Deckard stumbled back against the smallest table, feeling the chessboard skid beneath his hand, a knight piece digging into the palm; the room tilted as another seismic convulsion rocked the building. For a moment, as he was thrown toward the wall, he had a glimpse through a window ringed with broken-glass knives of the street below and the gaping chasm that had jagged down its center. The theater marquee burst into sparks, the neon curlicues snapping loose, raking blue tendrils across the sidewalk.
“Isn’t this fun?” Sebastian’s face had reddened into fury; he’d braced himself spread-legged in the middle of the room, riding out the successive impacts of the quake. “Come on—you got to admit it is!”
With the teddy bear wrapped around his leg, Deckard pushed himself away from the wall. He dove toward Sebastian as the bear’s toothless mouth managed to chew a dry hole through the fabric of his trousers. The impact knocked Sebastian off his feet, sending him and Deckard skidding through the rubble of chess pieces and hand tools. Still-warm candle wax smeared across Deckard’s cheek as he trapped Sebastian’s arms against his chest. The smaller man grimaced and spat, writhing futilely.
Outside, the U.N. blimp had floated lower, the light beams from among the spiked antennae slashing through the broken windows, pulling sections of the room into bright illumination, then back to hard-edged shade. Deckard got his knee onto the other man’s chest, pinning him to the floor.
Another light seeped through the room’s walls. Enough plaster had fallen to reveal the skeletal understructure of the building; beyond the broken laths and support beams, the image of a smaller area, the confines of a hovel on Mars, began filtering into Deckard’s perception. For a few disorienting seconds, he could see himself-his other self, the real one-sitting at the rickety table in the hovel’s kitchen area, head nodding with eyes closed as though in sleep or drug stupor, the briefcase silent now, waiting for him to come back from wherever he had gone .
More than vision: the quake rolling through the fabric of Sebastian’s private universe seemed to shake the dim outlines of the hovel on Mars. The empty beaker rolled from the table and shattered on the floor; shards of glass nicked across the back of Deckard’s hand. Blood welled between his fingers and onto the shoulder of the figure struggling beneath him.
The distraction had been enough for Sebastian to work one arm free; the butt of his palm shoved up against Deckard’s chin with a hysteric’s strength. Head pushed back, Deckard could just glimpse the infused life draining out of the toys and mannequins. The clown froze, paralyzed, laughter choked in its rubber-swaddled throat; the ballerina doll collapsed, the sequins across its meager breasts dulling to flakes of lead. Into the floor’s dark lightning cracks, the chess pieces rolled and disappeared, like crumbs swept from one of the overturned tables.
“Don’t fade out on me, you little sonuvabitch—” Deckard knocked Sebastian’s hand away from his face; with the same fist, he clouted the smaller man on the side of the head. “I’m not done . . . with you yet.” His own breath came panting with exertion; around him, he could feel the planes and corners of the room growing even less substantial, the illusion of their existence dissipating along with Sebastian’s will to maintain them. “Came here . . . to find out something . . .”
Deckard gritted his teeth, aiming another blow with the flat of his hand. “Not leaving . . . until I do .
“I don’t care,” sobbed the other man. Sebastian’s eyes squeezed shut, his wrinkled face looking even more like an aging infant’s. “Go ahead and kill me—I don’t care.”
“If I could, I would. Don’t tempt me into trying, though.” The uniformed teddy bear had let go of Deckard’s leg, toppling onto its back, button eyes staring lifelessly up at what remained of the ceiling. A few yards away, the bear’s comrade-in-arms had fallen face-downward, long nose skewed to one side, the point of its helmet broken off. “Just shut up and listen.” His brain raced in desperation, trying to figure out what to tell the weeping figure. “Look. Just because Pris isn’t here . . . that doesn’t mean she isn’t anywhere at all.
Maybe you just haven’t looked for her in the right places.”
“Huh?” Sebastian rubbed his wet face with his free hand. As Deckard let go of him, he scooted back and sat up. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. Figure it out.” Deckard knew he was talking crap, but managed to conceal it. “This is where she was killed, right? I mean, right here in this building. I should know; I’m the one who did it, who blew her away. Out in the real world. You think if you put this place back together here, she’s going to want to hang around it? Get real.”
“Huh.” With his sleeve, Sebastian wiped his reddened nose. “Never thought of that.”
“Only natural.” Deckard wasn’t sure if that word applied in a private universe like this. Raising his knees, he rested his forearms on them. From the corner of his eye, he could see that the room’s accelerating dissolve had been halted, perhaps even reversed; the walls, while still cracked and flaking plaster, appeared less nebulous. He could no longer see the other room, the one where his real body was sitting at a table with a briefcase on it. “Maybe you haven’t put the place back together yet where Pris would be.” He gestured toward one of the broken windows and the night sky beyond. “How far does this go?”
“How far . . . you mean the city? L.A.?”
Deckard nodded. “Everything. All the stuff you put together for yourself here.
Did you just do the street outside this building, or does it go beyond that?”
“Gosh. I don’t really know.” Sebastian gazed up to the cracked ceiling, sorting through his thoughts. “I never really go outside anymore. Not since the rep-symps put me here. It’s netlike I go out walking around or anything. I just made the stuff come back that I could see from the windows—you know, what I saw when I was back in the real world and I looked out and there was the street and everything.” He got up and walked over to the nearest window. With one hand, Sebastian pushed away the rags of the curtain. “Well it’s hard to tell from here. I mean, just how far things go. All the other buildings on this street are so much taller. There’s just kind of one angle over there where you can see some more of the city.” He pointed out to the night.
“Doesn’t look too . . . you know, real or anything. Kinda fakey.” Sebastian shrugged in embarrassment. “Guess I sorta skimped on that part. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“You ought to get out more,” said Deckard dryly. “Do you good.”
The room looked as if a storm had passed through it, scattering the contents.
Deckard stood up, then reached down to set upright one of the little tables and the candelabra that had been on it.
In the rubble on the floor was a scuffed Second World War-vintage Zippo lighter; he flicked on its thin flame and lit the half-burnt candles. The wavering light drove the shadows back to the corners.
“Maybe . . . maybe you’re right.” Still standing at the window, Sebastian leaned toward the darkness, gaze searching across the close urban vista. “About Pris.
You’re right, she wouldn’t be here!” His voice grew more excited; he turned back toward Deckard. “If she came back—and she must’ve; I wanted her to—she would’ve run away from someplace like this. Where she got hurt so bad and all.
She might’ve gotten away before I even got a chance to see her again.”