coming on in a few minutes.”
“I’m not interested in the cable schedule,” grated Deckard. “Just tell me what you want from me.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, pal. It’s what you want from me. I spent a great deal of time and effort tracking you down, just so I could offer you my help.”
Deckard didn’t return the man’s smile. “I don’t need it.”
“Oh, I think you might,” said Marley. “You’ve got a big job ahead of you.”
“What do you know about that?”
The other man shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Or maybe the whole thing. You’re trying to put together some travel plans, aren’t you? For you and the little girl here. And someone else. Or should I say some thing? I guess it depends on how you regard that briefcase you’ve been toting around. Is it human enough for you to think of it as a person?”
“Hey!” Batty’s voice sounded from beneath the table. “Fuck you, pal!”
Deckard gave the briefcase a kick. “Shut up. Let me handle this.”
“You tell him,” said Marley. “That old bastard’s out of the loop now. He’s luggage. Too bad you can’t just wrap him up, stick the postage on, and mail him out to the far colonies.”
“Who says that’s where we’re going?” Deckard wondered just how much the man sitting across from him was clued in on. “I could be taking him and the little girl anywhere. Maybe back to Earth, for all you know.”
“But you’re not.” Marley’s smile broadened. “And I do know. I know all about the job you’ve undertaken. I know that’s what you’re racking your brains over, trying to figure out how you’re going to get off-planet with that thing, how you’re going to deliver it to the replicant insurgents . . . the whole bit.”
Deckard coldly regarded the other man. “You know an awful lot.”
“More than you do. I know what’s really in that briefcase.” The smile faded, the man’s face turning hard and serious. “And I know who the little girl really is.”
“Somebody who knows things like that . . . or somebody who even claims to Deckard looked straight back into the other man’s eyes. “Chances are good it means that person’s a cop. So who are you working for? U.N. security? LAPD?”
“I’m not with anybody like that.” Marley glanced up at the video screen. “You should think of me as your friend. Like I said, I’m here to help you.”
“And like I said, I don’t want—”
“Hey, just hold on a bit.” Marley held up his hand, palm outward. “We can talk some more in a little while. But this—” He pointed at the video screen a couple of yards away. “This is going to be a good program. I really want you to take a look at it. I think it’s something you’ll get a bang out of.”
Beside him, the Rachael child had sat forward, trying to get a better viewing angle. Deckard looked over at the screen. The sports event, whatever it’d been, had apparently ended; the cable monopoly’s logo, all swirling colors and state-of—the-art abstract graphics, danced and shivered its pixels. He knew it wasn’t going to be a news show; there weren’t any. The cable’s feeds were all entertainment, or what passed for it in this captive market.
“You know,” said Deckard, “I’m not really interested in whatever soap opera you might be addicted to. Maybe you should watch this on your own time. I’ve got more important business to take care of right now.”
“Not any more important than this. Trust me.” Marley gave a nod toward the screen. “This is just about the most important thing in the universe for you.
Just sit back and watch, all right?”
The cable logo faded out and was replaced by another one, a stark black-and-white graphic of a stylized skull with wings. Deckard recognized it even before the words SPEED DEATH PRODUCTIONS pulsed into view; the skull image and the video company name had been on the advance check he’d received from that sweating, pudgy director he’d walked out on back at the Outer Hollywood station. It took a moment longer to remember the guy’s name. Urben ton—the recall prompted a slow nod from Deckard. That was it.
In the bar’s muffled quiet, the sound of a cheaply synthesized sound track, all throbbing bass and disembodied string choirs, oozed out of the video monitors’ tiny speakers. Deckard found himself watching intently, leaning forward across the table, despite his earlier scorn. On the screen, a black night vista was suddenly broken by a leaping gout of fire.
“That looks good.” Marley nodded admiringly. “Real spooky and dramatic.”
The title appeared on the screen, blanking out everything but the darkness behind it. Two words: Blade Runner.
“What the hell.” A surmise weighted with dread started to form inside Deckard.
A crawl of other words, smaller than the video’s title, moved upward across the screen. Broken phrases lodged in Deckard’s head-based on a true story . . . from actual LAPD case records-with their meanings slowly adding up to the realization of what he was seeing. The final piece locked in when he saw his own name listed in the opening credits as technical adviser.
Marley pointed to the words. “That was nice of that Urbenton fellow, don’t you think? Considering that you voided your contract with him—he didn’t have to leave your name on there.”
“This . . . this is the video he was making.” With a sick feeling, Deckard gazed at the screen. “That he hired me to go out there and help him with.”
“Come on—he hired you for more than that,” chided Marley. “Urbenton bought your life story—or at least that part of it that went down in L.A., when you were tracking that last bunch of escaped replicants. Well, here it is.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the nearest monitor and all the other identical screens mounted in the bar. “This is the premiere showing. Right now, on the entire Martian cable network.” Another smile. “See? I knew you’d dig it.”
“Shit—” Deckard stared at the video monitor in dismay. The fury of his own thoughts drowned out anything coming from the audio track. “Everybody’s going to see this. Everybody on this entire planet.”
“That’s right, pal.” Marley’s hands made an expansive gesture, as though in congratulation. “There’s only one channel, and you’re the star. It’s your fifteen minutes, Deckard; enjoy it.”
Deckard didn’t have time to respond to the other man’s sarcasm. This was something he hadn’t counted on. Now Fm really screwed, he thought. In a few minutes, once the video got past its opening sequence, with all the artsy Los Angeles location shots that Urbenton had faked from the Outer Hollywood street sets-once the story got rolling, Deckard’s own story—then it would be his own face up on the video screens. Not just here in this bar, but everywhere. Nice, big close-ups, all zoomed-in and personal; he had watched Urbenton directing the cameras during the video shoot, bringing them in tight on the actor in the distinctive long coat carrying the police-issue gun through the city’s dark and rain-soaked streets. There had been some full-on shots that would very likely fill the monitor screens. And it’ll be my face, he thought. Not the face of the actor playing me. But my face. That had been the other thing that he’d sold the rights to, that Urbenton and his Speed Death Productions had bought. Spelled out in precise contractual language: . . . the undersigned contracting party, in consideration of the financial remuneration specified above, grants as well the right to use a full and accurate facial depiction of self—along with any associated physical mannerisms consistent with an identification of the portrayed individual as the former Los Angeles Police Department special agent known as Rick Deckard .
That was what he’d agreed to, the contract he’d signed, back when he’d still been under the impression that the money from Urbenton would be enough to get him and Sarah Tyrell off Mars and heading out to the U.N.’s colonies in the stars. Deckard hadn’t anticipated being on the run, with Christ only knew what kind of police agencies breathing down his neck. It was a wonder he hadn’t been nabbed already; the suspicion had started to grow in him that the cops were giving him a long rope, seeing if there was anybody else he’d entangle before they picked him up. Eventually, they’d tire of that game, get tired of waiting for him to contact his nonexistent accomplices, and then Deckard would find the rope around his neck, where it’d always been.
It was going to be a lot easier to tighten that noose now, or as soon as this video had finished airing over every cable-linked monitor in the emigrant colony. When Deckard had been there, at the Outer Hollywood station, orbiting above Earth, Urbenton had even shown him how the special-effects people were going to digitize his face, from the bones up through the web of muscles, to the skin and every whisker stubble and freckle on it, every little detail that made up the world-weary, tired-of-killing but still deadly gestalt that Deckard saw when he looked in a mirror. Standard practice in the modern video business: in postproduction, once the principal photography was
