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You'll give it away , the remaining rational part of his mind argued. Walk out of here, and it'll prove that you're not one of the hired actors . The man standing in front of the door would have set security down on Holden's ass in no time.
    Besides , he told himself, there's nothing to worry about . All he had to do was bluff this officious bastard a little while longer, then find some way to slip out of here and continue looking for Deckard.
    The rational part had its reasons for him to go on sitting at the table, across from the replicant whose image was so firmly bolted into his memory. They amounted to nothing compared to the irrational ones.
    Fear kept him nailed to the seat. Fear, and the locks of time. Time repeating itself, a loop tightening around him, against which it was impossible to prevail. He knew what was coming-he remembered everything now-and knew that there was nothing he could do to keep it from happening all over again.
    "Say your line." The partial smile ebbed on the face of the man by the door. "Go on."
    Holden closed his eyes for a moment, to make sure that he got it absolutely right. "Tell me He opened his eyes and looked straight into the resentful gaze of the Kowalski replicant. "Tell me all the good things that come into your mind, when you think about . . . your mother .
    "My mother?" The replicant was right in character. His voice sounded just the way the other Kowalski's had, so long ago.
    "That's right." Holden couldn't keep himself from nodding, even smiling, the same superior fraction of expression that he'd had the first time through this loop. All he lacked was the cigarette and the blue smoke curling above his head. "Your mother."
    The Kowalski replicant's face flushed with anger, small eyes widening.
    That's perfect , thought Holden. Unresisting.
    "I'll tell you about my mother-"
    That was all he heard; the rest wasn't spoken, but shouted in flame that burst through the table, leapt and struck him in the chest, where his old, fleshiy heart had once been. The new heart took the bullet's impact without pain, without even shock. His breath was blood in his mouth; the artificial lungs had collapsed into two clenched fists.
    The chair spun around with him in it, head thrust hard against the words TYRELL CORP. He accepted another shot between the shoulder blades, the bullet tumbling through the chair back; fragments of surgically inert metal and polyethylene spattered before him in a red mist. The bullet's momentum thrust both him and the chair through the flimsy wall panel-
    Just as it had before. Well, they got that right , thought Holden. The chair had stopped, caught by debris and black cables on the set's flooring, but he hadn't. He found himself lying in a spreading pooi of blood, his fingertips heated by the red flow from the broken machinery in his chest. The blank idiot eyes of the video-cams stared down at him.
    He was right -a subsystem of the cardiopulmonary gear was still functional, at least for another few seconds; enough to pump a last trace of oxygen to his brain and rapidly dwindling consciousness. The briefcase had been right when it had warned him. Big trouble , thought Holden. His last thoughts ticked away, in synch with the final small battery winding down. To what the briefcase had said: You'll probably die .
    There was no arguing with that, not now.
    What the briefcase had gotten wrong, though-Holden shook his head, the back of his skull mired in the sticky wetness. It wasn't big trouble; at least not for him. The end of trouble-as the doctors had told him, there wouldn't be any chance of plugging a new heart and lungs into him, so he didn't have to worry about being brought back, to do this all over again.
    He could even smile about it, really smile, though he couldn't be sure that anything was happening with his face-for a few time-dilated microseconds after the second bullet had laid him out, he'd been able to catch a tiny reflection of himself in one of the curved