Replicant Night Read Online Free PDF

director." Urbenton emitted a dramatic sigh.
    "Spare me." Deckard leaned closer in to the other man. "Just tell me why, if our little agreement's in place, you've got a replicant with his head drilled open lying at your lead actor's feet."
    "You sure about this? Come on." Urbenton peered skeptically at him. "Like I said, you're not exactly hip, video production-wise. I've got some awfully good special effects people on the crew. Not just digital postproduction stuff, either; these guys do real-time." The director smiled appeasingly. "You know what? You probably saw a squib go off on this Kowalski replicant's forehead, a makeup load went splat hey, it's supposed to look realistic."
    "He went down. And he didn't get up."
    "The big lug probably fainted." Urbenton shook his head. "The crew probably didn't tell him ahead of time what was going to happen. Hell, I didn't even know that was what they had planned. There's some real practical jokers around here. That's why I wasn't worried-at first-when I got yanked off the set just when the tape had started rolling. Supposed to've been a call from the money people, down on Earth; you take those calls, no matter what. Then somebody, I didn't see who, slammed the door on me and I found myself locked in here. Until you came along-"
    "Can it." Deckard had had enough of the director's rattling on. "The Kowalski replicant didn't faint. I don't need to know about video production to see what happened to him. I'm hip to death." His voice lowered to a grim frequency. "That was my job ... for a long time. I know what a dead body looks like."
    "Hip to death.' That's a good one." Urbenton nodded in a show of appreciation. "I like that. Maybe I underestimated your potential; you might have a real talent for this sort of thing. I think you're down for getting some kind of screen credit out of this gig; maybe you could parlay that into some kind of scripting gig. Additional dialogue, that sort of thing."
    "You're not answering my question. I want to know how that Kowalski replicant got killed. If you didn't plan on it happening, who did?"
    "I'm beginning to think ... you're not kidding about this." From the corner of his eye, Urbenton studied him uneasily. "It happened just now? On the set?" The pink flesh turned pale. "A real bullet, and everything?"
    Deckard made no reply. He didn't have to.
    "That's weird." Urbenton slowly shook his head. "Because that'd be real bad news. Not just for that poor bastard replicant His voice spookily softened as his gaze shifted away from Deckard. "But for all of us ..."

    By the time he got past the doors through which Deckard had vanished, there was no sound of the others' footsteps. Or of any voices; the area was acoustically sealed off from the soundstages out in the station's main area. Holden could detect the faint buzzing of the fluorescent panels lining the narrow corridors, and nothing else.
    "Well, he's gotta be around somewhere." Holden looked down the double row of featureless doorways. A fine layer of dust had drifted onto their sills. He tilted back his head, trying to catch a scent trace of his quarry; he'd quit the department, but still prided himself on keeping his quasi-extrasensory cop skills.
    The briefcase had its own version of them. "There's somebody coming," it announced. "I can feel them. But it's not-" The briefcase suddenly clammed up.
    "What're you doing here?" Another voice, not Deckard's.
    Warning from the briefcase had given Holden the quarter second he needed to assemble a front. He glanced over his shoulder at the figure standing in the just-opened doorway behind him. A big sonuvabitch, possibly security; he had on an ID badge with a name he didn't bother to read. "I got called over to the set-" Holden kept his voice modulated down to a level of disarming self-assurance. "Beats me, what for."
    The other man stepped forward and peered more closely at him. "Okay The man gave a slow nod. "They must be talking about the office setup. The