“Maybe you would’ve, if you had the chance then.”
A shrug. “I’m past caring about that. So what about Batty?”
“What about him?” Sebastian looked puzzled.
“He’s with the rep-symps as well, I take it.”
“Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, we all are. Your old partner David Holden certainly was—and that’s the truth.” Both of Sebastian’s hands rose in an appeal. “Why would I lie to you about something like that? Jeez, Mr. Decker, I’m way out of the loop now. I don’t even exist anymore, at least not in the world you do. So it’s not like I’ve got something at stake in getting you to believe this. I’m, like, a disinterested party. Sort of, anyway. I mean, I care what happens and all. So you could say I’m on the rep-symp side, too.”
“You know Deckard laughed again, softer and more ruefully. “The funny thing is, I’d really like to believe you.”
“You should! I’m telling you the truth!” Sebastian’s hands quivered. “Look, you did me a favor just now. When you told me about why Pris wasn’t here, and about where she might be. That . . . that gives me hope, Mr. Decker. That I didn’t have before. I was going to give up, just let this whole place disappear. And me with it—I can do that if I want to. I don’t have to exist.
Here or anywhere else. But I’ve decided to stick around—because of what you told me.” He stepped forward and grasped Deckard’s arm. “So I owe you one. I do, really. I wouldn’t lie to you, especially not about the stuff you came here to find out. David Holden brought the Batty box out to you because he believed in the rep-symps’ cause; he died for it. Now it’s up to you—it’s your decision-about whether you should find a way to get the briefcase, and the information that’s inside it, to the replicant insurgents out in the colonies.”
Deckard regarded the other man. “What do you know about the data in the briefcase?”
“Not much. Just that it’s important that the insurgents get it. If they’re going to have a chance of winning and being free and all. Or even being allowed to live.”
“The U.N. would wipe them out? Exterminate them?”
Sebastian nodded vigorously. “You bet. In a second, if they could. And they might be able to-things really aren’t going that well for the insurgents. At least, that’s what I picked up from the rep-symps. So there’s a lot at stake in getting you to carry that briefcase out to the replicants. In some ways .
He let go of Deckard’s arm at the same time his voice dropped. “There’s a lot more at stake than just the fate of the replicants out in the colonies and their rebellion. That’s just . . . just the least little bit of it!” A fervent gleam appeared in Sebastian’s eyes. “It’s not just the replicants; it’s humans it’s everybody .
The sudden intensity of the other’s voice pushed Deckard back. “What’re you talking about?”
“They told me you weren’t supposed to know Sebastian squeezed his pale hands together. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you .
“About what?”
“I promised them I wouldn’t tell . . . but The little man was growing more visibly agitated by the second. “Like I said, I owe you one. I owe you everything Sebastian’s voice suddenly began to grow fainter and fainter.
“It’s like this. The stuff the rep-symps didn’t want me to tell you—it’s all about the difference between humans and replicants. If there is any-remember what Dr. Tyrell used to say?” The voice had diminished to the level of a whisper. “The Tyrell Corporation motto? ‘More human than human.’ ” He didn’t know how true that was .
“Hey-what’re you doing?” Deckard had leaned closer to the other man, trying to hear the words being spoken. “Sebastian—” He realized that he could see through the other’s image; the details of the scattered toys and dolls, even the cracked plaster of the far wall, had begun to show. Layers of transparency: each object, Sebastian object, seemed to be turning to clouded glass, or mist contained in the outlines of what had been solid. “You’re fading out on me—”
“Huh?” Sebastian’s gaze refocussed as he pulled himself from his monologue.
His partial image looked as though he was shouting, but the sound that emerged was barely audible. “Mr. Decker-where are you going? You can’t go now—”
Deckard reached for the other’s arm, as though he could drag Sebastian back into perceived reality. His fist closed on nothing. Sebastian’s image wavered and grew fainter.
“It’s not me, Mr. Decker—it’s you!” Sebastian’s faraway voice became more frantic. “The stuff you took, that activated colloidal suspension stuff—it’s wearing off. It’s going out of your system; you’re not here anymore—”
“Goddamn—” A wave of vertigo rolled over him. The indistinct walls and ceiling had exchanged places.
From somewhere above him, Sebastian’s voice called out. “Wait! There’s still things I gotta tell you!” The ghostly form grabbed an object from the table and hurriedly thrust it toward Deckard’s hands. “Here-take this—”
A small metal box; it felt light and hollow, but real, against Deckard’s palms as the rest of Sebastian’s pocket universe lost its substance. He suddenly found himself toppling backward, balance lost as the floor beneath him thinned out of existence.
Distance and direction vanished with all the other aspects of that world. He fell into the rapidly enfolding dark.
Miss Tyrell! Over here!” A voice came out of the darkness, the words barely distinguishable against the howl of the wind and the lashing of the rain.
“We’re coming—”
The water, salt of the Flow mixed with ice crystals driven from the dark roil of clouds above, stung beneath Sarah’s eyelids. She shielded her face with one hand, holding on to the edge of the shaft’s doorway with the other. The triangular structure bucked on the surface of the water, storm waves lifting and dropping the platform beneath her feet. The shaft itself, leading down to the Salander 3, strained with the violent motion as though it might snap free, like a rope stretched to its breaking point. All the way up from the sea-buried ship, as the tiny elevator had carried her toward light and air, she had wondered if that would happen. If it does, she had told herself, I’ll drown like a bug in a soda straw.
That some kind of atmospheric turbulence was pounding Scapa Flow had been no surprise to her. The clouds had been gathering, growing more ominous and heavy-laden, when she had first stepped onto the Orkney mainland, in sight of the old stone cathedral stuffed with its bogus monitoring equipment. And if the storm’s fury had been unleashed while she was locked away in a little bubble of stilled time, that made sense as well. Given what Sarah had witnessed, the things she had seen, the past made visible and tangible-given all that, it would have been little wonder to her if this world’s sun and moon had crashed together, with wormwood and the stars tumbling into the ocean like hot coals.
“Just hold on!” The call came from the boat careening on the Flow’s dark, churning surface. She could just barely make out the silhouette of Wycliffe standing braced at the prow, while Zwingli behind him manned the oars. “We’ll be there in a second!” A wave mounting as high as Wycliffe’s chest slammed into the boat, nearly toppling him overboard. Zwingli’s frantic rowing clawed helplessly at the raucous water.
Just my luck, thought Sarah; the phrase had become the obvious refrain to the events around her. I would’ve been safer back down below. She knew that wasn’t strictly true; as it was, she had barely escaped from the Salander 3 with her sanity intact. There was no way she wanted to see those things again; once had been more than enough.
The foam-crested waves struck the platform, a hammer seemingly more solid than liquid. Her fingers gripped tighter to the doorway as the impact tore at her, then passed, the shaft’s tension snapping it down into the trough that came after.