Authors: K. W. Jeter
He still had a job to do. He left the gun where it lay, a few inches from Sarah Tyrell's hand, and walked back toward the stairs.
The Rachael child had fallen asleep at the table, her head upon the old leather-bound book. Deckard touched her shoulder; she sat up, blinking and frowning. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. "I'm kind of hungry," she announced.
"That's all right." Deckard took the child's hand and helped her from the high-backed chair. "We're going home."
The girl looked up at him as he led her toward the door, past the silent toys. "Where's that?"
"I don't know," said Deckard. "I guess we'll find out."
"Mr Niemand-your papers are a mess." The U.N. bureaucrat looked at the documents spread across his desk and shook his head. "Do you really think you can get off this planet with your affairs in this condition?"
"I don't know," said Deckard. He leaned back in the uncomfortable chair that had been provided to him. "I don't much care, either."
The bureaucrat glanced up at him with small eyes filled by officious hatred. "You have an attitude problem as well." All the authority of the U.N's emigration program sounded in the man's voice. "Don't you?"
Deckard made no reply. The office, a tiny cubicle in the central administration building of the Martian emigrant colony, smelled like photocopy toner and the adrenaline of small-fry bullies. Deckard had no particular wish to be here at all; they had sent for him. The announcement of the resumption of travel to the far colonies had gone out a couple of weeks ago, but he hadn't bothered to make an application.
Let them come find me
, he'd decided.
And they had. The uniformed security men had shown up at the hovel, asking for him by pseudonym. He'd told the Rachael child to wait for him, that he'd be back before too long; then he'd pulled the door shut and had gone off with the grim-faced men on either side of him.
"Your original entry visa-" The bureaucrat flipped through a passport. "Shows that you came here with your wife." The mean little eyes raised from the leatherette-bound booklet. "Where's Mrs. Niemand?"
Deckard didn't even bother to shrug. "Why don't we just say . . . that she and I had domestic troubles."
The bureaucrat laid down the passport. "There's also nothing in the Niemand family documents about having a little girl with you. When you came to Mars, you were childless."
This time, he shrugged. "The domestic troubles didn't start right away."
"Obviously. From what our sources tell us, this child..." The small eyes glanced at another sheet of paper. "Reportedly named Rachael... is ten years old."
"That sounds about right."
"Mr. Niemand." The bureaucrat touched his fingertips together in a cage. "You haven't been on Mars for ten years."
"Then it's a mystery, isn't it"-Deckard looked straight back into the man's eyes-"how these things come about."
"No, it's not." Through his steepled hands, the bureaucrat regarded the figure on the other side of him. "Why don't we just cut the crap? We know who you really are."
Another shrug. "Good for you."
"We've gotten our orders ... Mr. Niemand." The bureaucrat's lip curled as he spoke the alias. "From the top levels. We're to put you and the little girl on the next transport heading to the outer colonies. You wanted to emigrate?" He gathered the passport and other documents into a pile. "Then you're ready to go. Cleared, approved, expedited- you're out of here."
Deckard picked up the booklet on top of the rest, opened it, and looked at the rubber-stamped markings on the pages. "What if I don't want to go now? What if I've changed my mind?"
The eyes narrowed down to pinpricks. "It's not up to you."
He regarded his own hologram photo at the front of the passport, then laid it down. "You say you know who I am." Deckard kept his voice level, emotionless.
"But what about you? Who are you?"
The bureaucrat's gaze shifted uneasily. "That doesn't matter. Mr. Niemand."
"It matters to me." Deckard leaned forward. "I don't know who the hell you are. You could be anybody." His voice grated harder. "You could be the U.N. You could be the cops; maybe you're really working for the LAPD. You could be the rep-symps; I don't know how far they've infiltrated the authorities. Maybe He studied the other man's round, insignificant face. "Maybe you're the Tyrell Corporation... that shadow of it. I just don't know."
"Let's face it." The bureaucrat showed an unpleasant smile. "Your track record on this sort of thing isn't the greatest. You can't even tell if I'm human or not."
"You're right. I can't even tell about myself anymore." Deckard slowly shook his head. "And I don't know why you want me to go out there. To the stars."
"You're not important," said the bureaucrat. Or whatever he was. "You don't matter at all. It's the girl. You know that much, don't you?"
Deckard kept his silence. The other man was right again. That was about all he knew for certain. He'd known it since he'd come back with the child from the Outer Hollywood station. She'd been born out there.
Far away
, he mused.
And strange
. The first replicant child, the beginning of that other species' inheritance. Of all that had once been considered the exclusive province of human beings.
There had been other things he'd agreed to carry to that place he'd never seen. And he'd lost them. For good or ill, he didn't know. But he still had the child with him. A child bearing his dead love's name, and her face with those dark, quietly watching eyes.
Rachael
...
That much he had also known. That whatever else happened-whatever he had to do, however it was made possible; whatever would come about when they reached that destination-he would take her there. That was the job he had, the job that he'd accepted.
"All right," said Deckard. He gathered up the other documents and held them with the passport in his hands. "I'll go." He pushed the chair back and stood up. "How much time do I have?"
The bureaucrat looked up at him. "The transport leaves in twelve hours." The small eyes were almost kind. "You're doing the right thing, Mr. Niemand."
"I don't know that." Deckard tucked the documents inside his jacket. He turned and grasped the knob of the office's thin door, then glanced over his shoulder at the other man. "And neither do you."
"It's not up to us, Mr. Niemand."
"Probably not." He pulled open the door. "Maybe out there I'll find out who does decide. And then I'll know."
The bureaucrat nodded. "Perhaps."
Deckard shut the door behind himself and headed down the narrow corridor. There was no hurry; the few things he had to pack for himself and the little girl wouldn't take long.
Whatever else they might need, he supposed, would be waiting for them at their journey's end.
About the Author
K. W. Jeter is one of the most respected sf writers working today. His first novel,
Dr Adder
, was described by Philip K Dick as 'a stunning novel... it destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of science fiction.' Jeter's other books have been described as having a 'brain-burning intensity' (
The Village Voice
), as being 'hard-edged and believable' (
Locus
) and 'a joy from first word to last' (
San Francisco Chronicle
). He is the author of twenty novels, including
Farewell Horizontal
,
Wolf Flow
, and
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human
.