Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (6 page)

Never in his life had he personally seen a raccoon. He knew the animal only from 3-D films shown on television. For some reason the dust had struck that species almost as hard as it had the birds—of which almost none survived now. In an automatic response he brought out his much-thumbed
Sidney’s
and looked up raccoon with all the sub-listings. The list prices, naturally, appeared in italics; like Percheron horses, none existed on the market for sale at any figure.
Sidney’s
catalogue simply listed the price at which the last transaction involving a raccoon had taken place. It was astronomical.

“His name is Bill,” the girl said from behind him. “Bill the raccoon. We acquired him just last year from a subsidiary corporation.” She pointed past him and he then perceived the armed company guards, standing with their machine guns, the rapid-fire little light Skoda issue; the eyes of the guards had been fastened on him since his car landed. And, he thought, my car is clearly marked as a police vehicle.

“A major manufacturer of androids,” he said thoughtfully, “invests its surplus capital on living animals.”

“Look at the owl,” Rachael Rosen said. “Here, I’ll wake it up for you.” She started toward a small, distant cage, in the center of which jutted up a branching dead tree.

There are no owls, he started to say. Or so we’ve been told. Sidney’s, he thought; they list it in their catalogue as extinct: the tiny, precise type, the
E,
again and again throughout the catalogue. As the girl walked ahead of him he checked to see, and he was right. Sidney’s never makes a mistake, he said to himself. We know that, too. What else can we depend on?

“It’s artificial,” he said, with sudden realization; his disappointment welled up keen and intense.

“No.” She smiled, and he saw that she had small even teeth, as white as her eyes and hair were black.

“But Sidney’s listing,” he said, trying to show her the catalogue. To prove it to her.

The girl said, “We don’t buy from Sidney’s or from any animal dealer. All our purchases are from private parties, and the prices we pay aren’t reported.” She added, “Also we have our own naturalists; they’re now working up in Canada. There’s still a good deal of forest left, comparatively speaking, anyhow. Enough for small animals and once in a while a bird.”

For a long time he stood gazing at the owl, who dozed on its perch. A thousand thoughts came into his mind, thoughts about the war, about the days when owls had fallen from the sky; he remembered how in his childhood it had been discovered that species upon species had become extinct and how the ’papes had reported it each day—foxes one morning, badgers the next, until people had stopped reading the perpetual animal obits.

He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn’t know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another. He had never thought of this before, the similarity between an electric animal and an andy. The electric animal, he pondered, could be considered a subform of the other, a kind of vastly inferior robot. Or, conversely, the android could be regarded as a highly developed, evolved version of the ersatz animal. Both viewpoints repelled him.

“If you sold your owl,” he said to the girl Rachael Rosen, “how much would you want for it, and how much of that down?”

“We would never sell our owl.” She scrutinized him with a mixture of pleasure and pity; or so he read her expression. “And even if we sold it, you couldn’t possibly pay the price. What kind of animal do you have at home?”

“A sheep,” he said. “A black-faced Suffolk ewe.”

“Well, then you should be happy.”

“I’m happy,” he answered. “It’s just that I always wanted an owl, even back before they all dropped dead.” He corrected himself. “All but yours.”

Rachael said, “Our present crash program and overall planning call for us to obtain an additional owl which can mate with Scrappy.” She indicated the owl dozing on its perch; it had briefly opened both eyes, yellow slits which healed over as the owl settled back down to resume its slumber. Its chest rose conspicuously and fell, as if the owl, in its hypnagogic state, had sighed.

Breaking away from the sight—it made absolute bitterness blend throughout his prior reaction of awe and yearning—he said, “I’d like to test out the selection, now. Can we go downstairs?”

“My uncle took the call from your superior and by now he probably has—”

“You’re a family?” Rick broke in. “A corporation this large is a
family
affair?”

Continuing her sentence, Rachael said, “Uncle Eldon should have an android group and a control group set up by now. So let’s go.” She strode toward the elevator, hands again thrust violently in the pockets of her coat; she did not look back, and he hesitated for a moment, feeling annoyance, before he at last trailed after her.

“What have you got against me?” he asked her as together they descended.

She reflected, as if up to now she hadn’t known. “Well,” she said, “you, a little police department employee, are in a unique position. Know what I mean?” She gave him a malice-filled sidelong glance.

“How much of your current output,” he asked, “consists of types equipped with the Nexus-6?”

“All,” Rachael said.

“I’m sure the Voigt-Kampff scale will work with them.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ll have to withdraw all Nexus-6 types from the market.” Her black eyes flamed up; she glowered at him as the elevator ceased descending and its doors slid back. “Because you police departments can’t do an adequate job in the simple matter of detecting the minuscule number of Nexus-6s who balk—”

A man, dapper and lean and elderly, approached them, hand extended; on his face a harried expression showed, as if everything recently had begun happening too fast. “I’m Eldon Rosen,” he explained to Rick as they shook hands. “Listen, Deckard; you realize we don’t manufacture anything here on Earth, right? We can’t just phone down to production and ask for a diverse flock of items; it’s not that we don’t want or intend to cooperate with you. Anyhow I’ve done the best I can.” His left hand, shakily, roved through his thinning hair.

Indicating his department briefcase, Rick said, “I’m ready to start.” The senior Rosen’s nervousness buoyed up his own confidence. They’re afraid of me, he realized with a start. Rachael Rosen included. I
can
probably force them to abandon manufacture of their Nexus-6 types; what I do during the next hour will affect the structure of their operation. It could conceivably determine the future of the Rosen Association, here in the United States, in Russia, and on Mars.

The two members of the Rosen family studied him apprehensively and he felt the hollowness of their manner; by coming here he had brought the void to them, had ushered in emptiness and the hush of economic death. They control inordinate power, he thought. This enterprise is considered one of the system’s industrial pivots; the manufacture of androids, in fact, has become so linked to the colonization effort that if one dropped into ruin, so would the other in time. The Rosen Association, naturally, understood this perfectly. Eldon Rosen had obviously been conscious of it since Harry Bryan’s call.

“I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” Rick said as the two Rosens led him down a highly illuminated wide corridor. He himself felt quietly content. This moment, more than any other which he could remember, pleased him. Well, they would all soon know what his testing apparatus could accomplish—and could not. “If you have no confidence in the Voigt-Kampff scale,” he pointed out, “possibly your organization should have researched an alternate test. It can be argued that the responsibility rests partly on you. Oh, thanks.” The Rosens had steered him from the corridor and into a chic, living-roomish cubicle furnished with carpeting, lamps, couch, and modern little end tables on which rested recent magazines…including, he noticed, the February supplement to the
Sidney’s
catalogue, which he personally had not seen. In fact, the February supplement wouldn’t be out for another three days. Obviously the Rosen Association had a special relationship with Sidney’s.

Annoyed, he picked up the supplement. “This is a violation of public trust. Nobody should get advance news of price changes.” As a matter of fact this might violate a federal statute; he tried to remember the relevant law, found he could not. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, and, opening his briefcase, dropped the supplement within.

After an interval of silence, Eldon Rosen said wearily, “Look, officer, it hasn’t been our policy to solicit advance—”

“I’m not a peace officer,” Rick said. “I’m a bounty hunter.” From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voigt-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments. “You may send the first testee in,” he informed Eldon Rosen, who now looked more haggard than ever.

“I’d like to watch,” Rachael said, also seating herself. “I’ve never seen an empathy test being administered. What do those things you have there measure?”

Rick said, “This”—he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires—“measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know this to be a primary autonomic response, the so-called ‘shame’ or ‘blushing’ reaction to a morally shocking stimulus. It can’t be controlled voluntarily, as can skin conductivity, respiration, and cardiac rate.” He showed her the other instrument, a pencil-beam light. “This records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles. Simultaneous with the blush phenomenon there generally can be found a small but detectable movement of—”

“And these can’t be found in androids,” Rachael said.

“They’re not engendered by the stimuli-questions; no. Although biologically they exist. Potentially.”

Rachael said, “Give me the test.”

“Why?” Rick said, puzzled.

Speaking up, Eldon Rosen said hoarsely, “We selected her as your first subject. She may be an android. We’re hoping you can tell.” He seated himself in a series of clumsy motions, got out a cigarette, lit it, and fixedly watched.

5

The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachael Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.

Seated where he could catch the readings on the two gauges of the Voigt-Kampff testing apparatus, Rick Deckard said, “I’m going to outline a number of social situations. You are to express your reaction to each as quickly as possible. You will be timed, of course.”

“And of course,” Rachael said distantly, “my verbal responses won’t count. It’s solely the eye-muscle and capillary reaction that you’ll use as indices. But I’ll answer; I want to go through this and—” She broke off. “Go ahead, Mr. Deckard.”

Rick, selecting question three, said, “You are given a calf-skin wallet on your birthday.” Both gauges immediately registered past the green and onto the red; the needles swung violently and then subsided.

“I wouldn’t accept it,” Rachael said. “Also I’d report the person who gave it to me to the police.”

After making a jot of notation, Rick continued, turning to the eighth question of the Voigt-Kampff profile scale. “You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar.”

“I’d take him to the doctor.” Rachael’s voice was low but firm. Again the twin gauges registered, but this time not so far. He made a note of that, too.

“You’re sitting watching TV,” he continued, “and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist.”

Rachael said, “I’d kill it.” The gauges, this time, registered almost nothing: only a feeble and momentary tremor. He noted that and hunted cautiously for the next question.

“In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude girl.” He paused.

“Is this testing whether I’m an android,” Rachael asked tartly, “or whether I’m homosexual?” The gauges did not register.

He continued, “Your husband likes the picture.” Still the gauges failed to indicate a reaction. “The girl,” he added, “is lying facedown on a large and beautiful bearskin rug.” The gauges remained inert, and he said to himself, An android response. Failing to detect the major element, the dead animal pelt. Her—Its—mind is concentrating on other factors. “Your husband hangs the picture up on the wall of his study,” he finished, and this time the needles moved.

“I certainly wouldn’t let him,” Rachael said.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Now consider this. You’re reading a novel written in the old days before the war. The characters are visiting Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. They become hungry and enter a seafood restaurant. One of them orders lobster, and the chef drops the lobster into the tub of boiling water while the characters watch.”

“Oh god,” Rachael said. “That’s awful! Did they really do that? It’s depraved! You mean a
live
lobster?” The gauges, however, did not respond. Formally, a correct response. But simulated.

“You rent a mountain cabin,” he said, “in an area still verdant. It’s rustic knotty pine with a huge fireplace.”

“Yes,” Rachael said, nodding impatiently.

“On the walls someone has hung old maps, Currier and Ives prints, and above the fireplace a deer’s head has been mounted, a full stag with developed horns. The people with you admire the decor of the cabin and you all decide—”