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5

The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachel Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disc 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 calfskin wallet on you birthday.' Both gauges immediatly 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 tome to the police.'
After making a jot of notation Rick continued, turning to 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 colour picture A nude girl.' He paused.
'Is this testing whether I'm an android,' Rachnel 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 girl is lying face down 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? Its 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 -'
'Not with the deer head,' Rachaet said. The gauges, however, showed an amplitude within the green only.
'You became pregnant,' Rick continued, 'by a man who has promised to marry you. The man goes off with another woman, your best friend; you get an abortion and -'
'I would never get an abortion,' Rachael said. 'Anyhow you can't. It's a life sentence and the police are always watching.' This time both needles swung violently into the red.
'How do you know that?' Rick asked her, curiously. 'About the difficulty of obtaining an abortion?'
'Everybody knows that,' Rachael answered.
'It sounded like you spoke from personal experience.' he watched the needles intently; they still swept out a wide path across the dials. 'One more. You're dating a man and he asks you to visit his apartment. While you're there he offers you a drink. As you stand holding your glass you see into the bedroom; it's attractively decorated with bullfight posters, and you wander in to look closer. He follows after you, closing the door. Putting his arm around you, he says -'
Rachel interrupted, 'What's a bullfight poster?'
'Drawings, usually in colour and very large, showing a matador with his cape, a bull trying to gore him.' He was puzzled. 'How old are you?' he asked; that might be a factor.
'I'm eighteen,' Rachael said. 'Okay; so this man closes the door and puts his arm around me. What does he say?'
Rick said, 'Do you know how bullfights ended?'
'I suppose somebody got hurt.'
'The bull, at the end, was always killed.' He waited, watching the two needles. They palpitated restlessly, nothing more.
No real reading at all. 'A final question,' he said. 'Two-part. You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from before war. It shows a banquet in progress; the guests are enjoying raw oysters.'
'Ugh,' Rachael said; the needles swung swiftly.
'The entree,' he continued, 'consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice.' The needles moved less this time, less than they had for the raw oysters. 'Are raw oysters more acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog? Evidently not.' He put his pencil down, shut off the beam of light, removed the adhesive patch from her cheek. 'You're an android,' he said. 'That's the conclusion of the testing,' he informed her - or rather it - and Eldon Rosen, who regarded him with writhing worry; the elderly man's face contorted shifted plastically with angry concern. 'I'm right aren't I?' Rick said. There was no answer, from either of the Rosens. 'Look,' he said reasonably. 'We have no conflict of interests; it's important to me that the Voigt-Kampff test functions, almost as important as it is to you.'
The elder Rosen said, 'She's not an android.'
'I don't believe it,' Rick said.
'Why would he lie?' Rachael said to Rick fiercely. 'If anything, we'd lie the other way.'
I want a bone marrow analysis made of you,' Rick said to her. 'It can eventually be organically determined whether you're android or not; it's slow and painful, admittedly, but-'
The legal aspect of the test
'Legally,' Rachael said, 'I can't be forced to undergo a bone marrow test. That's been estabished in the courts; selfincrimination. And anyhow on a live person - not the corpse of a retired android - it takes a long time. You can give that damn Voigt-Kampff profile test because of the specials; they haye to be tested for constantly, and while the government was doing that you police agencies slipped the Voigt-Kampff thrugh, But what you said is true; that's the end of the testing.' She rose to her feet, paced away from him, and stood with her hands on her hips, her back to him.
'The issue is not the legality of the bone marrow analysis,' Eldon Rosen said huskily. 'The issue is that your empathy delineation test failed in response to my niece. I can explain why she scored as an android might. Rachael grew up aboard Salader 3. She was born on it; she spent fourteen of her eighteen years living off its tape library and what the nine other crew members, all adults, knew about Earth. Then, as you know, the ship turned back a sixth of the way to Proxima. Otherwise Rachael would never have seen Earth - anyhow not until her later life.'
'You would have retired me,' Rachael said over her shoulder. 'In a police dragnet I would have been killed. I've known that since I got here four years ago; this isn't the first time the Voigt-Kampff test has been given to me. In fact I rarely leave this building; the risk is enormous, because of those roadblocks you police set up, those flying wedge spot checks to pick up unclassified specials.'
'And androids,' Eldon Rosen added. 'Although naturally the public isn't told. that; they're not supposed to know that androids are on Earth, in our midst.'
'I don't think they are,' Rick said. 'I think the various police agencies here and in the Soviet Union have gotten them all. The population is small enough now; everyone, sooner or later, runs into a random checkpoint.' That, anyhow, was the idea.
'What were your instructions,' Eldon Rosen asked, 'if you wound up designating a human as android?'
'That's a departmental matter.' He began restoring his testing gear to his briefcase; the two Rosens watched silently. 'Obviously,' he added, 'I was told to cancel further testing, as I'm now doing. If it failed once there's no point in going on.' He snapped the briefcase shut.
'We could have defrauded you,' Rachael said. 'Nothing forced us to admit you mistested me. And the same for the other nine subjects we've selected.' She gestured vigorously. 'All we had to do was simply go along with your test results, either way.'
Rick said, 'I would have insisted on a list in advance. A sealed-envelope breakdown. And compared my own test results for congruity. There would have had to be congruity.'
And I can see now, he realized, that I wouldn't have gotten it. Bryant was right. Thank God I didn't go out bounty hunting on the basis of this test.
'Yes, I suppose you would have done that,' Eldon Rosen said. He glanced at Rachael, who nodded. 'We discussed that possibility,' Eldon said, then, with reluctance.
'This problem,' Rick said, 'stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where -'
'We produced what the colonists wanted,' Eldon Rosen said. 'We followed the time-honoured principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressivly more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human - but that's not what happened.' His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. 'Your police department - others as well - may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr Deckard is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't.'
'In other words,' Rick said with acuity, 'I'm not going to be given a chance to check out a single Nexus-6. You people dropped this schizoid girl on me beforehand.' And my test, he realized, is wiped out. I shouldn't have gone for it, he said to himself. However, it's too late now.
'We have you, Mr Deckard,' Rachael Rosen agreed in a quiet, reasonable voice; she turned toward him, then, and smiled.

corruption;
He could not make out, even now, how the Rosen Association had managed to snare him, and so easily. Experts, he realized. A mammoth corporation like this - it embodies too much experience. It possessed in fact a sort of group mind. And Eldon and Rachael Rosen consisted of spokesmen for that corporate entity. His mistake, evidently, had been in viewing them as individuals. It was a mistake he would not make again.
'Your superior Mr Bryant,' Eldon Rosen said, 'will have difficulty understanding how you happened to let us void your testing apparatus before the test began.' He pointed toward the ceiling, and Rick saw the camera lens. His massive error in dealing with the Rosens had been recorded. 'I think the right thing for us all to do,' Eldon said, 'is to sit down and -' He gestured affably. 'We can work something out, Mr Deckard. There's no need for anxiety. The Nexus-6 variety of android is a fact; we here at the Rosen Association recognize it and I think now you do, too.'
Rachael, leaning toward Rick, said, 'How would you like to own an owl?'
'I doubt if I'll ever own an owl.' But he knew what she meant; he understood the business the Rosen Association wanted to transact. Tension of a kind he had never felt before manifested itself inside him; it exploded, leisurely, in every part of his body. He felt the tension, the consciousness of what was happening, take over completely.
'But an owl,' Eldon Rosen said, 'is the thing you want' He glanced at his niece inquiringly. 'I don't think he has any idea-'
'Of course he does,' Rachael contradicted 'He knows exactly where this is heading. Don't you, Mr Deckard?' Again she leaned toward him, and this time closer; he could smell a mild perfume about her, almost a warmth. 'You're practically there, Mr Deckard. You practically have your owl.' To Eldon Rosen she said, 'He's a bounty hunter; remember? So he lives off the bounty he makes, not his salary. Isn't it so, Mr Deckard?'
He nodded.
'How many androids escaped this time?' Rachael inquired.
Presently he said, 'Eight. Originally. Two have already been retired, by someone else; not me.'
'You get how much for each android?' Rachael asked.
Shrugging, he said, 'It varies.'
Rachael said, 'If you have no test you can administer, then there is no way you can identify an android. And if there's no way you can identify an android there's no way you can collect your bounty. So if the Voigt-Kampff scale has to be abandoned -'
'A new scale,' Rick said, 'will replace it. This has happened before.' Three times, to be exact. But the new scale, the more modern analytic device, had been there already; no lag had existed. This time was different.
'Eventually, of course, the Voigt-Kampff scale will become obsolete,' Rachael agreed. 'But not now. We're satisfied ourselves that it will delineate the Nexus-6 types and we'd like you to proceed on that basis in your own particular, peculiar work.' Rocking back and forth, her arms tightly folded, she regarded him with intensity. Trying to fathom his reaction.
'Tell him he can have his owl,' Eldon Rosen grated.
'You can have the owl,' Rachael said, still eyeing him. 'The one up on the roof. Scrappy. But we will want to mate it if we can get our hands on a male. And any offspring will be ours; that has to be absolutely understood.'
Rick said, 'I'll divide the brood.'
'No,' Rachael said instantly; behind her Eldon Rosen shook his head, backing her up. 'That way you'd have claim to the sole bloodline of owls for the rest of eternity. And there's another condition. You can't will your owl to anybody; at your death it reverts back to the association.'
'That sounds,' Rick said, 'like an invitation for you to come in and kill me. To get your owl back immediately. I won't agree to that; it's too dangerous.'
'You're a bounty hunter,' Rachael said. 'You can handle a laser gun - in fact you're carrying one right now. If you can't protect yourself, how are you going to retire the six remaining Nexus-6 andys? They're a good deal smarter than the Gozzi Corporation's old W-4.'
'But I hunt them.' he said. 'This way, with a reversion clause in the owl, someone would be hunting me.' And he did not like the idea of being stalked; he had seen the effect on androids. It brought about certain notable changes, even in them.
Rachael said, 'All right; we'll yield on that. You can will the owl to your heirs, But we insist on getting the complete brood. If you can't agree to that, go on back to San Francisco and admit to your superiors in the department that the Voigt-Kampff scale, at least as administered by you, can't distinguish an andy from a human being. And then look for another job.'
'Give me some time,' Rick said.
'Okay,' Rachael said. 'We'll leave you in here, where it's comfortable.' She examined her wristwatch.
'Half an hour,' Eldon Rosen said. He and Rachael filed toward the door of the room, silently. They had said what they intended to say, he realized; the rest lay in his lap.
As Rachael started to close the door after herself and her uncle, Rick said starkly, 'You managed to set me up perfectly. You have it on tape that I missed on you; you know that my job depends on the use of the Voigt-Kampff scale; and you own that goddamn owl.'
'Your owl, dear,' Rachael said. 'Remember? We'll tie your home address around its leg and have it fly down to San Francisco; it'll meet you there when you get off work.'
It, he thought. She keeps calling the owl it. Not her. 'Just a second,' he said.
Pausing at the door, Rachael said, 'You've decided?'
'I want,' he said, opening his brief case, 'to ask you one more question from the Voigt-Kampff scale. Sit down again.'
Rachael glanced at her uncle; he nodded and she grudgingly returned, seating herself as before. 'What's this for?' she demanded, her eyebrows lifted in distaste - and wariness. He perceived her skeletal tension, noted it professionally.
Presently he had the pencil of light trained on her right eye and the adhesive patch again in contact with her cheek. Rachael stared into the light rigidly, the expression of extreme distaste still manifest.
'My briefcase,' Rick said as he rummaged for the Voigt-Kampff forms. 'Nice, isn't it? Department issue.'
'Well, well,' Rachael said remotely.
'Babyhide,' Rick said. He stroked the black leather surface of the briefcase. 'One hundred per cent genuine human babyhide.' He saw the two dial indicators gyrate frantically. But after a pause. The reaction bad come, but too late. He knew the reaction period down to a fraction of a second, the correct reaction period; there should have been none. 'Thanks, Miss Rosen,' he said, and gathered together the equipment again; he had concluded his retesting. 'That's all.'
'You're leaving?' Rachael asked.
'Yes,' he said. 'I'm satisfied.'
Cautiously, Rachael said, 'What about the other nine subjects?'
'The scale has been adequate in your case,' he answered. false memory
'I can extrapolate from that; it's clearly still effective.' To Eldon Rosen, who slumped morosely by the door of the room, he said, 'Does she know?' Sometimes they didn't; false memories had been tried various times, generally in the mistaken idea that through them reactions to testing would be altered.
Eldon Rosen said, 'No. We programmed her completely. But I think toward the end she suspected.' To the girl be said, 'You guessed when he asked for one more try.'
Pale, Rachael nodded fixedly.
'Don't be afraid of him,' Eldon Rosen told her. 'You're not an escaped android on Earth illegally; you're the property of the Rosen Association, used as a sales device for prospective emigrants.' He walked to the girl, put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder; at the touch the girl flinched.
'He's right,' Rick said. 'I'm not going to retire you, Miss Rosen. Good day,' He started toward the door, then batted briefly. To the two of them he said, 'Is the owl genuine?'
Rachael glanced swiftly at the elder Rosen.
there are no owls
'He's leaving anyhow,' Eldon Rosen said. 'It doesn't matter; the owl is artificial. There are no owls.'
'Hmm,' Rick muttered, and stepped numbly out into the corridor. The two of them watched him go. Neither said anything. Nothing remained to say. So that's how the largest manufacturer of androids operates, Rick said to himself. Devious, and in a manner he had never encountered before. A weird and convoluted new personality type; no wonder law enforcement agencies were having trouble with the Nexus.6.
The Nexus-6. He had now come up against it. Rachael, he realized; she must be a Nexus-6. I'm seeing one of them for the first time. And they damn near did it; they came awfully damn close to undermining the Voigt-Kampff scale, the only method we have for detecting them. The Rosen Association does a good job - makes a good try, anyhow - at protecting its products.
And I have to face six more of them, he reflected. Before I'm finished.
He would earn the bounty money. Every cent.
Assuming he made it through alive.

6

The TV set boomed; descending the great empty apartment building's dust-stricken stairs to the level below, John Isidore made out now the fafniliar voice of Buster Friendly, burbling happily to his system.wide vast audience.
'- ho ho, folks! Zip click zip! Time f or a brief note on tomorrow's weather; first the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.A. - Mongoose satellite reports that fallout will be especially pronounced toward noon and then will taper off. So all you dear folks who'll be venturing out ought to wait until afternoon, eh? And speaking of waiting, it's now only ten hours 'til that big piece of news, my special expose! Tell your friends to watch! I'm revealing something that'll amaze you. Now, you might guess that it's just the usual-'
As Isidore knocked on the apartment door the television died immediately into nonbeing. It had not merely become silent; it had stopped existing, scared into its grave by his knock.
He sensed, behind the closed door, the presence of life, beyond that of the TV. His straining faculties manufactured or else picked up a haunted, tongueless fear, by someone retreating from him, someone blown back to the farthest wall of the apartment in an attempt to evade him.
'Hey,' he called. 'I live upstairs. I heard your TV. Let's meet; okay?' He waited, listening. No sound and no motion; his words had not pried the person loose. 'I brought you a cube of margarine,' he said, standing close to the door in an effort to speak through its thickness. 'My name's J.R. Isidore and I work for the well-known animal vet Mr Hannibal Stoat; You've heard of him. I'm reputable; I have a job. I drive Mr Sloat's truck.'
The door, meagrely, opened and he saw within the apartment a fragmented and misaligned shrinking figure, a girl who cringed and slunk away and yet held onto the door, as if for physical support. Fear made her seem ill; it distorted her body lines, made her appear as if someone had broken her and then, with malice, patched her together badly. Her eyes, enormous, glazed over fixedly as she attempted to smile.
He said, with sudden understanding, 'You thought no one lived in this building. You thought it was abandoned.'
Nodding, the girl whispered, 'Yes.'
'But,' Isidore said, 'it's good to have neighbours. Heck, until you came along I didn't have any.' And that was no fun, god knew.
'You're the only one?' the girl asked. 'In this building besides me?' She seemed less timid, now; her body straightened and with her hand she smoothed her dark hair. Now he saw that she had a nice figure, although small, and nice eyes markedly established by long black lashes. Caught by surprise, the girl wore pyjama bottoms and nothing more. And as he looked past her he perceived a room in disorder. Suitcases lay here and there, opened, their contents half spilled onto the littered floor. But this was natural; she had barely arrived.
'I'm the only one besides you,' Isidore said. 'And I won't bother you.' He felt glum; his offering, possessing the quality of an authentic old pre-war ritual, had not been accepted. In fact the girl did not even seem aware of it. Or maybe she did not understand what a cube of margarine was for. He had that - intuition; the girl seemed more bewildered than anything else. Out of her depth and helplessly floating in now-receding circles of fear. 'Good old Buster,' he said, trying to reduce her rigid postural stance. 'You like him? I watch him every morning and then again at night when I get home; I watch him while I'm eating dinner and then his late late show until I go to bed. At least until my TV set broke.'
'Who -, the girl began and then broke off; she bit her lip as if savagely angry. Evidently at herself.
'Buster Friendly,' he explained. It seemed odd to him that this girl had never heard of Earth's most knee-slapping TV comic. 'Where did you come here from?' he asked curiously.
'I don't see that it matters.' She shot a swift glance upward at him. Something that she saw seemed to ease her concern; her body noticeably relaxed. 'I'll be glad to receive company,' she said, 'later on when I'm more moved in. Right now, of course, it's out of the question.'
'Why out of the question?' He was puzzled; everything about her puzzled him. Maybe, he thought, I've been living here alone too long. I've become strange. They say chickenheads are like that. The thought made him feel even more glum. 'I could help you unpack,' he ventured; the door, now, bad virtually shut in his face. 'And your furniture.'
The girl said, 'I have no furniture. All these things' - she indicated the room behind her - 'they were here.'
'They won't do,' Isidore said. He could tell that at a glance. The chairs, the carpet, the tables - all had rotted away; they sagged in mutual ruin, victims of the despotic force of time. And of abandonment. No one had lived in this apartment for years; the ruin had become almost complete. He couldn't imagine how she figured on living in such surroundings. 'Listen,' he said earnestly. 'If we go all over the building looking we can probably find you things that aren't so tattered. A lamp from one apartment, a table from another.'
'I'll do it,' the girl said. 'Myself, thanks.'
'You'd go into those apartments alone?' He could not believe it.
'Why not?' Again she shuddered nervously, grimacing in awareness of saying something wrong.
Isidore said, 'I've tried it. Once. After that I just come home and go in my own place and I don't think about the rest. The apartments in which no one lives - hundreds of them and all full of the possessions people had, like family photographs and clothes. Those that died couldn't take anything and those who emigrated didn't want to. This building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized.'
'"Kipple-ized"?' She did not comprehend.
'Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers of yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.'
'I see.' The girl regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.
'There's the First Law of Kipple,' he said. '"Kipple driven out nonkipple." Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple.'
'So it has taken over completely,' the girl finished. She nodded. 'Now I understand.'
'Your place, here,' he said, 'this apartment you've picked - it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But -' He broke off.
'But what?'
Isidore said, 'We can't win.'
'Why not?' The girl stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her; arms folded self-consciously before her small high breasts she faced him, eager to understand. Or so it appeared to him, anyhow. She was at least listening.
entropy
'No one can win against kipple,' he said, 'except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.' He added, 'Except of course for the upward climb of Wilbur Mercer.'
The, girl eyed him. 'I don't see any relation.'
'That's what Mercerism is all about.' Again be found himself puzzled. 'Don't you participate in fusion? Don't you own an empathy box?'
After a pause the girl said carefully, 'I didn't bring mine with me. I assumed I'd find one here.'
'But an empathy box,' he said, stammering in his excitement 'is the most personal possession you have! It's an extension of your body; it's the way you touch other humans, it's the way you stop being alone. But you know that. Everybody knows that. Mercer even lets people like me -' He broke off. But too late; he had already told her and he could see by her face, by the flicker of sudden aversion, that she knew. 'I almost passed the IQ test,' he said in a low, shaky voice. 'I'm not very special, only moderately; not like some you see, But that's what Mercer doesn't care about.'
'As far as I'm concerned,' the girl said, 'you can count that as a major objection to Mercerism.' Her voice was clean and neutral; she intended only to state a fact, he realized. The fact of her attitude towards chickenheads.
'I guess I'll go back upstairs,' he said, and started away from her, his cube of margarine clutched; it had become plastic and damp from the squeeze of his hand.
The girl watched him go, still with the neutral expression on her face. And then she called, 'Wait.'
Turning, he said, 'Why?'
'I'll need you. For getting myself adequate furniture. From other apartments, as you said.' She strolled toward him, her bare upper body sleek and trim, without an excess gram of fat. 'What time do you get home from work? You can help me then.'
Isidore said, 'Could you maybe fix dinner for us? If I brought home the ingredients?'
'No, I have too much to do. The girl shook off the request effortlessly and he noticed that, perceived it without understanding it. Now that her initial fear had diminished, something else had begun to emerge from her. Something more strange. And, he thought, deplorable. A coldness. Like, he thought, a breath from the vacuum between inhabited worlds, in fact from nowhere: it was not what she did or said but what she did not do and say. 'Some other time,' the girl said, and moved back toward her apartment door.
'Did you get my name?' he said eagerly. 'John Isidore, and I work for-'
'You told me who you work for.' She had stopped briefly at her door; pushing it open she said, 'Some incredible person named Hannibal Sloat, who I'm sure doesn't exist outside your imagination. My name is -' She gave him one last warmthless glance as she returned to her apartment, hesitated, and said, 'Rachel Rosen.'
'Of the Rosen Association?' he asked. 'The system's largest manufacturer of humanoid robots used in our colonization programme?'
A complicated expression instantly crossed her face, fleetingly, gone at once. 'No,' she said. 'I never heard of them; I don't know anything about it. More of your chickenhead imagination, I suppose. John Isidore and his personal, private empathy box. Poor Mr Isidore.'
'But your name suggests -'
'My name,' the girl said, 'is Pris Stratton. That's my married name; I always use it I never use any other name but Pris. You can call me Pris.' She reflected, then said, 'No, you'd better address me as Miss Stratton. Because we don't really know each other. At least I don't know you.' The door shut after her and he found himself alone in the dust-strewn dim hall.

7

Well so it goes, J.R. Isidore thought as he stood clutching his soft cube of margarine. Maybe she'll change her mind about letting me call her Pris. And possibly, if I can pick up a can of pre-war vegetables, about dinner, too.
about cooking
But maybe she doesn't know how to cook, he thought suddenly. Okay, I can do it; I'll fix dinner for both of us. And I'll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She'll probably want to, once I show her how; as near as I can make out, most women, even young ones like her, like to cook; it's an instinct.
Ascending the darkened stairs he returned to his own apartment.
She's really out of touch, he thought as he donned his white work uniform; even if he hurried he'd be late to work and Mr Sloat would be angry but so what? For instance, she's never heard of Buster Friendly. And that's impossible; Buster is the most important person being alive, except of course for Wilbur Mercer ... but Mercer, he reflected, isn't a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template. At least that's what I've heard people say; that's what Mr Sloat says, for instance. And Hannibal Sloat would know.
Odd that she isn't consistent about her own name, he pondered. She may need help. Can I give her any help? he asked himself. A special, a chickenhead; what do I know? I can't marry and I can't emigrate and the dust will eventually kill me. I have nothing to offer.
Dressed and ready to go he left his apartment, ascended to the roof where his battered used hovercar lay parked.
the dying cat
An hour later, in the company truck, he had picked up the first malfunctioning animal for the day. An electric cat: it lay in the plastic dust-proof carrying cage in the rear of the truck and panted erratically. You'd almost think it was real, Isidore observed as he headed back to the Van Ness Pet Hospital - that carefully misnamed little enterprise which barely existed in the tough, competitive field of false-animal repair.
The cat, In its travail, groaned.
Wow, Isidore said to himself, It really sounds as if it's dying. Maybe its ten-year battery has shorted, and all its circuits are systematically burning out. A major job; Milt Borogrove, Van Ness Pet Hospital's repairman, would have his hands full. And I didn't give the owner an estimate, Isidore realized gloomily. The guy simply thrust the cat at me, said it had begun falling during the night, and then I guess he took off for work. Anyhow au of a sudden the momentary verbal exchange had ceased; the cat's owner had gone roaring up into the sky in his custom new-model handsome hovercar. And the man constituted a new customer.
To the cat, Isidore said, 'Can you hang on until we reach the shop?' The cat continued to wheeze. 'I'll recharge you while we're en route,' Isidore decided; he dropped the truck toward the nearest available roof and there, temporarily parked with the motor running, crawled into the back of the truck and opened the plastic dust-proof carrying cage, which, in conjunction with his own white suit and the name on the truck, created a total impression of a true animal vet picking up a true animal.
The electric mechanism, within its compellingly authenticstyle grey pelt, gurgled and blew bubbles, its vid-lenses glassy, its metal jaws locked together. This had always amazed him, these 'disease' circuits built into false animals; the construct which he now held on his lap had been put together in such a fashion that when a primary component misfired, the whole thing appeared - not broken - but organically ill. It would have fooled me, Isidore said to himself as he groped within the ersatz stomach fur for the concealed control panel (quite small on this variety of false animal) plus the quick-charge battery terminals. He could find neither. Nor could he search very long; the mechanism had almost failed. If it does consist of a short, he reflected, which is busy burning out circuits, then maybe I should try to detach one of the battery cables; the mechanism will shut down, but no more harm will be done. And then, in the shop, Milt can charge it back up.
Deftly, he ran his fingers along the pseudo bony spine. The cables should be about here. Damn expert workmanship; so absolutely perfect an imitation. Cables not apparent even under close scrutiny. Must be a Wheelright & Carpenter product - they cost more, but look what good work they do.
He gave up; the false cat had ceased functioning, so evidently the short - if that was what ailed the thing - had finished off the power supply and basic drive-train. That'll run into money, he thought pessimistically. Well, the guy evidently hadn't been getting the three-times-yearly preventive cleaning and lubricating, which made all the difference. Maybe this would teach the owner - the hard way.
Crawling back in the driver's seat he put the wheel into climb position, buzzed up into the air once more, and resumed his flight back to the repair shop.
Anyhow he no longer had to listen to the nerve-wracking wheezing of the construct; he could relax. Funny, he thought; even though I know rationally it's faked the sound of a false animal burning out its drive-train and power supply ties my stomach in knots. I wish, he thought painfully, that I could get another job. If I hadn't failed that IQ test I wouldn't be reduced to this ignominious task with its attendant emotional by-products. On the other hand, the synthetic sufferings of false animals didn't bother Milt Borogrove or their boss Hannibal Sloat. So maybe it's I, John Isidore said to himself. Maybe when you deteriorate back down the ladder of evolution as I have, when you sink into the tomb world slough of being a special - well, best to abandon that line of inquiry. Nothing depressed him more than the moments in which he contrasted his current mental powers with what he had formerly possessed. Every day he declined in sagacity and vigour. He and the thousands of other specials throughout Terra, all of them moving toward the ash heap. Turning into living kipple.
Buster Friendly
For company he clicked on the truck's radio and tuned for Buster Friendly's aud show, which, like the TV version, continued twenty-three unbroken warm hours a day ... the additional one hour being a religious sign-off, ten minutes of silence, and then a religious sign-on.
'- glad to have you on the show again,' Buster Friendly was saying. 'Let's see. Amanda; it's been two whole days since we've visited with you. Starting on any new pics, dear?'
'Vell, I vuz goink to do a pic yestooday baht veil, dey vanted me to staht ad seven -'
'Seven A.M.?' Buster Friendly broke in.
'Yess, dot's right, Booster; it vuz seven hey hem!' Amanda Werner laughed her famous laugh, nearly as imitated as Buster's. Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic so-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing. Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
How did Buster Friendly find the time to tape both his aud and vid shows? Isidore wondered. And how did Amanda Werner find time to be a guest every other day, month after month, year after year? How did they keep talking? They never repeated themselves - not so far as he could determine. Their remarks, always witty, always new, weren't rehearsed. Amanda's hair glowed, her eyes glinted, her teeth shone; she never ran down, never became tired, never found herself at a loss as to a clever retort to Buster's bang-bang string of quips, jokes, and sharp observations. The Buster Friendly Show, telecast and broadcast over all Earth via satellite, also poured down on the emigrants of the colony planets. Practice transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization extended that far. Had the Salander 3 reached its destination the travellers aboard would have found the Buster Friendly Show awaiting them. And they would have been glad.
But something about Buster Friendly irritated John Isidore, one specific thing. In subtle, almost inconspicuous ways, Buster ridiculed the empathy boxes. Not once but many times. He was, in fact, doing it right now.
'- no rock nicks on me,' Buster prattled away to Amanda Werner. 'And if I'm going up the side of a mountain I want a couple of bottles of Budweiser beer along!' The studio audience laughed, and Isidore heard a sprinkling of handclaps. 'And I'll reveal my carefully documented expose from up there - that expose coming exactly ten hours from now!'
'Ent me, too, dahlink!' Amanda gushed. 'Tek me wit you! I go alonk en ven dey trow a rock et us I protek you.' Again the audience howled, and John Isidore felt baffed and impotent rage seep up into the back of his neck. Why did Buster Friendly always chip away at Mercerism? No one else seemed bothered by it; even the U.N. approved. And the American and Soviet police had publicly stated that Mercerism reduced crime by making citizens more concerned about the plight of their neighbours. Mankind needs more empathy, Titus Corning, the U.N. Secretary General, had declared several times. Maybe Buster is jealous, Isidore conjectured. Sure, that would explain it; he and Wilbur Mercer are in competition. But for what?
Our minds, Isidore decided. They're fighting for control of our psychic selves; the empathy box on one hand, Buster's guffaws and off-the-cuff jibes on the other. I'll have to tell Hannibal Sloat that, he decided. Ask him if it's true; he'll know.
When he had parked his truck on the roof of the Van Ness Pet Hospital he quickly carried the plastic cage containing the inert false cat downstairs to Hannibal Sloat's office. As he entered, Mr Sloat glanced up from a parts-inventory page, his grey, seamed face rippling like troubled water. Too old to emigrate, Hannibal Sloat, although not a special, was doomed to creep out his remaining life on Earth. The dust, over the years, had eroded him; it had left his features grey, his thoughts grey; it had shrunk him and made his legs spindly and his gait unsteady. He saw the world through glasses literally dense with dust. For some reason Sloat never cleaned his glasses. It was as if he had given up; he had accepted the radioactive dirt and it had begun its job, long ago, of burying him. Already it obscured his sight. In the few years he had remaining it would corrupt his other senses until at last only his bird-speech voice would remain, and then that would expire, too.
'What do you have there?' Mr Sloat asked.
'A cat with a short in its power supply.' Isidore set the cage down on the document-littered desk of his boss.
'Why show it to me?' Sloat demanded. 'Take it down in the shop to Milt.' However, reflexively, he opened the cage and tugged the false animal out. Once, be had been a repairman. A very good one.
Isidore said, 'I think Buster Friendly and Mercerism are fighting for control of our psychic souls.'
'If so,' Sloat said, examining the cat, 'Buster is winning.'
'He's winning now,' Isidore said, 'but ultimately he'll lose.'
Sloat lifted his head, peered at him. 'Why?'
'Because Wilbur Mercer is always renewed. He's eternal. At the top of the hill he's struck down; he sinks into the tomb world but then he rises inevitably. And us with him. So we're eternal too.' He felt good, speaking so well; usually around Sloat he stammered.
Sloat said, 'Buster is immortal, like Mercer. There's no difference.'
'How can he be? He's a man.'
'I don't know,' Sloat said. 'But it's true. They've never admitted it, of course.'
'Is that how come Buster Friendly can do forty-six hours of show a day?'
'That's right,' Sloat said.
'What about Amanda Werner and those other women?'
'They're immortal, too.'
'Are they a superior life form from another system?'
'I've never been able to determine that for sure,' Mr Sloat said, still examining the cat. He now removed his dust-filmed glasses, peered without them at the half-open mouth. 'As I have conclusively in the case of Wilbur Mercer,' he finished almost inaudibly. He cursed, then, a string of abuse lasting what seemed to Isidore a full minute. 'This cat,' Sloat said finally, 'isn't false. I knew sometime this would happen. And it's dead.' He stared down at the corpse of the cat. And cursed again.
Wearing his grimy blue sailcloth apron, burly peppleskinned Milt Gorogrove appeared at the office door. 'What's the matter?' he said. Seeing the cat he entered the office and picked up the animal.
'The chickenhead,' Sloat said, 'brought it in.' Never before had he used that term in front of Isidore.
'If it was still alive,' Milt said, 'we could take bt to a real animal vet, I wonder what it's worth. Anybody got a copy of Sidney's?'
'D-doesn't y-y-your insurance c-c-cover this?' Isidore asked Mr Sloat. Under him his legs wavered and he felt the room begin to turn dark maroon cast over with specks of green.
'Yes,' Sloat said finally, half snarling. 'But it's the waste that gets me. The loss of one more living creature. Couldn't you tell, Isidore? Didn't you notice the difference?'
'I thought,' Isidore managed to say, 'it was a really good job. So good it fooled me; I mean, it seemed alive and a job that good -'
'I don't think Isidore can tell the difference,' Milt said mildly. 'To him they're all alive, false animals included. He probably tried to save it.' To Isidore he said, 'What did you do, try to recharge its battery? Or locate a short in it?'
'Y-yes,' Isidore admitted.
'It probably was so far gone it wouldn't have made it anyhow,' Milt said. 'Let the chickenhead off the hook, Han. He's got a point; the fakes are beginning to be darn near real, what with those disease circuits they're building into the new ones. And living animals do die; that's one of the risks in owning them. We're just not used to it because all we see are fakes.'
'The goddamn waste,' Sloat said.
'According to M-mercer,' Isidore pointed out, 'a-all life returns. The cycle is c-c-complete for a-a-animals, too. I mean, we all ascend with him, die-'
'Tell that to the guy that owned this cat,' Mr Sloat said.
Not sure if his boss was serious Isidore said, 'You mean I have to? But you always handle vidcalls.' He had a phobia about the vidphone and found making a call, especially to a stranger, virtually impossible. Mr Sloat, of course, knew this.
'Don't make him,' Milt said. 'I'll do it.' He reached for the receiver. 'What's his number?'
'I've got it here somewhere.' Isidore fumbled in his work smock pockets.
Sloat said, 'I want the chickenhead to do it.'
'I c-c-can't use the vidphone,' Isidore protested, his heart labouring. 'Because I'm hairy, ugly, dirty, stooped, snaggle toothed, and grey. And also I feel sick from the radiation; I think I'm going to die.'
Milt smiled and said to Sloat, 'I guess if I felt that way I wouldn't use the vidphone either. Come on, Isidore; if you don't give me the owner's number I can't make the call and you'll have to.' He held out his hand amiably.
'The chickenhead makes it,' Sloat said, 'or he's fired.' He did not look either at Isidore or at Milt; he glared fixedly forward.
'Aw come on,' Milt protested.
Isidore said. 'I d-d-don't like to be c-c-called a chickenhead. I mean the d-d--dust has d-d-done a lot to you, too, physically. though maybe n-n-not your brain, as in m-my case.' I'm fired, he realized. I can't make the call. And then all at once he remembered that the owner of the cat had zipped off to work. There would be no one home. 'I g-guess I can call him,' he said, as he fished out the tag with the information on it.
'See?' Mr Sloat said to Milt. 'He can do it if he has to.'
Seated at the vidphone, receiver in hand, Isidore dialled.
'Yeah.' Milt said, 'but he shouldn't have to. And he's right; the dust has affected you; you're damn near blind and in a couple of years you won't be able to hear.'
Stoat said, 'It's got to you, too, Borogrove. Your skin is the colour of dog manure.'
the telephonate
In the vidscreen a face appeared, a mitteleuropaeische somewhat careful-looking woman who wore her hair in a tight bun. 'Yes?' she said.
'M-m-mrs Pilsen?' Isidore said, terror spewing through him; he had not thought of it naturally but the owner had a wife, - who of course was home. 'I want to t-t-talk to you about your c-c-c-c-c-c -' He broke off, rubbed his chin tic-wise. 'Your cat.'
'Oh yes, you picked up Horace,' Mrs Pilsen said. 'Did it. turn out to be pneumonitis? That's what Mr Pilsen thought.'
Isidore said, 'Your cat died.'
'Oh no god in heaven.'
'We'll replace it,' he said. 'We have insurance.' He glanced toward Mr Sloat; he seemed to concur. 'The owner of our firm, Mr Hannibal Sloat -' He floundered. 'Will personally -'
'No,' Sloat said, 'we'll give them a cheque. Sidney's list puce.'
'- will personally pick the replacement cat out for-you', Isidore found himself saying. Having started a conversation which he could not endure he discovered himself unable to get back out. What he was saying possessed an intrinsic logic which he had no means of halting; it had to grind to its own conclusion. Both Mr Sloat and Milt Borogrove stared at him as he rattled on, 'Give us the specifications of the cat you desire. Colour, sex, subtype, such as Manx, Persian, Abyssinian -'
'Horace is dead,' Mrs Pilsen said.
'He had pneumomtis,' Isidore said. 'He died on the trip to the hospital. Our senior staff physician, Dr Hannibal Sloat, expressed the belief that nothing at this point could have saved him. But isn't it fortunate, Mrs Pilsen, that we're going to replace him. Am I correct?'
Mrs Pilsen, tears appearing in her eyes, said, 'There is only one cat like Horace. He used to - when he was just a kitten - stand and stare up at us as if asking a question. We never understood what the question was. Maybe now he knows the answer.' Fresh tears appeared. 'I guess we all will eventually.'
An inspiration came to Isidore. 'What about an exact electric duplicate of your cat? We can have a superb handcrafted job by Wheelright & Carpenter in which every detail of the old animal is faithfully repeated in permanent -'
'Oh that's dreadful!' Mrs Pilsen protested. 'What are you saying? Don't tell my husband that; don't suggest that to Ed or he'll go mad. He loved Horace more than any cat he ever had, and he's had a cat since he was a child.'
Taking the vidphone receiver from Isidore, Milt said to the woman, 'We can give you a cheque in the amount of Sidney's list, or as Mr Isidore suggested we can pick out a new cat for you. We're very sorry that your cat died, but as Mr Isidore pointed out, the cat had pneumonitis, which is almost always fatal.' His tone rolled out professionally; of the three of them at the Van Ness Pet Hospital, Milt performed the best in the matter of business phone calls.
'I can't tell my husband,' Mrs Pilsen said.
'All right, ma'am,' Milt said, and grimaced slightly. 'We'll call him. Would you give me his number at his place of employment?' He groped for a pen and pad of paper; Mr Sloat handed them to him.
'Listen,' Mrs Pilsen said; she seemed now to rally. 'Maybe other gentleman is right. Maybe I ought to commission an electric replacement of Horace but without Ed ever knowing; could it be so faithful a reproduction that my husband wouldn't be able to tell?'
Dubiously, Milt said, 'If that's what you want. But it's been our experience that the owner of the animal is never fooled. It's only casual observers such as neighbours. You see, once you get real close to a false animal -'
'Ed never got physically close to Horace, even though he loved him; I was the one who took care of all Horace's personal needs such as his sandbox. I think I would like to try a false animal, and if it didn't work then you could find us a real cat to replace Horace. I just don't want my husband to know; I don't think he could live through it. That's why he never got close to Horace; he was afraid to. And when Horace got sick - with pneumonitis, as you tell me - Ed got panicstricken and just wouldn't face it. That's why we waited so long to call you. Too long ... as I knew before you called I knew.' She nodded, her tears under control, now. 'How long will it take?'
Milt essayed, 'We can have it ready in ten days. We'll deliver it during the day while your husband is at work.' He wound up the call, said good-bye, and hung up. 'He'll know,' he said to Mr Sloat. 'In five seconds. But that's what she wants.'
'Owners who get to love their animals,' Sloat said sombrely, 'go to pieces. I'm glad we're not usually involved with real animals. You realize that actual animal vets have to make calls like that all the time?' He contemplated John Isidore. 'In some ways you're not so stupid after all, Isidore. You handled that reasonably well. Even though Milt had to come in and take over.'
'He was doing fine,' Milt said. 'God, that was tough.' He picked up the dead Horace. 'I'll take this down to the shop; Han, you phone Wheelright & Carpenter and get their builder over to measure and photograph it. I'm not going to let them take it to their shop; I want to compare the replica myself.'
'I think I'll have Isidore talk to them,' Mr Sloat decided. 'He got this started; he ought to be able to deal with Wheelright & Carpenter after handling Mrs Pilsen.'
Milt said to Isidore, 'Just don't let them take the original' He held up Horace. 'They'll want to because it makes their work a hell of a lot easier. Be firm.'
'Um,' Isidore said, blinking. 'Okay. Maybe I ought to call them now before it starts to decay. Don't dead bodies decay or something?' He felt elated.

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