Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Page 5

  A man, dapper and lean and elderly, approached them, hand extended; on his face a harried expression showed, as if everything recently had begun happening too fast. “I’m Eldon Rosen,” he explained to Rick as they shook hands. “Listen, Deckard; you realize we don’t manufacture anything here on Earth, right? We can’t just phone down to production and ask for a diverse flock of items; it’s not that we don’t want or intend to cooperate with you. Anyhow I’ve done the best I can.” His left hand, shakily, roved through his thinning hair.

  Indicating his department briefcase, Rick said, “I’m ready to start.” The senior Rosen’s nervousness buoyed up his own confidence. They’re afraid of me, he realized with a start. Rachael Rosen included. I can probably force them to abandon manufacture of their Nexus-6 types; what I do during the next hour will affect the structure of their operation. It could conceivably determine the future of the Rosen Association, here in the United States, in Russia, and on Mars.

  The two members of the Rosen family studied him apprehensively and he felt the hollowness of their manner; by coming here he had brought the void to them, had ushered in emptiness and the hush of economic death. They control inordinate power, he thought. This enterprise is considered one of the system’s industrial pivots; the manufacture of androids, in fact, has become so linked to the colonization effort that if one dropped into ruin, so would the other in time. The Rosen Association, naturally, understood this perfectly. Eldon Rosen had obviously been conscious of it since Harry Bryan’s call.

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” Rick said as the two Rosens led him down a highly illuminated wide corridor. He himself felt quietly content. This moment, more than any other which he could remember, pleased him. Well, they would all soon know what his testing apparatus could accomplish—and could not. “If you have no confidence in the Voigt-Kampff scale,” he pointed out, “possibly your organization should have researched an alternate test. It can be argued that the responsibility rests partly on you. Oh, thanks.” The Rosens had steered him from the corridor and into a chic, living-roomish cubicle furnished with carpeting, lamps, couch, and modern little end tables on which rested recent magazines…including, he noticed, the February supplement to the Sidney’s catalogue, which he personally had not seen. In fact, the February supplement wouldn’t be out for another three days. Obviously the Rosen Association had a special relationship with Sidney’s.

  Annoyed, he picked up the supplement. “This is a violation of public trust. Nobody should get advance news of price changes.” As a matter of fact this might violate a federal statute; he tried to remember the relevant law, found he could not. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, and, opening his briefcase, dropped the supplement within.

  After an interval of silence, Eldon Rosen said wearily, “Look, officer, it hasn’t been our policy to solicit advance—”

  “I’m not a peace officer,” Rick said. “I’m a bounty hunter.” From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voigt-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments. “You may send the first testee in,” he informed Eldon Rosen, who now looked more haggard than ever.

  “I’d like to watch,” Rachael said, also seating herself. “I’ve never seen an empathy test being administered. What do those things you have there measure?”

  Rick said, “This”—he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires—“measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know this to be a primary autonomic response, the so-called ‘shame’ or ‘blushing’ reaction to a morally shocking stimulus. It can’t be controlled voluntarily, as can skin conductivity, respiration, and cardiac rate.” He showed her the other instrument, a pencil-beam light. “This records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles. Simultaneous with the blush phenomenon there generally can be found a small but detectable movement of—”

  “And these can’t be found in androids,” Rachael said.

  “They’re not engendered by the stimuli-questions; no. Although biologically they exist. Potentially.”

  Rachael said, “Give me the test.”

  “Why?” Rick said, puzzled.

  Speaking up, Eldon Rosen said hoarsely, “We selected her as your first subject. She may be an android. We’re hoping you can tell.” He seated himself in a series of clumsy motions, got out a cigarette, lit it, and fixedly watched.

  5

  The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachael Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.

  Seated where he could catch the readings on the two gauges of the Voigt-Kampff testing apparatus, Rick Deckard said, “I’m going to outline a number of social situations. You are to express your reaction to each as quickly as possible. You will be timed, of course.”

  “And of course,” Rachael said distantly, “my verbal responses won’t count. It’s solely the eye-muscle and capillary reaction that you’ll use as indices. But I’ll answer; I want to go through this and—” She broke off. “Go ahead, Mr. Deckard.”

  Rick, selecting question three, said, “You are given a calf-skin wallet on your birthday.” Both gauges immediately registered past the green and onto the red; the needles swung violently and then subsided.

  “I wouldn’t accept it,” Rachael said. “Also I’d report the person who gave it to me to the police.”

  After making a jot of notation, Rick continued, turning to the eighth question of the Voigt-Kampff profile scale. “You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar.”

  “I’d take him to the doctor.” Rachael’s voice was low but firm. Again the twin gauges registered, but this time not so far. He made a note of that, too.

  “You’re sitting watching TV,” he continued, “and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist.”

  Rachael said, “I’d kill it.” The gauges, this time, registered almost nothing: only a feeble and momentary tremor. He noted that and hunted cautiously for the next question.

  “In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude girl.” He paused.

  “Is this testing whether I’m an android,” Rachael asked tartly, “or whether I’m homosexual?” The gauges did not register.

  He continued, “Your husband likes the picture.” Still the gauges failed to indicate a reaction. “The girl,” he added, “is lying facedown on a large and beautiful bearskin rug.” The gauges remained inert, and he said to himself, An android response. Failing to detect the major element, the dead animal pelt. Her—Its—mind is concentrating on other factors. “Your husband hangs the picture up on the wall of his study,” he finished, and this time the needles moved.

  “I certainly wouldn’t let him,” Rachael said.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Now consider this. You’re reading a novel written in the old days before the war. The characters are visiting Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. They become hungry and enter a seafood restaurant. One of them orders lobster, and the chef drops the lobster into the tub of boiling water while the characters watch.”

  “Oh god,” Rachael said. “That’s awful! Did they really do that? It’s depraved! You mean a live lobster?” The gauges, however, did not respond. Formally, a correct response. But simulated.

  “You rent a mountain cabin,” he said, “in an area still verdant. It’s rustic knotty pine with a huge fireplace.”

  “Yes,” Rachael said, nodding impatiently.

  “On the walls someone has hung old maps, Currier and Ives prints, and above the fireplace a deer’s head has been mounted, a full stag with developed horns. The people with you admire the decor of the cabin and you all decide—”

  “Not with the deer head,” Rachael said. The gauges, however, showed an amplitude within the green only.

  “You become pregnant,” Rick continued, “by a man who has promised to marry you. The man goes off with another woman, your b
est friend; you get an abortion and—”

  “I would never get an abortion,” Rachael said. “Anyhow you can’t. It’s a life sentence and the police are always watching.” This time both needles swung violently into the red.

  “How do you know that?” Rick asked her, curiously. “About the difficulty of obtaining an abortion?”

  “Everybody knows that,” Rachael answered.

  “It sounded like you spoke from personal experience.” He watched the needles intently; they still swept out a wide path across the dials. “One more. You’re dating a man and he asks you to visit his apartment. While you’re there he offers you a drink. As you stand holding your glass you see into the bedroom; it’s attractively decorated with bullfight posters, and you wander in to look closer. He follows after you, closing the door. Putting his arm around you, he says—”

  Rachael interrupted, “What’s a bullfight poster?”

  “Drawings, usually in color and very large, showing a matador with his cape, a bull trying to gore him.” He was puzzled. “How old are you?” he asked; that might be a factor.

  “I’m eighteen,” Rachael said. “Okay; so this man closes the door and puts his arm around me. What does he say?”

  Rick said, “Do you know how bullfights ended?”

  “I suppose somebody got hurt.”

  “The bull, at the end, was always killed.” He waited, watching the two needles. They palpitated restlessly, nothing more. No real reading at all. “A final question,” he said. “Two-part. You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from before the war. It shows a banquet in progress; the guests are enjoying raw oysters.”

  “Ugh,” Rachael said; the needles swung swiftly.

  “The entrée,” he continued, “consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice.” The needles moved less this time, less than they had for the raw oysters. “Are raw oysters more acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog? Evidently not.” He put his pencil down, shut off the beam of light, removed the adhesive patch from her cheek. “You’re an android,” he said. “That’s the conclusion of the testing,” he informed her—or rather it—and Eldon Rosen, who regarded him with writhing worry; the elderly man’s face contorted, shifted plastically with angry concern. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Rick said. There was no answer, from either of the Rosens. “Look,” he said reasonably. “We have no conflict of interest; it’s important to me that the Voigt-Kampff test functions, almost as important as it is to you.”

  The elder Rosen said, “She’s not an android.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Rick said.

  “Why would he lie?” Rachael said to Rick fiercely. “If anything, we’d lie the other way.”

  “I want a bone marrow analysis made of you,” Rick said to her. “It can eventually be organically determined whether you’re android or not; it’s slow and painful, admittedly, but—”

  “Legally,” Rachael said, “I can’t be forced to undergo a bone marrow test. That’s been established in the courts; self-incrimination. And anyhow on a live person—not the corpse of a retired android—it takes a long time. You can give that damn Voigt-Kampff profile test because of the specials; they have to be tested for constantly, and while the government was doing that you police agencies slipped the Voigt-Kampff through. But what you said is true; that’s the end of the testing.” She rose to her feet, paced away from him, and stood with her hands on her hips, her back to him.

  “The issue is not the legality of the bone marrow analysis,” Eldon Rosen said huskily. “The issue is that your empathy delineation test failed in response to my niece. I can explain why she scored as an android might. Rachael grew up aboard Salander 3. She was born on it; she spent fourteen of her eighteen years living off its tape library and what the nine other crew members, all adults, knew about Earth. Then, as you know, the ship turned back a sixth of the way to Proxima. Otherwise Rachael would never have seen Earth—anyhow not until her later life.”

  “You would have retired me,” Rachael said over her shoulder. “In a police dragnet I would have been killed. I’ve known that since I got here four years ago; this isn’t the first time the Voigt-Kampff test has been given to me. In fact I rarely leave this building; the risk is enormous, because of those roadblocks you police set up, those flying wedge spot checks to pick up unclassified specials.”

  “And androids,” Eldon Rosen added. “Although naturally the public isn’t told that; they’re not supposed to know that androids are on Earth, in our midst.”

  “I don’t think they are,” Rick said. “I think the various police agencies here and in the Soviet Union have gotten them all. The population is small enough now; everyone, sooner or later, runs into a random checkpoint.” That, anyhow, was the idea.

  “What were your instructions,” Eldon Rosen asked, “if you wound up designating a human as android?”

  “That’s a departmental matter.” He began restoring his testing gear to his briefcase; the two Rosens watched silently. “Obviously,” he added, “I was told to cancel further testing, as I’m now doing. If it failed once there’s no point in going on.” He snapped the briefcase shut.

  “We could have defrauded you,” Rachael said. “Nothing forced us to admit you mistested me. And the same for the other nine subjects we’ve selected.” She gestured vigorously. “All we had to do was simply go along with your test results, either way.”

  Rick said, “I would have insisted on a list in advance. A sealed-envelope breakdown. And compared my own test results for congruity. There would have had to be congruity.” And I can see now, he realized, that I wouldn’t have gotten it. Bryant was right. Thank god I didn’t go out bounty hunting on the basis of this test.

  “Yes, I suppose you would have done that,” Eldon Rosen said. He glanced at Rachael, who nodded. “We discussed that possibility,” Eldon said then, with reluctance.

  “This problem,” Rick said, “stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where—”

  “We produced what the colonists wanted,” Eldon Rosen said. “We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn’t made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human—but that’s not what happened.” His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. “Your police department—others as well—may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn’t.”

  “In other words,” Rick said with acuity, “I’m not going to be given a chance to check out a single Nexus-6. You people dropped this schizoid girl on me beforehand.” And my test, he realized, is wiped out. I shouldn’t have gone for it, he said to himself. However, it’s too late now.

  “We have you, Mr. Deckard,” Rachael Rosen agreed in a quiet, reasonable voice; she turned toward him then and smiled.

  He could not make out, even now, how the Rosen Association had managed to snare him, and so easily. Experts, he realized. A mammoth corporation like this—it embodies too much experience. It possesses in fact a sort of group mind. And Eldon and Rachael Rosen consisted as spokesmen for that corporate entity. His mistake, evidently, had been in viewing them as individuals. It was a mistake he would not make again.

  “Your superior, Mr. Bryant,” Eldon Rosen said, “will have difficulty understanding how you happened to let us void your testing apparatus before the test began.” He pointed toward the ceiling, and Rick saw the camera lens. His massive error in dealing with the Rosens had been recorded. “I think the right thing for us all to do,” Eldon said, “is sit down and—” He gestured affably. “We can work so
mething out, Mr. Deckard. There’s no need for anxiety. The Nexus-6 variety of android is a fact; we here at the Rosen Association recognize it and I think now you do, too.”

  Rachael, leaning toward Rick, said, “How would you like to own an owl?”

  “I doubt if I’ll ever own an owl.” But he knew what she meant; he understood the business the Rosen Association wanted to transact. Tension of a kind he had never felt before manifested itself inside him; it exploded, leisurely, in every part of his body. He felt the tension, the consciousness of what was happening, take over completely.

  “But an owl,” Eldon Rosen said, “is the thing you want.” He glanced at his niece inquiringly. “I don’t think he has any idea—”

  “Of course he does,” Rachael contradicted. “He knows exactly where this is heading. Don’t you, Mr. Deckard?” Again she leaned toward him, and this time closer; he could smell a mild perfume about her, almost a warmth. “You’re practically there, Mr. Deckard. You practically have your owl.” To Eldon Rosen she said, “He’s a bounty hunter; remember? So he lives off the bounty he makes, not his salary. Isn’t that so, Mr. Deckard?”

  He nodded.

  “How many androids escaped this time?” Rachael inquired.

  Presently he said, “Eight. Originally. Two have already been retired, by someone else; not me.”

  “You get how much for each android?” Rachael asked.

  Shrugging, he said, “It varies.”

  Rachael said, “If you have no test you can administer, then there is no way you can identify an android. And if there’s no way you can identify an android there’s no way you can collect your bounty. So if the Voigt-Kampff scale has to be abandoned—”

  “A new scale,” Rick said, “will replace it. This has happened before.” Three times, to be exact. But the new scale, the more modern analytical device, had been there already; no lag had existed. This time was different.

  “Eventually, of course, the Voigt-Kampff scale will become obsolete,” Rachael agreed. “But not now. We’re satisfied ourselves that it will delineate the Nexus-6 types and we’d like you to proceed on that basis in your own particular, peculiar work.” Rocking back and forth, her arms tightly folded, she regarded him with intensity. Trying to fathom his reaction.