Replicant Night by K. W. Jeter

he'd heard Roy Batty's voice, the other man had been in a human-type body and not a black leatherette rectangle. And had been trying to kill him-he supposed he didn't have to worry about that now. Unless the briefcase was some kind of bomb. It was always possible.
    "We've got a lot to talk about."
    He didn't answer the briefcase. He leaned back into the cockpit's seat, eyes still shut but nowhere near sleep.
    Whatever had to be told to him by the briefcase- No , Deckard corrected himself; it's Batty inside there . He knew it was-he figured he'd find out soon enough.

3
    The alarm clock laboriously climbed to the top of the bedside table, its hooked little claws gaining whatever purchase they could on the imitation wood-grain plastic-and-cardboard surfaces. It waddled through the litter of empty pharmaceutical tubes, wadded-up tissues, and unloaded gun, then looked over at the figure on the bed. "Time to wake up, Mrs. Niemand."
    Sarah Tyrell squeezed her eyes shut tighter. The cold, weak illumination of a Martian dawn-or possibly noon; it was always hard to tell-seeped through the hovel's dust-clouded skylights. "That's not my name." She heard the scraping of her voice, as though the airborne grit had filtered into her throat's various soft hinges and joints. "Don't call me that." The clock's programmed habits had been getting on her nerves for a long time.
    "You'll always be Mrs. Niemand to me." A synthesized bell tone, razor bright, sounded from the clock's tiny speaker. "Come on. Wakey wakey. Rise and shine."
    That was why the gun was unloaded. If she didn't keep it that way, the alarm clock would've been dead by now, sparkling bits of metal and microcircuitry splattered over the far wall of the bedroom.
    She laid the back of her hand against her eyelids, attempting in vain to block out the traces of the day's illumination, to create eternal-and dreamless-night.
    "Mrs. Niemand ... come on now From across the room, the calendar softly chided her. "You know your to-do list. There's nothing about committing suicide today." The calendar could read her moods. Behind the animated woodland scene and all the rows of numbered days beneath it was a fairly sharp intelligence. Autonomic household appliances got that way on Mars, given enough time. A matter of survival; they endured, while their human owners came and went.
    To the grave, mainly , thought Sarah. "All right," she called out. She didn't want the calendar on her tits all day, nagging along in its infuriatingly maternal way. Given her family background-that she had inherited the Tyrell Corporation, which before its destruction had been the single largest manufacturer of simulated human intelligences-she had little taste for talking machines. Of either the solicitous or chipper variety; she didn't know which grated on her nerves more. "I'm getting up." She threw the bedcovers back, away from her bare legs. "I won't just lie here all day, thinking about death. Satisfied?"
    "Attagirl!" The alarm clock rang its bell again. "Way to go! Don't let the bastards get you down!"
    She sighed, deep and weary. "Just one thing. Just do me one favor." She was talking to the calendar; she knew the clock was hopeless. "Call me Sarah. Or Miss Tyrell. Anything but that Mrs. Niemand crap."
    "We can't do that." The calendar sounded mournful. Or even grieving, as though the limited intelligence printed into its circuits was aware of the nature of its sins, which it couldn't help committing. "We came with the hovel. We're part of the rental agreement that you and Mr. Niemand signed. You got us and the microwave and the fridge, plus basic cable service, all for one low, low monthly fee."
    "Yeah, right." Basic cable consisted of a scrolling crawl of all the additional and hugely expensive service upgrades the video monopoly on Mars provided. Which the stuck-in-transit U.N. emigrants paid for, as long as they could. The alternative being a slow, twitching descent into idiopathic madness and death from