Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (22 page)

And, more, Rachael had begun to tease him. Imperceptibly she had passed from lamenting her condition to taunting him about his.

“Damn you,” he said.

Rachael laughed. “I’m drunk. I can’t go with you. If you leave here—” She gestured in dismissal. “I’ll stay behind and sleep and you can tell me later what happened.”

“Except,” he said, “there won’t be a later because Roy Baty will nail me.”

“But I can’t help you anyhow now because I’m drunk. Anyhow, you know the truth, the brick-hard, irregular, slithery surface of truth. I’m just an observer and I won’t intervene to save you; I don’t care if Roy Baty nails you or not. I care whether
I
get nailed.” She opened her eyes round and wide. “Christ, I’m empathic about myself. And, see, if I go to that suburban broken-down conapt building—” She reached out, toyed with a button of his shirt; in slow, facile twists she began unbuttoning it. “I don’t dare go because androids have no loyalty to one another and I know that that goddamn Pris Stratton will destroy me and occupy my place. See? Take off your coat.”

“Why?”

“So we can go to bed,” Rachael said.

“I bought a black Nubian goat,” he said. “I have to retire the three more andys. I have to finish up my job and go home to my wife.” He got up, walked around the bed to the bottle of bourbon. Standing there, he carefully poured himself a second drink; his hands, he observed, shook only very slightly. Probably from fatigue. Both of us, he realized, are tired. Too tired to hunt down three andys, with the worst of the eight calling the shots.

Standing there he realized, all at once, that he had acquired an overt, incontestable fear directed toward the principal android. It all hung on Baty—had hung on it from the start. Up to now he had encountered and retired progressively more ominous manifestations of Baty. Now came Baty itself. Thinking that, he felt the fear grow; it snared him completely, now that he had let it approach his conscious mind. “I can’t go without you now,” he said to Rachael. “I can’t even leave here. Polokov came after me; Garland virtually came after me.”

“You think Roy Baty will look you up?” Setting down her empty glass, she bent forward, reached back, and unfastened her bra. With agility she slid it from her, then stood, swaying, and grinning because she swayed. “In my purse,” she said, “I have a mechanism which our autofac on Mars builds as an emer—” She grimaced. “An emergency safety thingamajing, -jig, while they’re putting a newly made andy through its routine inspection checks. Get it out. It resembles an oyster. You’ll see it.”

He began hunting through the purse. Like a human woman, Rachael had every class of object conceivable filched and hidden away in her purse; he found himself rooting interminably.

Meanwhile, Rachael kicked off her boots and unzipped her shorts; balancing on one foot, she caught the discarded fabric with her toe and tossed it across the room. She then dropped onto the bed, rolled over to fumble for her glass, accidentally pushed the glass to the carpeted floor. “Damn,” she said, and once again got shakily to her feet; in her underpants she stood watching him at work on her purse, and then, with careful deliberation and attention she drew the bedcovers back, got in, drew the covers over her.

“Is this it?” He held up a metallic sphere with a button-stem projecting.

“That cancels an android into catalepsy,” Rachael said, her eyes shut. “For a few seconds. Suspends its respiration; yours, too, but humans can function without respiring—perspiring?—for a couple of minutes, but the vagus nerve of an andy—”

“I know.” He straightened up. “The android autonomic nervous system isn’t as flexible at cutting in and out as ours. But as you say, this wouldn’t work for more than five or six seconds.”

“Long enough,” Rachael murmured, “to save your life. So, see—” She roused herself, sat up in the bed. “If Roy Baty shows up here, you can be holding that in your hand and you can press the stem on that thing. And while Roy Baty is frozen stiff with no air supply to his blood and his brain cells deteriorating you can kill Roy Baty with your laser.”

“You have a laser tube,” he said. “In your purse.”

“A fake. Androids”—she yawned, eyes again shut—“aren’t permitted to carry lasers.”

He walked over to the bed.

Squirming about, Rachael managed to roll over at last onto her stomach, face buried in the white lower sheet. “This is a clean, noble, virgin type of bed,” she stated. “Only clean, noble girls who—” She pondered. “Androids can’t bear children,” she said then. “Is that a loss?”

He finished undressing her. Exposed her pale, cold loins.

“Is it a loss?” Rachael repeated. “I don’t really know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We’re not born; we don’t grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that’s what we are. Not you; I mean me. Chitinous reflex-machines who aren’t really alive.” She twisted her head to one side, said loudly,
“I’m not alive!
You’re not going to bed with a woman. Don’t be disappointed; okay? Have you ever made love to an android before?”

“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?” Apprehensively, 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?”