“Well, maybe you’ve packed a few extra things inside. Things that might sort out the situation a little bit.” Marley pulled the briefcase out from beneath Deckard’s palm and turned it around toward himself.
“Get your hands off me—”
Marley ignored the protest that came in Batty’s voice. His thumbs pushed back the latch buttons on either side of the handle; a second later, he had thrown the lid back, exposing the lined interior.
“Not a lot in here.” He glanced up at Deckard. “You could’ve made better use of it, you know. Thrown in a change of clothes or something. No matter—there’s enough. At least for right now.”
Leaning back against the booth’s padding, Deckard watched as the other man examined the briefcase. A rectangular packet, one end torn off and then folded down to preserve the contents, was held up before him.
“You held on to this?” Marley looked at the name SEBASTIAN on the packet.
“Thought it might come in handy, I guess. Just in case you wanted to talk to him again. Though what more he could tell you, I have no idea. Still, maybe you could just keep it as a little souvenir of your travels.” He laid the packet down on the booth’s table. The briefcase’s lid blocked Deckard’s view of the other man’s hands rummaging inside. “Or perhaps you just wanted to keep the original package all together, with all the bits and pieces-since the collaborator rep-symps, the ones the cops have taken over, put this in here, you might as well keep it the way it came to you. But this is something new.”
Marley held up another object. “I know what was in here originally, and this wasn’t part of it. You just put this in here since you got back from Sebastian’s pocket universe.”
Deckard looked across the table and saw a square of white-enameled metal in Marley’s hand. The other man turned it slightly, revealing the broad red cross on the small box’s lid. The old first aid kit-ancient, perhaps, considering how battered and scuffed it appeared. He had almost forgotten about it; when he had left the hovel, tugging the Rachael child along with him by one hand, the briefcase in the other, he had stopped when he had felt the little metal box slipping out of his jacket. He had popped open the briefcase and thrown the box in there for safekeeping, not even trying to figure out why he was hanging on to it at all instead of pitching it away as a worthless piece of junk.
“You do remember, don’t you? Where you got this?” Marley held the white metal box up in front of his smile. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
“What do you know about that?” The question of just how extensive the other man’s sources of information were troubled Deckard again. “You weren’t there when it happened.”
“No,” admitted Marley. “But I knew Sebastian had this. It’s a pretty important little item, even if it doesn’t look it. So it’s worth keeping track of. If Sebastian had it, and now you do, chances are good that you got it from him.
Logical, huh? And I’m right, aren’t I?”
A nod from Deckard. “So what’s so important about it?”
“Well, why don’t we take a look?” Marley gave a playful wink. “Shouldn’t be too hard for a couple of geniuses like us to figure out. Let’s see With his thumb, he pried open the lid; rust in the hinge joint creaked as the flat metal was prodded back by one fingertip. “Not too promising, if you’re looking for the secrets of the universe.” He glanced up at Deckard. “Old bandages and dried-up disinfectant.” The fingertip now pushed around the box’s antique-looking contents. “How about these aspirin?” When he pried the lid off one of the tiny bottles, the decayed vinegar smell wafted through the booth.
“Hm, I think the expiration date might’ve gone by already—”
“Cut the crap.” Deckard scowled in irritation. “Get on with it.”
Marley ignored him, continuing with the routine. “Not much else in here.
Hardly seems worth the trouble, does it? You’d have to wonder why anybody would make a fuss over something like this.”
“I know what that is.” At the back of the booth, the Rachael child had pushed herself forward, hands flat on the table so she could see better. “There were things like that where I came from. Like that box and all that stuff in it.”
“Of course there were.” Marley turned his smile toward the girl. “You’re absolutely right, sweetheart.” He glanced over at Deckard. “She knows what the score is—or at least part of it. Because this is a standard-issue item, something that was stocked in all transports going outside Earth orbit. No big deal, just your basic little kit for small emergencies, incidents you didn’t need to bother going to the infirmary for. There were probably dozens just like this aboard the Salander 3. But this particular one it’s very special.
Not because of the bandages and the dead aspirin. But something else.”
“It’s all old.” The Rachael child’s brow creased as she studied the box in Marley’s hands. “The ones we had, they were new. I mean, they weren’t all beat up like that one.”
“Sure—” Marley nodded. “That’s because those other first aid kits were still there with you, where there wasn’t any time. This one fell out-well, it was taken out. Somebody carried it out of the Salander 3. Because they had found out how important it was. So it’s been out here, in real time. And that’s where things get old and beat-up. Like this.” He turned back toward Deckard.
“You don’t know yet what I’m talking about. But you will.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“You don’t have a choice, Deckard. Not anymore. Not that you ever did.” Marley set the first aid kit down on the table. “If it’s not the contents-all this old crap—then maybe it’s the box itself. Think that could be?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “See the inside of the lid here? What’s it look like to you?”
“Paper.” Mottled and browned by the same passing of time that had marked the small box’s exterior; Deckard didn’t see anything remarkable in the thin lining. “That’s all. Probably it was some instructions, or a list of supplies.” The paper was blank, whatever words that had been on it long since faded. “Standard issue, like you said.”
“Wrong on that one, pal.” Marley watched as one of his fingernails picked at the edge of the paper. “What was standard on these kits was to have the contents list printed right on the metal. See? Like that.” One corner had been peeled away enough to reveal the black lettering beneath. “So somebody must’ve stuck this in here. For a reason.” He grasped the wrinkled paper between thumb and forefinger and tore it away. “Which you shall see.”
Something else was behind the paper, a rectangle just as thin but stiffer.
Marley pulled it from the hiding place and looked at it for a few seconds before handing it across the table.
A photograph. Deckard held it by the edge, looking into the frozen section of the past that had been caught there.
He was still looking at it and listening to Marley explain what it meant, what it showed-listening and understanding at last-when the first bullet hit.
For a moment, Deckard thought it was something from the video monitor, something that was happening to that other Deckard, the actor playing him in the reenacted past. The noise of the shot was so loud that it pulled his gaze away from the ancient, long-hidden photograph and toward the monitor. That Deckard, with his long coat but without his face, was backed up against a motorized urban trash-retrieval unit; the gun was a gleam of black metal spinning away, knocked out of his hand by the taller figure looming above him . . .
A quick scream of fright from the Rachael child, and he realized that the shot had been in this world and not in the one held by the monitor. The bullet had torn into the fiberboard ceiling above the booth, gouging out a ragged trench from which a loop of electrical conduit dangled like a silvery intestine.