Edge Of Human

After

The official behind the counter returned the blue leatherette folder, smiling as he handed it back. "I hope you have a pleasant journey, Mr. and Mrs. Niemand." He gazed upon them kindly, though that was merely part of his job. "And that you find everything you're looking for."

"Thanks." Deckard tucked the folder-it had the seal of the U.N. emigration services on it, along with gold-embossed letters spelling out A NEW LIFE! — inside his jacket. "I'm sure we will."

He picked up the carry-on bag beside him. A knot in his stomach unclenched-getting the forged ID cards and other documents stamped had been the last barrier they'd needed to get past. He turned away from the counter. "Come on, sweetheart. We don't want to miss the flight."

Rachael held on to his arm all the way through the corridors of the San Pedro off-world terminal. Scenes of happy life in the colonies-Norman Rockwell mixed with early Soviet Realism, laughing children and fields of grain lined the gleaming chrome walls. Even when Deckard and Rachael were seated aboard the ship, she leaned her head against his shoulder, as though she were already fatigued from the rigors of flight.

Rachael kept her eyes closed all through a lecture from a pair of uniformed attendants, on the various safety procedures. She might have been asleep. He let her hand rest in his; he could just feel the flicker of pulse at her wrist.

Eventually, a low-pitched vibration shivered through the cabin. He looked across the tops of the seats; there were only a few other passengers-emigrants-besides themselves.

"I was dreaming…" Rachael's eyelids had fluttered open. She gazed upward.

"Of what?"

She shook her head. "I don't remember." She glanced out the small round window at her side. Not really a window, but a simulation, a video feed from one of the ship's exterior cameras. The slate-grey Pacific extended to the horizon, its curvature visible now.

"'From Earth we shall quickly remove… " Her voice a murmur. "'And mount to our native abode… '"

An old song-a moment passed before he recognized the Protestant hymn. It called forth a memory; not of childhood, but of another world, the one that had been enclosed by the rough wooden walls of the cabin far to the north. And of that other moment, when a woman had leaned down to look through the glass of a black coffin, at the face that had been a sleeping mirror image of her own. She had spoken the words of a different hymn then. But he had known it, as he knew this one.

He spoke its title aloud: "'Away with our sorrow and fear… '"

Rachael turned and looked at him. Her eyes widened, as though in sudden realization. Of what her own words had disclosed.

"Don't worry." He leaned his head back against the seat. "It's not important." More of the ancient words came to him.

We soon shall recover our home; the city of saints shall appear, the day of eternity come…

He closed his eyes, her hand still in his.

They gave him a new heart-a newer one, top of the line, better than the one he'd been born with. And a new job, an easy one, at least for a while. Wrapping up loose ends, more or less. For the department files.

He checked his pulse and blood pressure, the oxygen mixture in his artificial lungs, with a glance at the miniaturized LEDs that had been implanted in his wrist. Everything in order-Dave Holden felt no strain as he walked up the path from where he'd left the police spinner. The dry pine needles shifted beneath his boots with each step. Small living things scurried away, into the forest's deep and dark shade.

The cabin was ashes and charred boards, as he'd expected it to be. The men who'd worked for Sarah Tyrell had given all the details about their assignment here, the last they had gotten from her. What they had done, and what they had left. He raised the camera and took a few photographs, for documentation.

Holden stepped across what had been the sill of the cabin's door and looked around the black rectangle. Glass in the ashes, the remains of a heat-cracked window, an iron stove toppled onto its side, shapes of what might have been a wooden chair and table before the fire had been set around them…

And something else, untouched. In perfect condition — the men had done that, as they had been told to. Taken the black coffin, the transport sleep module, out of the cabin and a safe distance away; then returned it to where it had been before. Complete with that which it held. No longer sleeping; no longer dying. Beyond all that.

He looked down through the coffin's glass lid, at the woman's face. Eyes closed, dark hair spread across the silken pillow. Rachael, he thought. He knew it was her. The one that his ex-partner Deckard had loved. It had always been.

A glance at the transport module's control panel had shown that all life processes had ceased, vital signs at zero. The coffin's sustaining mechanisms had been switched off. Not murder, not technically, but an authorized procedure on Tyrell Corporation property.

He didn't take any photos of the black coffin. He didn't need to. In the picture in his memory, she could still be sleeping.

Walking slowly back to the spinner, he wondered. Why had Rachael been left there? Like that, untouched. He knew, or could guess, why Sarah had done everything else. The whole charade of pretending to be Rachael, asleep on the bed in the Tyrell private suite. While the persynth-the real-time, computer-generated replica of herself, a talking, responding simulation of herself-had shown on the screen of the video monitor. There had been enough evidence in the smoldering remains of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters to reveal what she had done. The same trick that the police had used before on Deckard, set up in the shabby office in the central station, to make him believe that Bryant had still been alive. Deckard had seen through that one. Strange that he hadn't seen through Sarah's little joke as well.

He supposed it was all a matter of getting what you wanted. A hawk wheeled across the sky and was gone. Sarah had done that, gotten what she wanted. To become Rachael. To be loved…

Maybe Deckard had as well. Something that Holden had thought about before, back when he'd first figured out what had happened. Maybe Deckard hadn't been fooled at all.

He got back into the police spinner and let the cockpit glass seal around him. Maybe, thought Holden, he got what he wanted. Somehow. Maybe he did. Not that it really mattered.

A moment later the spinner mounted into the sky, banking south and toward Los Angeles.