asking questions later. Right?”
“Knock it off.” The needle of her words had gotten under his skin, as intended. “Look. I went away, I came back, and you’re not here. I go away again—” That was what he figured his time in Sebastian’s pocket universe amounted to. “I come back, you’re here. Great; whatever. But things have changed. There’s a kid sitting right here—” He pointed to the Rachael child.
“I see her, you see her . . . she’s real. I don’t want to hear any crap about hallucinations. I just want to know how you got to Earth, how you got into the Salander 3, wherever the hell it is now, and why you brought this girl back with you.” His voice had hardened with his growing anger. “How about that for right?”
“Don’t try to bully me, Deckard.” With one hand, Sarah pushed herself away from the door frame. She stood looking at him with her hands planted on her hips. “I don’t even want to talk to you, let alone listen to you. You’re just making it easier for me to go through with what I’ve already decided to do. Not that I was going to find it hard to do it.”
A great weariness settled on Deckard’s shoulders, his own fatigue meeting all the sense of lost hope and futility that Sarah Tyrell’s mere presence evoked in him. A bad marriage, he thought, just as if the aliases of Mr. and Mrs.
Niemand had been the names of real people. There had been a time, when he had first taken Sarah from Earth, when he had believed he could accomplish something by welding his fate to hers. Even if it had been no more than moving her so far away from any sources of power that she could wreak no more harm to humans or replicants. But you can’t fight crazy people—he told himself that once more, something he had known from the beginning. They’re always crazier than you are sane. When he looked into Sarah’s eyes, past the memory image of the Rachael he’d loved, he saw the black hole of madness that could consume all reason and desire and life itself, a place that could give nothing back to the living, imploding as it were with the dense gravity of its own obsessions.
He should have known—he had known—that it was hopeless to fight against something like that.
“All right,” he said, pulling his bent spine upright. “Whatever it is you’ve set your mind on, go ahead. I’ve got other business to take care of.” There was still the briefcase sitting on the hovel’s table, the one that spoke with the voice of Roy Batty and that had Isidore’s list of disguised replicants encoded somewhere inside. Whatever else had happened in Sebastian’s pocket universe, he’d at least been convinced of that much. Both Batty and the rep- symps who’d put the dehydrated deity packet inside the briefcase had been right: he would believe Sebastian when he would believe no one else. Not because of the little genetic engineer’s transmogrification, his new enhanced status as a small-scale god, but simply because Sebastian was incapable of lying. A nature as simple as his didn’t change, from this world to any other.
Deckard looked up at the woman in the doorway. “I’ve got things to do.”
Sarah laughed. “Like what?”
“You don’t need to know.” Somehow, he had to find a way to carry the briefcase to the replicant insurgents, out in the stars. Belief in the briefcase’s contents and the acceptance of his mission were locked together for him now; he had no choice.
The mission would have been hard enough to pull off even if the U.N. were still sending new emigrants to its far cob-flies . . . but possible. The shutdown of the emigration program, the absolute bottleneck here on Mars, was compounded for him. They’i’e looking for me, thought Deckard glumly. The people who’d already killed Dave Holden, the first courier attached to the briefcase, they might be right outside the hovel, right now, watching and waiting, the only mystery being why they didn’t just move in and ice him immediately. Maybe they were showboats, the breed of cops who liked to kill in public, where everybody could see; that was the kind of display that could get someone promoted to the blade runner unit. He supposed that some grunt climbing to the ranks of the elite over his ventilated corpse would be an ironic justice. But one I want to avoid, Deckard reminded himself.
“What about me?” The Rachael child spoke up, as though she had been able to read his milling thoughts. “You said you promised.”
“That’s right, sweetheart. I promised.” And now this complication. Whatever he had to pull off to ferry the briefcase and Isidore’s data to the insurgents, it would have to be done with the little girl in tow. And I don’t even know where she came from or how she got here. Still—“I’m not leaving you behind.”
“True,” said Sarah from the room’s doorway. “That’s because you’re not going anywhere, Deckard. That’s what I came back here to tell you.”
He looked back around at her, but another voice broke in before he could speak.
“Mr. Niemand-be careful,” said the wall calendar. “She’s got a gun. A new one.”
The calendar was telling the truth. The evidence was in Sarah’s hand, pulled from her coat pocket. The black metal hung suspended a short distance from Deckard’s face; the muzzle’s hole looked as deep and dark and fatal as the centers of the woman’s eyes.
He allowed one eyebrow to rise. “That’s what it’s come to?” Deckard was really only surprised that it had taken this long.
“Oh it’s always been this way.” Sarah’s gun hand displayed no wavering. “I just didn’t know it until recently.”
“Well, it’s always good to know what you want.” Right now, he wanted to keep her talking while he figured out what to do. She knew how to use the gun; he was aware that she could pull the trigger without flinching. No chance of making a sudden grab for the weapon; Sarah stood a carefully judged distance from him, just far enough away that a quick lunge was out of the question, especially from his sitting position. And just close enough that she could unload the gun’s clip right into his chest, grouping the entrance holes into a pattern tight as her fist. “So A trickle of sweat ran down one side of his neck. “What finally decided you?”
Sarah tilted her head back, keeping her narrowed gaze and the gun aimed at him. “This little act of yours, this thing you’ve cooked up with the shadow corporation, the die-hard Tyrell Corporation loyalists—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What shadow corporation?”
“That’s good, Deckard. That’s real good.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “You’re a real professional. An actor—you’re going to keep your part rolling right up to the very end.”
“I’m not acting.” He gave a shrug. “I just don’t know what the hell you’re going on about.”
“Deckard . . . there was probably a time when I would’ve believed you about that.” A slow shake of the head; her expression changed to one of sad regret.
“I would’ve liked to have believed you. It might have made things easier in some ways. But it’s too late for that.” A twitch of the gun’s muzzle indicated the little girl across from him. “This business-this performance-of sitting here and talking and acting as if you can see somebody else here with us. A child who says her name is Rachael.”
She took a deep breath and expelled it through clenched teeth, an audible hiss. “Those other two—Wycliffe and Zwingli; I bet you know their names—that was how they were going on as well. Before I took care of them. Trying to make me think they could see my hallucinations; trying to make me think what I saw was real. You sonsabitches must’ve thought you were really being clever.”
“Never heard of anybody named that. At least not outside the history books.”
Deckard spread his hands apart. “Besides—even if these people, whoever they are, and I were in on some big conspiracy against you, what would we accomplish by pretending we could see things that don’t exist? I don’t get it.”
“Why should I try to figure it out? Perhaps you’re just sick individuals.”
Sarah’s face darkened with anger. “Sicker when you put your heads together.
Perhaps you’re all just crazy.” The same thin, ugly nonsmile appeared.
“Perhaps even as crazy as I am.”
He saw an opening. “You think so? I’m not joking around now.” Deckard kept his voice low and serious. “But did you ever really consider that possibility? You know, that I might be as crazy as you are. And not just that. But crazy in the same way.”
Without saying anything, Sarah regarded him over the top of the gun. The muzzle dropped a quarter inch, no more.
“Think about it.” Deckard pressed on, trying to expand the tiny fracture he’d created. “Wouldn’t I have to be? You know how contagious insanity is; it spreads from person to person. From you to me. After the things we’ve been through together, how could it be any other way?”
