Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Read online

  “I can’t tell my husband,” Mrs. Pilsen said.

  “All right, ma’am,” Milt said, and grimaced slightly. “We’ll call him. Would you give me his number at his place of employment?” He groped for a pen and pad of paper; Mr. Sloat handed them to him.

  “Listen,” Mrs. Pilsen said; she seemed now to rally. “Maybe the other gentleman is right. Maybe I ought to commission an electric replacement of Horace but without Ed ever knowing; could it be so faithful a reproduction that my husband wouldn’t be able to tell?”

  Dubiously, Milt said, “If that’s what you want. But it’s been our experience that the owner of the animal is never fooled. It’s only casual observers such as neighbors. You see, once you get real close to a false animal—”

  “Ed never got physically close to Horace, even though he loved him; I was the one who took care of all Horace’s personal needs such as his sandbox. I think I would like to try a false animal, and if it didn’t work then you could find us a real cat to replace Horace. I just don’t want my husband to know; I don’t think he could live through it. That’s why he never got close to Horace; he was afraid to. And when Horace got sick—with pneumonitis, as you tell me—Ed got panic-stricken and just wouldn’t face it. That’s why we waited so long to call you. Too long…as I knew before you called. I knew.” She nodded, her tears under control now. “How long will it take?”

  Milt essayed, “We can have it ready in ten days. We’ll deliver it during the day while your husband is at work.” He wound up the call, said good-bye, and hung up. “He’ll know,” he said to Mr. Sloat. “In five seconds. But that’s what she wants.”

  “Owners who get to love their animals,” Sloat said somberly, “go to pieces. I’m glad we’re not usually involved with real animals. You realize that actual animal vets have to make calls like that all the time?” He contemplated John Isidore. “In some ways you’re not so stupid after all, Isidore. You handled that reasonably well. Even though Milt had to come in and take over.”

  “He was doing fine,” Milt said. “God, that was tough.” He picked up the dead Horace. “I’ll take this down to the shop; Han, you phone Wheelright & Carpenter and get their builder over to measure and photograph it. I’m not going to let them take it to their shop; I want to compare the replica myself.”

  “I think I’ll have Isidore talk to them,” Mr. Sloat decided. “He got this started; he ought to be able to deal with Wheelright & Carpenter after handling Mrs. Pilsen.”

  Milt said to Isidore, “Just don’t let them take the original.” He held up Horace. “They’ll want to because it makes their work a hell of a lot easier. Be firm.”

  “Um,” Isidore said, blinking. “Okay. Maybe I ought to call them now before it starts to decay. Don’t dead bodies decay or something?” He felt elated.

  8

  After parking the department’s speedy beefed-up hovercar on the roof of the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Lombard Street, bounty hunter Rick Deckard, briefcase in hand, descended to Harry Bryant’s office.

  “You’re back awfully soon,” his superior said, leaning back in his chair and taking a pinch of Specific No. 1 snuff.

  “I got what you sent me for.” Rick seated himself facing the desk. He set his briefcase down. I’m tired, he realized. It had begun to hit him, now that he had gotten back; he wondered if he would be able to recoup enough for the job ahead. “How’s Dave?” he asked. “Well enough for me to go talk to him? I want to before I tackle the first of the andys.”

  Bryant said, “You’ll be trying for Polokov first. The one that lasered Dave. Best to get him right out of it, since he knows we’ve got him listed.”

  “Before I talk to Dave?”

  Bryant reached for a sheet of onionskin paper, a blurred third or fourth carbon. “Polokov has taken a job with the city as a trash collector, a scavenger.”

  “Don’t only specials do that kind of work?”

  “Polokov is mimicking a special, an anthead. Very deteriorated—or so he pretends to be. That’s what suckered Dave; Polokov apparently looks and acts so much like an anthead that Dave forgot. Are you sure about the Voigt-Kampff scale now? You’re absolutely certain, from what happened up in Seattle, that—”

  “I am,” Rick said shortly. He did not amplify.

  Bryant said, “I’ll take your word for it. But there can’t be even one slip-up.”

  “There never could be in andy hunting. This is no different.”

  “The Nexus-6 is different.”

  “I already found my first one,” Rick said. “And Dave found two. Three, if you count Polokov. Okay, I’ll retire Polokov today, and then maybe tonight or tomorrow talk to Dave.” He reached for the blurred carbon, the poop sheet on the android Polokov.

  “One more item,” Bryant said. “A Soviet cop, from the W.P.O., is on his way here. While you were in Seattle I got a call from him; he’s aboard an Aeroflot rocket that’ll touch down at the public field, here, in about an hour. Sandor Kadalyi, his name is.”

  “What’s he want?” Rarely if ever did W.P.O. cops show up in San Francisco.

  “W.P.O. is enough interested in the new Nexus-6 types that they want a man of theirs to be with you. An observer—and also, if he can, he’ll assist you. It’s for you to decide when and if he can be of value. But I’ve already given him permission to tag along.”

  “What about the bounty?” Rick said.

  “You won’t have to split it,” Bryant said, and smiled creakily.

  “I just wouldn’t regard it as financially fair.” He had absolutely no intention of sharing his winnings with a thug from W.P.O. He studied the poop sheet on Polokov; it gave a description of the man—or rather the andy—and his current address and place of business: the Bay Area Scavengers Company with offices on Geary.

  “Want to wait on the Polokov retirement until the Soviet cop gets here to help you?” Bryant asked.

  Rick bristled. “I’ve always worked alone. Of course, it’s your decision—I’ll do whatever you say. But I’d just as soon tackle Polokov right now, without waiting for Kadalyi to hit town.”

  “You go ahead on your own,” Bryant decided. “And then on the next one, which’ll be a Miss Luba Luft—you have the sheet there on her, too—you can bring in Kadalyi.”

  Having stuffed the onionskin carbons in his briefcase, Rick left his superior’s office and ascended once more to the roof and his parked hovercar. And now let’s visit Mr. Polokov, he said to himself. He patted his laser tube.

  For his first try at the android Polokov, Rick stopped off at the offices of the Bay Area Scavengers Company.

  “I’m looking for an employee of yours,” he said to the severe, gray-haired switchboard woman. The scavengers’ building impressed him; large and modern, it held a good number of high-class purely office employees. The deep-pile carpets, the expensive genuine wood desks, reminded him that garbage collecting and trash disposal had, since the war, become one of Earth’s important industries. The entire planet had begun to disintegrate into junk, and to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally…or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer—not of radioactive dust—but of kipple.

  “Mr. Ackers,” the switchboard woman informed him. “He’s the personnel manager.” She pointed to an impressive but imitation oak desk at which sat a prissy, tiny, bespectacled individual, merged with his plethora of paperwork.

  Rick presented his police ID. “Where’s your employee Polokov right now? At his job or at home?”

  After reluctantly consulting his records, Mr. Ackers said, “Polokov ought to be at work. Flattening hovercars at our Daly City plant and dumping them into the Bay. However—” The personnel manager consulted a further document, then picked up his vidphone and made an inside call to someone else in the building. “He’s not, then,” he said, terminating the call; hanging up, he said to Rick, “Polokov didn’t show up for work today. No explanation. What’s he don
e, officer?”

  “If he should show up,” Rick said, “don’t tell him I was here asking about him. You understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Ackers said sulkily, as if his deep schooling in police matters had been derided.

  In the department’s beefed-up hovercar Rick next flew to Polokov’s apartment building in the Tenderloin. We’ll never get him, he told himself. They—Bryant and Holden—waited too long. Instead of sending me to Seattle, Bryant should have sicced me on Polokov—better still last night, as soon as Dave Holden got his.

  What a grimy place, he observed as he walked across the roof to the elevator. Abandoned animal pens, encrusted with months of dust. And, in one cage, a no longer functioning false animal, a chicken. By elevator he descended to Polokov’s floor, found the hall unlit, like a subterranean cave. Using his police A-powered sealed-beam light, he illuminated the hall and once again glanced over the onionskin carbon. The Voigt-Kampff test had been administered to Polokov; that part could be bypassed, and he could go directly to the task of destroying the android.

  Best to get him from out here, he decided. Setting down his weapons kit he fumbled it open, got out a nondirectional Penfield wave transmitter; he punched the key for catalepsy, himself protected against the mood emanation by means of a counterwave broadcast through the transmitter’s metal hull directed to him alone.

  They’re now all frozen stiff, he said to himself as he shut off the transmitter. Everyone, human and andy alike, in the vicinity. No risk to me; all I have to do is walk in and laser him. Assuming, of course, that he’s in his apartment, which isn’t likely.

  Using an infinity key, which analyzed and opened all forms of locks known, he entered Polokov’s apartment, laser beam in hand.

  No Polokov. Only semi-ruined furniture, a place of kipple and decay. In fact no personal articles: what greeted him consisted of unclaimed debris which Polokov had inherited when he took the apartment and which in leaving he had abandoned to the next—if any—tenant.

  I knew it, he said to himself. Well, there goes the first thousand dollars’ bounty; probably skipped all the way to the Antarctic Circle. Out of my jurisdiction; another bounty hunter from another police department will retire Polokov and claim the money. On, I suppose, to the andys who haven’t been warned, as was Polokov. On to Luba Luft.

  Back again on the roof in his hovercar he reported by phone to Harry Bryant. “No luck on Polokov. Left probably right after he lasered Dave.” He inspected his wristwatch. “Want me to pick up Kadalyi at the field? It’ll save time and I’m eager to get started on Miss Luft.” He already had the poop sheet on her laid out before him, had begun a thorough study of it.

  “Good idea,” Bryant said, “except that Mr. Kadalyi is already here; his Aeroflot ship—as usual, he says—arrived early. Just a moment.” An invisible conference. “He’ll fly over and meet you where you are now,” Bryant said, returning to the screen. “Meanwhile read up on Miss Luft.”

  “An opera singer. Allegedly from Germany. At present attached to the San Francisco Opera Company.” He nodded in reflexive agreement, his mind on the poop sheet. “Must have a good voice to make connections so fast. Okay, I’ll wait here for Kadalyi.” He gave Bryant his location and rang off.

  I’ll pose as an opera fan, Rick decided as he read further. I particularly would like to see her as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. In my personal collection I have tapes by such old-time greats as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Lotte Lehmann and Lisa Della Casa; that’ll give us something to discuss while I set up my Voigt-Kampff equipment.

  His car phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver.

  The police operator said, “Mr. Deckard, a call for you from Seattle; Mr. Bryant said to put it through to you. From the Rosen Association.”

  “Okay,” Rick said, and waited. What do they want? he wondered. As far as he could discern, the Rosens had already proven to be bad news. And undoubtedly would continue so, whatever they intended.

  Rachael Rosen’s face appeared on the tiny screen. “Hello, Officer Deckard.” Her tone seemed placating; that caught his attention. “Are you busy right now or can I talk to you?”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “We of the association have been discussing your situation regarding the escaped Nexus-6 types, and knowing them as we do, we feel that you’ll have better luck if one of us works in conjunction with you.”

  “By doing what?”

  “Well, by one of us coming along with you. When you go out looking for them.”

  “Why? What would you add?”

  Rachael said, “The Nexus-6s would be wary at being approached by a human. But if another Nexus-6 made the contact—”

  “You specifically mean yourself.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her face sober.

  “I’ve got too much help already.”

  “But I really think you need me.”

  “I doubt it. I’ll think it over and call you back.” At some distant, unspecified future time, he said to himself. Or more likely never. That’s all I need: Rachael Rosen popping up through the dust at every step.

  “You don’t really mean it,” Rachael said. “You’ll never call me. You don’t realize how agile an illegal escaped Nexus-6 is, how impossible it’ll be for you. We feel we owe you this because of—you know. What we did.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.” He started to hang up.

  “Without me,” Rachael said, “one of them will get you before you can get it.”

  “Good-bye,” he said and hung up. What kind of world is it, he asked himself, when an android phones up a bounty hunter and offers him assistance? He rang the police operator back. “Don’t put any more calls through to me from Seattle,” he said.

  “Yes, Mr. Deckard. Has Mr. Kadalyi reached you yet?”

  “I’m still waiting. And he had better hurry because I’m not going to be here long.” Again he hung up.

  As he resumed reading the poop sheet on Luba Luft, a hovercar taxi spun down to land on the roof a few yards off. From it a red-faced, cherubic-looking man, evidently in his mid-fifties, wearing a heavy and impressive Russian-style greatcoat, stepped and, smiling, his hand extended, approached Rick’s car.

  “Mr. Deckard?” the man asked with a Slavic accent. “The bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department?” The empty taxi rose, and the Russian watched it go, absently. “I’m Sandor Kadalyi,” the man said, and opened the car door to squeeze in beside Rick.

  As he shook hands with Kadalyi, Rick noticed that the W.P.O. representative carried an unusual type of laser tube, a subform which he had never seen before.

  “Oh, this?” Kadalyi said. “Interesting, isn’t it?” He tugged it from his belt holster. “I got this on Mars.”

  “I thought I knew every handgun made,” Rick said. “Even those manufactured at and for use in the colonies.”

  “We made this ourselves,” Kadalyi said, beaming like a Slavic Santa, his ruddy face inscribed with pride. “You like it? What is different about it, functionally, is—here, take it.” He passed the gun over to Rick, who inspected it expertly, by way of years of experience.

  “How does it differ functionally?” Rick asked. He couldn’t tell.

  “Press the trigger.”

  Aiming upward, out the window of the car, Rick squeezed the trigger of the weapon. Nothing happened; no beam emerged. Puzzled, he turned to Kadalyi.

  “The triggering circuit,” Kadalyi said cheerfully, “isn’t attached. It remains with me. You see?” He opened his hand, revealed a tiny unit. “And I can also direct it, within certain limits. Irrespective of where it’s aimed.”

  “You’re not Polokov, you’re Kadalyi,” Rick said.

  “Don’t you mean that the other way around? You’re a bit confused.”

  “I mean you’re Polokov, the android; you’re not from the Soviet police.” Rick, with his toe, pressed the emergency button on the floor of his car.

  “Why won’t my laser tube fire?”
Kadalyi-Polokov said, switching on and off the miniaturized triggering and aiming device which he held in the palm of his hand.

  “A sine wave,” Rick said. “That phases out laser emanation and spreads the beam into ordinary light.”

  “Then I’ll have to break your pencil neck.” The android dropped the device and, with a snarl, grabbed with both hands for Rick’s throat.

  As the android’s hands sank into his throat, Rick fired his regulation issue old-style pistol from its shoulder holster; the .38 magnum slug struck the android in the head and its brain box burst. The Nexus-6 unit which operated it blew into pieces, a raging, mad wind which carried throughout the car. Bits of it, like the radioactive dust itself, whirled down on Rick. The retired remains of the android rocked back, collided with the car door, bounced off and struck heavily against him; he found himself struggling to shove the twitching remnants of the android away.

  Shakily, he at last reached for the car phone, called in to the Hall of Justice. “Shall I make my report?” he said. “Tell Harry Bryant that I got Polokov.”

  “‘You got Polokov.’ He’ll understand that, will he?”

  “Yes,” Rick said, and hung up. Christ that came close, he said to himself. I must have overreacted to Rachael Rosen’s warning; I went the other way and it almost finished me. But I got Polokov, he said to himself. His adrenal gland, by degrees, ceased pumping its several secretions into his bloodstream; his heart slowed to normal, his breathing became less frantic. But he still shook. Anyhow I made myself a thousand dollars just now, he informed himself. So it was worth it. And I’m faster to react than Dave Holden. Of course, however, Dave’s experience evidently prepared me; that has to be admitted. Dave had not had such warning.

  Again picking up the phone, he placed a call home to his apt, to Iran. Meanwhile he managed to light a cigarette; the shaking had begun to depart.

  His wife’s face, sodden with the six-hour self-accusatory depression which she had prophesied, manifested itself on the vidscreen. “Oh hello, Rick.”