Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (20 page)

“Thanks,” Rick said. He followed after Iran, in the direction of the elevator. “Does this cure your depression?” he asked her. “It cures mine.”

Iran said, “It certainly does cure my depression. Now we can admit to everybody that the sheep’s false.”

“No need to do that,” he said cautiously.

“But we
can
,” Iran persisted. “See, now we have nothing to hide; what we’ve always wanted has come true. It’s a dream!” Once more she stood on tiptoe, leaning and nimbly kissing him; her breath, eager and erratic, tickled his neck. She reached, then, to stab at the elevator button.

Something warned him. Something made him say, “Let’s not go down to the apartment yet. Let’s stay up here with the goat. Let’s just sit and look at her and maybe feed the goat something. They gave me a bag of oats to start us out. And we can read the manual on goat maintenance; they included that, too, at no extra charge. We can call her Euphemia.” The elevator, however, had come, and already Iran was trotting inside. “Iran, wait,” he said.

“It would be immoral not to fuse with Mercer in gratitude,” Iran said. “I had hold of the handles of the box today and it overcame my depression a little—just a little, not like this. But anyhow I got hit by a rock, here.” She held up her wrist; on it he made out a small dark bruise. “And I remember thinking how much better we are, how much better off, when we’re with Mercer. Despite the pain. Physical pain but spiritually together; I felt everyone else, all over the world, all who had fused at the same time.” She held the elevator door from sliding shut. “Get in, Rick. This’ll be just for a moment. You hardly ever undergo fusion; I want you to transmit the mood you’re in now to everyone else; you owe it to them. It would be immoral to keep it for ourselves.”

She was, of course, right. So he entered the elevator and once again descended.

In their living room, at the empathy box, Iran swiftly snapped the switch, her face animated with growing gladness; it lit her up like a rising new crescent of moon. “I want everyone to know,” she told him. “Once that happened to me; I fused and picked up someone who had just acquired an animal. And then one day—” Her features momentarily darkened; the pleasure fled. “One day I found myself receiving from someone whose animal had died. But others of us shared our different joys with them—I didn’t have any, as you might know—and that cheered the person up. We might even reach a potential suicide; what we have, what we’re feeling, might—”

“They’ll have our joy,” Rick said, “but we’ll lose. We’ll exchange what we feel for what they feel. Our joy will be lost.”

The screen of the empathy box now showed rushing streams of bright formless color; taking a breath, his wife hung on tightly to the two handles. “We won’t really lose what we feel, not if we keep it clearly in mind. You never really have gotten the hang of fusion, have you, Rick?”

“Guess not,” he said. But now he had begun to sense, for the first time, the value that people such as Iran obtained from Mercerism. Possibly his experience with the bounty hunter Phil Resch had altered some minute synapsis in him, had closed one neurological switch and opened another. And this perhaps had started a chain reaction. “Iran,” he said urgently; he drew her away from the empathy box. “Listen; I want to talk about what happened to me today.” He led her over to the couch, sat her down facing him. “I met another bounty hunter,” he said. “One I never saw before. A predatory one who seemed to like to destroy them. For the first time, after being with him, I looked at them differently. I mean, in my own way I had been viewing them as he did.”

“Won’t this wait?” Iran said.

Rick said, “I took a test, one question, and verified it; I’ve begun to empathize with androids, and look what that means. You said it this morning yourself. ‘Those poor andys.’ So you know what I’m talking about. That’s why I bought the goat. I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be a depression, like you get. I can understand now how you suffer when you’re depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone, then by means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don’t care. Apathy, because you’ve lost a sense of worth. It doesn’t matter whether you feel better, because if you have no worth—”

“What about your job?” Her tone jabbed at him; he blinked. “Your
job,
” Iran repeated. “What are the monthly payments on the goat?” She held out her hand; reflexively he got out the contract which he had signed, passed it to her. “That much,” she said in a thin voice. “The interest; good god—the interest alone. And you did this because you were depressed. Not as a surprise for me, as you originally said.” She handed the contract back to him. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m still glad you got the goat; I love the goat. But it’s such an economic burden.” She looked gray.

Rick said, “I can get switched to some other desk. The department does ten or eleven separate jobs. Animal theft; I could transfer to that.”

“But the bounty money. We need it or they’ll repossess the goat!”

“I’ll get the contract extended from thirty-six months to forty-eight.” He whipped out a ballpoint pen, scribbled rapidly on the back of the contract. “That way it’ll be fifty-two fifty less a month.”

The vidphone rang.

“If we hadn’t come back down here,” Rick said, “if we’d stayed up on the roof, with the goat, we wouldn’t have gotten this call.”

Going to the vidphone, Iran said, “Why are you afraid? They’re not repossessing the goat, not yet.” She started to lift the receiver.

“It’s the department,” he said. “Say I’m not here.” He headed for the bedroom.

“Hello,” Iran said, into the receiver.

Three more andys, Rick thought to himself, that I should have followed up on today, instead of coming home. On the vidscreen Harry Bryant’s face had formed, so it was too late to get away. He walked, with stiff leg muscles, back toward the phone.

“Yes, he’s here,” Iran was saying. “We bought a goat. Come over and see it, Mr. Bryant.” A pause as she listened and then she held the receiver up to Rick. “He has something he wants to say to you,” she said. Going over to the empathy box, she quickly seated herself and once more gripped the twin handles. She became involved almost at once. Rick stood holding the phone receiver, conscious of her mental departure. Conscious of his own aloneness.

“Hello,” he said into the receiver.

“We have a tail on two of the remaining androids,” Harry Bryant said. He was calling from his office; Rick saw the familiar desk, the litter of documents and papers and kipple. “Obviously they’ve become alerted—they’ve left the address Dave gave you and now they can be found at…wait.” Bryant groped about on his desk, at last located the material he wanted.

Automatically Rick searched for his pen; he held the goat-payment contract on his knee and prepared to write.

“Conapt Building 3967-C,” Inspector Bryant said. “Get over there as soon as you can. We have to assume they know about the ones you picked off, Garland and Luft and Polokov; that’s why they’ve taken unlawful flight.”

“Unlawful,” Rick repeated. To save their lives.

“Iran says you bought a goat,” Bryant said. “Just today? After you left work?”

“On my way home.”

“I’ll come and look at your goat after you retire the remaining androids. By the way—I talked to Dave just now. I told him the trouble they gave you; he says congratulations and be more careful. He says the Nexus-6 types are smarter than he thought. In fact he couldn’t believe you got three in one day.”

“Three is enough,” Rick said. “I can’t do anything more. I have to rest.”

“By tomorrow they’ll be gone,” Inspector Bryant said. “Out of our jurisdiction.”

“Not that soon. They’ll still be around.”

Bryant said, “You get over there tonight. Before they get dug in. They won’t expect you to move in so fast.”

“Sure they will,” Rick said. “They’ll be waiting for me.”

“Got the shakes? Because of what Polokov—”

“I haven’t got the shakes,” Rick said.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Okay,” Rick said. “I’ll get over there.” He started to hang up the phone.

“Let me know as soon as you get results. I’ll be here in my office.”

Rick said, “If I get them I’m going to buy a sheep.”

“You have a sheep. You’ve had one as long as I’ve known you.”

“It’s electric,” Rick said. He hung up. A real sheep this time, he said to himself. I have to get one. In compensation.

At the black empathy box his wife crouched, her face rapt. He stood beside her for a time, his hand resting on her breast; he felt it rise and fall, the life in her, the activity. Iran did not notice him; the experience with Mercer had, as always, become complete.

On the screen the faint, old, robed figure of Mercer toiled upward, and all at once a rock sailed past him. Watching, Rick thought, My god; there’s something worse about my situation than his. Mercer doesn’t have to do anything alien to him. He suffers but at least he isn’t required to violate his own identity.

Bending, he gently removed his wife’s fingers from the twin handles. He then himself took her place. For the first time in weeks. An impulse: he hadn’t planned it; all at once it had happened.

A landscape of weeds confronted him, a desolation. The air smelled of harsh blossoms; this was the desert, and there was no rain.

A man stood before him, a sorrowful light in his weary, pain-drenched eyes.

“Mercer,” Rick said.

“I am your friend,” the old man said. “But you must go on as if I did not exist. Can you understand that?” He spread empty hands.

“No,” Rick said. “I can’t understand that. I need help.”

“How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see?
There is no salvation.”

“Then what’s this for?” Rick demanded. “What are you for?”

“To show you,” Wilbur Mercer said, “that you aren’t alone. I am here with you and always will be. Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong.”

“Why?” Rick said. “Why should I do it? I’ll quit my job and emigrate.”

The old man said, “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

“That’s all you can tell me?” Rick said.

A rock whizzed at him; he ducked and the rock struck him on the ear. At once he let go of the handles and again he stood in his own living room, beside his wife and the empathy box. His head ached wildly from the blow; reaching, he found fresh blood collecting, spilling in huge bright drops down the side of his face.

Iran, with a handkerchief, patted his ear. “I guess I’m glad you pried me loose. I really can’t stand it, being hit. Thanks for taking the rock in my place.”

“I’m going,” Rick said.

“The job?”

“Three jobs.” He took the handkerchief from her and went to the hall door, still dizzy and, now, feeling nausea.

“Good luck,” Iran said.

“I didn’t get anything from holding onto those handles,” Rick said. “Mercer talked to me but it didn’t help. He doesn’t know any more than I do. He’s just an old man climbing a hill to his death.”

“Isn’t that the revelation?”

Rick said, “I have that revelation already.” He opened the hall door. “I’ll see you later.” Stepping out into the hall, he shut the door after him. Conapt 3967-C, he reflected, reading it off the back of the contract. That’s out in the suburbs; it’s mostly abandoned there. A good place to hide. Except for the lights at night. That’s what I’ll be going by, he thought. The lights. Phototropic, like the death’s head moth. And then after this, he thought, there won’t be any more. I’ll do something else, earn my living another way. These three are the last. Mercer is right; I have to get this over with. But, he thought, I don’t think I can. Two andys together—this isn’t a moral question, it’s a practical question.

I probably
can’t
retire them, he realized. Even if I try; I’m too tired and too much has happened today. Maybe Mercer knew this, he reflected. Maybe he foresaw everything that will happen.

But I know where I can get help, offered to me before but declined.

He reached the roof and a moment later sat in the darkness of his hovercar, dialing.

“Rosen Association,” the answering-service girl said.

“Rachael Rosen,” he said.

“Pardon, sir?”

Rick grated, “Get me Rachael Rosen.”

“Is Miss Rosen expecting—”

“I’m sure she is,” he said. He waited.

Ten minutes later Rachael Rosen’s small dark face appeared on the vidscreen. “Hello, Mr. Deckard.”

“Are you busy right now or can I talk to you?” he said. “As you said earlier today.” It did not seem like today; a generation had risen and declined since he had talked to her last. And all the weight, all the weariness of it, had recapitulated itself in his body; he felt the physical burden. Perhaps, he thought, because of the rock. With the handkerchief he dabbed at his still-bleeding ear.