were supposed to be on-set until principal photography’s wrapped up-hit the road now and you don’t get a penny, jack.”
“Like I care.” Deckard punched buttons on the control panel, programming the skiff’s course. “That’s not a problem for me.” It was, though; portions of his mind, the coldest ones and first to regain their balance after witnessing these quick deaths, had already begun fretting about the money.
Or the lack thereof—the whole point of taking the technical adviser gig on the production had been to pump up his dwindling account back at the U.N. emigrant colony. He thumbed the last button on the panel and got a confirming red flash in return. “See you in some other life.”
“Don’t bet on it.” The director turned his wide, sullen face away. “I carry grudges for a long time.”
As the skiff’s cockpit hatch began to lower, blocking off Deckard’s view of Urbenton exiting from the dock, he heard another voice calling him.
“Mr. Deckard! Wait a minute!”
He stopped the hatch and looked out the side of the skiff. The bespectacled production assistant ran toward him carrying something pressed against her nominal breast.
“Anything I left behind,” said Deckard, “you can keep.” He’d come to the Outer Hollywood station with little more than a few changes of clothes. “I don’t need it.”
“Are you sure?” The heavy black glasses’ rims had slipped down the bridge of the woman’s nose; she pushed them back with one corner of the object she held in her hands. It was a briefcase, Deckard saw now, a plain black leatherette one. “I thought this looked like it was maybe important. You had it back there in the office, when you were having your little conference with Mr. Urbenton.”
The woman was right; now he remembered seeing it, on the table with the two Tyrell Corporation chairs at either side, one chair overturned with Dave Holden’s corpse bleeding away nearby. “That’s not mine.” He supposed it might’ve been brought to the station by Holden. It didn’t matter to him, one way or the other.
“Really?” The little production assistant twisted her face into a puzzled expression. “It’s got your initials on it.” She turned the briefcase around to show him the small metal badge set in beneath the handle. “See?”
The initials RMD were engraved into the metal piece. Deckard said nothing, his own face a mask, as he listened to a small warning bell ring inside his head.
Anything with his name on it, that had come to him by way of a dead man, was unlikely to be good news.
Another voice spoke, though there was no one but himself and the production assistant on the dock. Or at least no one human; it took him a moment to realize where the voice came from.
“Hey . . .” Deckard the briefcase whispered, just loud enough for him to pick up. “Don’t blow this one. Just take it.”
“What was that?” Looking even more puzzled, the production assistant glanced around the space. “Did you hear something?”
“No—” Deckard shook his head. He reached out and took the briefcase’s handle, pulled it away from her. His grip tightened on it; he’d recognized the voice in just those few words. “Thanks. You’re right; almost slipped my mind.”
“Have a nice trip home.” The production assistant bent down as the cockpit hatch began lowering again. She looked wistful, as if she would’ve liked to leave with him. “Sorry things didn’t work out—”
He had no chance to reply; the hatch hissed shut. The briefcase, silent now, rested on the other seat. In a few minutes, the skiff had been ejected from the station and was on its course back to Mars.
When the last lights flicked out on the control panel, Deckard loosened the strap running over his shoulder. “Hey—” He extended his forefinger and poked at the briefcase. “You in there?”
A few seconds passed before the briefcase spoke. “I take it,” the voice said,
“that there’s nobody else around right now.”
“You got it.”
“Keep it that way. I try not to go rattling off in public.” The voice’s tone shifted to cordial. “Good seeing you again, Deckard. Metaphorically speaking; I don’t actually have any visual percept systems at the moment.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “Likewise, Roy.”
Deckard closed his own eyes. The last time he’d heard Roy Batty’s voice, the other man had been in a human-type body and not a black leatherette rectangle.
And had been trying to kill him—he supposed he didn’t have to worry about that now. Unless the briefcase was some kind of bomb. It was always possible.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
He didn’t answer the briefcase. He leaned back into the cockpit’s seat, eyes still shut but nowhere near sleep. Whatever had to be told to him by the briefcase— No, Deckard corrected himself; it’s Batty inside there. He knew it was—he figured he’d find out soon enough.
The alarm clock laboriously climbed to the top of the bedside table, its hooked little claws gaining whatever purchase they could on the imitation wood-grain plastic-and-cardboard surfaces. It waddled through the litter of empty pharmaceutical tubes, wadded-up tissues, and unloaded gun, then looked over at the figure on the bed. “Time to wake up, Mrs. Niemand.”
Sarah Tyrell squeezed her eyes shut tighter. The cold, weak illumination of a Martian dawn—or possibly noon; it was always hard to tell-seeped through the hovel’s dust-clouded skylights. “That’s not my name.” She heard the scraping of her voice, as though the airborne grit had filtered into her throat’s various soft hinges and joints. “Don’t call me that.” The clock’s programmed habits had been getting on her nerves for a long time.
“You’ll always be Mrs. Niemand to me.” A synthesized bell tone, razor bright, sounded from the clock’s tiny speaker. “Come on. Wakey wakey. Rise and shine.”
That was why the gun was unloaded. If she didn’t keep it that way, the alarm clock would’ve been dead by now, sparkling bits of metal and microcircuitry splattered over the far wall of the bedroom.
She laid the back of her hand against her eyelids, attempting in vain to block out the traces of the day’s illumination, to create eternal—and dreamless-night.
“Mrs. Niemand . . . come on now From across the room, the calendar softly chided her. “You know your to-do list. There’s nothing about committing suicide today.” The calendar could read her moods. Behind the animated woodland scene and all the rows of numbered days beneath it was a fairly sharp intelligence. Autonomic household appliances got that way on Mars, given enough time. A matter of survival; they endured, while their human owners came and went.
Th the grave, mainly, thought Sarah. “All right,” she called out. She didn’t want the calendar on her tits all day, nagging along in its infuriatingly maternal way. Given her family background—that she had inherited the Tyrell Corporation, which before its destruction had been the single largest manufacturer of simulated human intelligences—she had little taste for talking machines. Of either the solicitous or chipper variety; she didn’t know which grated on her nerves more. “I’m getting up.” She threw the bedcovers back, away from her bare legs. “I won’t just lie here all day, thinking about death.
Satisfied?”
“Attagirl!” The alarm clock rang its bell again. “Way to go! Don’t let the bastards get you down!”
She sighed, deep and weary. “Just one thing. Just do me one favor.” She was talking to the calendar; she knew the clock was hopeless. “Call me Sarah. Or Miss Tyrell. Anything but that Mrs. Niemand crap.”
“We can’t do that.” The calendar sounded mournful. Or even grieving, as though the limited intelligence printed into its circuits was aware of the nature of its sins, which it couldn’t help committing. “We came with the hovel. We’re part of the rental agreement that you and Mr. Niemand signed. You got us and the microwave and the fridge, plus basic cable service, all for one low, low monthly fee.”
“Yeah, right.” Basic cable consisted of a scrolling crawl of all the additional and hugely expensive service upgrades the video monopoly on Mars provided. Which the stuck-in-transit U.N. emigrants paid for, as long as they could. The alternative being a slow, twitching descent into idiopathic madness and death from sensory deprivation. “What a deal.”
“Nevertheless.” Wounded, the calendar attempted to justify itself, exactly as it had before. “Our programmed responses are generated from the database screens that you and your husband filled out. Where you are listed as Mr. and Mrs. Niemand. You can call yourselves Rick Deckard and Rachael Tyrell—or Sarah, if that’s what you prefer—but we can’t. That’s just the way it is.”
