“You figure it’s just luck? The director Urbenton just happened to change his mind?”
He looked over at the other man. “No—” Deckard shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of luck. If I ever did. Nothing happens without a reason.”
“For anybody not in the kind of position you are, that would be considered paranoia. For you, Deckard, it’s the beginning of wisdom.”
Whatever relief he had felt over the broadcast of the video, and the absence of his face from it, was replaced by the suspicions he had for this character.
“I don’t have to be real wise, buddy, to wonder what it is you want from me.”
“What do I want?” Marley looked back at him with wideeyed, feigned innocence.
“Like I said, I want to help you. And the way I do that is by stopping you.”
“Stopping me from what?”
“Come on, Deckard. I’m way ahead of you.” The naive mask had dropped from Marley’s face. “I know what you’re up to. You’ve accepted a little job, haven’t you? The fact that you’re carrying around that talking briefcase only goes to prove it. If you had any sense—if all you were interested in was saving your own skin—you would’ve ditched it by now.” Marley tilted his head toward the other occupant of the booth. “Same with the little girl. Nice kid, but she’s only going to slow you down.”
“That’s my problem,” said Deckard.
“Oh, exactly.” Marley’s thin smile returned. “It’s your problem because it’s your job. The job you’ve taken on for the rep-symps of getting that briefcase and its data contents out to the insurgent replicants.”
Deckard stiffened. “If you know all that . . . and you want to stop me . . . then you must be some kind of cop. You’d have to be working for the authorities.”
“Not at all.” The smile grew wider. “I’m with the repsymps.”
For a few seconds, Deckard thought that one over, then slowly nodded. “Sure you are. You blow away that Kowalski replicant right in front of me, and then you come and tell me that you’re working on behalf of the replicants. You really think I’m going to believe that one?”
“Shooting the Kowalski replicant Marley shrugged. “Regrettable, but it had to be done. And not even all that much to be sorry about—he was pretty much at the end of the four-year life span that the Tyrell Corporation had built into that model. So he didn’t really lose that much. And besides, there are other Kowalski replicants.”
“That’s a pretty cold attitude.” Deckard studied the other man. “At least I had the grace to develop a guilty conscience over what I’d done.”
“Good for you.” Deckard’s words had left Marley unfazed. “That must be why you got picked for this job you’re doing. Guilty consciences screw up people’s heads, make ’em easy to manipulate. Like you. Otherwise, if you were thinking straight, you would’ve been able to figure out a few things about the situation you’re in.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Work on it, Deckard.” The other man leaned closer across the table. “You think because I’ve said I want to stop you—to make sure you don’t get that briefcase and its data out to the insurgents—you think that must mean I’m with the authorities. Have you ever thought that it’s exactly the authorities—the police, the U.N., whatever-who want you to get that briefcase out to where you’ve been told it’s supposed to be delivered?”
“Hey!” The voice of Roy Batty piped up from beneath the table. “Don’t listen to this guy! He’s trouble!”
Deckard glanced over to the monitor screen, where the Deckard of the video, still wearing the actor’s face, was talking to somebody in a set that was supposed to be the LAPD’s high-ceilinged main headquarters. He didn’t hear the characters’ words, concentrating instead on what the figure across from him had just said.
“Look at it this way,” continued Marley. “The cable monopoly here does whatever the authorities tell it to do—that’s why it gets to remain a monopoly. If U.N. security tells the monopoly to run this video or that one, or that one”—he pointed to the screen—“then it gets broadcast all over the colony. Same way with Urbenton and his little Speed Death Productions company; if he wasn’t in tight with the police before, it wouldn’t take much pressure, if any, before he’d do whatever they tell him to. Especially since he doesn’t owe you any favors. If they told him to cut the computer graphic effects, the dubbing in of your face over the actor who was playing you—he’d do it in a second. Urbenton wouldn’t care if it helped you or hurt you; just the kind of guy he is.”
Deckard had to admit that Marley was right, at least as far as that part of the analysis went. “I think I’m starting to see what you mean.”
“I bet you are. You’re not totally stupid, Deckard. If the police and the U.N. security forces and everybody else who should be after you, if all those people wanted to find you and stop you from carrying that briefcase out to the insurgents, they wouldn’t have let that actor’s face stay in the video that’s being broadcast. They would’ve told Urbenton to go ahead with his original production plans and dub your face in there. So that everybody in the emigrant colony would know what you look like; so they could put out a bulletin, offer a little reward, and there would’ve been no place you could hide. We wouldn’t be sitting in this cozy little hole having this conversation; the police would’ve hauled your ass away by now.”
It made sense; or put another way, the video broadcast didn’t. This was their chance, thought Deckard, to make sure everybody knows what I look like. And it hadn’t happened. The corollary of the principle that, for him, everything happened for a reason—not paranoia but wisdom, a survivor’s assessment of how the universe worked—was that when things didn’t happen, that was also because somebody wanted it that way.
“Then that would mean Deckard slowly picked through his own words. “It would mean the authorities don’t want to stop me. They don’t want to catch me . . .”
“They want you to get away.” On the other side of the table, Marley regarded him with evident satisfaction, pleased with the impact his arguments had made.
“So the question you have to ask yourself now is . . . why?”
“Why do they want me to get away.” Deckard rubbed his mouth with a knuckle.
“They must have a reason.”
“It’s not you, pal.” Marley seemed to be taking pity on him. “If it’s any comfort to you-nobody’s ever considered you to be that important. So you needn’t bother building up your ego now. It’s what you’re carrying. The job you’ve undertaken. Got it?” He smiled. “It’s the briefcase. They want you to deliver it. Not the rep-symps, but the authorities. The police, the U.N. . . . all of them. The bad guys.”
“I told you!” Batty’s voice shouted louder from beneath the table. The briefcase vibrated against Deckard’s shin. “I told you this guy was trouble.
He’s messing with your mind. Don’t listen to him!”
The Rachael child leaned to one side in order to talk to the briefcase. “It’s okay,” she said in a soothing tone. “Nothing bad’s going to happen to you—”
“Christ,” spoke Batty disgustedly. “I don’t need this. You people are all screwing up big-time. Man, I wish I still had legs. I’d walk out of here right now and take my chances on my own. I’d let you all just sit here until you rotted away.”