Replicant Night by K. W. Jeter

apprehending its own demise. Sarah wondered what Deckard was going on about, pounding on the door with that much force. He's that happy about being home? Maybe he had finally flipped out, gone all the way around the bend of that dark corridor that'd always been there inside his head; some bad retro-TV fantasy of domestic bliss had wormed its way into his thoughts and taken over. Some vision of Mr. Niemand coming back here after a long, hard day at work, to be greeted by Mrs. N in a lace-edged kitchen apron and heels, bearing a cold stainless-steel pitcher of gin and vermouth-the life their great-great-grandparents had lived, at least inside their sitcom fantasies.
    "Take it easy!" More strips of sealant tape dangled loose, trailing like thick party streamers from the hovel's low ceiling. "You're going to knock the place over-" A muffled voice came from the other side of the door, but Sarah couldn't make out what he'd said. She batted another sticky section of tape away from her face and reached for the door's knob.
    In the sliver of time it took to turn the knob and pull the wobbling front door open, Sarah had entertained the notion of going with Deckard's anticipatory fantasy . . . or at least stringing him along with it for a few minutes. She could act as though there were, in fact, some measure of affection between them; she could even try once more to be Rachael, his long-dead and long-remembered love. The pretending wouldn't be unpleasant; there was still a room inside her head in which her own desire for all of that was still kept, like an ancient white wedding dress, never used and carefully folded between sheets of tissue paper.
    It's what the bastard deserves , thought Sarah as her fingertips touched the doorknob. To be jerked around the way she had been, by a forged-iron chain bolted to the heart. To be led to believe one thing, even for a second, then be slammed up against the even more unyielding steel wall of reality ...
    In her other hand, the one dangling by her side as she reached to pull open the door, she had the perfect representation of what reality had come to mean for her. Loaded and cocked; she had already decided she didn't want to even try to screw around with Deckard's head anymore. There would be no Rachel-like homecoming kiss for him. If there were any irrational hopes left inside the sonuvabitch that would rise upon his seeing the human original of the replicant face for which he'd fallen, they'd be dashed by the very next thing he'd see. A circle of cold metal, with a darker black space at its center-Sarah's hand was already lifting the gun into position as she stepped back from the door swinging open toward her.
    Two faces looked in at her. Two men, neither of them Rick Deckard. The eyes behind their matching square-rimmed glasses widened as they focussed on the gun she was holding a few inches from their foreheads.
    "Um ... is this the Niemand residence?" The man to the left swallowed nervously. The two of them didn't appear to be twins, but looked as if they were trying to be. "If it's not ... we're sorry ..."
    "Maybe this is a bad time." Beads of sweat had welled up on the other's brow; tiny images of the gun floated in the wet mirrors. "Maybe we could come back ... some other time."
    Sarah let the gun lower of its own weight. She leaned against the side of the doorway; the hovel swayed and audibly creaked. "My apologies, gentlemen." Beyond the pair, the dimly lit corridors of the U.N. emigrant colony were visible, the rounded angles filled with rubble trembling in the airless breezes. "I just woke up."
    One of the men tried an uneasy smile. "You were expecting someone else?"
    "My husband, actually."
    The two men exchanged glances, their heads pivoting a fraction of an inch toward each other, as though linked by some simple, invisible mechanism. The same unseen gear turned their owlish gazes back to Sarah.
    "Mrs. Niemand-" The one on the left spoke with somber intonation. "We can tell that you