“I’m an investigator for the San Francisco Police Department. Deckard, Rick Deckard.” The man flapped his ID shut again, stuck it back in his overcoat pocket. “They’re up there now? The three?”
“Well, the thing is,” Isidore said, “I’m looking after them. Two are women. They’re the last ones of the group; the rest are dead. I brought Pris’s TV set up from her apartment and put it in mine, so they could watch Buster Friendly. Buster proved beyond a doubt that Mercer doesn’t exist.” Isidore felt excitement, knowing something of this importance—news that the bounty hunter evidently hadn’t heard.
“Let’s go up there,” Deckard said. Suddenly he held a laser tube pointed at Isidore; then, indecisively, he put it away. “You’re a special, aren’t you?” he said. “A chickenhead.”
“But I have a job. I drive a truck for—” Horrified, he discovered he had forgotten the name. “—a pet hospital,” he said. “The Van Ness Pet Hospital,” he said. “Owned b-b-by Hannibal Sloat.”
Deckard said, “Will you take me up there and show me which apartment they’re in? There’re over a thousand separate apartments; you can save me a lot of time.” His voice dipped with fatigue.
“If you kill them you won’t be able to fuse with Mercer again,” Isidore said.
“You won’t take me up there? Show me which floor? Just tell me the floor. I’ll figure out which apartment on the floor it is.”
“No,” Isidore said.
“Under state and federal law,” Deckard began. He ceased then. Giving up the interrogation. “Good night,” he said, and walked away, up the path and into the building, his flashlight bleeding a yellowed, diffuse path before him.
Inside the conapt building, Rick Deckard shut off his flashlight; guided by the ineffectual, recessed bulbs spaced ahead of him, he made his way along the hall, thinking, The chickenhead knows they’re androids; he knew it already, before I told him. But he doesn’t understand. On the other hand, who does? Do I?
Did
I? And one of them will be a duplicate of Rachael, he reflected. Maybe the special has been living with her. I wonder how he liked it, he asked himself. Maybe that was the one who he believed would cut up his spider. I could go back and get that spider, he reflected. I’ve never found a live, wild animal. It must be a fantastic experience to look down and see something living scuttling along. Maybe it’ll happen someday to me like it did him.
He had brought listening gear from his car; he set it up, now, a revolving detek-snout with blip screen. In the silence of the hall the screen indicated nothing. Not on this floor, he said to himself. He clicked over to vertical. On that axis the snout absorbed a faint signal. Upstairs. He gathered up the gear and his briefcase and climbed the stairs to the next floor.
A figure in the shadows waited.
“If you move I’ll retire you,” Rick said. The male one, waiting for him. In his clenched fingers the laser tube felt hard but he could not lift it and aim it. He had been caught first, caught too soon.
“I’m not an android,” the figure said. “My name is Mercer.” It stepped into a zone of light. “I inhabit this building because of Mr. Isidore. The special who had the spider; you talked briefly to him outside.”
“Am I outside Mercerism now?” Rick said. “As the chickenhead said? Because of what I’m going to do in the next few minutes?”
Mercer said, “Mr. Isidore spoke for himself, not for me. What you are doing has to be done. I said that already.” Raising his arm, he pointed at the stairs behind Rick. “I came to tell you that one of them is behind you and below, not in the apartment. It will be the hard one of the three and you must retire it first.” The rustling, ancient voice gained abrupt fervor. “Quick, Mr. Deckard.
On the steps.
”
His laser tube thrust out, Rick spun and sank onto his haunches facing the flight of stairs. Up it glided a woman, toward him, and he knew her; he recognized her and lowered his laser tube. “Rachael,” he said, perplexed. Had she followed him in her own hovercar, tracked him here? And why? “Go back to Seattle,” he said. “Leave me alone; Mercer told me I’ve got to do it.” And then he saw that it was not quite Rachael.
“For what we’ve meant to each other,” the android said as it approached him, its arms reaching as if to clutch at him. The clothes, he thought, are wrong. But the eyes, the same eyes. And there are more like this; there can be a legion of her, each with its own name, but all Rachael Rosen—Rachael, the prototype, used by the manufacturer to protect the others. He fired at her as, imploringly, she dashed toward him. The android burst and parts of it flew; he covered his face and then looked again, looked and saw the laser tube which it had carried roll away, back onto the stairs; the metal tube bounced downward, step by step, the sound echoing and diminishing and slowing. The hard one of the three, Mercer had said. He peered about, searching for Mercer. The old man had gone. They can follow me with Rachael Rosens until I die, he thought, or until the type becomes obsolete, whichever comes first. And now the other two, he thought. One of them is not in the apartment, Mercer had said. Mercer protected me, he realized. Manifested himself and offered aid. She—it—would have gotten me, he said to himself, except for the fact that Mercer warned me. I can do the rest now, he realized. This was the impossible one; she knew I couldn’t do this. But it’s over. In an instant. I did what I couldn’t do. The Batys I can track by standard procedure; they will be hard but they won’t be like this.
He stood alone in the empty hall; Mercer had left him because he had done what he came for, Rachael—or rather Pris Stratton—had been dismembered and that left nothing now, only himself. But elsewhere in the building, the Batys waited and knew. Perceived what he had done here. Probably, at this point, they were afraid. This had been their response to his presence in the building. Their attempt. Without Mercer it would have worked. For them, winter had come.
This has to be done quickly, what I’m after now, he realized; he hurried down the hall and all at once his detection gear registered the presence of cephalic activity. He had found their apartment. No more need of the gear; he discarded it and rapped on the apartment door.
From within, a man’s voice sounded. “Who is it?”
“This is Mr. Isidore,” Rick said. “Let me in because I’m looking after you and t-t-two of you are women.”
“We’re not opening the door,” a woman’s voice came.
“I want to watch Buster Friendly on Pris’s TV set,” Rick said. “Now that he’s proved Mercer doesn’t exist it’s very important to watch him. I drive a truck for the Van Ness Pet Hospital, which is owned by Mr. Hannibal S-S-Sloat.” He made himself stammer. “S-S-So would you open the d-d-door? It’s my apartment.” He waited, and the door opened. Within the apartment he saw darkness and indistinct shapes, two of them.
The smaller shape, the woman, said, “You have to administer tests.”
“It’s too late,” Rick said. The taller figure tried to push the door shut and turn on some variety of electronic equipment. “No,” Rick said, “I have to come in.” He let Roy Baty fire once; he held his own fire until the laser beam had passed by him as he twisted out of the way. “You’ve lost your legal basis,” Rick said, “by firing on me. You should have forced me to give you the Voigt-Kampff test. But now it doesn’t matter.” Once more Roy Baty sent a laser beam cutting at him, missed, dropped the tube and ran somewhere deeper inside the apartment, to another room, perhaps, the electronic hardware abandoned.
“Why didn’t Pris get you?” Mrs. Baty said.
“There is no Pris,” he said. “Only Rachael Rosen, over and over again.” He saw the laser tube in her dimly outlined hand; Roy Baty had slipped it to her, had meant to decoy him into the apartment, far in, so that Irmgard Baty could get him from behind, in the back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Baty,” Rick said, and shot her.
Roy Baty, in the other room, let out a cry of anguish.
“Okay, you loved her,” Rick said. “And I loved Rachael. And the special loved the other Rachael.” He shot Roy Baty; the big man’s corpse lashed about, toppled like an overstacked collection of separate, brittle entities; it smashed into the kitchen table and carried dishes and flatware down with it. Reflex circuits in the corpse made it twitch and flutter, but it had died; Rick ignored it, not seeing it and not seeing that of Irmgard Baty by the front door. I got the last one, Rick realized. Six today; almost a record. And now it’s over and I can go home, back to Iran and the goat. And we’ll have enough money, for once.
He sat down on the couch, and presently as he sat there in the silence of the apartment, among the non-stirring objects, the special Mr. Isidore appeared at the door.
“Better not look,” Rick said.
“I saw her on the stairs. Pris.” The special was crying.
“Don’t take it so hard,” Rick said. He got dizzily to his feet, laboring. “Where’s your phone?”
The special said nothing, did nothing except stand. So Rick hunted for the phone himself, found it, and dialed Harry Bryant’s office.
20
“Good,” Harry Bryant said, after he had been told. “Well, go get some rest. We’ll send a patrol car to pick up the three bodies.”
Rick Deckard hung up. “Androids are stupid,” he said savagely to the special. “Roy Baty couldn’t tell me from you; it thought you were at the door. The police will clean up in here; why don’t you stay in another apartment until they’re finished? You don’t want to be in here with what’s left.”
“I’m leaving this b-b-building,” Isidore said. “I’m going to 1–1-live deeper in town where there’s m-m-more people.”
“I think there’s a vacant apartment in my building,” Rick said.
Isidore stammered, “I don’t w-w-want to live near you.”
“Go outside or upstairs,” Rick said. “Don’t stay in here.”
The special floundered, not knowing what to do; a variety of mute expressions crossed his face and then, turning, he shuffled out of the apartment, leaving Rick alone.
What a job to have to do, Rick thought. I’m a scourge, like famine or plague. Where I go the ancient curse follows. As Mercer said, I am required to do wrong. Everything I’ve done has been wrong from the start. Anyhow, now it’s time to go home. Maybe, after I’ve been there awhile with Iran, I’ll forget.
When he got back to his own apartment building, Iran met him on the roof. She looked at him in a deranged, peculiar way; in all his years with her he had never seen her like this.
Putting his arm around her, he said, “Anyhow it’s over. And I’ve been thinking; maybe Harry Bryant can assign me to a—”
“Rick,” she said, “I have to tell you something. I’m sorry. The goat is dead.”
For some reason it did not surprise him; it only made him feel worse, a quantitative addition to the weight shrinking him from every side. “I think there’s a guarantee in the contract,” he said. “If it gets sick within ninety days the dealer—”
“It didn’t get sick. Someone”—Iran cleared her throat and went on huskily—“someone came here, got the goat out of its cage, and dragged it to the edge of the roof.”
“And pushed it off?” he said.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“Did you see who did it?”
“I saw her very clearly,” Iran said. “Barbour was still up here fooling around; he came down to get me and we called the police, but by then the animal was dead and she had left. A small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black eyes, very thin. Wearing a long fish-scale coat. She had a mail-pouch purse. And she made no effort to keep us from seeing her. As if she didn’t care.”
“No, she didn’t care,” he said. “Rachael wouldn’t give a damn if you saw her; she probably wanted you to, so I’d know who had done it.” He kissed her. “You’ve been waiting up here all this time?”
“Only for half an hour. That’s when it happened; half an hour ago.” Iran, gently, kissed him back. “It’s so awful. So needless.”
He turned toward his parked car, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel. “Not needless,” he said. “She had what seemed to her a reason.” An android reason, he thought.
“Where are you going? Won’t you come downstairs and—be with me? There was the most shocking news on TV; Buster Friendly claims that Mercer is a fake. What do you think about that, Rick? Do you think it could be true?”
“Everything is true,” he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought.” He snapped on the car motor.
“Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, and thought, And I’m going to die. Both those are true, too. He closed the car door, flicked a signal with his hand to Iran, and then swept up into the night sky.
Once, he thought, I would have seen the stars. Years ago. But now it’s only the dust; no one has seen a star in years, at least not from Earth. Maybe I’ll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.
21
In the early morning light the land below him extended seemingly forever, gray and refuse-littered. Pebbles the size of houses had rolled to a stop next to one another, and he thought, It’s like a shipping room when all the merchandise has left. Only fragments of crates remain, the containers which signify nothing in themselves. Once, he thought, crops grew here and animals grazed. What a remarkable thought, that anything could have cropped grass here.