EdgeOfHuman by Unknown

thick lenses of Isidore's glasses. He shook his head in disgust. "Anytime people wuh-want to get themselves off the huh-hook, that's the kuh-kuh-kind of thing they say. 'I was doing my job . They told me to do it.'" His mocking voice didn't stumble. "It was a kruh-creaky old line at Nurembuh-berg."
    "Yeah, well, maybe it was true there, too."
    "Oh, guh- good one, Deckard." The head of the Van Nuys Pet Hospital pressed his hands fiat against the desk, leaning forward with his suddenly sharper gaze. "Great reh-rhetorical tuh-tactic, all right. You can duh-defend yourself and the Third Reich, all at the same tuh-time."
    "Give me a break." His turn to shake his head. "You brought me here for a lecture on ancient history? Forget it. The dead are buried, and the murderers' ashes were dumped at the side of the road."
    "I'm impressed. You nuh-know your stuff."
    "Enough of it." He leaned back in the chair. "So can I go now? Because if you just wanted to take the moral higher ground with me, you didn't have to bother. Like I said, I quit the job."
    "But maybe," said Isidore, "the juh-juh-job didn't quit you ."
    He sighed. "Whatever."
    "Because . . ." The other's voice went lower and softer. "Because you never really fuh-found anything wrong with the blade runner job itself. You just didn't like duh-doing it anymore. Like you said, you got too far out on the Curve."
    The room, Isidore's office, filled with silence; the papers and old calendars on the wall hung motionless in tensed air. Deckard closed his eyes. "It was a job somebody had to do.They were dangerous."
    "Huh-who were?"
    "Come on. The replicants. They were made to be dangerous. Military issue . . . for those nasty little chores offworld. So they had to be taken care of. Retired."
    "By somebody like you."
    Deckard opened his eyes. "That's right."
    "Fuh-funny, isn't it, that they never huh-hurt anybody who wasn't trying to hurt them first. There's no ruh-record of an escaped replicant killing a human . . . at least not here on Earth . . . except when it was buh-backed into a corner, with no other way out."
    "Oh, yeah?" That brought a sharp laugh from Deckard. "Tell it to Eldon Tyrell."
    "Thuh-thuh-that was duh-different. That was something puh-personal." Isidore's expression turned brooding. "Besides, Eldon Tyrell duh-deserved to die. He was a real sonuvabitch. Believe me, I nuh-know."
    Deckard wasn't going to argue the point. Tyrell, when alive, had given him the creeps.Plus, everything he'd scoped out since -- all the bleak shimmer he'd picked up from the man's niece Sarah -- hadn't changed his mind.
    "All right," said Deckard. "Maybe replicants are nothing but saints. Human, however, they're not."
    "Is thuh-that you talking? Or the blade runner?"
    "Take your pick."
    "Buh-but you loved one. A replicant. Or you still do. You suh-suh-sleep with her. In your arms."
    "Doesn't make her human." He could hear the coldness in his own voice. Not for Rachael, but for everything else in the world. "If she were human, she wouldn't be dying now. So you're right about Tyrell -- that four-year life span was one of his bright ideas. The Nexus-6 replicants were his big chance to play God, and all he could think of to do was hard-wire death into their cells."
    Isidore gazed sadly at him for a moment. "If that duh-didn't make her human -- your loving her -- then what would?"
    "Nothing." He shook his head. "There's a difference. Between human and not. That's what the tests are all about. The Voigt-Kampff tests." He knew he sounded like a blade runner now. These were the articles of faith, the core beliefs of the job. "She couldn't pass the test the first time I gave it to her, out at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters." He wondered how much of this Isidore already knew. There was some kind of link between Isidore and Sarah Tyrell -- he just didn't know yet what it was. "I spotted her then. It took a while, but I knew. That she was a replicant."
    "Buh-but it wasn't just the vuh-Voigt-Kampff