EdgeOfHuman Read online

  The last dregs of that happy sense, of knowing at last that what had happened to him wasn't his fault, ebbed out of Holden's soul. Another emotion replaced it, as in silence he studied the man standing next to him. Now it was his turn to feel pity. He could see more clearly now the lines engraved into Batty's face, the deep creases as well as the finer net across the aged skin. Cheeks hollowed, eyes sunken in the dark crepe of their sockets; as if in the blue glow of the monitor, the man was visibly claimed by time, all the decades catching up with him. He's right, thought Holden. He's been doing this a long while . . .

  "You didn't quit, did you?" He wondered just how old this guy was, exactly. "Either the Tyrell Corporation or the places before that. They fired you. Put you out to pasture."

  Batty shot him a fierce glance. "Yeah, well, maybe you're just finding out what it's like." An almost childish Bulkiness twisted in his voice. "Maybe the reason Bryant went in on the conspiracy to get rid of you guys is just because he wanted to bring in some new blood. Replace you jerks who've gotten your minds all warped out on the Curve. Useless dildos."

  "The Curve was never a problem for me." Holden set his own gaze hard. "Once I've got the territory scoped out, I can take care of myself."

  "Man, you don't even know. I tell you one thing, that your ass was set up for a fall. and now you think you're a walking encyclopedia." The mean smile showed again. "There's stuff going on, levels of conspiracy, that I haven't even started to bend your head with yet."

  The realization had come to him some time ago that Batty got off on the whole conspiracy notion. "Such as?"

  "Bryant was lying to you from the beginning. To you, and then to Deckard, when he sent you out hunting that batch of replicants." A smug expression showed on Batty's face. "There was one more escaped replicant that he didn't tell either one of you about. A sixth replicant."

  "That doesn't make any sense." Another memory, from when he'd been back there at the hospital. Bryant had told him that all the escapees-all five of them-had been taken care of. Holden shook his head. "Why would Bryant cover up for a replicant?"

  "Ah. There's the mystery, all right." Batty's face showed once more how much he was enjoying this process. "When you combine that with the supposition he was involved in a conspiracy to get rid of the blade runners . . . makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just whose side Bryant is on."

  Holden fell silent, musing over everything Batty had told him, trying to fit the loose bits and pieces together.

  "A sixth replicant . . ." He spoke aloud. Something moved deep inside his being, other than his prowling, restless thoughts. "Number six." The old blade runner instinct, the desire, that had stirred into life every time he'd gotten an assignment from Bryant. To hunt, to track down and locate, and then to retire the quarry. He'd never really understood why wimps like Deckard and some of the other blade runners bitched and crabbed about this job. To him, it'd always been his whole reason for existing. Like that old high-wire artist had said, long ago-everything else was just waiting. "One more to get . . ."

  "Take it easy," said Batty. "I know the idea gets you all revved up, but you still gotta take it easy for a little while. That artificial heart-and-lung implant's still settling in."

  Holden didn't care about that. He knew that bagging the sixth replicant would solve a lot of things. It'd prove, he thought with grim satisfaction, that I'm still on top of the game. He'd been set up by that fat, lying bastard Bryant; that'd been the only way that they -- the big they of the anti-blade runner conspiracy -- had been able to nail him. It still rankled to think of people hearing about him lying there in the hospital, a limp little bag of fluids hooked up to pumps and aerators, and feeling sorry for him. Now there was the chance to show them all.

  Plus, it seemed logical there must be something special about this one remaining replicant; why else would Bryant have let the others be hunted down and retired, while covering the tracks for number six? When I find this one -- Holden already knew he would -- I'll have to be careful not to retire it too soon. Not until he'd pumped it for every scrap of information about the conspiracy. The key to why Bryant and those mysterious, unknown others had tried to kill him -- he didn't care about all the rest of the blade runners; this was personal -- was walking around Los Angeles right now, passing for human, wearing some face that could be just about anybody's.

  "This isn't going to be a piece of cake." Holden nodded slowly, laying out everything neatly and efficiently inside his head. He knew he'd have to be careful, operate while keeping his own head low-the conspirators had to know that he'd been busted out of the hospital, and Batty had made such a circus out of the break, there'd be no doubt that he was hooked up with him as well. Loose cannon, he thought. That loony smile and crazy eyes made him wonder how far he could trust Batty. Or whether he'd have to find some way to cut free of him --

  He suddenly felt tired, a wave of fatigue deep and powerful enough to buckle his knees. He had to steady himself against the bank of monitors and other electronic equipment, to keep from falling.

  "See? I told you." Batty's voice came from somewhere nearby. "You gotta take it slow for right now. It's going to be a while before you're back up to your old operating speed. If ever."

  "Screw that." He summoned enough willpower to stand upright. "Don't worry about me. I'm not going to let having a bio-mech heart-and-lung set cramp my action." He gave a quick, harsh laugh. "Hey, it just struck me--" Turning his own smile toward Batty. "With what your doctor pals out here stuck inside me, I'm not all human anymore. What a thought."

  "'Not all human . . . " Batty peered at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Don't you get it?" Maybe this guy was so old, he was turning senile; maybe that was why Tyrell had fired him. "You know, because of the new heart and lungs being machines and stuff-"

  "You poor sonuvabitch. You're the one who doesn't get it." Batty slowly shook his head. "I thought you knew. That's why it was such a good joke a while back when you thought I was a replicant."

  Holden felt a chill lock on to his vertebrae, climbing upward one by one. "What're you talking about?"

  "You were never human, Holden." The smile, the pitying gaze. "You're the one who's a replicant. You've always been one."

  9

  "All right, all right; now I know you're bullshitting me." Holden felt both weary and disgusted. "You told me part of your brain was wired in backward, and now I believe it. You got a sense of humor that could only come from a couple of fritzed lobes."

  "Bullshit, it's not." Batty folded his arms across his chest. In the space bound by the equipment shack's corrugated-steel walls, the monitor's glow laced an icy blue through his colorless hair. "I'm not joking with you. Why should I? About something like this? Trust me. You're a replicant."

  "Trust you . . . yeah, right." The guy was either yanking his chain, figured Holden, or really was as crazy as the frequent smile and weird cast to his gaze indicated. "Give it up, Batty. I don't know what the hell you think you're accomplishing with all this fun-and-games line, but I'm not falling for any more of it."

  "Aw, man, the games haven't even started. Let's go back over to the medical unit." He reached over and switched off the monitor. In darkness, he headed for the dim rectangle of the door and the starlit night outside. "You want proof I'm not jerking you around, then come on. Got something else to show you."

  Outside the larger building, the disheveled doctor looked the same as he had when he'd wheeled Holden's gurney into the operating room. He couldn't tell if any of the blood spots on the white coat were his own. The hot night air had pulled darker crescents of sweat under the man's arms.

  "Hey, can I bum one of those off you?" The doctor didn't wait for permission, but plucked the cigarette pack from Holden's breast pocket. "Thanks." He flicked the match away, a miniature comet, inhaled, and coughed. "You shouldn't be walking around, you know." With the same hand, he rubbed his watering eyes and used the cigarette to point toward Holden. "I didn't put all that gear i
nside you that long ago." He looked over at Batty. "You wear this guy out and he pops a seam, it's not going to be that easy to fix, man."

  "Don't worry about him. He's one of those big, bad blade runner types." Batty held out his own hand, palm upward. "Give me the keys to the ice room. You know, the slab farm."

  Scratching his unshaven chin, the doctor fidgeted through the white coat's pockets until he came up with a ring of keys. "I want those back when you're done. I don't want to find any more of those grease monkeys trying to take naps in there. I don't care what the weather's like. Bad enough, keeping their sixers in there."

  "Relax. This'll only take a minute." Batty twirled the keys on one raised finger. "Come on, Mr. Skeptic. Prepare thyself to be blown away."

  Holden followed Batty inside and to the rear of the building. The door-lined corridor was crowded with abandoned gurneys and wheelchairs, nests of catheters and trusses, a crutchless Lourdes. He spotted the black attaché case he'd worn strapped to his chest, now tossed onto a collapsed scarecrow of chrome IV-drip stands.

  "In here." Batty unlocked the last door, pushed it open. "All the proof you could ever want." The room exhaled a chill draft. "At least in this world."

  "Great," said Holden as he looked around. "A morgue." He'd been in enough of them in his time. This wasn't one of the best maintained he'd ever seen; daggers of frozen condensation had formed on the rows of metal drawers that made up one wall. "This is it?"

  Batty stepped over to the single table, underneath the light fixture dangling from the ceiling. "You know, I don't know why, but I just had a feeling that this would come in handy. Good thing I asked 'em to keep it around." He grabbed the corner of the sheet and pulled it partway back. "Take a look."

  Standing at the table's chrome edge, Holden gazed down.

  And saw himself.

  Not a mirror. The eyes were closed. As though asleep -- so far down that there was no breath to raise the chest beneath the sheet. Unscarred -- this body hadn't caught any rounds to the sternum. No wonder I look so peaceful, he thought.

  "Nice, close match, huh?" Hands on hips, Batty nodded as he admired the corpse on the table. "Say what you want about those Tyrell people being a crew of bastards, you gotta admit they do nice work setting up a production line. They get tolerances down to a gnat's foreskin. There's probably not a freckle's difference between you and this baby, or any of the rest of this model. You're all identical. With some . . . minor variations."

  With one fingertip, Holden reached down and touched the forehead of the body. The coldness of the flesh, flesh the same as his, tingled up his arm like a small electric shock.

  "Who . . ." The morgue smell, the refrigerated suspension of decay, sat heavy in his mouth. "Who is this?"

  "Hey. What does it look like? Maybe it's the twin your mother forgot to tell you about. Slipped her mind." Batty's amused gaze peered closer at him, waiting for a reaction. "Isn't it obvious? It's another David Holden replicant, just like you. It's amazing you haven't run into one before. It may not have been the most popular model that the Tyrell Corporation ever made, but there are still quite a few of them out there."

  Holden drew his hand back, rubbing his fingertip against the front of his jacket, as though to wipe off some residue of his own death. The initial shock, that of seeing his own face attached to a body on a morgue table, had passed; now he looked at it with a measure of distaste. "Where did this thing come from?"

  "You're sure not displaying much family sympathy. Especially for somebody who came out of the same factory as you." Batty spread his hands above the corpse with Holden's face, as though in benediction. "This 'thing,' as you put it, originally came out of the Tyrell Corporation just as you did. That's where it died, too. Dust to dust, meat to meat. But between those end points, it went far, far away-to the off-world colonies. This Dave Holden replicant was one of the group of six that escaped and came back here to Earth, back to L.A. and Tyrell. The bunch that your boss Bryant told you to track down and retire. Except that this one was already dead by the time Bryant gave you the assignment. This is the one that got fried in one of the Tyrell Corporation's electrical-field security devices, when they all tried to break into the corporation's headquarters." Batty lifted the sheet corner higher. "There's some burn marks farther down on the abdomen. Do you want to check them out?"

  "No, that's okay. I'll take your word on it." He felt oddly relieved that the replicant had gone out in a relatively quick and painless way; the kind of security devices that were used in places like the Tyrell Corporation had neural-interrupter capabilities, knocking trespassers unconscious before killing them. Better that way-the thought of that face, identical to his own, taking a blade runner slug to the forehead wasn't pleasant, either. He started to turn away. "I've seen enough."

  "Actually, I don't think you have." Batty pulled the sheet completely away from the table. "Look a little closer."

  Holden glanced over his shoulder. And nearly fell, surprise triggering a hiccup in his new heart.

  The corpse on the table had breasts. Small, an athlete's, but definite. And farther down, the genitalia of a female.

  "Great," muttered Holden. He'd recovered some of his composure. "They make a double of me, and it goes out and becomes a transsexual."

  "Not quite." Batty re-draped the sheet over the table, as though respecting the dead's modesty. "She was created this way. Another Dave Holden replicant-just like you but with one small difference, the chromosomal selection for a female rather than male. The Tyrell Corporation can do that. It's easy enough."

  He wasn't quite sure what to think. "What was its name?"

  "Something beginning with a D, I suppose. Deirdre? Danielle, perhaps. They're short on imagination over at the corporation's design labs. And Holden, of course; they put the same last name on all the units of a particular model. Like they named the Roy Batty replicants after me." He really didn't care about the thing's name. Just giving himself time to think, as he gazed down at the corpse. Time to sort out the physical evidence-things didn't get much more factual than a dead body-and the stuff that wacko Batty kept rattling on about. Which was considerably less reliable. Somebody saves your life, gives you a whole new heart and lungs, and they think they can hand you any old routine. He knew he wasn't buying this one, not without an argument.

  "All right," he said. "You got a dead replicant here. And it's obviously a Dave Holden replicant. The female version, at least. That doesn't mean I'm a replicant. I could be the human templant for this model."

  "Oh?" Batty raised an eyebrow. "You recall getting any royalty checks from the Tyrell Corporation recently? If they based a replicant model on you, they're supposed to pay for that."

  "So they screwed me. Christ, I'd rather believe that than . . . than . . . what you're trying to convince me of. That I'm not human at all. Hey, you're the one who's been going on about what a bunch of bastards they are over at the Tyrell Corporation. So now I find out that they owe me money; fine, I'll go over there sometime and collect."

  He looked down at the corpse again, then back up to Batty. "Besides, what sense would it make? I'm a replicant, and I get put on the squad hunting down escaped replicants? And don't give me that line about setting a particular kind of cat to hunt a particular kind of rat. You'd have a replicant blade runner hanging around with human blade runners-they're not going to figure it out eventually? Even if I didn't get assigned to track down an escaped Dave Holden replicant, one of the other blade runners would. So he'd either let me know I'm a replicant or he'd come back to the police station and blow me away. In either case, it's not going to be much of a secret any longer, about what's been going on."

  "You know . . ." Batty sighed. "Your problem is that you make all these big assumptions. You just sail right into believing stuff that hasn't been shown to be true."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as there being any human blade runners at all."

  That shut him up for a moment; he hadn't been expecting that line.
When Holden spoke again, his voice was tightened by a barely controlled anger. "I don't have a problem, Batty; you do. You're insane. You've got all the classic thought processes of a paranoid schizophrenic."

  "Please-" Disgust on Batty's face. "This is what I get for being a nice guy, trying to help people out. Amateur medical advice. You want to believe this or not, fine, it's no skin off my nose. But the truth of the matter is that all the blade runners have always been replicants, from day one. Even before there were any replicants being manufactured in the U.S., back when the industry was located in Stuttgart, and the original developers of the technology-people like Paul Derain, and Sudermann and Grozzi, the ones that Eldon Tyrell eventually ripped off-knew they were dealing with dangerous stuff and they put the first safeguards in place."

  Holden had to admit that the other man knew his stuff. Those were names from the ancient history of replicant manufacturing.

  "From the start," Batty went on, "those companies had replicants on-line whose sole purpose was to keep other replicants from escaping and trying to pass themselves off as human. That's where the name 'blade runner' comes from; those enforcement replicants were originally called Bleibruhigers. Bleib ruhig is German for 'stay quiet.' And that's what they did, they kept everything nice and quiet; most people around the turn of the century weren't even aware that the replicant technology had been developed. Then when Tyrell and the U.N. brought everything over to the States, and the catching of escaped replicants became a police function, that's when Bleibruhiger got Anglicized to blade runner. The term doesn't make any sense, otherwise."

  "That's a nice etymology lesson, Batty, but it doesn't prove anything. Why use replicants to hunt down other replicants? You'd always be risking them realizing that they had their own interests in common. Then they'd conspire back against you."

  "Only if the blade runners knew that they were replicants." Batty pointed a finger at him. "You didn't know. And you were one of the best that the LAPD had in the squad. That's the whole point of having replicants do the dirty work. The nature of the blade runner job is nothing but licensed killing-for most thinking, feeling creatures, whether they're human or replicant, that's a corrosive way to live."