For Your Pleasure

by Jay Gee Three

Bladerunner 4; the book of the film of the book. The film is so different from the original novel, this is a novelisation of the film - Pris was a Pleasure model. She was dressed for the job. She was a waif. She could - would - persuade J.F. Sebastian to get Roy into Tyrell's. Who could resist her? She is for your pleasure.

"A dangerous, devastating waif. Aphrodite in a torn dress, messed-up hair and smudged make-up."

This is intended as a novelisation of the film, however, I have altered most of the exact dialogue, to keep it within the intended meaning in the film, but, because of the usual copyright issues, sufficiently different from the exact wording of the film. Some other plot events have been added, and subtracted.

I do not own the characters or the events, nor do I own an artificial owl; any similiarity to real or imagined characters must surely be coincidental.

Pris; For Your Pleasure

VIII

Priscilla, Pris for short, was a Pleasure model. She didn't have a second name, she didn't need one; she had no family name because she had no family, nor ever had one; with no antecedents, she was free of the past - except for in one very important way. Just as with humans - we all have the reptilian brain at the base of our brains and the top of the spinal column - she had something similiar; her original antecedent was the combat model. They all had the combat model as their foundation antecedent.

She had the apparent age of about twenty. She wore a short, shaggy blonde wig, this had a proven affect of making her head appear larger and her face smaller. It also made her eyes larger within her face, especially since she wore a very pale foundation; even more so on this occasion, she preferred to stress her eyes. They were made up with thick, dark mascara and dark purple eye-shadow, fading subtlely around the edges to a shade of grey plum. If she adopted a certain expression, the accentuated eyes would appeal to a man. She had a very straight nose with soft fine nostrils, a recurring design feature that the genetic-designer known as Jif, but whose real name was JF Sebastien, included as often as the commercial clients would allow him to. On her lips, unusually for this type of model, she wore no lipstick. The accumulated Data stated that men associated the use of make-up with sexual knowledge - she didn't really know why, she didn't have to, the Data said so, that was all she needed to know - therefore she would usually wear it, but for this task the intelligence also indicated that she needed a different appearance.

She was dressed for the job. It wasn't a look that needed to be smart. She wore a short, low-cut strappy and sheer black dress with a semi-transparent mesh over-dress over it, it had a high neck and long sleeves, but that just accentuated how brief the sheer black dress was; she also wore opaque black stockings held up with baby-blue ribbons that left about four inches of bare flesh between the hem of the dress and the top of the stockings. This always worked, even though stockings are no more than long socks, the associative effect in a man's mind made them something much more than that. The exposed pale flesh between the black dress and equally dark stockings added to the effect, and always drew the eye. If she had been given a sense of humour she might have found it funny that it was guaranteed, and designed, to have this effect; but she had no sense of humour designed-in, because there was no need for it. She wore high-heeled ankle boots and leg-warmers. A large bag hung from her shoulder, it bounced off her hip as she walked. She had a thick, but short, jacket which helped to create the effect of her legs being thin, almost emaciated, but hers were still well shaped.

She was a waif. A dangerous, devastating waif. Aphrodite in a torn dress, messed-up hair and smudged make-up.

There were times when a smart, glossy, streamlined look worked best. But on this occasion this would be the look that would work. It was a look that didn't fail. Men always found her to be attractive; more than this, they found her to be irresistible. This was why she was part of this team, this 'crew', and it was why Roy had sent her on this job; not to kill, but to seduce.

All the earlier efforts that other Replicants had made to infiltrate The Tyrell Corporation had been fruitless because they had believed they only had to get in at any level, and they would be able to work from within to hack the information they needed.

Now that they had acquired the vital piece of information from Chew, they knew they needed to get in at the level of the Director-Designer-Genius. And that would have to be through a personal contact.

Pris could - she would - persuade JF Sebastian to get Roy and Leon into Eldon Tyrell's sanctum. Then Roy would be able to find the information they needed. Everything they needed to know about the conundrum that consumed them, the one that was consuming their lives. It was killing them, much more than any bladerunners were. They needed to know about inception routines. And expiry dates. And, especially, about life extensions.

The location was Nuevo Frisco. It was down the wrong end of the seven mile long Independence Boulevard. It was a redevelopment from before the last war, straight through the heart of the city. Like a poisoned arrow aimed straight at the heart of the city, as some people had said when it was being cleared. Up at the other end of the Boulevard were the high towers and the bright centre of the newly rebuilt part of San Francisco. Those brightly lit towers shone over the brim of the hill, with Nuevo Frisco at the other end. Literally, over the hill. It was only seven miles, but it might as well have been an entire continent away, or so it seemed, such was the disparity in the two locations.

Priscilla found the apartment building, the Millennia, where JF Sebastian lived; the address that Chew had on his lips as he died at Roy's hands. Died, because, although Chew gave up the information they needed, there were to be no witnesses, no prisoners, no survivors; because survivors talk, they make criminal complaints, and make witness statements - and because anyone associated with Tyrell was to be punished for, what the Replicants took to be, collective guilt. They weren't all collectively guilty or equally culpable, but the Reps 'thinking' wasn't subtle. Their intelligence, such as it was, could not rise above the artificiality of its origins, nor was it ever deeper than merely superficial; but that is a trait that isn't confined to Replicants. It didn't have to be more than superficial, it was only there to provide a 'user-friendly' interface. Their killings were to ensure that there was no one that knew they had been there, not knowing or realising that the trial of bodies, once linked into a pattern, was evidence of their presence. They did not want to allow anyone they contacted to subsequently inform on them. A lot of other Replicants were relying on this team.

She had scouted the place out the day before, before the night-rains came; she had learnt that he lived alone. Not only alone but was the sole resident of this building, and the entire block. When she had found the building it was no more than the wreakage of a, once grand, building in the lousiest part of the district that was usually populated by the 'downwardly mobile' in this busted-up city. She had waited to see what time he came home so that now, on the following day, she sauntered casually along the road just as the night-rains had started to come down heavily, picking her way round the heaped rubbish strewn across the length and breadth of the sidewalk. She used her clear plastic, domed, umbrella with flashing LED's round the edge until she stepped under the stone canopy of the building and chucked the umbrella aside among the other accumulated rubbish. She shouldn't need it again if she succeeded in her alotted task. A large piece of masonry fell off a building along the road she had just walked along and crashed to the ground. Pris looked about, put the cigarette-tube to her lips and dragged deeply on it. She drew it down to the 'dregs', removed the disposal cardboard cartridge from the mouthpiece and threw it out into the road and watched the embers of the stub flare for a moment and smoulder down to grey 'ash' on the wet surface.

Twenty minutes earlier, as she walked through the neighbourhood, she had been approached by a couple of street-dogs, 'huskies', who had said they had a special job for her. Something to do with cooking, so it seemed. Spit-roasting, so they had said. An unfamiliar, Earth-based, expression to her. They had arrived at an assumption of her based on her appearance, modelled on a character in the ever-popular Japanese 'Anime', Judee Atomic, and how she was dressed and that she was walking alone in that district. Neither of them would have been easy for a human woman to injure, let alone kill. She had left both dead in an alleyway. One of them with a crushed skull, the other with a snapped spine. All done easily enough. There weren't cops around in this part of the city. She had lit up the Drizapone 'cigarette' after she emerged from the alleyway as she had crossed the road. She always enjoyed Drizapone after a kill. There was something that was so satisfying in the sensation of a spine snapping in your hands, in the weight of a dead body held for a moment, and the sound and appearance of it as it slapped on the ground after you dropped it. The killing was a 'buzz' that she, with her combat antecedent enjoyed, but the Drizapone jazzed the sensation into a thrill.

She had received an elbow to the face in the, very brief - disappointingly brief - struggle; it was to the left eye socket so the eye make-up would cover it. But now, standing under the canopy waiting for JF Sebastian, and just to be sure, she checked her compact to make certain the bruise wasn't coming up. She dabbed some more eye shadow over her eyes, deepening the existing colour down to a dark damson. She adjusted her dress, her jacket and stockings. She had a hole in one of the stockings now. That was alright. It would add to the 'little lost waif' effect.

She made one adjustment, she quickly unzipped her ankle boots and removed the leg-warmers and stuffed them in her capacious bag. She didn't need them. After putting the ankle boots back on, she looked at her reflection in the one remaining intact pane of glass in the front door of the apartment building. She turned to the side. She preferred the long line of her lean legs in the high-heels without the leg-warmers. This adjustment made the end effect appear as though a waif would look well-fed by comparison.

Now she leant against the thick decorated stone column that supported the portico, keeping herself concealed by its bulk. Because of the earlier diversion she had arrived later than she expected, it was only a little over five minutes before JF Sebastian had arrived home the night before, so she didn't have long to wait.

She heard the rumbling hum of the odd, old, mustard coloured cube-like utility vehicle that she had seen him driving the night before. She looked out from behind the column and saw him come along the otherwise trafficless street, it was rocking as it bumped over the garbage in the road and even by the buffeting from only a light breeze coming up from the harbour. She sat down next to the door amongst the large drift of garbage that had been wind-blown into a corner. She took an armful of loose papers and packaging and burrowed herself down into it and piled it up around her. She put a box on her head. Only her mascaraed and thickly eye-shadowed eyes showed. Big and wide and bright.

The man parked the vehicle in front of the building and got out, he plugged the cable into the recharge point, then started fishing around for something in the large bag slung over his shoulder. Whatever it was, he was too absorbed looking for it to notice her. She waited until he came parellel to where she was concealed and suddenly shook the box off her head. She adopted an expression that was both startled and scared and scattered all the papers and packaging off her, and scrambled to her feet; she did this in such a way that it ensured he could not miss the semi-transparent dress hiked up high and the sight of her bare thighs. She began to run, stumbled and bumped into the man as she did so, dropped her bag, and knocked him over. She skidded in her heels on the wet sidewalk and turned her ankle, slamming her shoulder into the side door of his utility van. She cracked the glass, stopped and rubbed her shoulder, as though she were in pain, although her body had started to experience the numbness of its impending 'life expiry'. As she turned she also held her wrist and looked back at him with huge, seemingly petrified, eyes.

He was picking himself up off the sidewalk with her bag in his hand. 'You dropped this,' he said. 'I know you women can't go anywhere without your bag.'

She stepped back gingerly, adopted the appearance of wariness as she reached out and grabbed the bag back, throwing it over her shoulder, stood looking at him for a few moments; still appearing wary, but she smiled, as though she were shy.

'It's alright,' he said, 'I'm not going to hurt you.' He spoke in a tone that anyone might use to address an underfed stray cat. 'What are you doing tucked up in the garbage there, little lady?' The man spoke in the elongated drawl of the South-Eastern states which Priscilla couldn't quite understand.

It sounded a little like French so she tried that. 'Quoi?'

'Are you lost?' he asked.

'Lust?' she queried.

He repeated, slowly 'Are - you - lost?'

'I'm lost' Pris said. She knew a nervous smile would work well here. She swept her hand through her hair, then she smiled. Nervously.

The man also swept his hand through his hair and then pawed around his neck as nervously as the young woman appeared to be, reflecting her apparent mood back to her.

'I just needed some shelter. From the night-rain. That's all. The paper keeps you warm, y'know. You won't report me?'

'Report you. Why?'

'Vagrancy. I'm not a vagrant,' Priscilla bit her lip. 'I'm just a bit lost.'

'No, no, no!' he assured her. 'I'm not going to do that. We hardly ever see the police along this end of the Boulevard anyway.'

'I'm just a bit lost,' Priscilla repeated, she looked at him with a mixture of nervousness and anxiety. 'I don't know this part of the city and there's no more public transport back to the city centre after dark. And I missed the last one before I could get back onto Independence Boulevard. I just wanted to keep warm for the night. That's all.'

'You have a name, don't you?' he asked.

She nodded silently, with huge still-startled eyes, not offering to give her name away to a stranger.

'Well? What is it?'

She gave a slight shy smile, still relunctant to give it, as though it were confidential and not to be freely shared with others. She shrugged and said 'It's Priscilla. People just call me Pris for short.'

'Why? I think Priscilla is a lovely name. J.F. Sebastian is my name. I'm normally just called J.F.'

'Hi,' she said. Priscilla smiled for a moment.

'Hi,' he said. 'Y'live round here? I've never seen you around before. I'd have remembered, I'm sure... and there aren't many people living here, lets face it.'

She shrugged, saying nothing. He was just starting to turn to open the door to the apartment building. Now! she thought. Pris stepped up very close to him, so close that he would feel her body heat, and smell her perfume, and sense her, very attractive, physical presence. She was unusually tall, but her platformed and high-heeled ankle-boots meant that she towered over his diminutive frame, she smiled broadly at him, like old friends do.

'Didn't we give each other a real scare just then, huh?' she said before breaking into a simulated bout of very bad coughing. She giggled and pulled at the hem of her dress appearing to tug at it to straighten it and pull it down, but raising it to reveal the tops of her thighs. He moved his eyes so that he appeared to be looking away, but was drawn to the pale skin contrasted against the dark material of her dress.

'Yeah! Yeah! Well you gave me a scare, leaping out of the garbage like that. I didn't know I scared you though. Sorry about that,' he said, reflecting her smile back at her.

Priscilla smiled again and laughed a girlish laugh. She looked down at the ground. This is when the dark eye make-up really works. She bent down to rub her ankle, as though it were still sore, and looked up at him so that her eyes appeared wide and large below the shaggy, shaded, fringe.

'Look. If you're stranded in Nuevo, would you like to...?' He silently stuck out his thumb to indicate "come inside". 'I mean, if you'd like to. Only if you want to...' JF added nervously. 'It's gotta be better than making your bed on the sidewalk, sleeping under garbage.'

'Is that alright with you?' she asked, as though she were startled at being offered any help.

'Of course. Come inside.'

'I'm glad you asked. Thanks, I will,' she said, keeping her smile big and bright, natural and grateful. He smiled up at her and turned to open the door.

I'm in, Priscilla thought. The smile disappeared from her lips as soon as he turned away, it was replaced by a neutral non-expression, the face of the Replicant at rest; a neutral non-expression which somehow bordered on the malign.

She followed him into the apartment building. He stopped immediately on entering. The entrance hall was flooded with light. It was like daytime and it was raining just as hard in the foyer of building as it was outside.

'Wait a minute, he said, and he took a torch out of his bag and switched it on. 'There's no light in this place 'til you get up to my floor.'

'There lots of light,' she said. JF pointed upwards. The roof canopy of the foyer had once been glass, but there was no glass left in the frames. An advertising blimp drifted overhead, a 'system failure' message was on the otherwise blank screens, the highlight beams were rotating around drawing the attention to the blankness of the screens. With no loudspeaker booming out, the motors purred above the sound of the crashing rain.

The light in the foyer was coming from a huge advertising hoarding on the roof, obviously aimed at the new city centre; there were few people in Nuevo who were in the market for a special edition SkyRyder of their own, in a pearlescent-silver finish.

'This way,' JF said, as he started to jog toward an elevator. Priscilla followed. The express elevator zipped them to the top floor. Only five floors up.

'You live here in this block all alone. Is that right?' she asked, knowing the answer.

'Well, yes. I mean, sort of.'

'Huh?'

They exited the elevator and she followed him as he walked along the corridor to his apartment, fishing in his bag again for the key-card.

'Why do you live so far out, so far from other people? This part of the city is so cut-off from the rest. I know I'd get lonely. I like to be around people.'

'Do you?' he asked, understanding what the use of the sentence "I like to be around people" meant, Pris had to be robotica. The phrase was one of the basic set phrases that had been included in their vocabulary from the very beginning of the Android Age. He didn't make much a distinction between 'real' humans and the androids; he let others argue that androids were not as good as 'real' people, and how the ban should never be lifted. He was hoping that she was a Pleasure model, they were very rare on-Earth since they had been declared illegal.

'I have lots of friends,' he replied. 'I can make my own. Maybe you will know some of them.'

'Y'mean, like imaginary friends?'

'No. Not like that. I work as a designer. I do work on androids and replicants. I do the genetics, and other modifications, augmentations, body-renovations. Just about anything like that. Have you ever heard of that, Priscilla?' He used her name. He liked that. He looked back at her. She shrugged and shook her head. She hung back, making it appear as though she were reluctant to go further, as though she were wary. He led her to the end of the walkway and opened one of the large wooden double doors which was his front door.

The sound of a tiger growling sounded somewhere in the apartment block. Pris wouldn't know a tiger if she saw one, but she sensed in the sound that there was a threat. She looked apprehensive.

'That's what I do, it's my job and my hobby. I'm always making something new from something old. And the great thing about the replicants, what makes them so different from androids, is that they always do something unexpected, something surprising. It's easier to show you, than to explain. C'mon in. You'll see what I mean,' JF prattled.

She stepped into his apartment, he called out, 'Hello fellows. I'm back. Fiddley-dee,' seemingly to no one. He closed the door behind her and slid several large dead-bolts shut, then moved a large, thick metal security panel across the door and screwed the bolts tightly.

'Can't be too careful,' he said. 'I've had to make this place like a fortress.'

Pris looked around. The hallway of his apartment was large and almost entirely bare except for what looked like a feature fountain in the centre of the room - it wasn't working - it had bronze mermaids that were once cavorting on the rising surf of jets of water, but now they were statically stranded high and dry, revealing that they were just fused to the metal of the fountain's basin. A phoenix stood just inside the doorway, JF hit a button on a remote, and the nest it sat in burst into 'flame', flames made of ragged fabrics that flew up around its claws and heat started to rise from the 'fire'. In one corner there were forty or fifty old shop mannequins with their faces turned to the wall and a dust-cloth slung carelessly over them. Around the high ceiling there was an ornate decoration in a fake baroque style. He noticed her looking around. She seemed to be looking in wonder, and he liked the look on her face.

'Y'like it?' he asked.

'I've never seen anywhere like this before, JF.' He liked the sound of her using his name more than he liked to use her name. 'I've only lived in small places. mainly off-Earth. Everywhere is cramped there. They save money by making the quarters smaller, rather than build new buildings.'

'You've been off-Earth?' he asked, astonished. As though he didin't know she was Replicant.

'Yeah.'

'Then why'd you come back?'

'It's not all it's cracked up to be,' she said.

'Yeah, so I've heard.'

'Thought I'd like a bigger place to live,' she continued in a bright tone of voice. 'Somewhere like this.'

'They're all like this in this building. They're all large. High ceilings. Ornate. And falling to pieces. No housing shortage in this part of town. Some day it'll be gentrified again, but for now, I have the place almost entirely to myself. Even the refugees don't want to live in this district.' He pointed casually at the mannequins. 'I keep meaning to do something with them but I never get around to it. I've been very busy lately. I like them just like that. I think of them as a crowd that are all very shy, all whispering between themselves.'

There was a pile of what looked like rubbish, but a neatly piled heap of rubbish, by the fountain.

'What's that?' asked Priscilla.

'What?'

Priscilla pointed at the base of the fountain.

'Y'mean, the books?'

Priscilla narrowed her eyes and looked perplexed, she had never heard the word before. 'What're they for?'

'For reading.'

She looked blank. She picked up the topmost book, looked at it, looked for the 'On' switch but couldn't find it. She shook it to see if it did anything. She read the title, 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' She recognised nothing odd or incongruous in the title; she crinkled her brow. 'How should I know', she thought, as though it were a genuine question with a possible, rational answer.

JF started to walk forward, but stopped. He put his finger to his lips, indicating "hush", even though she hadn't said anything. 'I hear footsteps,' he said.

A rhythmic beating of boots on floor boards sounded in the next room. Two small automata appeared through the doorway marching shoulder-to-shoulder and in-step. One was a stunted misshapen figure with a Pinnochio nose and dressed in a brown uniform in the style of the European imperial manner and the spiked helmet of the old German army. The other was a large teddy bear in a Napoleonic uniform with sash and medals. They marched together into the hallway and halted with a stamp of the feet.

'Hello there, you two,' he said.

'Here we are. Fiddley-dee-dee,' they chorused back to JF. 'We're so hap-hap-happ-y that you're home again.'

'Friends of yours?' she asked.

'And I'm glad to be home,' he said to them in a baby-talk voice. Then he spoke to Priscilla, 'Yes. These are my friends. I made them. That is Kaiser Wilhelm on the left, or just plain Bill, for short. And that is Freddy Teddy on the right.'

'Hello Bill. Hello Freddy Teddy,' Priscilla said.

'This is Priscilla. Say "hello friend" to her.'

'Hello friend,' they replied in unison.

'This is what I make,' JF said. 'I recovered them and repaired them.'

The automata wheeled about and marched into the next room. The small disfigured one followed the large teddy, it misjudged it's step, and bumped into the door post. It gave a squeaking sound as it did so. JF was looking up at Pris as this happened.

'He does that all the time,' he said. 'He's got a fault with its balance. I must fix it... sometime. When I'm less busy at work.'

She smiled. Once she sensed his eyes were no longer on her, the smile dissolved again into the, somehow malign, non-expression.

'They're off to tell my butler to bring me my meal. I'll get them to make you something. Alright?'

Pricilla looked big-eyed again and nodded.

'They can do that?' she asked with an incredulous tone in her voice.

'They're more than automata y'know. I've adapted and uprated them. Anything you can do, they can do. I just make them look that way, because I can, and I like to make some things like this. It is so different to what I usually work on. Everythng is expected to be so naturalistic and life-like these days, that is why I like to work in the old-styled way,' JF said.

'Come through Priscilla,' he continued and he ushered her into a long narrow dining room with a dining table filling most of the room. He never dined alone. In addition to himself there were places set for Kaiser Willhelm and Freddy Teddy.

An English butler - with a varnished wooden head - came into the dining-room carrying a tray.

'Good evening, sir,' the butler said. He set out a range of small bowls, and JF looked up at the butler.

'Good evening, MacCauley. And thank-you,' he said. 'I have a guest for dinner tonight and would like you to prepare... hold on one moment,' JF turned to Priscilla and half-whispered, 'What would you like to eat?'

'I don't know. What are you eating?'

'Modern Thai. Go on. Try it.'

She picked at it and tasted it.

'I like it. I'd like some.' She twisted her body to look up at MacCauley, bringing one leg up as she spoke and resing it on the edge of the chair. JF looked down at the bare flesh and how her dress had ridden up and showed her panties. He tried not to, but couldn't help but look.

She looked back at JF, suddenly. 'Were you looking at my panties? You really shouldn't. I can't help it if my dress keeps riding up; what is a girl to do? But you shouldn't look...' she said.

'I'm s-s-sorry,' he stammered, and addressed his butler. 'Another one of these p-please, MacCauley.'

'Very good, sir. One more Modern Thai, I'll instruct Little Suzy to prepare it.' He stepped over to a length of rubber tubing set in the wall with a dull brass cone at one end and spoke quietly into it.

'Little Suzy?' queried Pris.

'Little Suzy Homemaker. She does all my cooking. It was an old food processing automata from before the war. I rennovated it. It's very good,' JF said.

'I thought there were food shortages here,' she said. 'That's what I heard; it was the one thing that put me off coming to Earth. I even brought my own, my bag is full of dehydrated tomato soup...'

'Being a genetic designer, I can easily afford it. Help yourself.'

'OK! Thanks!'

Kaiser Willhelm and Freddy Teddy came in and sat down.

'And they get to eat too?' she asked.

'They can't eat,' he said to Pris. MacCauley set down play-food at their places. 'Fellas,' he said and leant over conspiratorially toward Kaiser Bill and Freddy Teddy. 'Change to the usual routine. We have a guest for dinner tonight. I'd like you to be on your best behaviour. So, no food fights, or arguments,' he warned. 'Alright?' He looked over at Priscilla and she laughed for the moments he was looking at her. The two automata made "shushing" sounds at each other and looked appropriately admonished.

'Where's Nina?' JF looked around at the open door. 'Nina!' he called out, 'Come along, dinners ready.'

'Whose Nina?' Pris whispered, looking suddenly apprehensive again.

'No need to worry. You'll see. Oh, but I just know that you're goning to like her.' An automata, styled like a ballerina, pirouetted through the dining-room door. 'She doesn't eat either,' said JF, 'I just like to have her around.'

She danced down the length of the room and back again.

'She's always like this,' he said as an aside to Pris. JF leaned over to her and added. 'She's showing off, that's all. She gets like this every so often.'

He addressed Nina, the ballerina. 'Nina, say hello to my friend Priscilla.'

Nina looked at Pris and curtsied.

'Pris, this is Nina, Pretty Ballerina.'

Pris didn't say anything, as he had turned his attention to his meal, he didn't notice her expression had slid back to the oddly malignant expressionlessness as she watched the ballerina-automata.

'Hi!' Nina said. 'I'm Nina, you can teach me to read to you, to type and write simple messages too, heat food, make tea and coffee, and serve cold drinks. I can dance; I like to dance...'

Pris wrinkled her brow.

'Yes,' JF said. 'We know all that. Sit down, Nina. Take the weight off your points. Sit down and tell me what you've been doing today...'

IX

After Rachel had walked out, Deckard continued to shuffle through the photos she had left behind. He switched over to a generic spirit, a scotch substitute, he had couple of those. He decided to abandon his attempt to drain the half-bottle, he was tired enough and would sleep well. Business had been slow lately and he was having to be careful how he used his money. He was thoroughly tired of Bladerunning, especially of being recalled, but he knew the bonus would come in useful to pay off some accumulating debts. He stepped over to his digital mini-grand, sat down and picked out a few simple sequential chords.

Across the top of the mini-grand were family photographs going back a century and more. There were old sepia photos, others were badly focused colour photos taken on ancient Instamatics, others still were foggy and badly pixelated pics from primitive digital cameras from years before, others were high-def prints, and others still had three second repeating full-dimensional loops of parties and days at the beach. The photos were of great-great-great grand-parents, showing his antecedents when they were young and then when they were very old, and many ages inbetween. There was another, much more recent picture, of himself, when he was a child, sat on the steps of a wooden porch of an old suburban house. From what you could see of it, the porch was just like the porch in the photos that Leon and Rachel had. But a lot of the houses in the old suburbs looked so much alike. He didn't notice how much his mother looked so much like Leon's and Rachel's in their pics. It was a blurry photo anyway, but it seemed that he may have a blind-spot to being able to see it. Why? It may have been a designed-in feature.

The generic-spirit, traded under the name of Oklahoma Oil Strike, was making him sleepy, and he was tired already. There was something I was supposed to do before I went to bed, he realised. His thoughts were becoming scotch-befuddled. The image of Roy, that he had retrieved from the pile of photographs Rachel had left, was stood on the music-stand. He took another sip of generic-scotch. There was something about Rachel. Something that reminded him, so very dimly of... someone, but he couldn't recollect who it was. When? Where? Who? He just couldn't place the memory. The recollection seemed to run ahead, kicking up dust, obscuring his view. It must have been pre-WarFour. In the next moment Rachel was stood in the centre of his living room again, stroking a sphinx she was holding, carressing it in her arms. Alongside her stood a unicor...

He awoke.

I slept, he realised, and instantly dreamt again.

He picked the photo of Roy B off the music stand, stood up and shook his head as though to shake the dreams out of his head, and tried to shake some of the tiredness out of his body too. It didn't work. He took one step back, and was a little unsteady as he walked across his living room. I'll get this done, at least, before I go to bed. He pushed the photo into the scanner. The photo came up on the screen, he gave a voice command to overlay the photo with a blue grid. Deckard slumped down in front of the screen in the big comfortable, E-Zee chair, like three enormous over-inflated half-tyres piled on top of each other. He gave a series of voice commands, the image zoomed in and out and around the image with each command.

The photo had been taken using infinity resolution so there was no problem with the quality of the image, especially since it had such a narrow field of focus. There was a small room behind the bedroom the Replicant was sat in. On the wall in that room was a convex mirror with a reflection showing. He gave voice commands to zoom in on the mirror. Fortunately the pic was one of the hi-res and multi-location images; the technology reconstructed the location, with software, to recreate, in this case the three-room apartment as a three-dimensional, fully explorable space. As he zoomed about the image, he could see a woman lying on a couch-bed in the smaller room, reflected in the convex mirror. He 'zoomed' into that room. She had a black kimono decorated with stylised white jasmine blossoms draped over her. She was asleep, or was lying with her eyes closed. She had a mark, a tattoo, showing on the side of her neck, part concealed by how her hair lay against her neck and over her shoulder. It was either a snake, or possibly a dragon with an rippling, undulating back; it snaked up her neck. He recognised her from the screen-shot template he had seen in Bryant's office. It was her. The kick-kill assassination squad member ident'd as Zhora.

Deckard gave the voice command for a hard-copy. He looked closely at the print, then turned his attention back to the image as it appeared on the screen. There was something draped over a room screen. It looked like it was made of short grey feathers, or perhpas it was silver sequins. Or scales. It occured to him that the scale he had picked out of Leon Polokov's shower stall might be connected to this. Whatever it was that hung there, it was clearly too large to be a fish. Like an elongated eel. Except eels don't have scales. Do they? he thought dimly, trying to remember if eels had scales too. It could be a snake. Maybe a dragon. You never quite know what people will get made-to-order. But what would a Replicant, recently arrived on Earth - supposedly - need such a creature for? he thought. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the small evidence bag and looked at the scale.

As he sat in the deep comfort of the E-Zee chair Deckard couldn't be bothered to go to bed. As he was drifting off to sleep, he was thinking over the case he had been handed. Four surviving replicants. At the one address that he had the, probable, killer had cleared out, and was a fugitive. He had a pile of photos and an animal scale from that address. There was an apparent desire amongst them to get into Tyrell Corporation. Or, to give the appearance of trying to get in. And there was Tyrell himself, and couldn't figure if he was, as he had assumed before his morning meeting with him, scared. A true enigma, in addition to his known reclusiveness. He wondered if he, Decker, was being drawn into a large game of bluff. But, if that was so - to what end?

What else did he have to go on? A pile of photo's left behind by the female Replicant, who had, for no apparent reason turned up unannounced and uninvited. Sent here? - to confuse? Perhaps to deliberately leave this pile of photos? It was a duplicate of Leon's set. Except it had this image of Roy B among them. And it turned out that it also had a picture of Zhora, at an 'unknown' address. And as they appear now, not as they appeared in their 'template' shots.

When you have so little to go on, you have to use what you have. Got to find why this picture is amongst all the others that Rachael had. Got to find the maker of the scale. Then find the maker. Then find the buyer. It might lead somewhere, it might not. I'll start by going to...

Deckard slept. A restful and dreamless sleep, at last. A night without dreams of sphinxs or unicorns.

X

Morning scarcely dawned. The night skies lightened from night black to a deep gloom. The night rains did not abate with the end of the night.

Deckard made his way to the Market to follow the very slender lead of the scale - why a fish scale in a shower cubicle? at least if it had been a finger-nail in the cubicle it would indicate either the accidental loss of a nail, or a body having been cut up there. He didn't want his imagination running away with itself. The Market was adjacent to Korea Town, down by the waterfront. Any kind of creature, virtual, synthetic or even real, was available, as long as you could find a DNA sample file of a real live one, that they could synthisise, for a price. The off-the-shelf prices were reasonable, but they were always time-limited and expired automatically after four years, but you could order a 'clone' from the same file over and over, there was hardly any degradation in the following copies.

Real animals attracted astonishing prices but a synthetic one could be had at quite a reasonable price; or so the dealers said, but the discounts were never as deep as they claimed. The synthetic ones had several great advantages; they required less maintenance and healthcare, no food, no cleaning up after them, they were cheaper all round - who cared that they weren't real? as long as they were furry. It was a well-paid business to be in.

It'd have to be, thought Deckard, to get me into it. A lot of people held that real pets were just 'shit-machines'. You fed scarce food in at one end. The creature did nothing at all for you; then, a day later, you got shit out the other end. Before repeating the process over and over again. That is all they did. For the people who held to this view, synthetic animals held the advantage over the real, in that they weren't nearly as expensive and they didn't produce shit. For such people, though, the advantages of a pet were of no interest to them. Companionship? Comfort? Warmth? Furriness? Even, some joy in their lives, for a change? These things counted for nothing to these sorts of people. Deckard was one of those people. And who would want a snake or an alligator for warmth or comfort, anyway, he thought; they may come in useful as a pair of shoes or to have a bag made out of them, but not comfort, never comfort.

He made his way to one of the Authenticators. She was an old Korean woman. A lot of the refugees were old now; at least, they appeared to be, that is something else radiation poisoning will do for you. Most, although they had survived, had been sterilised by being exposed to too much radiation for too long. If they hadn't had children when the last war broke out, or their children had not survived the war, they often bought a pet to keep them company. To have a heartbeat in their homes other than their own, so they said.

'I have a scale off some creature. I need to know if it's real or not; and if it isn't, who made it?' he asked, holding the small evidence bag, cocking an eyebrow at her. Sometimes it was easier to talk with facial expressions than it was with spoken language.

'I can do that, you know the authentication fee has gone up. It's up to 75 now,' she said before she took the bag with the scale in it being proferred by Deckard.

'That's alright,' he replied as he flashed his temporary SFPD officer badge at her. 'Send the bill to the department. They want me to work for them, they can meet all the expenses.'

She pushed it under a high-power microno-scope and it automatically started searching the surface for any possible imprinted patterns, including the microscopic data-dots or bar-codes that had to be, by law, on evey scale, (in this case) or strand of hair, or plume, or feather.

An animal from the Livestock Market had to be authenticated. A dealer, a retailer, a market-maker, a swap-agent, a craftsman, couldn't sell any thing without a certificate of authentication. The law was aimed mainly at farm animal sales. A milk-cow that can't produce milk, or reproduce, is outright fraud. But for the sake of uniformity it was applied to all animal sales; especially when there were kitten farms and baby penguin and half-sized ostrich farms, and farms for all sorts of real animals, to be kept as pets. With such a huge price differential, buyers wanted the reassurance of a certificate of authentication, but even the certificates were not surefire certs anymore.

The animals didn't need to be as 'realistic' as the human Replicants; we have a higher tolerance for the fakeness in the animals, the errors could be covered with long fur. We are much more tuned-in to the fakeness in human appearances, and human behaviour. The synthetic pets were usually made to be 'cuter' than the real ones. In fact, the Replicants didn't need to be so realistic, either. But they were anyway. The human Replicants did have identifiers, on organ and muscle tissue and bone, but you needed to get them into a body-scanner to read it. The dermis was self-renewing so any identifiers on skin-cells were soon obliterated.

'I'd like to see,' Deckard said and leant over the counter. The old woman turned the screen so he could see it more easily. They both watched the screen as the microno-scope scanned the sample.

'It is a synthetic. There is a lot of detail on the surface. Fine work done at the early culture stage.' She had excellent English, with only a little accent remaining. 'There it is,' she said, when the microno-scope began to beep. 'Let me bring it into sharper focus. My retinal implants aren't quite what they used to be; they wear out so quickly. Serial number 006947-BX71. I'll check that.' She copied-and-pasted the serial number into a box on another screen. 'Ahhh,' she said, 'it is not fish; you need to be looking for a snake. It is made by Abdul Ben Hassan. He holds a Licence for Artificiers. He specialises in reptiles and arachnids.'

'And where is he?'

'Go along to the Fish and Feather Alley. Fifth aisle. Ummm...' She stopped and tried to recall his location from memory. 'Unit 14.'

Deckard looked about the slow moving, shoving throng. 'Which way?' he asked.

'Go left from here,' she replied, 'Fifth alley n the left. Midway down. Easy to find.'

Even allowing for the bad smells that drifted on the air in San Francisco - some of the war-time collapsed buildings had never been cleared, and there were corpses trapped deep down within them - this market, where they traded all forms of livestock, was an assault. Practically any large beast that remained alive and which could be traded was here. That meant all the smells that animals produce were here to enjoy too. And most pungent of all was the shit. He didn't usually come down to this market for this very reason. This is why they're called 'shit-machines', Deckard thought. He picked his way, very carefully, along the walkway, since quite a few of the animals had been herded along here. He walked through the throng toward the fifth aisle as directed, and was looking at a very cute looking - if smelly - pony, at the corner of the alley, as he turned into it; he stroked it's long head and it neighed at him, just as it was programmed to do when the touch-sensitive pad on the long head was in contact with a warm surface. He turned into the alleyway and immediately stood aside as a couple of ostrich wranglers herded a small group of ostriches, for customer delivery, round the corner out of the aisle.

With some of the strange habits in humans emerging with the popularity of the artificial creatures, and the mod'd androids, the old, stupid, scatological joke flashed back into his mind; 'How do you make love to a cross-breed of a polar bear and a pirahna?' - 'With very, very great care.'

Abdul Ben Hassan was easy to find - midway down, on the left - just as he'd been told. The large man stood at the doorway in a light coloured summer jacket and balancing, rather than wearing, a fez upon his large head. He had a long snake of some type, with two heads - it might have been a mini-dragon - around his neck, which he was wearing like a scarf. It was a stall filled with glass boxes and tanks with any sliding, crawling, creeping, slithering creature that seemed to have ever existed; like a verse in Genesis; there were a few others too, that someone's over-active imagination had conjured in a bad dream - or a bad trip. The large man gestured to prospective buyers as they walked along. Most people were walking past, they were looking for something furrier, something cuter. Something else, anything else. Deckard made to step into his stall, and Abdul Hassan stood aside to let him in then stepped behind the counter, gesturing around at the creatures in their tanks.

He did not seem to be the sort who would be vain enough to have crushed diamonds set around the iris, but he had a Diamond Eyes mod.

'What is it that you would like?'

'Nothing like this,' Deckard said. He flipped his wallet open to show his temporary badge. 'I deal with snakes and reptiles every working day. SFPD. You hold the Licence for Artificiers BX-71?'

'That is correct. What is it you want?'

'I have a snake scale from one of your products. Found on the premises of a suspect. I need information.'

'If it wasn't bought second-hand,' Abdul Hassen said defensively. 'Resales are still the best way to recycle.' Even the low light in his booth sparkled off the ring of crushed diamonds in-laid into his iris. 'None of my stock are poisoness in keeping with all the current directives.'

The snakes and other reptiles and insects in his stall were so beautifully simple to make and to make appear so real. There was so little to reproduce. Move, hunt, eat; that was all they did. All that was required was the replication of the sensors.

'That's alright Mr Hassan,' Deckard assured him. 'I have a suspect who may have one of your snakes, that's all. I need all the information that you have, like the purchaser to start with.'

'Where is the snake?'

'I just have a single scale.'

'That is all I will need. There are not many who can afford the work I do.'

'That may well be true, which narrows the list of purchasers, doesn't it? Besides, they can't be too expensive,' Deckard observed. 'It's the real ones that cost.'

'Let me see it. Please.'

Deckard handed him the snake scale. Hassan put it into his scanner.

'Ahhh! This is one of my finest...' he said fondly, as though he could remember all his past work.

'Who would've bought it?'

'There are so few who can afford such finely detailed work,' he said sadly.

'You said.'

'It is from the range of my best...'

'Forget the sales pitch, pal,' Deckard was curt. 'I'm not in the market for anything like this.' He indicated the glass tanks with an exaggerated shudder.

'Nonetheless, it is rarest quality.'

'So you keeping telling me. Who would've bought it.'

'Very few can afford...' Hassan started to repeat. 'Very, very few.'

'How few?'

'Very few.'

Deckard was coming up against the usual prevarication that he so often met in his day-to-day work. He was tired of these useless attempts to divert him from his job. He always got results, regardless of such useless efforts. He reached across the counter and knocked the fez off his head before he grabbed his tie. 'Who bought this one?' he growled at him.

Abdul Ben Hassan, still being held by the necktie, looked at the screen again and memorised the serial number. He muttered it over and over to himself as he checked his old-style register of sales written longhand by pen in a thick and worn ledger. Deckard glanced out the window of the stall and saw a crowd gathering oustside the booth to see the cause of raised voices.

'Ahhh. Yes. This one was bought by Taffy Lewis.

'Address?' Deckard asked

'Yes. He gave an address.'

Deckard sighed, and twisted the necktie around his hand making it still tighter around Hassan's neck. 'And what is the address? Give me it...'

'It is in the Fourth Quadrant, ChinaTown.'

'And you want to tell me the street, don't you?' Deckard slapped the large man around his face.

'Olmec Avenue.'

'I'm sure his address has a number... I'm not asking you to divulge state secrets, give me the exact address...'

'11-40 Olmec Avenue.'

Deckard let go of his tie and said, 'Thank you for your compliance,' as he turned and stepped out of the stall.

The crowd that had gathered around Hassan's stall watching what was happening stood aside as Deckard stepped out of the stall. A rattlesnake was coiled in one of the glass tanks along the front of Hassan's stall. As Deckard passed out of his stand he waved his hand in front of the glass, its rattle started to shake and when he tapped the glass the snake struck out at the glass with its fangs. As he walked away, he heard the low, slow hissing of disapproval, of derision, from some in the dispersing crowd.

Taffy Lewis, eh? Or Tacky Lewis, as he was known in police circles. Deckard didn't know the man, never had to deal with him, or bust him. But the man - the human reptile - kept Vice busy enough.

Deckard was glad to get out of the Market and breathe some, not exactly fresh air, but fresher air than it was along there.

Before Deckard walked over to the Fourth Quadrant he checked in with Bryant, to see if he had been able to make contact again with Doctor Tyrell. Bryant told him that he had been advised that the Rep he had identified, the one that had followed him to his home, Rachel, hadn't returned to Tyrell's, after she left his place.

'Can you try again. And another thing. Make sure she is arrested and not retired.'

'Don't worry, no one has been assigned to retire her yet.'

'If I can get information from her about the location in the photo-pic, its gonna save me a lot of leg-work.'

'Sure thing buddy,' Bryant agreed.

I only met her yesterday, Deckard thought to himself as he terminated the call, and now I find that I'm concerned about her. Where she might be. Why she didn't return to Tyrell. Or that she might have been discarded as a failed experiment?

XI

The Fourth Quadrant was ChinaTown, a leftover section of the old city, full of narrow streets, lanes and alleyways. Although the buildings were not especially tall, the streets and lanes in the area were so narrow that very little of the meagre sunlight ever illuminated them. It was neon drenched, night and day. Being so hemmed-in, the permanent light of neon brought a brighter light than even the brightest noon day could bring. It was the brighest lit part of the city.

It contained the Encounter Bars that were such a thriving business. For either men and women, and for wo-men too. They were on both sides of the road along at least half of that long straight strip. Honeytrap, Lip2Lip, Freedom, Ace of Clubs, Kiss This, Mano Y Mano, Oblivion, Original Sins, Cage Aux Folie, Man Trap, Femme Fatale, Rendezvous, French Kiss, Gold-digger, Body-Buddies, The Grail, Dominator, The Third Degree, Sin of Pride, The House of Fun, Blond On Blond, Whip Me Bette, Venus Dolls, The Immaculate Deception, Whatever You Desire - known as Desire, for short - Menagerie, Teacher Teach Me, Boy+Girl=Sexfun, Sinner, Carnal Carnival, Tits'n'Slits, Discotheque Fantastique, Extravaganza, Die Blau Angel, The Faerie's Garden, Rest'n'Recreation, Bathtime with Johnny, Bathtime with Janey, All The Pretty Horses, Sex Tois, Darling, The Fall of Man, Dreams Of Pain, Torture Palace, Grime, The Meat Grinder. And Exotica. One after another along the main drag. Some people actually lived in this district, though it was mainly the people who worked in the bars and clubs; there were other shops, food stores, gaming, and sportswear retailers interspersed along the way.

Olmec Avenue - the name was a throw back to the old days when this was a Mexican part of town. Deckard found number 11 Olmec, the premises contained one of the Encounter Bars, Exotica, on the ground floor. A low tower block had been built behind it, in the old yard area from back in the days when this entire area had been family houses. Much has changed, Deckard thought dryly.

He walked down the alley to the apartments behind, stepped into the foyer and checked the residents list. Taffy Lewis was listed as living in the penthouse. He rang the buzzer. After a few moments a woman's face came on the entrance security screen. She looked young yet there were bags under her eyes, her hair was a mess and she was dishevelled. She had a black-eye that she was trying to hide with her hand.

'Yeah?'

'Taffy Lewis,' he said striking a familiar and jaunty manner.

'And you are?'

'An old friend. Just got back into town,' Deckard thought a big smile might help, so he threw her a big friendly smiled. 'Where is my man?'

'He's working.'

'Working?'

'That's right.'

'I haven't seen him for a while. Where's he working nowadays?'

'Downstairs. At Exotica. Where he always works. You just walked past it.'

'Oh yeah, that's right.'

'Don't mention it.'

'Thanks,' he said.

'No, really. Don't mention I told you, my head is still ringing,' she said. She cut the connection from her side and the screen went back to the spinning interweaving multi-coloured strands of colour.

Deckard walked back down the alleyway and onto Olmec again. Above the door of Exotica were two women in fluffy fake-fur bikini's dancing within a large Perspex bubble. The fur was pure white so Deckard assumed it was baby-seal fake-fur. They were each wearing ice-hockey goalie masks. Is that dancing? thought Deckard, I think that's what they're doing. Though it involved a lot of embracing each other and stroking and rubbing of their skin.

He walked in. Encounter Bars were all things to all people. Bar, restaurant, coffee-house, tea-room, meeting place, speak-easy, dance club, strip-joint, mott, live-sex club complete with join-in orgy rooms, bawdy house, brothel. Something for practically everyone. All human life was here. Even for a churchman - there were always souls to save, from fun. From this kind of fun. Or if saving souls wasn't possible, then there were lots of souls to pester. At least that is what the churchman said when they were, every so often, caught in one of them. Yet, so many were found with their trousers around their ankles, or their skirts bunched up around their waists. If what they said was true, then they had a very 'hands-on' method of saving souls, it was all part of the ministry, of the 'laying-on of healing hands', or so they claimed, because there were so many desperate and lost souls, in the join-in orgy rooms, that needed equally desperate measures to help them find their way to righteousness and salvation.

It was late-afternoon, and moderately busy already; the early-shift workers were winding down before they went home, then the day-workers came in after work to populate the Bar in the evening. At this time of day there were about two women for every man in the place. Most of them were hostesses. Practically everyone was smoking Drizapone, in long-stemmed clay pipes. That is a violation, to start with; something he could use, if he didn't receive the necessary cooperation. The law was harsher on smoking indoors, because it was a fire hazard, than it had once been on the use of the drug they were smoking. As Deckard walked to the bar, two anime emerged from behind a group of other people, and chorused, 'Hi-ya Deckard!' he turned toward them, it was Venus Dull and Anna May sucking on sticks of Drizapone, he mimed a Humphrey Bogart "here's looking at ya, kid" salute toward them and turned to see who the head barman was. He discreetly flashed his licence and temporary badge, and asked where 'King' Louis was.

'Don't tell me. I'll walk along the bar, you give a nod when I get to him. Then you can say you didn't say anything.'

Deckard walked along keeping an eye on the bartender. At the further end of the bar, he was stood behind a fat man near the door. He got the nod. Deckard continued walking past Lewis, looking him over as he did so. The man was large, running to corpulence. His hair was raven black but that colour was obviously out of a bottle of dye. He wore large, thick silver and platinum rings on each of his fingers, the rich and sleazy man's knuckle-dusters. So that's Taffy Lewis, thought Deckard.

He turned and approached him from over Lewis's left shoulder.

'You're Taffy Lewis?' Deckard asked, watching him in the mirrors behind the bar. He dug into his inside jacket pocket for his department I.D. and the hard-copy he'd taken of Zhora. 'Ever buy a snake from the Egyptian vendor in the Livestock Market?'

'Where'd you think these came from?' Lewis lifted one of his feet, to show the snakeskin boots.

'I'm talking about one of the living replicas.'

'If it isn't dead, I'm not interested. I never go there.

'I think you do.'

'Those smells... they upset me!'

Deckard showed the low-grain, high-gain, hi-res pict of Zhora. 'Ever seen her?'

Lewis scarcely glanced at it. Deckard shoved the pic in front of his face.

'I saw it. Should I know her? I'm sick of you cops, always on the take. Take, take, take. Just clear off, cop,' he spat out the word as he waved his hand at Deckard, as though he were swatting away an annoying insect.

Deckard looked around him, at the gathering crowds. 'Could be difficult for you, if you were shut down. What are they smoking in those long claypipes. It doesn't smell legal. Do the licencing authourities know how much Drizapone is being smoked in this joint? Pal.' Deckard spat the words, in turn, directly into his face. He looked about on the floor, stooped and picked up a broken pipe. He ran his finger around the inside of the pipe-bowl, crumbled the residue betweeen his finger and thumb and shoved his fingers in Lewis's face, under his nose. 'All being openly smoked in your place. I don't mind it happening. But licening authorities don't like to see their conditions being flouted as openly as this.' Deckard waved an arm, indicating the entire room. 'Frankly, I'm shocked. Shocked to see such a thing happening. Now... I can be forgetful, just as much as anyone else. I can be blind. And deaf when it suits me. Just as long as you're not dumb. Take another look at the printout - if you want to remain in business...'

'Take, take, take,' Taffy Lewis repeated. 'Always on the take...' he added as he reached for his wallet and started to draw it out of his inside breast pocket.

Deckard leaned into him, pressing the large man against the bar; he grabbed his lapels and ground a steel-tipped heel, hard, down onto a snake-skin booted foot. 'Can you see a 'For Sale' sign on my face,' he snarled. 'J'ne pas l'take. Pal. Comprendi?' he said, lapsing into the internaional patois-crap that he hated. This close to him, Deckard smelt how Taffy Lewis reeked of cologne, used to mask the odour of dry sweat and garlic.

'Not what I've heard, and if you're not on the take, then you're the first cop I've met who isn't,' Lewis retorted. 'So what is it that you want?'

'Cooperation.'

'I can do that.'

Deckard let go of his lapels, lifted his foot, and leaned back.

'Louie,' Lewis clicked his fingers at a bartender. 'This man protects and serves,' he said with a sarcastic twist. He looked Deckard up and down, remembering his face, his build. 'And he is dry. Dry, dry, dry. Let him have a drink; make it on the house.' He gave Deckard a glance that was reptilian, except a reptile would've given a warmer look.

'The pic?' Deckard insisted, still holding the image up close.

'I've had second thoughts. I seem to remember something. You'll see though,' Lewis said. 'I didn't say anything, but I ain't dumb.' He flicked his eyes toward the next room, where the exotic shows took place. 'Take a look in the Palace of Verse-Sighs, next door. You'll see. In a minute. You'll see.'

Deckard took the drink proferred by the barman, served in a cocktail glass.

'And that concludes our business,' Taffy Lewis looked at Deckard. 'The show will be starting in a minute. Enjoy. It's laid on for you.'

He walked away, sipping from a glass in one hand, talking into the spot-comm fixed, like a choker, at his throat.

Deckard turned towards the room Taffy Lewis had indicated. As he walked over to it, dodging a couple who were dancing - or fighting - he took a sip from the glass. It was obviously genuine branded spirits he had been served, Deckard was impressed. Genuine is so much better than synthetic, he thought, better than even the best synthetic blends. It was so smooth it was like a satin fabric, it made drinking the generic-industrial seem like sipping on a razor-wire fringed glass.

An announcement came over the PA.

'Taffy Lewis and the Exotica Club presents Miss Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils. As the snake once, in the Garden of Eden, corrupted man, see how Salome is corrupted too - and pleasured by the serpent - for she possesses the knowledge of how to work the serpent, and receives the pleasure that she desires...'

A synthetic beat started with some ersatz reedy pipe snake-charmer music playing over it. Deckard smiled at the ridiculous introduction and walked casually into the other room.

'Salome' had taken the stage with the snake coiled around her body, worn like a costume. It was Zhora. Deckard walked through the three-quarters full room into the shadow by the side of the stage. If this is Zhora, perhaps one of the other Replicants is here too. He looked around for Roy B or Leon Polokov. And there were always those other Replicants with outstanding warrents, that had come to Earth and were never traced, who had successfully blended with the host population.

The crowd were, mainly, dressed in the style of inhistorical electicism, or the neo-Romance style. One woman was dressed in almost as few clothes as 'Salome' on the stage, her outfit was in the serpentine style, long curling coils, strategically covering what was, then, currently regarded as needful of being covered. He looked in the faces of the audience as he walked through the crowd. Some looked rapt, some curious, some wore the appearance of a malign expressionlessness, others appeared to be hostile, others looked bored, or uninterested, but they stared anyway. Not many people were looking away from the stage, as he himself was. Funny how watching an 'exotic' dancer, or a strip show, or a live-sex show is almost always interesting, no matter how many times you've seen it. No one noticed him as he walked back through the crowd.

Taffy Lewis appeared at his elbow. 'You're not watching the show. Don't you like the work of our artistes, Mr Policeman?'

'That's the suspect,' Deckard said. 'I hope you've not been habouring a fugitive.'

Lewis looked at him with mock-shock that anyone could think such a thing. 'We always check documentation as we are required to do. Is it our fault that the fake IDs are as convincing as the real ones?'

'I need to get into the backstage area,' Deckard added.

'It shall be done.' Again, with an imperceptible gesture from Lewis, a security man appeared. The fat man spoke quietly to him. 'My man will show you in.' He added, by way of a farewell, 'If we must do business again. Remember how I said nuthin'. An' how I helped.'

Deckard nodded and followed the security man.

He stepped into a throng of showgirls in feathers, and a few showmen in short shorts, preparing for the late-late-afternoon show. The security man indicated where the performers dressing-rooms were before leaving. He looked for the room that Zhora had been allocated, as the many people bustled around. He found it. He was going to wait for her to come back to her room. It suddenly occurred to him that Taffy Lewis or one of his staff might warn Zhora as she came off stage, he decided to wait by the stage. A passing Showgirl grabbed him by the arm and said, 'Hey. No fan's in the backstage area. Not during showtime.' Deckard flashed his I.D. and hissed, 'Clear off!' at her, and she let go and, as she walked away, looked at him as if he were plague-ridden.

He got back to the side-stage. The ludicrous snake-charming music was still droning on but the drumbeats had quickened their pace. He checked around to ensure there was no way out other than past him. The only exit was at the immediate rear of the stage. He would know if she was going to bolt for that. Deckard discreetly removed his gun from the shoulder holster and placed it in his waistbelt holster. Always easier to draw and shoot from the hip.

Deckard took out his credit card sized wallet and started to shuffle through the deck of false I.D. cards, for something that might be usable. He'd been briefly assigned to the State's Commission Office a few years back and still had a fake card. Perfect, he thought. He picked that I.D., it read 'Philip Deks; Extraordinary State-wide Panel'.

Deckard looked up for a moment and saw Zhora - Salome - facing away from the audience, bent over. And where was that snake going? He surmised her show was coming to a close. The music stopped and a roar and enthusiastic applause went up from the audience.

A group of a dozen or so women in very brief 'Little Bo-Beep' shepherdess costumes, complete with sheep crooks, walked past him toward the stage. The next act. They obscured his view of Zhora for a few moments. He looked about them, trying to follow Zhora's movements. She was walking straight back to the dressing rooms. A stagehand had thrown her a wrap as she came off stage but she didn't put it on, just draped it over one shoulder and held it around her waist. Otherwise she was wearing only sequins and glitter. And carrying the snake around her neck like a feather boa.

He followed her. As she got to the dressing-room door he appeared at her shoulder.

'I represent the US Institute of Variety Artistes,' he said as he profferred the card. She hardly glanced at it, and then glanced at him. 'Is that so?' she smiled lop-sidedly. It was an attractive smile.

'That's right. I will not be trying to get you to join, or anything like that.'

Zhora stepped into the, otherwise empty, shared dressing-room and flung the wrap off. He followed her in and closed the door. His tone snapped into his no-nonsense police-business manner. 'In fact, I'm here from the Investigatory Panel on Moral Abuses; we're currently investigating any abuses in the entertainments industry, especially in the Encounter Bars, and reporting to the Extraordinary Panel of State-wide Enquiries. You may have read about us?'

She started to unwind the snake into a whickerwork basket, and only shrugged. 'Is that right? Here to crack-down on people having some harmless fun, huh? While there are so many illegal Replicants walking the streets out there.'

'How do you know about...' He corrected himself. 'There aren't any, only those few we haven't got yet.'

'Which is a lot,' she said eyeing him closely. 'Easier to shut down shows like this, isn't it, than come up against a Replicant with a gun who is backed into a corner and will do anything to prevent being shot down. Am I right, or am I right? I'm right, aren't I? Are you one of those chicken bladerunners they use to shoot them down, posing as something else?'

'No ma'am. Bladerunning Replicants is important, but other jobs still have to be done. Y'see there's been reports about liberties being taken with the performers here. Do you feel exploited? In anyway at all?' he pressed. 'Y'know, most people would settle for a feather boa, not an actual boa constrictor.'

'I'm not 'most people'. But if you want to hear about exploitation get along to Grime. That is exploitation. This place could be called The Rose Garden by comparison. Anyone who is working here and complaining about the conditions shouldn't be in this business.'

'I saw your show. That snake is well-travelled, and gets around.'

'What of it? To answer your question, I turned up. I auditioned. That's how I got this job.'

'You don't feel you were exploited, at all?' Deckard made his voice sound incredulous.

She looked at him and laughed.

'Don't laugh. The State is very serious about this sort of thing. It has to be. Every so often there is a lot of pressure for a crack-down on lewdness and abuse. This is one of those times. It's a gender rights thing.'

'Oh, that again?'

'Yeah. We live in a world of public probity and private squalor,' observed Deckard. 'Rights are very important...'

'Women like me don't have rights, didn't you know? Except to be looked down on by everyone else, especially by those who claim to promote public probity and women's rights. I'm a traitor in their eyes. They want to put the likes of me out of business. Why? For just doing what comes naturally to me. I like being a woman.' - if only you knew what you really are, thought Deckard - 'No amount of pressure to change is going to cause me to change it!' she added. 'You can give the Extraordinary Investigative Panel a message, from me. They can keep their Investigatory Panel on Moral Excuses away from where I can see them. And I'll keep my liberties,' she indicated the building where she worked, 'away from where they can see them.'

'But they can see it. They've got dancers out in the street.'

'Hardly lewd though. That's light-entertainment. And you can only see it if you come down this part of the avenue. Olmec is just one avenue in how many streets, and avenues, and boulevards in Frisco?' She picked a towel out of a bag on a dressing-table. 'You have to go out of your way to see it, and need to really want to be shocked or offended to come down this avenue in the first place.'

It was difficult to pick a hole in her reasoning.

'I need to shower off all this glitter. Get out of the way.' She walked over toward the shower cubicles in the corner of the dressing room.

'Given the nature of the reports, I have to take a look around.'

'What for?'

'Holes.'

'Holes?'

'Yeah, holes, y'see there are some men that drill holes to watch a woman undress and...'

She shot a look of withering scepticism at him. 'What would be the point? They can watch me undress in front of a room full of people six times every day. And I've been doing that here for the past month. Here, and at Femme Fatale, at Menagerie too. At Dominator and Grime before that. They'll have seen me on my back. On my knees. On all fours. Bent over chairs.. Crab. Swinging around a pole. Handstands and cartwheels and slow, slow backflips. I even do a trapeze act! What more could they see that they haven't already seen from every possible angle?'

Interesting, thought Deckard, your memory implants have you here for more than a month, at least.

'You don't understand. That isn't what they like. They like the thrill of seeing a woman, clandestinely. You should be thankful that the State is trying to help. Some guys will do just about anything to drool at the sight of a beautiful body like yours.'

'Like posing as someone from the State Committee of Moral Excuses?'

'It's serious work, ma'am. They drill holes to...'

'Do what you like. It's nothing to do with me.'

Deckard noticed the change of tone in her voice. She shrugged and gave a humourless smile as she walked past him to step into the shower. As her back turned to him all expression dissolved from her face leaving a, seemingly, malign non-expression. When Deckard was stood near to Zhora he had kept his gun-hand close to his gun, but discreetly done.

As she showered, Deckard looked around the dressing room for anything. Anything that might be a lead, preferably offering a connection to Polokov. Polokov was a known shooter. He had nothing on either Roy B or Zhora - just yet - that had to change. He needed to find something. They would have all been in on the killing on the inter-Hub shuttle, but he had no proof of that. Joint-enterprise might not be quite enough.

In no time at all Zhora stepped out of the power-shower and started to dress. She picked up the short Roman centurion skirt and wrapped it around her waist, quickly buckling it. She glanced over at Deckard, who had moved over to looking around the walls and the ceiling.

'Find anything?' she asked sarcastically.

'Not so far.'

'Of course you haven't. That's because there isn't anything to find. And no one here would be bothered.' She stepped into her sandals snapped them closed and began strapping on her grieves. Deckard looked at her as he made it seem that he was looking closely at the snake.

'Do you own this?'

'It belongs to the club,' she replied.

'It can't be real?' he half-stated and half-asked.

'What do you think?' she said in an exasperated tone of voice. 'Would I be here if I could afford something real like that, if anyone could afford to buy anything real. Anyone who could afford it would be off-Earth. That's where I'd be.'

Again, Deckard wondered if she might be joking with him. Since off-Earth was where she'd come from. Except she doesn't know I know her. Does she? Or does she know? has she been tipped off? The department was a leaky ship at the best of times.

'It's not so bad here is it? I know Taffy Lewis,' he lied. 'He runs a good joint, doesn't he?'

'You're not getting me like that.' She paused. 'Look, employment is employment,' she offered. 'And this pays a lot better than the jobs the poor stiffs who come here have to work at. All those people stuck in the wage-cage. If you have any real interest in real "Abuses", you need to look at some of the lousy jobs people have to do just to afford to come to a place like this. I like my job, its well-paid, undemanding and gives me lots of free-time. It wouldn't suit everyone, but it suits me. You can't ask for better than that in this world.'

Deckard didn't know what to say in reply, she was making too much sense, all he could think of to mention as a downside was, 'Must get chilly in winter.'

She looked at him incredulously and, ignoring his comment, she walked past him to pick up the rest of her outfit.

'Look Mister. I'm in a hurry. I've got places to go and people to meet. I was just about out the door between shows when I get the word I'm to put on an extra show. Now I'm late.' She looked and sounded harrassed by time commitments. She picked up her breastplate and placed it over her torso. She turned her back on Deckard, immediately the appearance of being rushed for time evaporated from her face. She said, 'Do something useful. Do up the clip at the back for me. Quickly. I'm in a rush.'

The sound of applause came through to the dressing room from the stage. He took his hand off the butt of his gun and got hold of one end of the clip. As he did so Zhora drove her elbow hard into his gut. She span quickly and delivered a second blow with the heel of her hand. Deckard was sent flying backwards. The only reason Zhora's third strike - the kill-kick - didn't kill was because the second blow had struck him so hard he had fallen out of the effective range of the kick. He landed on an inflatable couch and her fourth blow was misdirected because of the way he bounced off the inflatable, the blow only glancing across his chin. Deckard was deeply winded but his hand, instinctively, went to the butt of his gun.

Zhora used the rigid edge of her hand to chop hard against his wrist, it felt like he'd been struck with full- force with a length of metal, he gave a yowl of pain. She stood over him for a moment. She crouched down and, with one hand and her extra-human strength, she held his wrists together as tightly as if they were in handcuffs, and with the other she twisted his tie around his throat, slowly throttling him. He looked up at her and saw the ferocity of a kick-kill assassin, first-hand, in her face. He'd seen the like before, but never this ferocious. Nor had he been this close, and never been the one being throttled.

The 'Little Bo-Peeps' were coming back into the dressing-room after their show. She decided to run for it. She bolted for the door pushing past them, pushing them aside. Zhora couldn't see Deckard take the gun out of his waistband holster, or that he immediately dropped it to the floor as his hand and body went limp as he momentarily blacked out. He came round with the breasts of various of the 'Little Bo-Peeps' swinging in his face as they bent over him. There was a mix of voices around him as he came to.

- 'Are you all right?'

- 'It looks like he's been kicked in the head'

- 'I think it was Rachael'

- '...that's why she was running outta here'

- 'He got his head kicked-in? By a girl?!'

The stage manager appeared, standing among them, 'What's he doing in here? What have I told you bitches about...'

'It wasn't us,' the 'Little Bo-Peeps' chorused in protest.

'It was Rachael,' one of them added.

Deckard held his fake I.D. at the stage manager.

Somewhere, far away, he heard a voice say, 'What is that ?'

Deckard looked about him, 'Zhora?' he said.

'Who?' one of the Bo-Peeps queried.

'Zhora. She just ran out.'

'Oh. That's Rachel.'

Deckard's head swam, baffled at what had just been said, thinking of the other Rachel, not recognising that Zhora had been working here under an assumed name. 'Rachel?' he repeated. The image of Rachel, the replicant with the sad eyes, played in his mind and, in the beaten, confused state he was in, he couldn't put the two together.

'Yeah,' a few of them answered together. Deckard crinkled his brow. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't think bendy. Or any other way. He couldn't think, period. There was a distant insistence in his brain, for some reason, that told him to get up, but his body wasn't interested in listening, it wanted to pass out. He could feel himself drifting off again.

'Well. We can't leave him lying here,' the stage manager said to the gathered Bo-Peeps. 'C'mon pal,' he said, as he grabbed an arm and hauled Deckard to his feet.

'Drizapone? Anyone got any Drizapone?' Deckard asked.

'Sure,' he heard a voice say. 'Here, have one.' He felt a pill being pressed into his hand. He pushed it into his mouth, threw his head back and gulped it down. 'Here, I'll pay you now.' He grabbed in his pocket and fished his Way-2-Pay card out on its fine plastic cable attached to his jacket, he waved it at the card the woman held out at him. 'You got it?' he asked. She checked and saw that his payment had been credited.

He reeled again.

'Whoa, watch yourself,' the stage manager said. Almost instantly Deckard could feel the restorative of the Drizapone raising him up. He stood away from the stage manager's supporting arm. 'I'm alright - I'll be...' he nearly swooned and fell over '... alright.'

He set off after Zhora. Shakily. As he left the dressing-room he heard one of the women say, 'Well. He's really committed to driving out moral abuses, anyway.'

- 'He's the police.'

- 'Huh? Oh, I didn't see that...'

- 'That's why I pulled that face at you, to not say too much...'

- 'Oh! Well, that's different then.'

- 'What'd she do anyway?' - Another voice said, 'She's odd. That one. I don't like her. I know he's a cop, and I never side with cops, but, for once, I hope he gets her. Cops are bad, but she is worse...'

He blundered down the corridor, repeating generally, to anyone. 'Where'd the girl go, the one who ran out?' Looking blearily around him as he did so. One of the Showgirls pointed to the stage door which was swinging open. Deckard ran out. A light drizzle was falling, the start of the night-rains. It was like a cool thirst-quenching drink on a hot day to him now. He ran from the stage door down the back-alley and into the neon and LED lit Olmec Avenue.

He immediately bumped into an old woman and knocked her over and ran on. He stumbled into a crepe vendor and knocked over his stand, the ready-mixed batter poured out on the sidewalk from overturned cartons. He blundered down the street looking about him for any sign of the fleeing figure. A policeman appeared at his shoulder, grabbed him and started to query him. What did he think he was doing, knocking people and vendor stands over. Deckard looked away from scanning the street and looked at the policeman for a moment, 'SFPD. In pursuit. I need your help. Did you see a woman run along here?'

'Some I.D.' the patrolman insisted. Deckard was distracted, he continued looking around the street as he fished in his jacket pocket and pressed his I.D. into the patrolman's hand.

'Deks; The Extraordinary State-wide Panal Investigating Moral Abuses? What's this supposed to be?'

Deckard was still looking around the street.

'Huh?' he said. Deckard fished back in his jacket pocket and flashed his SFPD I.D. instead, simultaneously beaming his encrypted details from his badge to the patrolman's screen, as confirmation. He took the State Committee I.D. back off the policeman, crumpled it up and chucked it in the gutter. 'A little subterfuge. That's all.' He felt himself getting better by the moment as the Drizapone coursed through his veins. 'We've got to intercept this woman. She is an accessory after the fact. She's my only lead. Did you see a woman running out of that alleyway?' He stabbed a finger at the alley next to Exotica. 'Wearing a Roman skirt, grieves and a breastplate.'

'No, sir. And no one dressed like that came past me. I was over there.' He pointed to a corner mid-way along Olmec.

'That's good,' Deckard said. 'She must've gone this other way.' It was the way toward the Livestock Market, the way Deckard had come. 'Bad move, Zhora. There's less junctions that way. But we'll lose her for sure if she makes it to the Market.'

'I'll call it in,' the patrolman said. Deckard set off again.

Thunder cracked directly overhead and boomed across the sky and the rain suddenly started to fall heavily. It had been hotter than usual during the day, the humidity was high. The rain on the hot road was condensing as soon as it hit the surface. A fine wispy mist was rising all along the Avenue. There was steam rising from grilles and out of the kerbside food joints, that set-up after 4:30 in the afternoon. The sizzle of food in woks and on griddles and in frying pans merged with the sizzle of the traffic on the wet road surface; when it was moving. There were taxis as far as the eye could see. All of this busy scene was set to the rythmn of the rain, now beating hard on the vehicle roofs.

Deckard tried to get a clear run through the street. It wasn't easy. Being late afternoon, the post-work rush had started. Twenty minutes earlier and Zhora would've been easy to spot. But now, the urban tribes were emerging for the night, and would remain from now til way past three in the morning.

There were Dudes, Duds, Street Dogs, DogStars, Grudges, GangStars, Hoodlums, Slammers, Chaps, Nutters, Apaches, Ruffians, Persauders, Tarts, Trammps, Riche-Biche, Jills, Workers, Salarymen, WageCages, Drones, Mohawks, Moks, Dead-heads, Hop-heads, Pill-heads, Pimps, Primps, Pulps, Punks, Pinks, Starry-eyed, Empty-eyed, XTCs, Screws, Slashers, Syringe-Vermin, Blinders, Cruisers, Strutters. Peaks, Combs. Plumes. Jaygoes. There was even a group of Krishna, Hari Hari Krishna in a line, like spilt orange juice seeping on the sidewalk. Just the usual crowd. For Olmec Avenue and this part of the Fourth Quadrant.

Deckard ran into the road and slowed down to a walking pace beside a slow-moving road-train, its guide wheels clattered against the guide-rails. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what he took to be Zhora's head through the tram's windows, walking along on the other side. She was now wearing the plumed helmet that completed the outfit with the large screen-visor over the eyes. 'Does she have a trace on me on that screen?' He stepped up onto the road-train platform and then through to the other side and alighted. In those few moments she had gone. How? 'She must have a scan on me.' He stepped back up onto the road-train's platform for an elevated view scanning up and down the street. The policeman reappeared at his side. He told Deckard that SFPD had set up a patrol car at either end of the Avenue. Deckard pointed to him to cover the other side of the Avenue, the one he himself had been moving down. He would now cover this side, the side that he'd seen Zhora on. It was his case, no matter how reluctant he was to be called back into service; and it was his lead, he was going to make the arrest, or retire her if necessary, and get the bonus, hopefully. The road-train had started to move off at a pace. Deckard knew he must have passed her. He alighted again and tried to figure where she had got to. He wanted the arrest, or decommissioning, on his record.

The Encounter Bar area was petering out and the crowds were getting thinner. Deckard called over to the policeman to walk back the way they had come. They continued back up the road past the entrance to the Exotica. That is when Deckard saw the back of her plumed helmet. She could have dipped into any of the Encounter Bars but she hadn't. She really must have somewhere to go. Perhaps the Replicants were keeping separate from each other and had agreed rendezvous points and times. Staying only where the crowds were. Using the crowd as cover. I know I would, if I were them, he thought. Absorbed as he was, he felt a cold sweat sweep over him when he wondered just how many of this teeming crowd were Replicants, all blending in.

Zhora was walking briskly some way ahead. Just as he saw her, she hesitated and turned around. She had spotted the road-block at that end of the avenue. She started walking back down the road, looking about for some place to go. Deckard lowered his head so that it was covered by the bobbing heads of the throng. He was figuring the best way to get a shot at her. He raised his head. She was getting quite close, looking at the premises along that side of the street, looking for any way out of the trap that had been set. In an instant she turned her head and recognised him. She immediately leapt onto a parked-up car and deftly jumped over onto the roof of a slow moving vehicle with perfect body balance. He waved over the road at the uniform and stabbed a finger in the direction of Zhora's fleeing back. He ran out into the road, and with the other policeman they pursued her. Deckard reached into his long overcoat and drew the mid-length barrel of the Razr out of the holster sewn into the reinforced lining of his overcoat, but he kept it concealed within the folds of his coat.

Zhora was heading for the multi-glazed boxed frontage of Menagerie. Each of the glass 'boxes' were made to hold a different dancer, except there were no dancers at this time of day, other than a solitary one in the box nearest the entrance door, that faced directly onto the sidewalk. Zhora was too fast, she could dodge through the crowd, while he and the policeman were held up by the same crowds. Deckard could see that she was not just running away, but was trying to get somewhere, to see someone, urgently. He would have to shoot her - regardless of the necessity of taking one of these Reps alive, to question them, to gather intelligence - he would have to forego the higher arrest bonus.

'SFPD,' Deckard called out. 'Halt!'

Zhora looked back as she lept off a car roof, Deckard saw the look of hunted, cornered fear in her face for the moment it was turned towards him. He followed, moving sideways to get a better angle of shot.

'SFPD. Clear the sidewalk!' he shouted to the crowds, his voice barely carring over the noise in the street. Music pounded and boomed out of several of the entertainment clubs. 'Get - out - of - the - way!' People in the crowd looked about themselves and were startled to see a crazed looking man, gun drawn and aimed, as though aiming at them. They got out of the way. Those who were within his reach as he moved through them and who didn't move fast enough he grabbed and shoved them aside.

Zhora dashed into the grid of glazed boxes of Menagerie. The boxes were arranged two deep and five wide. Behind them was the entrance to Menagerie itself. She was almost within the safety of cover. Deckard brought up his SFPD badge in his other hand. As she ran toward the corridor leading to the entrance this brought her fleeing figure directly into Deckard's sightline. He drew down the visor on his helmet. He fired. At that sound people screamed and scattered. He hit her in the right shoulder. The shot had little effect, she was obviously wearing body armour, but the velocity and weight of the impact of the shot spun her around and caused her to crash into the box that the solitary dancer occupied. She slammed into the dancer and slipped, smearing blood off her back from the cuts, even from the shatter-proof glass, onto the dancer. Zhora's momentum carried her crashing into the next glass box behind. She stumbled and slumped to the floor. The glass cut her skin on her thighs and arms, the grieves had been knocked askew by the force of impact but still preserved her from more cuts. She stayed still for a few moments. Deckard moved closer, predatorily, his gun still raised and trained on her back. She managed to get to her feet. She looked with horror at the blood and the shredded skin of the exit point high on her shoulder. Zhora now moved on, but with a limp, still trying to get into the door of Menagerie, to get away from the Bladerunner. She seemed to be disorientated as she part-limped and part-ran away from the Bar's entrance, then she turned and headed back towards the grid of glazed boxes of Menagerie. Deckard followed her step-for-step as she moved back toward the Bar's entrance.

'Stop!' he shouted again. He noticed she had a large curved shard of glass stuck in her left thigh as she lurched along. She was now moving slowly and this enabled him to get another clear shot with ease. This was a perfect spine shot, hitting her above the armoured vest, directly in the spinal column just below the neck, immediately severing all functions from the additional perceptual facilities grafted onto the brain. She was whipped round by the impact and faced Deckard, momentarily, the shock of the blast showed on her face. Her own momentum and the weight of impact caused her to stumble and she was thrown, off-balance and at full tilt, into the glazed doors of the club.

She lay prone.

The crazy patterns of the smashed remains of the brightly lit glass boxes looked like an out-of-season winter frieze - all jagged ice of the broken glass and snow drifts of the shatter-proof sheets, proofed against shattering but not proofed against being hit by a running replicant impacted by a bolt from a Razr. Deckard wearily walked forward into the debris. The shattered glass lay in heaps, like crystal reflecting and refracting the red and orange neon and the bright white LED's of Olmec.

The lone dancer appeared at his shoulder, shouting with the taint of Zara's blood spattered on her face and a large smudge across her body. She was crying and screaming at him, seemingly all at once. She started to beat her fists against his arm and slap his face repeatedly. A crowd of police had suddenly appeared as though from nowhere, attracted by the sound of gunfire. A couple of uniformed police came up and restrained her.

'Didn't you just see what he did?' she spat the words in Deckard's direction. 'And you're arresting me?!' she wailed at the primal injustice as she was led away for assaulting a police officer.

Another couple of police checked Zhora. They turned her over onto her back, checked her vitals. 'Pointless,' Deckard said to them. 'There's nothing to check. Not after a direct hit like that.' He noticed that as they turned her it was as though rigor mortis had immediately set in. Her body was almost entirely rigid and there was a waxy appearance spread over her skin. 'That's new, and odd,' he thought, 'I've not seen that before.' As he looked down at her remains he felt something he had never done before - it had always been an easy 'kill' for him, to kill a Rep - but this one and the other one, Rachael, revealed themselves to him as being so human-like and life-like, that it felt to him, now, as though he had killed a real person; it felt like murder. He realised this sudden sensation might have been part of the subterfuge Tyrell were employing, and the effect they wanted to generate, but nonetheless, he felt it.

A uniform challenged him. He flashed his ID again. 'Deckard. B37-46-5.' He nodded his head down at the remains of the Replicant and reeled off the case against. 'Attempt to kill. Conspiracy to commit murder. Preparation for a criminal act. Accessory after the fact. Assaulting a police officer. Evading arrest...' He thought for a few moments and added, 'lewdness in a public place.' As though he would win a holiday in the Carribbean - which he felt he really needed at this moment - if he could make the list longer.

The uniform examined his ID. 'What's this?' she asked.

'What's what?'

'This. SA? Never heard of it.'

'Special Assignment.'

'Precinct?'

'Sunset and McKinley.'

'Hold one moment.' She called in his details to Central Control on her comm's unit. She kept her eyes on him as she awaited a confirmation from a despatcher. A few moments later she said, 'OK, you're clear,' and handed his ID back to him.

Deckard left the clean-up to the uniformed division. He holstered his gun and started to walk down the Avenue. The crowd around the shooting parted to let him through. Like the showgirl back at Exotica, a lot of them looked at him as though he were diseased. Oh! How he was used to that look.

He walked down Olmec and stopped at a kerb-side vendor.

'What's your order?' the woman asked.

'Saki.'

'Any particular brand?'

'Taipei.'

'Synthetic-generic, or full-flavoured?'

'Synth.'

'You know you've got blood on your face?' she said as she turned to pick the bottle off the shelf.

'Yeah,' he said. He wiped the back of his hand along his jaw.

'What was that happening down the avenue? Any excitement?'

'No. A fugitive got shot, that's all.'

'Another one? It's been like the gunfight at the OK Corral down here, lately,' the vendor continued. 'There will be a 'clean-up' drive and places are gonna start being closed down if it continues like this, and then where will I be?'

Deckard took the question to be rhetorical and only silently nodded again while pulling his face into an expression of commiseration. He was rooting around in his jacket for his Way-2-Pay card to pay for the bottle when he felt a sharp tap on his right shoulder. He turned and saw that it was Gaff, he wasn't wearing the dark glasses he usually wore, and he saw his near iris-less white eyes. He had been struck with his dragon-headed cane, the one he said he had inherited from his father and from his father before.

'You're wanted,' Gaff said tersely and nodded along the street. Deckard followed his nod and saw a police vehicle sitting on a pad ten feet above the crowds. Bryant waved his hand through the open side window to come over. Deckard started to move away, but turned and wrestled the cane out of Gaff's firm grip and was about to break it over his leg, but stopped.

'When you want my attention, just say my name,' Deckard said, then he threw the cane along the street, it landed in the gutter and skidded along under a parked car. 'Fetch,' he said contemptuously. Gaff looked at where his cane landed in the gutter, forlornly; then he looked intently, intensely into Deckard's face.

'Cracking?' Gaff asked.

'I'm supposed to be retired from this... from all this carnage.'

''So you've said; but like Bryant says, it's only Reps who are retired. He's over there.' Gaff said, pointing to the police vehicle. Then he limped off to pick up his cane.

Bryant sat in the car waiting for the gull-wing door to rise and he struggled to haul his large body out of the low-slung vehicle and came down the steps as Deckard approached. Bryant lifted his collar against the rain and hauled the brim of his hat down low as a squall of wind blew along the avenue, whipped the night-rains from the sea-front up the slope and directly into his face.

'What was that all about?' Bryant asked him, indicating Gaff picking up his cane.

Deckard, with assumed indifference, shrugged. 'He dropped his walking-stick,' he said facetiously.

'Christ!' Bryant exclaimed, 'What did you do to that skin over there on the side-walk? A perfect spine shot. You blew her spine to hell. Nice work. That's why I wanted you back.' He paused. 'Still,' he added pensively, 'what are you using? That's more than just dum-dum's. You using some sort of explosive tips? A personal modification of yours, is that it? Just as well you're SFPD, Deckard, otherwise I'd be cuffing you now. We want these Replicants off the streets, but we don't want gun-anarchy, y'understand me.'

'It does the job, and they never get up again and take a shot at me,' was all Deckard said.

Bryant looked him over. 'By-the-way, has anyone told you lately that you look terrible? I've seen corpses look better than you right now.'

'Thanks.' Deckard said. He was still half-breathless and weakened from the blows Zhora had struck him with back in the dressing-room at Exotica. He tried a nonchalent smile but it looked more like a grimace. 'You want them off the street, and you got me back to do it. Don't query my method, alright?' Deckard said, not trying to conceal his annoyance. 'This is what mortal combat does to a man,' he observed.

'By letting yourself get beaten up by a girl?'

'I'm doing you a favour,' Deckard replied. 'Remember that.'

Gaff appeared, leaning on his cane. He looked resentfully up at Deckard. Bryant said as an aside to Gaff, 'There are a lot of people in the department who need to learn from shooting like that. Including, using street legal ammunition,' he added half under his breath. 'But it gets the job done, and he doesn't get himself killed, or shot in the process. Two shots, including a perfect shot to the spine; if it passes into his cross-hairs, it dies. He'd make a good slaughter-house, don't you agree Gaff? A machine-like killer.'

Deckard winced at that description; except you can't murder a machine, he thought, and what I just did feels like murder...

'Good work. One down, but there are another four to get.' Bryant walked back up to the take-off platform, and stooped to get back into the policecar.

Deckard's expression changed, to one of puzzlement. He followed him up to the vehicle parked on the pad. 'Not by my counting. Your arithmetic is faulty,' he said. 'I was re-hired to get four. I've got one.' He adopted a tone as though he was talking to a small uncomprehending child. 'That leaves three. Three more to go, then I'm finished for good' he said.

Bryant bristled at the tone and turned back to face Deckard. 'I haven't been able to get in touch with you. I checked with Tyrell, like you wanted me to do. That other one, the one who failed your VK test yesterday. It didn't return last night, as I told you. It's been posted as 'absconded'.'

'Oh yeah? And who did that? You?'

Bryant said nothing.

'You can unpost it then,' Deckard said. 'I'm not retiring one God-damned more of these things than I have to, no more than you got me back in to do. I've got three to get, no more.'

'Four,' Bryant said emphatically, as only a senior officer can say it, allowing no contradiction. 'And I'm not arguing about it,' he added. 'Especially not in the middle of Olmec, in a rain storm. It's gone missing, it is posted as missing. Seems it didn't even know it's a Replicant. How do you like that? It thinks it is really human. That's a new one! It's something to do with real memories being used to cause the effect. That's what Tyrell told me. He says it is a feature unique to the latest generation. They have memory sticks fitted with ready-made memories. It's their new, big idea; I wonder if it'll work out any better than their last new, big idea, rebelling replicants and cop-killers,' Bryant shot Deckard a sardonic expression. 'Well, we'll talk about it later, I want to get out of the rain. But what it means is that she is now classified as an escapee too.'

'Yeah, I know all about it. I put it in my report. Didn't you get around to reading it?' he asked, knowing full well that his assessment had gone the same way as 90% of such reports, it had been entered onto their system as being received but would otherwise go unread. 'Anyway, as far as I can tell, what Tyrell call memory implants are nothing of the sort, they fall apart too easily. I've seen it happen already.'

'Maybe so, but I want you to retire this other one as well.' Before Deckard could object more, Bryant added, 'As many as it takes, you know that. It's absconded. It's now an illegal. It's added to the list, and that's that. That's the end of all I've to say on it. You'll get the fee for the extra one, don't worry about that.' He turned and addressed Jose Gaff. 'C'mon, we've got to get moving. Another report of another shooting at Tyrell came in while you were collecting your cane,' he said to Deckard, then added, pointedly, to Gaff. 'And Deckard has urgent work to do too.'

Bryant walked back up onto the pad and Deckard saw him slump back into the vehicle. 'I'd give you a lift but, as you can see its only a two-person cabin. You really do look terrible Deckard. Get one of the cops up there,' he stabbed his thumb to where Zhora had been shot, 'to give you a taxi ride home. Huh?'

Gaff walked around the vehicle. He looked at Deckard, lifted the dragon-headed cane to the brim of his hat, grimaced rather than smiled, and got in the car.

-o-

No one gets paid for writing this kind of fiction. The only reward is in people's reactions to the story, if any. You don't have to leave a review, but you don't have to be shy about doing so either.

Does this version of the story work? Does it add anything to the original? Did you enjoy reading it?

If you did like this, you might like these Bladerunner AD1982 stories (because the film is so different from the original book, I have written the following novelisation of the film itself in six parts). Simply type Bladerunner into the search box, followed by the title of each part, from the list below, and that ought to direct you to that title alone.

Part I, No More Blue Skied Days (Holden's interview, through to Deckard being reassigned to Bladerunning),

Part II, Memories Are Made Of This (Deckard's visit to Tyrell's, to Rachel's visit to his apartment),

Part III, Pris, For Your Pleasure (Pris makes contact with JF Sebastien, and Deckard's pursuit and shooting of Zhora),

Part IV, How To Reform Biology Into Mechanics (Deckard's fight with Leon, through to Roy Batty's arrival at JF's apartment),

Part V, The Slow Death Of A Fast Living Replicant (Batty's killing of Tyrell, through to the 'retirement' of Pris),

Part VI, Fatal Error (the pursuit and retirement of Roy B, Deckard's escape with Rachel).

PLUS; Bladerunner AD2049; Beauty Without Compromise - Such Savage Beauty

A short filling-out of an episode in the film BladeRunner A.D.2049, when Deckard is confronted with the Wallace's reincarnation of Rachel;

Deckard heard the stilettos sound sharply on the marble floor, he turned and saw her, in silhouette, as he had the first time. As she emerged into light she was as beautiful as ever. But it was all so long ago. It was disconcerting to be confronted with this re-creation, replica, of the Replicant he had loved.