“No,” he said, taking off his shirt and tie.
“I understand—they tell me—it’s convincing if you don’t think too much about it. But if you think too much, if you reflect on what you’re doing—then you can’t go on. For, ahem, physiological reasons.”
Bending, he kissed her bare shoulder.
“Thanks, Rick,” she said wanly. “Remember, though: don’t think about it, just do it. Don’t pause and be philosophical, because from a philosophical standpoint it’s dreary. For us both.”
He said, “Afterward I still intend to look for Roy Baty. I still need you to be there. I know that laser tube you have in your purse is—”
“You think I’ll retire one of your andys for you?”
“I think in spite of what you said you’ll help me all you can. Otherwise you wouldn’t be lying there in that bed.”
“I love you,” Rachael said. “If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I’d score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.”
Tonight sometime, he thought as he clicked off the bedside light, I will retire a Nexus-6 which looks exactly like this naked girl. My good god, he thought; I’ve wound up where Phil Resch said. Go to bed with her first, he remembered. Then kill her. “I can’t do it,” he said, and backed away from the bed.
“I wish you could,” Rachael said. Her voice wavered.
“Not because of you. Because of Pris Stratton; what I have to do to her.”
“We’re not the same. I don’t care about Pris Stratton. Listen.” Rachael thrashed about in the bed, sitting up; in the gloom he could dimly make out her almost breastless, trim shape. “Go to bed with me and I’ll retire Stratton. Okay? Because I can’t stand getting this close and then—”
“Thank you,” he said; gratitude—undoubtedly because of the bourbon—rose up inside him, constricting his throat. Two, he thought. I now have only two to retire; just the Batys. Would Rachael really do it? Evidently. Androids thought and functioned that way. Yet he had never come across anything quite like this.
“Goddamn it, get into bed,” Rachael said.
He got into bed.
17
Afterward they enjoyed a great luxury: Rick had room service bring up coffee. He sat for a long time within the arms of a green, black, and gold leaf lounge chair, sipping coffee and meditating about the next few hours. Rachael, in the bathroom, squeaked and hummed and splashed in the midst of a hot shower.
“You made a good deal when you made that deal,” she called when she had shut off the water; dripping, her hair tied up with a rubber band, she appeared bare and pink at the bathroom door. “We androids can’t control our physical, sensual passions. You probably knew that; in my opinion you took advantage of me.” She did not, however, appear genuinely angry. If anything she had become cheerful and certainly as human as any girl he had known. “Do we really have to go track down those three andys tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. Two for me to retire, he thought; one for you. As Rachael put it, the deal had been made.
Gathering a giant white bath towel about her, Rachael said, “Did you enjoy that?”
“Yes.”
“Would you ever go to bed with an android again?”
“If it was a girl. If she resembled you.”
Rachael said, “Do you know what the lifespan of a humanoid robot such as myself is? I’ve been in existence two years. How long do you calculate I have?”
After a hesitation he said, “About two more years.”
“They never could solve that problem. I mean cell replacement. Perpetual or anyhow semi-perpetual renewal. Well, so it goes.” Vigorously she began drying herself. Her face had become expressionless.
“I’m sorry,” Rick said.
“Hell,” Rachael said, “I’m sorry I mentioned it. Anyhow it keeps humans from running off and living with an android.”
“And this is true with you Nexus-6 types, too?”
“It’s the metabolism. Not the brain unit.” She trotted out, swept up her underpants, and began to dress.
He, too, dressed. Then together, saying little, the two of them journeyed to the roof field, where his hovercar had been parked by the pleasant white-clad human attendant.
As they headed toward the suburbs of San Francisco, Rachael said, “It’s a nice night.”
“My goat is probably asleep by now,” he said. “Or maybe goats are nocturnal. Some animals never sleep. Sheep never do, not that I could detect; whenever you look at them they’re looking back. Expecting to be fed.”
“What sort of wife do you have?”
He did not answer.
“Do you—”
“If you weren’t an android,” Rick interrupted, “if I could legally marry you, I would.”
Rachael said, “Or we could live in sin, except that I’m not alive.”
“Legally you’re not. But really you are. Biologically. You’re not made out of transistorized circuits like a false animal; you’re an organic entity.” And in two years, he thought, you’ll wear out and die. Because we never solved the problem of cell replacement, as you pointed out. So I guess it doesn’t matter anyhow.
This is my end, he said to himself. As a bounty hunter. After the Batys there won’t be any more. Not after this, tonight.
“You look so sad,” Rachael said.
Putting his hand out, he touched her cheek.
“You’re not going to be able to hunt androids any longer,” she said calmly. “So don’t look sad. Please.”
He stared at her.
“No bounty hunter ever has gone on,” Rachael said. “After being with me. Except one. A very cynical man. Phil Resch. And he’s nutty; he works out in left field on his own.”
“I see,” Rick said. He felt numb. Completely. Throughout his entire body.
“But this trip we’re taking,” Rachael said, “won’t be wasted, because you’re going to meet a wonderful, spiritual man.”
“Roy Baty,” he said. “Do you know all of them?”
“I knew all of them, when they still existed. I know three, now. We tried to stop you this morning, before you started out with Dave Holden’s list. I tried again, just before Polokov reached you. But then after that I had to wait.”
“Until I broke down,” he said. “And had to call you.” “Luba Luft and I had been close, very close friends for almost two years. What did you think of her? Did you like her?”
“I liked her.”
“But you killed her.”
“Phil Resch killed her.”
“Oh, so Phil accompanied you back to the opera house. We didn’t know that; our communications broke down about then. We knew just that she had been killed; we naturally assumed by you.”
“From Dave’s notes,” he said, “I think I can still go ahead and retire Roy Baty. But maybe not Irmgard Baty.” And not Pris Stratton, he thought. Even now; even knowing this. “So all that took place at the hotel,” he said, “consisted of a—”
“The association,” Rachael said, “wanted to reach the bounty hunters here and in the Soviet Union. This seemed to work…for reasons which we do not fully understand. Our limitation again, I guess.”
“I doubt if it works as often or as well as you say,” he said thickly.
“But it has with you.”
“We’ll see.”
“I already know,” Rachael said. “When I saw that expression on your face, that grief. I look for that.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“I don’t remember. Seven, eight. No, I believe it’s nine.” She—or rather it—nodded. “Yes, nine times.”
“The idea is old-fashioned,” Rick said.
Startled, Rachael said, “W-What?”
Pushing the steering wheel away from him, he put the car into a gliding decline. “Or anyhow that’s how it strikes me. I’m going to kill you,” he said. “And go on to Roy and Irmgard Baty and Pris Stratton alone.”
“That’s why you’re landing?” Appr
ehensively, she said, “There’s a fine; I’m the property, the legal property, of the association. I’m not an escaped android who fled here from Mars; I’m not in the same class as the others.”
“But,” he said, “if I can kill you then I can kill them.”
Her hands dived for her bulging, overstuffed, kipple-filled purse; she searched frantically, then gave up. “Goddamn this purse,” she said with ferocity. “I never can lay my hands on anything in it. Will you kill me in a way that won’t hurt? I mean, do it carefully. If I don’t fight; okay? I promise not to fight. Do you agree?”
Rick said, “I understand now why Phil Resch said what he said. He wasn’t being cynical; he had just learned too much. Going through this—I can’t blame him. It warped him.”
“But the wrong way.” She seemed more externally composed now. But still fundamentally frantic and tense. Yet, the dark fire waned; the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The classic resignation. Mechanical, intellectual acceptance of that which a genuine organism—with two billion years of the pressure to live and evolve hagriding it—could never have reconciled itself to.
“I can’t stand the way you androids give up,” he said savagely. The car now swooped almost to the ground; he had to jerk the wheel toward him to avoid a crash. Braking, he managed to bring the car to a staggering, careening halt; he slammed off the motor and got out his laser tube.
“At the occipital bone, the posterior base of my skull,” Rachael said. “Please.” She twisted about so that she did not have to look at the laser tube; the beam would enter unperceived.
Putting his laser tube away, Rick said, “I can’t do what Phil Resch said.” He snapped the motor back on, and a moment later they had taken off again.
“If you’re ever going to do it,” Rachael said, “do it now. Don’t make me wait.”
“I’m not going to kill you.” He steered the car in the direction of downtown San Francisco once again. “Your car’s at the St. Francis, isn’t it? I’ll let you off there and you can head for Seattle.” That ended what he had to say; he drove in silence.
“Thanks for not killing me,” Rachael said presently.
“Hell, as you said, you’ve only got two years of life left, anyhow. And I’ve got fifty. I’ll live twenty-five times as long as you.”
“But you really look down on me,” Rachael said. “For what I did.” Assurance had returned to her; the litany of her voice picked up pace. “You’ve gone the way of the others. The bounty hunters before you. Each time they get furious and talk wildly about killing me, but when the time comes they can’t do it. Just like you, just now.” She lit a cigarette, inhaled with relish. “You realize what this means, don’t you? It means I was right; you won’t be able to retire any more androids; it won’t be just me, it’ll be the Batys and Stratton, too. So go on home to your goat. And get some rest.” Suddenly she brushed at her coat, violently. “Yife! I got a burning ash from my cigarette—there, it’s gone.” She sank back against the seat, relaxing.
He said nothing.
“That goat,” Rachael said. “You love the goat more than me. More than you love your wife, probably. First the goat, then your wife, then last of all—” She laughed merrily. “What can you do but laugh?”
He did not answer. They continued in silence for a while and then Rachael poked about, found the car’s radio and switched it on.
“Turn it off,” Rick said.
“Turn off Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends? Turn off Amanda Werner and Oscar Scruggs? It’s time to hear Buster’s big sensational exposé, which is finally almost arrived.” She stooped to read the dial of her watch by the radio’s light. “Very soon now. Did you already know about it? He’s been talking about it, building up to it, for—”
The radio said, “—ah jes wan ta tell ya, folks, that ahm sitten hih with my pal Bustuh, an we’re tawkin en havin a real mighty fine time, waitin expectantly as we ah with each tick uh the clock foh what ah understan is the mos important announcement of—”
Rick shut the radio off. “Oscar Scruggs,” he said. “The voice of intelligent man.”
Instantly reaching, Rachael clicked the radio back on. “I want to listen. I intend to listen. This is important, what Buster Friendly has to say on his show tonight.” The idiotic voice babbled once more from the speaker, and Rachael Rosen settled back and made herself comfortable. Beside him in the darkness the coal of her cigarette glowed like the rump of a complacent lightning bug: a steady, unwavering index of Rachael Rosen’s achievement. Her victory over him.
18
“Bring the rest of my property up here,” Pris ordered J. R. Isidore. “In particular I want the TV set. So we can hear Buster’s announcement.”
“Yes,” Irmgard Baty agreed, bright-eyed, like a darting, plumed swift. “We need the TV; we’ve been waiting a long time for tonight and now it’ll be starting soon.”
Isidore said, “My own set gets the government channel.”
Off in a corner of the living room, seated in a deep chair as if he intended to remain permanently, as if he had taken up lodgings in the chair, Roy Baty belched and said patiently, “It’s Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends that we want to watch, Iz. Or do you want me to call you J. R.? Anyhow, do you understand? So will you go get the set?”
Alone, Isidore made his way down the echoing, empty hall to the stairs. The potent, strong fragrance of happiness still bloomed in him, the sense of being—for the first time in his dull life—useful. Others depend on me now, he exulted as he trudged down the dust-impacted steps to the level beneath.
And, he thought, it’ll be nice to see Buster Friendly on TV again, instead of just listening on the radio in the store truck. And that’s right, he realized; Buster Friendly is going to reveal his carefully documented sensational exposé tonight. So because of Pris and Roy and Irmgard I get to watch what will probably be the most important piece of news to be released in many years. How about that, he said to himself.
Life, for J. R. Isidore, had definitely taken an upswing.
He entered Pris’s former apartment, unplugged the TV set, and detached the antenna. The silence, all at once, penetrated; he felt his arms grow vague. In the absence of the Batys and Pris he found himself fading out, becoming strangely like the inert television set which he had just unplugged. You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean, before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it’s changed. You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go from people to nonpeople. In panic he thought, I’m dependent on them. Thank god they stayed.
It would require two trips to transfer Pris’s possessions to the apartment above. Hoisting the TV set, he decided to take it first, then the suitcases and remaining clothes.
A few minutes later he had gotten the TV set upstairs; his fingers groaning, he placed it on a coffee table in his living room. The Batys and Pris watched impassively.
“We got a good signal in this building,” he panted as he plugged in the cord and attached the antenna. “When I used to get Buster Friendly and his—”
“Just turn the set on,” Roy Baty said. “And stop talking.”
He did so, then hurried to the door. “One more trip,” he said, “will do it.” He lingered, warming himself at the hearth of their presence.
“Fine,” Pris said remotely.
Isidore started off once more. I think, he thought, they’re exploiting me sort of. But he did not care. They’re still good friends to have, he said to himself.
Downstairs again, he gathered the girl’s clothing together, stuffed every piece into the suitcases, then labored back down the hall once again and up the stairs.
On a step ahead of him something small moved in the dust.
Instantly he dropped the suitcases; he whipped out a plastic medicine bottle, which, like everyone else, he carried for just this. A spider, undistinguished but alive. Shakily he eased it into
the bottle and snapped the cap—perforated by means of a needle—shut tight.
Upstairs, at the door of his apartment, he paused to get his breath.
“—yes sir, folks; the time is now. This is Buster Friendly, who hopes and trusts you’re as eager as I am to share the discovery which I’ve made, and by the way, had verified by top trained research workers working extra hours over the past weeks. Ho ho, folks; this is it!”
John Isidore said, “I found a spider.”
The three androids glanced up, momentarily moving their attention from the TV screen to him.
“Let’s see it,” Pris said. She held out her hand.
Roy Baty said, “Don’t talk while Buster is on.”
“I’ve never seen a spider,” Pris said. She cupped the medicine bottle in her palms, surveying the creature within. “All those legs. Why’s it need so many legs, J. R.?”
“That’s the way spiders are,” Isidore said, his heart pounding; he had difficulty breathing. “Eight legs.”
Rising to her feet, Pris said, “You know what I think, J. R.? I think it doesn’t need all those legs.”
“Eight?” Irmgard Baty said. “Why couldn’t it get by on four? Cut four off and see.” Impulsively opening her purse, she produced a pair of clean, sharp cuticle scissors, which she passed to Pris.
A weird terror struck at J. R. Isidore.
Carrying the medicine bottle into the kitchen, Pris seated herself at J. R. Isidore’s breakfast table. She removed the lid from the bottle and dumped the spider out. “It probably won’t be able to run as fast,” she said, “but there’s nothing for it to catch around here anyhow. It’ll die anyway.” She reached for the scissors.
“Please,” Isidore said.
Pris glanced up inquiringly. “Is it worth something?”
“Don’t mutilate it,” he said wheezingly. Imploringly.
With the scissors, Pris snipped off one of the spider’s legs.
In the living room Buster Friendly on the TV screen said, “Take a look at this enlargement of a section of background. This is the sky you usually see. Wait, I’ll have Earl Parameter, head of my research staff, explain their virtually world-shaking discovery to you.”