again, when you saw the past-those things couldn’t have been faked. It really happened—that your father killed Ruth, that he would have killed you and your sister, Rachael, as well, if she hadn’t managed to protect you.” Deckard folded his arms across his chest.
“There’s only one possible explanation for all of that. The replicant named Anson Tyrell wouldn’t have gone insane-murderously insane—for no reason. But the reason he did had been programmed inside him. By Eldon Tyrell. As a fail-safe protection in case it turned out that replicants could be made capable of reproducing themselves. He wanted to make sure that that knowledge was suppressed, so he built into Anson’s brain a whole destructive sequence, a ‘stepfather syndrome’ based on primitive behavior patterns. And it worked; your father would’ve killed both you and your sister, Rachael, if he had been able to get to you. As it turned out, it was still enough to destroy both your mother and your father. That was enough; Eldon Tyrell could cover up or get rid of the other evidence about what had happened out there, what it meant. The only thing he didn’t do was go ahead and have the two children destroyed, the daughters of the replicants he’d sent out on the Salander 3. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was something else . . . but he let you live. Rachael went on sleeping in the transit chamber on board the ship, and you became his niece. Even you believed it—and why shouldn’t you have? You thought you were human; you thought you were the original, the template, for the replicant Rachael that Eldon Tyrell created later.” Deckard tilted his head back, letting the rain strike his eyelids, then looked over at Sarah again. “You just didn’t know that that Rachael, the adult one, was a copy of a copy. A replicant of a replicant. Just because she wasn’t a human that doesn’t mean you’re one.”
Sarah’s gaze had fastened upon her hand, the one holding the gun, as though she were seeing it for the first time. “Who She spoke falteringly. “Who told you . . . all this.”
“Does it matter?”
“Whoever it was . . .” Her teeth clenched with anger. “They were lying.”
“Sarah . . . Her name,” his voice low, the syllables as kindly said as possible.
“You know it’s true. You might not have known all the details, but the truth . . . you knew that all along. At least from the time you went back to the Salander 3. And you found her. The little girl; your sister. The first Rachael. She was real, and you knew it. You knew you weren’t crazy; you knew you weren’t suffering from some hallucination. Yet you kept on saying that you were, saying that she wasn’t real, she didn’t exist. Even though you knew she did.” He drew a deep breath, the damp air filling his lungs. “You wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t realized what it meant that that child should be there at all. And you knew somehow—you felt it—that she was your sister. That she was the same as you.”
The words had had an impact on Sarah. She closed her eyes, swaying slightly where she stood, the gun’s weight trembling in her hand. After a moment, she nodded slowly. “Yes Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. “I knew .
“You knew,” said Deckard. “But you did not believe. Because you didn’t want to.”
She said nothing. There was nothing more for her to say.
“Now what do you want?” He watched, pitying her now.
“I don’t know.” Sarah looked at the gun in her hand. “I suppose I could just go ahead and kill you.” She sounded close to crying, a broken thing. “Since you don’t love me. You never did.”
“I never did. I never could.”
She looked at him, eyes pleading. “Is that what I should do?”
“Maybe.” Deckard shrugged. He felt tired, at the end of his own words. “But if you do that . . . remember He looked up at the video cameras watching them.
“That’s what they wanted you to do.”
“You’re right.” Sarah nodded, her gaze focussed on some deep interior vista.
“That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never even known what I wanted.” She looked up at him. “But now I do.”
He knew what she meant. He knew what would happen next. “Are you sure?”
Sarah nodded. “It was always going to come to this. You win, Deckard.”
“No He shook his head. “You do. Because now you get what you want.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Exhaustion sounded in her voice, as though from the long journey it had taken to reach this place. She managed a smile, a fragile turn of her mouth. “Could you She lowered her hand, letting the gun drop to her side. “Could you kiss me? The way you kissed her?”
No words. Deckard took her in his arms, feeling the warmth of her body through his own rain-soaked clothes. She turned her face, eyes closed, up to his.
Time stopped. Memory took its place. But even that had to end.
She was kind to him. She took care of herself.
The gun fell to the rooftop, a black shape surrounded by a thin, rippling mirror. Even as the echo of the shot rolled against the studio walls, the night city’s false horizon. She fell then, and was still beautiful. He looked down at the crumpled form, something that might have once been human. The blood from her shattered temple flowed and mingled with the pooled rain.
Deckard looked up at the cameras. “How about that?” His furious shout battered the empty lenses. “Was that good enough? Did you get what you wanted?”
As though in answer, the observing spark died inside all the video cameras.
The artificial rain had already stopped; now the lights came up, dispelling the false night. The taping was over. Deckard stood in the center of the building set’s roof, a dead woman at his feet, one that had the face of someone he’d loved, now wrapped in the same sleep, the one from which there was no waking. The one he envied.
He still had a job to do. He left the gun where it lay, a few inches from Sarah Tyrell’s hand, and walked back toward the stairs.
The Rachael child had fallen asleep at the table, her head upon the old leather-bound book. Deckard touched her shoulder; she sat up, blinking and frowning. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “I’m kind of hungry,” she announced.
“That’s all right.” Deckard took the child’s hand and helped her from the high-backed chair. “We’re going home.”
The girl looked up at him as he led her toward the door, past the silent toys.
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know,” said Deckard. “I guess we’ll find out.”
After
“Niemand—your papers are a mess.” The U.N. bureaucrat looked at the documents spread across his desk and shook his head. “Do you really think you can get off this planet with your affairs in this condition?”
“I don’t know,” said Deckard. He leaned back in the uncomfortable chair that had been provided to him. “I don’t much care, either.”
The bureaucrat glanced up at him with small eyes filled by officious hatred.
“You have an attitude problem as well.” All the authority of the U.N.’s emigration program sounded in the man’s voice. “Don’t you?”
Deckard made no reply. The office, a tiny cubicle in the central administration building of the Martian emigrant colony, smelled like photocopy toner and the adrenaline of small-fry bullies. Deckard had no particular wish to be here at all; they had sent for him. The announcement of the resumption of travel to the far colonies had gone out a couple of weeks ago, but he hadn’t bothered to make an application. Let them come find me, he’d decided.
And they had. The uniformed security men had shown up at the hovel, asking for him by pseudonym. He’d told the Rachael child to wait for him, that he’d be back before too long; then he’d pulled the door shut and had gone off with the grim-faced men on either side of him.
“Your original entry visa—” The bureaucrat flipped through a passport. “Shows that you came here with your wife.” The mean little eyes raised from the leatherette-bound booklet. “Where’s Mrs. Niemand?”
Deckard didn’t even bother to shrug. “Why don’t we just say . . . that she and I had domestic troubles.”
The bureaucrat laid down the passport. “There’s also nothing in the Niemand family documents about having a little girl with you. When you came to Mars, you were childless.”
This time, he shrugged. “The domestic troubles didn’t start right away.”
