Free Eye and Talon by K. W. Jeter

immediately dismissed that possibility — or something else had happened to him, a data erasure of some kind. And it had happened at the division level, figured Iris, instead of farther up; if the deliberate hole in the data had been created by a departmental action, by the real and spooky powers above her boss Meyer, then they would have taken out this Deckard's regulation profile as well, instead of leaving his name and divisional affiliation behind to ID him with.
    'Interesting,' mused Iris aloud. 'Very . .
    'What is?' The chat, now stationed by her ankles, looked up at her. 'The only thing more curious than a hole, where something should be, is a partial hole. You know?' She smiled down at the chat. 'If somebody's got the power to remove it, they should have the power to remove it all the way, without leaving little pieces behind. And if they want to remove it in the first place, why wouldn't they want to remove it all?'
    'Dunno.' The chat shook its head. 'Cuddle?'
    'Later. I'm still working.' The tingling, subdermal numbness in her fingertips had already ebbed away, along with whatever woozy endorphins had been produced by handling the chat. That was fine by Iris: figuring out a new assignment's intricacies, sniffing the trail of the tiny and fragmentary data and where they led to, gave a better high.
    This Deckard thing . . .
    She had the sense, down in the base of her gut, that it was important. Though what a partially deleted blade runner could have to do with tracking down an escaped pet owl, she didn't have a clue on yet.
    'Resume playback.'
    The owl showed up again, in the surresper's current discrete sequence. Only for a moment, sitting on a different metal perch, but with the same alert and round, golden eyes, scanning the territory in front of it. Which this time included the image of a woman coming into the illusory room. She looked even colder and harder than the blade runner Deckard, though she was obviously younger and, by objective standards, prettier. The woman looked as if she had been dipped in money as well, gilded by its transforming power into another piece of the Tyrell Corporation's expensive furnishings. Her dark hair was done up in some kind of retro fashion, like the brittly unpleasant rich girl in an ancient black and white movie; the image's makeup had the over-precise, controlled sexuality that Iris associated with virgins and mental patients. Iris shook her head and looked away, giving in to her own deep, instinctive dislike of the young woman, without bothering to figure out what about her had triggered such a quick aversive reaction. Maybe she reminded me of somebody . . .
    In the illusory room, in the surresper's brief snippet of reconstructed past, the two images exchanged a few words — and then it was over. 'Sequence terminus,' announced the machine.
    'That's it?'
    'Affirmative.' The circuitry inside the surresper didn't care, one way or the other. 'Loaded data contains two chron sequences, optical and auditory representation. Viewing of first sequence aborted before terminus, upon command; second sequence played through.'
    Not much to go on , grumped Iris to herself. There had been only a quick glimpse of the owl, looking exactly as it had in the other sequence, and a few words exchanged between the images of the woman and the cop named Deckard. She had barely paid attention to what the two had said; she'd been paying attention to the owl, over at the side of the reconstructed space. The bit had been so brief and uninformative that Iris had to wonder why Meyer had included it in the first place.
    'Play it again,' suggested the chat, sensitive to her mood. This time, she listened to what the two images said.
    Do you like our owl? That was the first thing the woman said to Deckard, as she'd walked into the room and caught him looking at it. The woman's use of the word 'our' confirmed what Iris had already surmised: the owl belonged to the Tyrell Corporation itself.
    It's artificial?