"K. W. Jeter - Bladerunner 01 - Replicant Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jeter K. W)

BLADE RUNNER: REPLICANT NIOHT


Copyright (c) 1996 by Philip K. Dick Trust


Blade Runner: replicant night! K.W. Jeter.

For Russ Galen

Scanned by Pete256 8/05/2002


Wake up. . .
He'd heard those words, that voice, before. Deckard wondered, for a moment, if
he were dreaming. But if he were dreaming-I'd be able to breathe, he thought.
And right now, in this segment of time, all he could feel were the doubled
fists at his throat, the tight grip on the front of his jacket that lifted him
clear of the Los Angeles street's mirror-wet and rubbled surface. In his
vision, as he dangled from the choking hook of factory-made bone and flesh,
all that remained was the face of Leon Kowalski and his brown-toothed grin of
fierce, delighted triumph.
The other's stiff-haired knuckles thrust right up under Deckard's chin,
forcing his head back enough to make him dizzily imagine the passage of air
snapping free from the straining lungs in his chest. He could just make out,
at the lower limit of his vision, his own hands grabbing onto Kowalski's
wrists, thick and sinew-taut, more like the armatures of a lethal machine than
anything human. His hands were powerless, unable to force apart the
replicant's clench.
"Wakeup . . ,
The same words, a loop of past event repeating inside Deckard's head. An echo,
perhaps; because he knew the other-the replicant, his murderer-had said it
only once. But he'd known it was coming. Those words . . . and his own death.
Everything had to happen, just as it had before. Just as he knew it would.
Echo, dream, memory . . . or vision; it didn't matter. What was important was
that there had been a gun in Deckard's hands, in the hands that were now
clawing to let desperate air into his throat. His gun, the heavy black piece
that was standard issue in the LAPD's blade runner unit, a piece that could
blow a hole through the back of a fleeing replicant and an even larger,
ragged-edged hole through its front.
And that had happened as well. Echo of time, echo of sound, the impact of the
gun's roaring explosion travelling up Deckard's outstretched arms, locked and
aimed, as it had so many times and so many replicants before. While the sound
of death itself had slammed off the city's close-pressed walls, the intricate
neon of kanji and corporate logos shivering as though with a sympathetic fear,
the honed leading edge of the shot and its lower-pitched trail rolling over
the street's crowded, incurious faces. All of them as used to death as Deckard
was, just from living in L.A.; he knew they could watch him being pulled apart
by Kowalski with the same indifferent gazes they had swung toward the
replicant Zhora's bullet-driven terminal arc.