EdgeOfHuman Read Free Page A

were some old debts owed to me." He'd watched her, not sure what he felt at seeing a woman who looked like Rachael but wasn't. "From being in the business, you might say." Or was she? He didn't know yet.
    Sarah continued gazing at the sleeping woman inside I he coffin. "New life," she murmured, brushing her hand 'cross the glass, as though tenderly stroking a sister's I 'row. " 'New life the dead receive . .' "
    He recognized the line. Not from any opera. " 'The mournful broken hearts rejoice . . " One of his own aunts, the church-going one, had used to sing it. He had a memory of her naive, awkward soprano voice, floating from a kitchen window, and from the choir at his mother's funeral service. " 'The humble poor believe.' "
    "Very good." She looked over at him. "Charles Wesley- O, for a thousand tongues to sing. Most people don't know any eighteenth-century hymns. Raised Protestant?"
    A shake of the head. "Not raised much of anything. Just like most people."
    "I suppose I got an overdose of it, from all those church boarding schools I was shuffled off to for so long. Most of my life, actually." She tilted her head to one side and smiled. "But then . . . that makes for a difference, doesn't it? Between me . . . and her." A sidelong glance down to the black coffin. "Your beloved Rachael wouldn't have known any Methodist hymn tunes, would she? The memory implant they gave her -- that part of it at least, it was all Roman Catholic, wasn't it?"
    He nodded. "Heavy Latin. Tridentine. The old stuff."
    "One of my uncle's clever little ideas. He wanted her to have some deep notion of guilt and redemption -- so he could control her more easily, I imagine. Doesn't seem to have worked." Sarah studied her double for a moment longer. "There were all sorts of concoctions inside her head, weren't there? I know about most of them. Including a brother for her that never existed." She watched her fingernail tap softly on the glass. "Really -- it's just as well that I'm an only child."
    He said nothing. He'd had a long time to get used to the notion of someone believing that her implanted memories were real.
    "Is that what you were hoping for? New life? Some cure for Rachael, some way of getting around that hard cutoff point, the four-year life span that was built into these Nexus-6 replicants?"
    "No. I think we were both pretty well past that." He shrugged. "I'm not sure what we wanted. I knew that replicants are shipped from the Tyrell Corporation in these transport modules, so they'd arrive at the off-world colonies without most of their life spans being used up. I figured . . . why not? Just to make it seem longer, that she'd be with me. That's all."
    "I know what the modules are used for; you don't have to tell me ." Sarah brushed her hand against her skirt, as though there had been dust on the coffin lid. "You realize, of course, that your being in possession of this device is a felony." The woman who had called herself Sarah regarded him with the same half smile, one that he had seen a long time before on Rachael's face. "You're not licensed for it. Plus, after all, it is Tyrell Corporation property."
    "What's that to you?"
    The smile that had been unamused before shifted and became even less. "Listen, Deckard -- if it's Tyrell property, then it's my property. Don't you know who I am?"
    "Sure." He gave a shrug. "You're some other replicant; probably out of the same Nexus-6 batch as her." A nod toward the coffin. "The Rachael batch. They must've sent you up here, figured that seeing you would fuck with my head."
    "Did it?"
    "Not much." He kept his voice flat, leeched emotionless. "I may not be a blade runner anymore, but I've still got some of my professional attitude left. I'm way past being surprised. By anything." Deckard studied his own hand, reddened by the woodstove's heat, before looking at her again. "You've got some problems, though. They must've programmed you for delusions of grandeur. Tyrell property doesn't belong to you. You