That had been a different time. Another world-literally—and another life, even though it’d all been little more than a year ago.
“I’m waiting . . .”
“Shut up,” he told the briefcase. Even with his mind elsewhere, Holden’s gaze had continued to scan the crowd on the fake L.A. set, looking for the one face he needed to find. A part of him had to admire the authenticism of the producers; the milling extras who made up the set’s street population looked as if they might’ve been scooped up with a net from the earthly L.A. and deposited here. Antiquarian punks with museum-quality mohawks and chrome-studded minor body parts mingled with every variety of hopeful religious fanatic, from New Mexican penitentes to orange-bedsheet-clad Hare Krishnas. Whatever wasn’t costume or cultic emblem was bare flesh, strapped tight under crossed networks of imitation leather, slicked shining by the artificial rain and lit to the blue pallor of ancient consumptives by the thin spectra of the coiling neon overhead.
The effect of an actual L.A. street—Holden knew the one the producers were obviously going for; it was over by the animal dealers’ bustling marketplace—was marred only by the fact that the extras were on break, along with the videocam operators and other techs. Instead of passing by each other, two rivers of foot traffic between the buildings, with that zombielike facial glaze typical of longtime Angelenos, they were all talking with each other and even laughing, heading over to the honey wagons or the meager pickings on the shoot’s catering tables.
A little knot in the middle of the crowd wasn’t so well disposed. Some of the extras and crew glanced over their shoulders at the figures whose shouts and pleadings were barely audible to Holden.
There he is—the crowd thinned a bit, allowing Holden to spot the one with the ragged brush-cut hair and knocked-about long coat, nubbly square-ended tie pulled tight under his shirt collar. That combination of rough edges and oddly matched gear was just the way he remembered Deckard from all their time together in the blade runner unit. Then he saw the man’s face and realized he’d gotten it wrong. That’s the actor, thought Holden. The one playing Deckard-ot her than the general height and build, they weren’t even close. The actress, the Rachael, was a decent-enough match . . . except for the look of disgust screwing up one corner of her mouth, which indicated that she might be fully capable of lifting the big black gun she had in one hand and icing somebody else. There was already one corpse lying in the middle of the set—Kowalski? The face-down body was hard to identify, but it appeared big enough.
Blood mixing with the puddled artificial rain gave Holden the suspicion that some poor bastard of a replicant wasn’t going to be getting up, brushing himself off, and cruising for stale doughnuts with the extras and other bit players.
Christ, thought Holden in sudden dismay as he caught a better glimpse of the one shouting figure. It’d taken him a few seconds to recognize his old partner; the last year or so appeared to have walked all over Deckard. The former blade runner looked harder and meaner, skin beginning to draw down tighter upon the sharpened angles of his facial bones. There was even a little steel grey scattered through his closecropped hair. Deckard looked as if he’d spent the last year in prison rather than on Mars. Rumor had it that life in the U.N. emigration program’s transit colonies was no absolute picnic, but Holden hadn’t figured its effects would be this visibly corrosive.
It had to be the poor sonuvabitch’s personal life. What else? Holden shook his head; he would’ve bet that it wasn’t going to work out, that the arrangements Deckard had made would have a dismal outcome. The whole bit with Sarah Tyrell, the human original of the replicant Deckard had fallen in love with . . .
Holden knew that the point would come, if it hadn’t already, when dismal would turn to fatal.
“I see him.” Keeping his voice low, Holden lifted the briefcase and started calculating a route through the maze of video-cams and other equipment. It wouldn’t be easy; he’d have to find a way past whatever security was on the set—did Outer Hollywood have rent-a-cops?—then catch Deckard’s attention somehow without revealing what was going on to everybody else standing around.
His old partner didn’t know that he’d be coming here, let alone that he had a talkative briefcase to deliver to him. Deckard would be fast enough on his feet—or at least Holden hoped he still would be—not to blow it by reacting to one of his old friends’ unannounced presence; he’d know that Holden would only be there for a good reason, one that was best kept on the quiet until its exact nature was determined. Still, thought Holden, I’ve got to get him somewhere in private-handing the briefcase over in public view would be likely to get them both killed.
It appeared that the job might be easier than he’d originally expected. The loud confrontation down on the set—Deckard’s shouting, with the others standing around and trying to mollify him-ended with Deckard’s storming away, leaving a small bespectacled figure with clipboard far behind in his wake. The look in Deckard’s eyes—even from a distance, Holden was able to intercept a quick spark of it—was one of murderous rage. Or if not murder, at least serious asskicking; the hunched set of his shoulders indicated that he was going off looking for someone with whom he had a score to settle.
“Come on—” Holden had got into the habit of speaking that way to the briefcase, even though he knew it had no independent means of locomotion. “We can catch him over there.” He started walking again, picking up his pace as he skirted the video set, staying in the shadows beyond the range of the lights.
The sound of someone pounding on a door came to Deckard’s ears. And a voice shouting—he looked down the long hallway, determining from behind which door the noise was coming.
“Hey! Anybody!” The voice was Urbenton’s, pitched even higher with overexcitement. “Come on, this isn’t funny-let me out of here! You’re all going to be fuckin’ fired! I’m supposed to be on the set!”
Deckard halted when he saw one of the doorknobs futilely rattling. The adrenaline pumping through his system hadn’t ebbed—he’d lost none of the anger over the replicant’s murder during the taping. He took a step backward, raised one leg, and kicked straight out, hitting the door’s keyless lock.
The impact knocked over the person on the other side as the door wobbled to a stop, one hinge torn loose from the surrounding frame.
“Jeez—” The pudding-y director scrambled to his feet. Urbenton’s face, already starting to settle into jowls despite his relative youth, shone with sweat.
“You could’ve killed me!”
“Believe it—I still could.” Deckard completed the other man’s standing-up process by reaching down and grabbing Urbenton’s jacket lapels in his fists, then pulling and lifting. The video director hung in Deckard’s grasp, the same way the actor had hung in the grasp of the now-dead Kowalski replicant. “You sonuvabitch—I thought we had an agreement.” The last words rasped out of Deckard’s throat.
“What’re you talking about?” Urbenton’s feet kicked futilely in midair. “You gone nuts or something? What agreement?”
“Don’t bullshit me. You know what I mean.” He set the director down, but kept the lapels wadded in his grip. “When you brought me here-before even, when you came to Mars and talked me into this nonsense—you said that nobody would get hurt. Nobody—not even replicants.”
“Hey, come on!” Urbenton tilted his head back from Deckard’s fierce glare.