Ideas are real things, too.” Sebastian’s voice went on the defensive. “Just as much as all that stuff . . . you know . . . out there.” He nodded toward the room’s high, arched window, but it was clear that he meant someplace farther away than the visible street. “Where you just came from.”
“That’s why it’s called the real world,” said Deckard. “And this isn’t.” He gestured toward the other man. “In the real world, you didn’t have legs. Not anymore.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian nodded slowly. “I had to get rid of them out there.” His expression brightened. “But here —’cause this is my world—I figured I should have ’em again. And I was right! They come in real handy.”
“Should’ve given yourself a second pair of arms. Be even more convenient.”
“Oh, they told me I could do that if I wanted—”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Deckard peered closer at the short-statured image.
A matter-of-fact response came from Sebastian. “The repsymps. When they did this for me. You know, what they call ‘dehydrated’? Only it’s not dehydrated at all; that’s just a slang term. Same way with being a deity; I don’t feel like one.” He smiled shyly. “I just feel like myself. The fact that they were able to do me over, to take what was left of me and turn it into a polymerized sensorial override encapsulate—that’s the technical term for the process—it doesn’t change anything. Real or not.”
Deckard gazed around the overstuffed room, then back to his host. “There’s one big difference here,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to die here. The way you were on the outside.”
“Well, I could if I wanted to. Anything’s possible.” Sebastian placed a hand against the front of his coveralls. “I could make this whole body go away. I mean, it could just crumple up and blow out the window like dust. But He looked across the silent dolls and toys. “There’s enough of me left in all this—it’s all me, actually—so I guess I’d still be here. In spirit, kinda.”
Sebastian frowned, as though trying to puzzle the situation out. “Like that old bit—did you ever hear about it when you were a kid?-about splitting an apple and finding God in the seed. So maybe I am some kind of deity, like all those genuine name-brand ones that you get in those little packets. Huh.”
Deckard felt sorry for him, the same as he had long ago, in the real world.
“Yeah, maybe you are.”
“You shoulda seen it, though, when I first got here and I was joking around and stuff.” The moist eyes glittered with excitement. “I made myself ten feet tall! Always wanted to be.” A forefinger pointed up. “Hit my head on the ceiling, though, so it wasn’t really practical. Guess I coulda made the room bigger, though—but then it wouldn’t have been the same as before. And that was the way I wanted it. Just the same. And with my little friends, too.” He shouted past Deckard. “Hey, Colonel! And Squeaker-come on out here. We’ve got company.”
A glance over his shoulder, and Deckard saw two even smaller figures, an ornately uniformed teddy bear and a long-nosed toy soldier, waddle-marching from one of the other rooms. The bear’s button eyes fixed on Deckard with evident suspicion; the soldier’s spine went rigid, as though the automaton was considering its courses of action.
“Now, come on, fellas. Be nice.” Sebastian waggled his finger, stained with black grease, at them. “Mr. Decker isn’t going to do anything to hurt us. He can’t, anyway, even if he wanted to. Least, I don’t think he can.” The watery eyes peered at him. “Can you?”
Deckard shook his head. “No. Not anymore.”
The toy companions weren’t convinced; the bear emitted a soft growl. “Foo,” said the soldier. “He’s not a nice man.”
“I’m sure, Colonel, he’s as nice as he can be. Mr. Decker hasn’t had as easy a life as we have. As I have.” Tilting his head to one side, Sebastian regarded his guest thoughtfully. “He doesn’t have real good friends like I do. He’s all alone. Aren’t you?”
“Not alone enough.” Time might not be ticking along in this room-like everything else, that might have been left outside in the real world—but Deckard knew that there was at least one other person waiting for him somewhere. Unfinished business, his mutual fate with Sarah lyrell still to be worked out. “But I can deal with it.”
A shrug from Sebastian. “Suit yourself. That’s your pocket universe. The one inside your head.”
“What about you?” The other’s low-rent holiness had irritated Deckard, bringing out a mean streak he didn’t feel like concealing. “Your little buddies really enough company for you?”
“Sure—” Sebastian looked suddenly nervous, picking up on the edge of hostility in the dust-moted air. “They always were. They had to be.”
“What about Pris?” Deckard felt his own thin smile appear. “Where’s she?”
The childlike innocence flashed out of Sebastian’s face, as though the switch on one of his mechanical toys had been thrown. Replaced by something both hotter and darker, that could be seen like black-enameled metal at the center of the man’s eyes. “That’s not any of your business, Mr. Decker.” His hard, annihilating stare could have bored holes through real-world skin and flesh.
“You don’t have any right to ask about that.”
“Just a simple question.” Deckard’s turn to give a shrug. “You don’t have to answer. It’s your world, remember.”
That world trembled in sympathetic connection to its creator. Plaster dust sifted from a network of cracks that suddenly shot like negative lightning across the water-stained ceiling. The crystal attachments to the candelabra and unlit chandeliers rattled, as though the fault lines beneath the real L.A. had been duplicated here.
“Stop!” Another voice shrilled from the opposite side of the room. “Stop that!” The toy soldier shook his tiny fists in the air, as high as the point on his spiked helmet. “Let him alone!” Beside the soldier, the uniformed teddy bear stamped its feet, anger sufficient to have caused this earth’s tremors.
“Wicked, wicked, wicked!”
“No, fellas . . . don’t Face wet with tears, Sebastian held one palm outward as he sank into a carved wooden chair. “It’s all right .
The teddy bear attacked first, the tassels of its epaulets shaking as it locked stubby arms around Deckard’s leg, the round face nuzzling a muffled growl against the long coat’s lower edge. Deckard peeled the animated creature from himself, hoisting it up just long enough to pitch it against the approaching toy soldier. Both of Sebastian’s automatons sprawled into a corner; the soldier burst into whimpers of frustration.
“Don’t hurt them!” Leaning forward, Sebastian grabbed hold of Deckard’s sleeve. “It’s not their fault. They’re just doing what I programmed them to do. They’re just trying to protect me!”
Deckard looked down at the weeping man. “From what?” An old, deeply buried cop circuit linked inside Deckard’s brain, producing the almost shamefully cruel satisfaction that came with doing the job well. This might have been Sebastian’s world, his little private pocket universe, but Sebastian didn’t control it any longer. I do, thought Deckard. Things had to be broken before the things they concealed could be seen, out in the open. Now he could find out what he needed to know. “Protecting you from what?”
Sebastian took a deep, shuddering breath, drawing himself upright. “Oh . . . everything, I guess. I don’t know.” He made a visible effort to calm himself down, the fragile body parts drawn together by an invisible string. “Nothing, really.” His trembling fingers wiped the last tears from his eyes. He looked up at Deckard. “I mean that. From nothing. She’s not here.”
“Pris? Why not?”
“I just don’t know Sebastian morosely shook his head. “I tried to make her be here—you know, the way I made Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar just be the way they were before.” He pointed to the bear and the toy soldier, who had sullenly withdrawn into a corner of the room. “I should’ve been able to do that. This is my world, isn’t it? The rep-symps put me here, they made me a dehydrated deity, they gave me all this . . . I should be able to have what I want, shouldn’t I?”
“I suppose so.” Deckard nodded. “Whatever you want.”
“But I just couldn’t make it be that way. I tried and tried, but it just wouldn’t happen. That’s really why I didn’t change anything, why I kept it all the way it was before. Look—” Sebastian jumped up from the chair, ran to one of the tall windows and yanked its gauzy curtain to one side. “I got that right, didn’t I?” His finger stabbed toward the dark, rain-drizzled urban landscape below. “That’s the street, isn’t it? Just the way it was.”
Another slow nod from Deckard.
“And all this. The building and everything.” The small man turned around in the center of the room, hands
