dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford edibles beyond the U.N.’s meager rations.
So when Urbenton had appeared, with his greased-smooth dealer’s smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, fhere was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colony’s marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he’d moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more breathable air that the annual monsoon rains managed to scrub to a lower toxicity level.
“Let’s have a little talk, Mr. Niemand—” When Urbenton had used Deckard’s alias, the smile on the video director’s face had widened, like that of some reptile unhinging its jaws to swallow an entire goat in one mouthful. “By ourselves, all right?” They’d left Mrs. Niemand—she didn’t even pretend to call herself Rachael anymore— sleeping on the hovel’s narrow bed, or perhaps gazing up at the dark memorial vistas that played out behind her eyelids. It had been a long time since Deckard had pretended that he knew what went on inside Sarah Tyrell’s head. He’d pulled the hovel’s airseals shut and followed Urbenton—and the scent of money that the man had exuded.
Now, sitting in the skiff’s cockpit with the talking briefcase beside him, Deckard slowly nodded. “That’s why I did it.” As if it really needed any explanation. “The guy just smelled like money.”
“That’s a powerful attractant.” The voice of Roy Batty sounded amused. “More so than all those pheromones of sex and love and pride, all that corporeal stuff that yanks people around so well. Excuse me for waxing philosophical. I have a slightly more . . . disinterested viewpoint these days, as you might be able to tell.” The voice’s tone sharpened. “Just how much did Urbenton offer you?”
“A lot.” Deckard recited the raw numbers. “That was just for starters, what was in the production budget. Residual payments would probably have come to more, once the video went out over the wires.”
“Not bad.”
It wasn’t. Or wouldn’t have been, Deckard corrected himself. If I would’ve gotten it. Free money, or as close to that ideal state as this universe allowed—there had been virtually nothing he had to do in order to get the payment from the dead on the mark. Money was even more necessary than oxygen, at least in the hovels of the U.N. emigrant colonies. Breathable air, smelling of glue and recycling filters overdue for changing, was at least furnished free of cost by the U.N.’s own blue-helmeted Environmental Maintenance teams, along with the basic ration loads of algae-derived carbos and proteins. Money, on the other hand, the emigrants had to provide for themselves—either from the savings they’d brought with them from their former lives on Earth, or what they hustled in the colonies’ black market and/or other officially tolerated, unsanctioned free enterprise zones. All of which, the savings or the hustling proceeds, only served to stave off bankruptcy, destitution, and death for a little while. Any emigrant could lie on the bunk in his hovel, fingers laced together between the back of his head and the thin pillow, and feel his life seeping away, like the sour air hissing through a leak in the plastic Quonset roof above him. And not even care any longer.
He’d just about reached that point—or would have, if he hadn’t locked a vow into the pit of his soul, a vow with both Sarah Tyrell’s and Rachael’s names stamped in smoldering, ashen letters upon it-when the smug little video director Urbenton had shown up at the hovel’s pneumatic-sealed door.
Travelling incognito, or travelling at all, being able to come to Mars and then leave again—that had been impressive evidence of Urbenton’s pull, some kind of cozy arrangement between his Speed Death Productions company and the cable services provider that effectively called all the shots in the colonies.
The cable company was the arbiter of life and death, the ruler of the emigrants’ pocket universe; in a low—or even zero-stim environment like Mars, the cable feed into the hovels was the true sustaining pipeline, one that people continued to shell out for long after their cash reserves had dwindled to the point where they could no longer afford edibles beyond the U.N.’s meager rations.
So when Urbenton had appeared. with his greased-smooth dealer’s smile pasted between his jowls, and had told Deckard that he had an offer to make, there was nothing to do but listen. In a little ersatz coffee bar down in the local colonys marketplace, a densely packed area of vendor booths slapped together from wobbling sheets of discarded transit containers and shuffling crowds scanning the scene with desperate hollow eyes; it all reminded Deckard of similar streets he’d moved through back in L.A., only minus the flickering neon and the slightly more
