“You gotta be practical, man. When you’re on a video shoot . . . there’s just accidents that’re going to happen. That’s just the way it is; we live in an imperfect universe. There’s a lot of heavy equipment here-all it takes is for a lighting unit to fall on somebody’s head, wham, they got a concussion. Or a camera dolly rolls over somebody’s foot—”
“We’re not talking accidents here.” Deckard felt himself towering over the smaller man like some wrathful avenging deity. “What just happened on the set wasn’t an accident. It was planned that way.”
“How the hell would I know?” An indignant pitch shrilled in Urbenton’s voice.
“I wasn’t even near the set. I’ve been locked in here the whole time.”
“Right. Very convenient.”
“Convenient, nothing—” The director managed to pull himself free. He brushed down the front of his jacket with offended dignity. “It’s my shoot. I’m in charge here-at least, I’m supposed to be in charge.” Urbenton’s wide face turned to a mottled pink, as though he were contemplating active injustices.
“There’s been some funny stuff going on around here, though. From the beginning. The money people, the ones putting up the financing for the production—they’ve had some of their thugs hanging around since the shoot began. And they really give me the creeps—”
“My heart bleeds.” Deckard had no intention of letting the fat little weasel off the hook. “But as you said, you’re in charge. It’s your shoot. So if somebody gets killed on the set—if even a replicant gets killed—it’s because you ordered it to happen that way.”
“What?” Urbenton blinked in puzzlement. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”
“Killed. Dead. A bullet through the back of the skull and out the front, brains all over the pavement. What the hell do you think I mean?”
“You’re out of your mind, Deckard.” Repulsion filtered through the director’s voice and face. “I knew it was a bad idea to hire you for this project. Any time you bring civilians around a video shoot, they get these weird ideas about what’s going on. People like you just don’t understand the nature of the industry.”
“What I understand,” grated Deckard, “is that there’s a corpse lying on your set. If your crew hasn’t cleaned it up by now.”
Urbenton sighed wearily. “Whose corpse?”
“The replicant you had for that last street scene. The Leon Kowalski replicant—”
The director’s round shoulders lifted in a shrug. “We’ve got more than one of those here.”
“How many of them were you planning on killing off? All the Kowalskis?”
Another shrug. “Well, we could if we wanted to. I mean, it’d be legal. They’re only replicants-hell, they’re not even covered under the law regarding the treatment of animals in video production. Now, if we’d brought a real snake up here—you know, for that scene in Zhora’s dressing room, in that club—and anything had happened to it, the authorities would’ve been all over our asses.
You need a major permit just to take a living animal up out of the Earth’s atmosphere.” A thin smile formed on Urbenton’s lips. “Different situation with replicants, though. As long as you got all your security precautions in place, so they’re not going to escape or anything, you can pretty much do what you want with them. Inasmuch as they’re technically classified as manufactured products, and not really living things. Not like you and me.”
“So you were planning on killing them.” Deckard’s gaze narrowed on the other man. “Just to make your goddamn video.”
“I keep telling you. Nobody’s getting killed on this shoot. Jeez.” Urbenton shook his head. “You were the one who insisted on all these conditions, just so you’d come here at all. I didn’t want you as a technical adviser on this production; it was the money people who laid that on me. Believe me, I could do without you hanging around, griping about the things that happen to what should be some perfectly expendable production items. For Christ’s sake, Deckard, on a video shoot, replicants are nothing but fancy-shmancy props, that’s all.” He rolled his eyes, lifting his short-fingered hands in a gesture of defeat. “But you’ve got some hair up your butt about ’em, so fine; that’s why I agreed we weren’t going to harm any replicants on this shoot. For your tenderhearted sake, I should compromise my artistic vision—but who am I, right? I’m just the director.” Urbenton emitted a dramatic sigh.
“Spare me.” Deckard leaned closer in to the other man. “Just tell me why, if our little agreement’s in place, you’ve got a replicant with his head drilled open lying at your lead actor’s feet.”
“You sure about this? Come on.” Urbenton peered skeptically at him. “Like I said, you’re not exactly hip, video production-wise. I’ve got some awfully good special effects people on the crew. Not just digital postproduction stuff, either; these guys do real-time.” The director smiled appeasingly. “You know what? You probably saw a squib go off on this Kowalski replicant’s forehead, a makeup load went splat they, it’s supposed to look realistic.”
“He went down. And he didn’t get up.”
“The big lug probably fainted.” Urbenton shook his head. “The crew probably didn’t tell him ahead of time what was going to happen. Hell, I didn’t even know that was what they had planned. There’s some real practical jokers around here. That’s why I wasn’t worried-at first-when I got yanked off the set just when the tape had started rolling. Supposed to’ve been a call from the money people, down on Earth; you take those calls, no matter what. Then somebody, I didn’t see who, slammed the door on me and I found myself locked in here. Until you came along—”
“Can it.” Deckard had had enough of the director’s rattling on. “The Kowalski replicant didn’t faint. I don’t need to know about video production to see what happened to him. I’m hip to death.” His voice lowered to a grim frequency. “That was my job . . . for a long time. I know what a dead body looks like.”
“Hip to death. That’s a good one.” Urbenton nodded in a show of appreciation.
“I like that. Maybe I underestimated your potential; you might have a real talent for this sort of thing. I think you’re down for getting some kind of screen credit out of this gig; maybe you could parlay that into some kind of scripting gig. Additional dialogue, that sort of thing.”
“You’re not answering my question. I want to know how that Kowalski replicant got killed. If you didn’t plan on it happening, who did?”
“I’m beginning to think . . . you’re not kidding about this.” From the corner of his eye, Urbenton studied him uneasily. “It happened just now? On the set?”
The pink flesh turned pale. “A real bullet, and everything?”
Deckard made no reply. He didn’t have to.
“That’s weird.” Urbenton slowly shook his head. “Because that’d be real bad news. Not just for that poor bastard replicant His voice spookily softened as his gaze shifted away from Deckard. “But for all of us .
By the time he got past the doors through which Deckard had vanished, there was no sound of the others’ footsteps. Or of any voices; the area was acoustically sealed off from the soundstages out in the station’s main area.
Holden could detect the faint buzzing of the fluorescent panels lining the narrow corridors, and nothing else.
“Well, he’s gotta be around somewhere.” Holden looked down the double row of featureless doorways. A fine layer of dust had drifted onto their sills. He tilted back his head, trying to catch a scent trace of his quarry; he’d quit the department, but still prided himself on keeping his quasi-extrasensory cop skills.
The briefcase had its own version of them. “There’s somebody coming,” it announced. “I can feel them. But it’s not—” The briefcase suddenly clammed up.