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'This building is android-infested.'
'This building is android-infested.'
Resch said introspectively, 'That's going to make It hard for you and me to get out of here. Nominally I have the authority to leave any time I want, of course. And to take a prisoner with me.' He listened; no sound came from beyond the office. 'I guess they didn't hear anything. There's evidently no bug installed here, monitoring everything ... as there should be.' Gingerly, he nudged the body of the android with the toe of his shoe. 'It certainly is remarkable, the psionic ability you develop in this business; I knew before I opened the office door that he would take a shot at me. Frankly I'm surprised he didn't kill you while I was upstairs.'
'He almost did,' Rick said. 'He had a big utility-model laser beam 'on me part of the time. He was considering it. But it was you he was worried about, not me.'
'The android flees,' Resch said humorlessly, 'where the bounty hunter pursues. You realize, don't you, that you're going to have to double back to the opera house and get Luba before anyone here has a chance to warn her as to how this came out. Warn it, I should say. Do you thinkof them as "it"?'
'I did at one time,' Rick said. 'When my conscience occasionally bothered me about the work I had to do; I protected myself by thinking of them that way but now I no longer find it necessary. All right, I'll head directly back to the opera house. Assuming you can get me out of here.'
'Suppose we sit Garland up at his desk,' Resch said; he dragged the corpse of the android back up into its chair, arranging its arms and legs so that its posture appeared reasonably natural - if no one looked closely. If no one came into the office. Pressing a key on the desk intercom, Phil Resch said, Inspector Garland has asked that no calls be put through to for the next half hour. He's involved us work that can't be, interrupted.'
'Yes, Mr Resch.'
Releasing the intercom key, Phil Resch said to Rick, 'I'm going to handcuff you to me during the time we're still here the building. Once we're airborne I'll naturally let you go.' He produced a pair of cuffs, slapped one onto Rick's wrist and other around his own. 'Come on; let's get it over with.' He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and pushed open the office door.
Uniformed police stood or sat on every side, conducting their routine business of the day; none of them glanced up or paid any attention as Phil Resch led Rick across the lobby to the elevator.
'What I'm afraid of,' Resch said as they waited for the elevator, 'is that the Garland one had a dead man's throttle warning component built into it. But -' He shrugged. 'I would have expected it to go off by now; otherwise it's not much good.'
The elevator arrived; Several policelike nondescript men and women disemelevatored, clacked off across the lobby on their several errands. They paid no attention to Rick or Phil Resch.
'Do you think your department will take me on?' Resch asked, as the elevator doors shut, closing the two of them inside; he punched the roof button and the elevator silently rose. 'After all, as of now I'm out of a job. To say the least.'
Guardedly, Rick said, 'I - don't see why not.' Except that we already have two bounty hunters. I've got to tell him, he said to himself. It's unethical and cruel not to. Mr Resch, you're an android, he thought to himself. You got me out of this place and here's your reward; you're everything we jointly abominate. The essence of what we're committed to destroy.
'I can't get over it,' Phil Resch said. 'It doesn't seem possible. For three years I've been working under the direction of androids. Why didn't I suspect - I mean, enough to do something?'
'Maybe it isn't that long. Maybe they only recently infiltrated this building.'
'They've been here all the time. Garland has been my superior from the start, throughout my three years.'
'According to it,' Rick said, 'the bunch of them came to Earth together. And that wasn't as long ago as three years; it's only been a matter of months.
'Then at one time an authentic Garland existed,' Phil Resch said. 'And somewhere along the way got replaced.' His sharklike lean face twisted and he struggled to understand. 'Or - I've been impregnated with a false memory system. Maybe I only remember Garland over the whole time. But -' His face suffused now with growing torment, continued to twist and work spasmodically. 'Only androids show up with false memory systems; it's been found ineffective in humans.'
The elevator ceased rising: its doors slid back, and there, spread out ahead of them, deserted except for empty parked vehicles, lay the police station's roof field.
'Here's my car,' Phil Resch said, unlocking the door of a nearby hovercar and waving Rick rapidly inside; he himself got in behind the wheel and started up the motor. In a moment they had lifted into the sky and, turning north, headed back in the direction of the War Memorial Opera House. Preoccupied, Phil Resch drove by reflex; his progressively more gloomy train of thought continued to dominate his attention. 'Listen, Deckard,' he said suddenly. 'After we retire Luba Luft - I want you to -' His voice, husky and tormented, broke off. 'You know. Give me the Boneli test or that empathy scale you have, To see about me.'
'We can worry about that later,' Rick said evasively.
'You don't want me to take it, do you?' Phil Resch glanced at him with acute comprehension. 'I guess you know what the results will be; Garland must have told you something. Facts which I don't know.'
Rick said, 'It's going to be hard even for the two of us to out Luba Luft; she's more than I could handle, anyhow. Let's keep our attention focused on that'
Resch and his squirrel
'It's not just false memory structures,' Phil Resch said. 'I own an animal; not a false one but the real thing. A squirrel. I love the squirrel, Deckard; every goddamn morning I feed it and change its papers - you know, clean up its cage - and then in the evening when I get off work I let it loose in my apt and it runs all over the place. It has a wheel in its cage; ever seen a squirrel running inside a wheel? It runs and runs, the wheel spins, but the squirrel stays in the same spot. Buffy seems to like it, though.'
'I guess squirrels aren't too bright,' Rick said.
They flew on, then, in silence.

12

At the opera house Rick Deckard and Phil Resch were informed that the rehearsal had ended. And Miss Luft had left.
'Did she say where she intended to go?' Phil Resch asked the stagehand, showing his police identification.
'Over to the museum.' The stagehand studied the ID card. 'She said she wanted to take in the exhibit of Edvard Munch that's there, now. It ends tomorrow.' And Luba Luft, Rick thought to himself, ends today.
As the two of them walked down the sidewalk - to the museum, Phil Resch said, 'What odds will you give? She's flown; we won't find her at the museum.'
'Maybe,' Rick said.
They arrived at the museum building, noted on which floor the Munch exhibit could be found, and ascended. Shortly, they wandered amid paintings and woodcuts. Many people had turned out for the exhibit, including a grammar school class; the shrill voice of the teacher penetrated all the rooms comprising the exhibit, and Rick thought, That's what you'd expect an andy to sound - and look - like. Instead of like Rachael Rosen and Luba Luft. And - the man beside him. Or rather the thing beside him.
'Did you ever hear of an andy having a pet of any sort?' Phil Resch asked him.
For some obscure reason he felt the need to be brutally honest; perhaps he had already begun preparing himself for what lay ahead. 'In two cases that I know of, andys owned and cared for animals. But it's rare. From what I've been able to learn, it generally fails; the andy is unable to keep the animal alive. Animals require an environment of warmth to flourish. Except for reptiles and insects.'
Edvard Munch exhibition
'Would a squirrel need that? An atmosphere of love? Because Buffy is doing fine, as sleek as an otter. I groom and comb him every other day.' At an oil painting Phil Resch halted, gazed intently. The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature's torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by - or despite - its outcry.
'He did a woodcut of this,' Rick said, reading the card tacked below the painting.
'I think,' Phil Resch said, 'that this is how an andy must feel.' He traced in the air the convolutions, visible in the picture, of the creature's cry. 'I don't feel like that, so maybe I'm not an -' He broke off, as several persons strolled up to inspect the picture.
'There's Luba Luft.' Rick pointed and Phil Resch halted his sombre introspection and defence; the two of them walked at a measured pace toward her, taking their time as if nothing confronted them; as always it was vital to preserve the atmosphere of the commonplace. Other humans, having no knowledge of the presence of androids among them, had to be protected at all costs - even that of losing the quarry.
Holding a printed catalogue, Luba Luft, wearing shiny tapered pants and an illuminated gold vestlike top, stood absorbed in the picture before her: a drawing of a young girl, hands clasped together, seated on the edge of a bed, an expression of bewildered wonder and new, groping awe imprinted on face.
'Want me to buy it for you?' Rick said to Luba Luft; he stood beside her, holding laxly onto her upper arm, informing her by his loose grip that he knew he had possession of her - he did not have to strain in an effort to detain her. On the other side of her Phil Resch put his band on her shoulder and Rick saw the bulge of the laser tube. Phil Resch did not intend to take chances, not after the near miss with Inspector Garland.
'It's not for sale' Luba Luft glanced at him idly, then violently as she recognized him; her eyes faded and the colour dimmed from her face, leaving it cadaverous, as if already starting to decay. As if life had in an instant retreated to some point far inside her, leaving the body to its automatic ruin. 'I thought they arrested you. Do you mean they let you go?'
'Miss Luft,' he said, 'this is Mr Resch. Phil Resch, this is the quite well-known opera singer Luba Luft.' To Luba he said, 'The harness bull that arrested me is an android. So was his superior. Do you know - did you know - an Inspector Garland? He told me that you all came here in one ship as a group.'
'The police department which you called,' Phil Resch said to her 'operating out of a building on Mission, is the organizing agency by which it would appear your group keeps in touch. They even feel confident enough to hire a human bounty bunter; evidently -'
'You?' Luba Luft said. 'You're not human. No more than I am: you're an android, too.'
An interval of silence passed and then Phil Resch said in a low but controlled voice, 'Well, we'll deal with that at the proper time,' To Rick he said, 'Let's take her to my car.'
Failing of androids in hopeless situations
One of them on each side of her they prodded her in the direction of the museum elevator. Luba Luft did not come willingly, but on the other hand she did not actively resist; seemingly she had become resigned. Rick had seen that before in androids, in crucial situations. The artificial life force animating them seemed to fail if pressed too far ... at least in some of them. But not all.
And it could flare up again furiously.
Androids try to keep inconspicious
Androids, however, had as he knew an innate desire to remain inconspicuous. In the museum, with so many people roaming around, Luba Luft would tend to do nothing. The real encounter - for her probably the final one - would take place in the car, where no one else could see. Alone, with appalling abruptness, she could shed her inhibitions. He prepared himself - and did not think about Phil Resch. As Resch had said, it would be dealt with at a proper time.
At the end of the corridor near the elevators, a little storelike affair had been set up; it sold prints and art books, and Luba halted there, tarrying. 'Listen,' she said to Rick. Some of the colour had returned to her face; once more she looked - at least briefly - alive. 'Buy me a reproduction of that picture I was looking at when you found me. The one of the girl sitting on the bed.'
After a pause Rick said to the clerk, a heavy-jowled, middleaged woman with netted grey hair, 'Do you have a print of Munch's "Puberty"?'
'Only in this book of his collected work,' the clerk said, lifting down a handsome glossy volume. 'Twenty-five Dollars.'
'I'll take it.' He reached for his wallet.
Phil Resch said, 'My departmental budget could never in a million years be stretched -'
'My own money,' Rick said; he handed the woman the bills and Luba the book. 'Now let's get started down,' he said to her and Phil Resch.
'It's very nice of you,' Luba said as they entered the elevator. 'There's something very strange and touching about humans. An android would never have done that.' She glanced icily at Phil Resch. 'It wouldn't have occurred to him; as he said, never in a million years.' She continued to gaze at Resch, now with manifold hostility and aversion. 'I really don't like androids. Ever since I got here from Mars my life has consisted of imitating the human, doing what she would do, acting as if I had the thoughts and impulses a human would have. Imitating, as far as I'm concerned, a superior lifeform.' To Phil Resch she said, 'Isn't that how it's been with you, Resch? Trying to be -'
'I can't take this.' Phil Resch dug into his coat, groped.
'No.' Rick said; he grabbed at Phil Resch's hand; Resch retreated, eluding him. 'The Boneli test,' Rick said.
'It's admitted it's an android,' Phil Resch said. 'We don't have e to wait.'
'But to retire it,' Rick said, 'because it's needling you - give me that.' He struggled to pry the laser tube away from Phil Resch. The tube remained in Phil Resch's possession; Resch circled back within the cramped elevator, evading him, his attention on Luba Luft only. 'Okay,' Rick said. 'Retire it; kill it now. Show it that it's right.' He saw, then, that Resch meant to. 'Wait-'
Killing of Luba Luft
Phil Resch fired, and at the same instant Luba Luft, in a spasm of frantic hunted fear, twisted and spun away, dropping as she did so. The beam missed its mark but, as Resch lowered it, burrowed a narrow hole, silently, into her stomach. She began to scream; she lay crouched against the wall of the elevator, screaming. Like the picture, Rick thought to himself, and, with his own laser tube, killed her. Luba Luft's body fell forward, face down, in a heap. It did not even tremble.
With his laser tube, Rick systematically burned into blurred ash the book of pictures which he had just a few minutes ago bought Luba. He did the job thoroughly, saying nothing; Phil Resch watched without understanding, his face showing his perplexity.
'You could have kept the book yourself,' Resch said, when it had been done. 'That cost you -,
'Do you think androids have souls?' Rick interrupted.
Cocking his head on one side, Phil Resch gazed at him in even greater puzzlement.
'I could afford the book,' Rick said. 'I've made three thousand dollars so far today, and I'm not even half through.'
'You're claiming Garland?' Phil Resch asked. 'But I killed him, not you. You just lay there. And Luba, too. I got her.'
'You can't collect,' Rick said. 'Not from your own department and not from ours. When we get to your car I'll administer the Boneli test or the Voigt-Kampff to you and then we'll see. Even though you're not on my list.' His hands shaking, he opened his briefcase, rummaged among the crumpled onionskin carbons. 'No, you're not here. So legally I can't claim you; to make anything I'll have to claim Luba Luft and Garland.'
'You're sure I'm an android? Is that really what Garland said?'
'That's what Garland said.'
'Maybe he was lying,' Phil Resch said. 'To split us apart. As we are now. We're nuts, letting them split us; you were absolutely right about Luba Luft - I shouldn't have let her get my goat like that. I must be overly sensitive. That would be natural for a bounty hunter, I suppose; you're probably the same way. But look; we would have had to retire Luba Luft anyhow, half an hour from now - only one half hour more. She wouldn't even have had time to look through that book you got her. And I still think you shouldn't have destroyed it; that's a waste. I can't follow your reasoning; it isn't rational, that's why.'
Rick said, 'I'm getting out of this. business.'
'And go into what?'
'Anything. Insurance underwriting, like Garland was supposed to be doing. Or I'll emigrate. Yes.' He nodded. 'I'll go to Mars.'
'But someone has to do this,' Phil Resch pointed out,
'They can use androids. Much better if andys do it. I can't any more; I've had enough. She was a wonderful singer. The planet could have used her. This is insane.' 'This is necessary. Remember: they killed humans in order top get away. And if I hadn't gotten you out of the Mission police station they would have killed you. That's what Garland wanted me for; that's why he had me come down to his office. Didn't Polokov almost kill you? Didn't Luba Luft almost? We're acting defensively; they're here on our planet - they're murderous illegal aliens masquerading as -'
'As police,' Rick said. 'As bounty hunters.' 'Okay; give me the Boneli test. Maybe Garland lied. I think he did - false memories just aren't that good. What about my squirel?'
'Yes, your squirrel. I forgot about your squirrel.'
'If I'm an andy,' Phil Resch said, 'and you kill me, you can have my squirrel. Here; I'll write it out, willing it to you.'
Andys can't will anything. They can't possess anything to will.'
'Then just take it,' Phil Resch said.
'Maybe so,' Rick said. The elevator had reached the first floor, now; its doors opened. 'You stay with Luba; I'll get a patrol car here to take her to the Hall of Justice. For her bone marrow test.' He saw a phone booth, entered it, dropped a coin, and, his fingers shaking, dialled. Meanwhile a group of people, who had been waiting for the elevator, gathered around Phil Resch and the body of Luba Luft.
She was really a superb singer, he said to himself as he hung the receiver, his call completed. I don't get it; how can a talent like that be a liability to our society? But it wasn't the talent, he told himself; it was he herself. As Phil Resch is, he thought. He's a menace in exactly the same way, for the same reasons. So I can't quit now. Emerging.~from the phone booth he pushed his way among the people, back to Resch and the prone figure of the android girl. Someone had put a coat over her. Not Resch's.
Going up to Phil Resch - who stood off to one side vigorously smoking a small grey cigar - he said to him, 'I hope to god you do test out as an android.'
'You really hate me,' Phil Resch said, marvelling. 'All of a sudden; you didn't hate me back on Mission Street. Not while I was saving your life.'
'I see a pattern. The way you killed Garland and then the way you killed Luba. You don't kill the way I do; you don't try to - Hell,' he said, 'I know what it is. You like to kill. All you need is a pretext. If you had a pretext you'd kill me. That's why you picked up on the possibility of Garland being an android; it made him available for being killed. I wonder what you're going to do when you fail to pass the Boneli test. Will you kill yourself? Sometimes androids do that.' But the situation was rare.
'Yes, I'll take care of it,' Phil Resch said. 'You won't have to do anything, besides administering the test.'
A patrol car arrived; two policemen hopped out, strode up, saw the crowd of people and at once cleared themselves a passage through. One of them recognized Rick and nodded. So we can go now, Rick realized. Our business here is concluded. Finally.
As he and Resch walked back down the street to the opera house, on whose roof their hovercar lay parked, Resch said, 'I'll give you my laser tube now. So you won't have to worry about my reaction to the test. In terms of your own personal safety.' He held out the tube and Rick accepted it.
'How'll you kill yourself without it?' Rick asked. 'If you fail on the teat?'
'I'll hold my breath.';
'I'll hold my breath.'
'Chrissake,' Rick said. 'It can't be done.'
'There's no automatic cut-in of the vagus nerve,' Phil Resch said, 'in an android. As there is in a human. Weren't you taught that when they trained you? I got taught that years ago.'
'But to die that way,' Rick protested.
'There's no pain. What's the matter with it?'
'It's -' He gestured. Unable to find the right words.
'I don't really think I'm going to have to,' Phil Resch said.
Together they ascended to the roof of the War Memorial Opera House and Phil Resch's parked hovercar.
Sliding behind the wheel and closing his door, Phil Resch said, 'I would prefer it if you used the Bond test.'
'I can't. I don't know how to score it.' I would have to rely on you for an interpretation of the readings, he realized. And that's out of the question.
'You'll tell me the truth, won't you?' Phil Resch asked. 'If I'm an android you'll tell me?'
'Sure.'
'Because I really want to know. I have to know.' Phil Resch relit his cigar, shifted about on the bucket seat of the car, trying to make himself comfortable. Evidently he could not. 'Did you rea ly like that Munch picture that Luba Luft was looking at?' he asked. 'I didn't care for it. Realism in art doesn't interest me; I like Picasso and -'
'"Puberty" dates from 1894,' Rick said shortly. 'Nothing but realism existed then; you have to take that into account.'
'But that other one, of the man holding his ears and yelling - that wasn't representational.'
Opening his briefcase, Rick fished out his test gear.
'Elaborate,' Phil Resch observed, watching. 'How many questions do you have to ask before you can make a determination?'
'Six or seven.' He handed the adhesive pad to Phil Resch.
'Attach that to your cheek. Firmly. And this light -' He aimed it. 'This stays focussed on your eye. Don't move; keep your eyeball as steady as you can.'
'Reflex fluctuations,' Phil Resch said acutely. 'But not to the physical stimulus; you're not measuring dilation, for instance. It'll be to the verbal questions; what we call a flinch - reaction.'
Rick said, 'Do you think you can control it?'
'Not really. Eventually, maybe. But not the initial amplitude; that's outside conscious control If it weren't -' He broke off. 'Go ahead. I'm tense; excuse me if I talk too much.'
'Talk all you want,' Rick said. Talk all the way to the tomb, he said to himself. If you feel like it. It didn't matter to him.
'If I test out android,' Phil Resch prattled, 'you'll undergo renewed faith in the human race. But, since it's not going to work out that way, I suggest you begin framing an ideology which will account for -'
'Here's the first question,' Rick said; the gear had now been set up and the needles of the two dials quivered. 'Reaction time is a factor, so answer as rapidly as you can.' From memory he selected an initial question. The test had begun.

Afterward, Rick sat in silence for a time. Then he began gathering his gear together, stuffing it back in the briefcase.
'I can tell by your face,' Phil Resch said; he exhaled in absolute, weightless, almost convulsive relief. 'Okay; you can give me my gun back.' He reached out, his palm up, waiting.
'Evidently you were right,' Rick said. 'About Garland's motives. Wanting to split us up; what you said.' He felt both psychologically and physically weary.
'Do you have your ideology framed?' Phil Resch asked.
'That would explain me as part of the human race?'
Rick said, 'There is a defect in your emphatic, role-taking ability. One which we don't test for. Your feelings toward androids.'
'Of course we don't test for that.'
'Maybe we should.' He had never thought of it before, had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed. Always he had assumed that throughout his psyche he experienced the android as a clever machine - as in his conscious view. And yet, in contrast to Phil Resch, a difference had manifested itself. And he felt instinctively that he was right. Empathy toward an artificial construct? he asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive? But Luba Luft had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of a simulation.
'You realize,' Phil Resch said quietly, 'what this would do. If we included androids in our range of empathic identification, as we do animals.'
'We couldn't protect ourselves.'
Ahsolutely. These Nexus-6 types ... they'd roll all over us and mash us flat. You and I, all the bounty hunters - we stand between the Nexus-6 and mankind, a barrier which keeps the two distinct. Furthermore -' He ceased, noticing that Rick was once again hauling out his test gear. 'I thought the test was over.'
'I want to ask myself a question,' Rick said. 'And I want you to tell me what the needles register. Just give me the calibration; I can compute it.' He plastered the adhesive disc against us cheek, arranged the beam of light until it fed directly into his eye. 'Are you ready? Watch the dials. We'll exclude time lapse in this; I just want magnitude.'
'Sure, Rick,' Phil Resch said obligingly.
Aloud, Rick said, 'I'm going down by elevator with an android l've captured. And suddenly someone kills it, without framing.'
'No particular response,' Phil Resch said.
'What'd the needles hit?'
'The left one 2.8. The right one 3.3.'
Rick said, 'A female android.'
'Now they're up to 4.0 and 6.0 respectively.'
'That's high enough,' Rick said; he removed the wired adhesive disc from his cheek and shut off the beam of light. 'That's an emphatically empathic response,' he said. 'About what a human subject shows for most questions. Except for the extreme ones, such as those dealing with human pelts used decoratively ... the truly pathological ones.'
'Meaning?'
Rick said, 'I'm capable of feeling empathy for at least specific, certain androids. Not for all of them but - one or two.' For Luba Luft, as an example, he said to himself. So I was wrong. There's nothing unnatural or unhuman about Phil Resch's reactions; it's me.
I wonder, he wondered, if any human has ever felt this way before about an android.
Of course, he reflected, that may never come up again in my work; it could be an anomaly, something for instance to do with my feelings for "The Magic Flute". And for Luba's voice, in fact her career as a whole. Certainly this had never come up before; or at least not that he had been aware of. Not, for example, with Polokov. Nor with Garland. And, he realized, if Phil Resch had proved out android I could have killed him without feeling anything, anyhow after Luba's death.
So much for the distinction between authentic living humans and humanoid constructs. In that elevator at the museum, he said to himself, I rode down with two creatures, one human, the other android ... and my feelings were the reverse of those intended. Of those I'm accustomed to feel - am required to feel.
'You're in a spot, Deckard,' Phil Resch said; it seemed to amuse him.
Rick said, 'What - should I do?'
'It's sex,' Phil Resch said.
'Sex?'
'Because she - it - was physically attractive. Hasn't that ever happened to you before?' Phil Resch laughed. 'We were taught that it constitutes a prime problem in bounty hunting. Don't you know, Deckard, that in the colonies they have android mistresses?'
'It's illegal,' Rick said, knowing the law about that.
'Sure it's illegal, But most variations in sex are illegal. But people do it anyhow.'
'What about - not sex - but love?'
'Love is another name for sex.'
'Like love of country,' Rick said. 'Love of music.'
'If it's love toward a woman or an android imitation, it's sex. Wake up and face yourself, Deckard. You wanted to go to bed with a female type of android - nothing more, nothing less. I felt that way, on one occasion. When I had just started bounty hunting. Don't let it get you down; you'll heal. What's happened is that you've got your order reversed. Don't kill her - or be present when she's killed - and then feel physically attracted. Do it the other way.'
'Go to bed with her first-'
Rick stared at him. 'Go to bed with her first-'
'- and then kill her,' Phil Resch said succinctly. His grainy, hardened smile remained.
You're a good bounty hunter, Rick realized. Your attitude proves it. But am I?
Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he had begun to wonder.

13

Like an arc of pure fire, John R. Isidore soared across the late-afternoon sky on his way home from his job. I wonder if she's still there, he said to himself. Down in that kippleinfested old apt, watching Buster Friendly on her TV set and quaking with fear every time she imagines someone coming down the hall. Including, I suppose, me.
Planing the dinner
He had already stopped off at a blackmarket grocery store. On the seat beside him a bag of such delicacies as bean curd, ripe peaches, good soft evil-smelling cheese rocked back and forth as he alternately speeded up and slowed down his car; being tense, tonight, he drove somewhat erratically. And his allegedly repaired car coughed and floundered, as it had been doing for months prior to overhaul. Rats, Isidore said to himself.
The smell of peaches and cheese eddied about the car,fill his nose with pleasure. All rarities, for which he had squandered two weeks' salary - borrowed in advance from Mr Sloat. And, in addition, under the car seat where it could not roll and break, a bottle of Chablis wine knocked back and forth; the greatest rarity of all. He had been keeping it in a safety deposit box at the Bank of America, hanging on to it and not selling it no matter how much they offered, in case at some long, late, last moment a girl appeared. That had not happened, not until now.
The rubbish-littered, lifeless roof of his apartment building as always depressed him. Passing from his car to the elevator door he damped down his peripheral vision; he concentrated on the valuable bag and bottle which be carried, making certain that he tripped over no trash and took no ignominious pratfall to economic doom. When the elevator creakily arrived he rode it - not to his own floor - but to the lower level on which the new tenant, Pris Stratton, now lived. Presently he stood in front of her door, rapping with the edge of the wine bottle, his heart going to pieces inside his chest.
'Who's there?' Her voice, muffled by the door and yet clear. A frightened, but blade-sharp tone.
'This is J.R. Isidore speaking,' he said briskly, adopting the new authority which he had so recently acquired via Mr Sloat's vidphone. 'I have a few desirable items here and I think we can put together a more than reasonable dinner.'
The door, to a limited extent, opened; Pris, no lights on in the room behind her, peered out into the dim hall. 'You sound different,' she said. 'More grown up.'
'I had a few routine matters to deal with during business hours today. The usual. If you c-c-could let me in-'
'You'd talk about them.' However, she held the door open wide enough for him to enter. And then, seeing what he carried, she exclaimed; her face ignited with elfin, exuberant glee. But almost at once, without warning, a lethal bitterness crossed her features, set concrete-like in place. The glee had gone.
'What is it?' he said; he carried the packages and bottle to the kitchen, set them down and hurried back.
Tonelessly, Pris said, 'They're wasted on me.'
'Why?'
'Oh ...' She shrugged, walking aimlessly away, her hands in the pockets of her heavy; rather old-fashoned skirt. 'Sometime I'll tell you.' She raised her eyes, then. 'It was nice of - you anyhow. Now I wish you'd leave. I don't feel like seeing anyone.' In a vague fashion she moved toward the door to the hall; her steps dragged and she seemed depleted, her store of energy fading almost out.
'I know what's the matter with you,' he said.
'Oh?' Her voice, as she reopened the hall door, dropped even further into uselessness, listless and barren.
'You don"t have any friends. You're a lot worse than when I saw you this morning; it's because -'
'I have friends.' sudden authority stiffened her voice; she palpably regained vigour. 'Or I had. Seven of them. That was to start with but now the bounty hunters have had time to get to work. So some of them - maybe all of them - are dead.'
She wandered toward the window, gazed out at the blackness and the few lights here and there. 'I may be the only one of the eight of us left. So maybe you're right.'
'I will protect you.'
'What's a bounty hunter?'
'That's right. You people aren't supposed to know. A bounty hunter is a professional murderer who's given a list of those he's supposed to kill. He's paid a sum - a thousand dollars is the going rate, I understand - for each he gets. Usually he has a contract with a city so he draws a salary as well. But they keep that low so he'll have incentive.'
'Are you sure?' Isidore asked.
'Yes.' She nodded. 'You mean am I sure he has incentive? Yes, he has incentive. He enjoys it.'
'I think,' Isidore said, 'you're mistaken.' Never in his life had he heard of such a thing. Buster Friendly, for instance, had never mentioned it. 'It's not in accord with present-day Mercerian ethics,' he pointed out. 'All life is one; "no man Is an island", as Shakespeare said in olden times.'
'John Donne.'
Isidore gestured in agitation. 'That's worse than anything I ever heard of. Can't you call the police?'
'No.'
'And they're after you? They're apt to come here and kill you?' He understood, now, why the girl acted in so secretive a fashion. 'No wonder you're scared and don't want to see anybody.' But he thought, it must be a delusion. She must be psychotic. With delusions of persecution. Maybe from brain damage due to the dust; maybe she's a special. 'I'll get them first,' he said.
'With what?' Faintly, she smiled; she showed her small, even, white teeth.
'I'll get a licence to carry a laser beam. It's easy to get, out here where there's hardly anybody; the police don't patrol - you're expected to watch out for yourself.'
'How about when you're at work?'
'I'll take a leave of absence!'
Pris said, 'That's very nice of you, J.R. Isidore. But if bounty hunters got the others, got Max Polokov and Garland and Luba and Hasking and Roy Baty -' She broke off. 'Roy and Irmgard Baty. If they're dead then it really doesn't matter. They're my best friends. Why the hell don't I hear from them, I wonder?' She cursed, angrily.
Making his way into the kitchen he got down dusty, long unused plates and bowls and glasses; he began washing them in the sink, running the rusty hot water until it cleared at last. Presently Pris appeared, seated herself at the table. He uncorked the bottle of Chablis, divided the peaches and the cheese and the bean curd.
'What's that white stuff? Not the cheese.' She pointed.
'Made from soy bean whey. I wish I had some -' He broke of, flushing. 'It used to be eaten with beef gravy.'
tales from Mars
'An android,' Pris murmured. 'That's the sort of slip an android makes. That's what gives it away.' She came over, stood beside him, and then to his stunned surprise put her arm around his waist and for an instant pressed against him. 'I'll try a slice of peach,' she said, and gingerly picked out a slippery pink-orange furry slice with her long fingers. And then, as she ate the slice of peach, she began to cry. Cold tears descended her cheeks, splashed on the bosom of her dress. He did not know what to do, so he continued dividing the food. 'Goddamn it,' she said, furiously 'Well -' She moved away from him, paced slowly, with measured steps, about the room. '- see, we lived on Mars. That's how come I know androids.' Her voice shook but she managed to continue obviously it meant a great deal to her to have someone to talk to.
'And the only people on Earth that you know,' Isidore said, 'are your fellow ex-emigrants.'
'We knew each other before the trip. A settlement near New New York. Roy Baty and Irmgard ran a drugstore; he was a pharmacist and she handled the beauty aids, the creams ointments; on Mars they use a lot of skin conditions. I -' She hesitated. 'I got various drugs from Roy - I needed them at first because - well, anyhow, it's an awful place. This' - she swept in the room, the apartment, in one violent gesture - 'this is nothing. You think I'm suffering because I'm lonely. Hell, all Mars is lonely. Much worse than this.'
'Don't the androids keep you company? I heard a commercial on -' Seating himself he ate, and presently she too picked up the glass of wine; she sipped expressionessly. 'I understood that the androids helped.'
'The androids,' she said, 'are lonely, too.'
'Do you like the wine?'
She set down her glass. 'It's fine.'
'It's the only bottle I've seen in three years.'
'We came back,' Pris said, 'because nobody should have to live there. It wasn't conceived for habitation, at least not within the last billion years. It's so old. You feel it in the stones, the terrible old age. Anyhow, at first I got drugs from Roy; I lived for that new synthetic pain-killer, that silenizine. And then I met Horst Hartman, who at that time ran a stamp store, rare postage stamps; there's so much time on your hands that you've got to have a hobby, something you can pore over endlessly. And Horst got me interested in pre-colonial fiction.'
Science Fiction Books
'You mean old books?'
'Stories written before space travel but about space travel.'
'How could there have been stories about space travel before-'
'The writers,' Pris said, 'made it up.'
'Based on what?' 'On imagination. A lot of times they turned out wrong. For example they wrote about Venus being a jungle paradise with huge monsters and women in breastplates that glistened.' She eyed him. 'Does that interest you? Big women with long braided blonde hair and gleaming breastplates the size of melons?'
'No,' he said.
'Irmgard is blonde,' Pris said. 'But small. Anyhow, there's a fortune to be made in smuggling pre-colonial fiction, the old magazines and books and films, to Mars. Nothing is as exciting. To read about cities and huge industrial enterprises, and really successful colonization, You can imagine what it might have been like. What Mars ought to be like. Canals.'
'Canals?' Dimly, he remembered reading about that; in the olden days they had believed in canals on Mars.
'Crisscrossing the planet,' Pris said. 'And beings from other stars. With infinite wisdom. And stories about Earth, set in our time and even later. Where there's no radioactive dust.'
'I would think,' Isidore said, 'it would make you feel worse.'
'It doesn't,' Pris said curtly.
'Did you bring any of that pre-colonial reading material back with you?' It occurred to him that he ought to try some.
'It's worthless, here, because here on Earth the craze never caught on. Anyhow there's plenty here, in the libraries; that's where we get all of ours - stolen from libraries here on Earth and shot by autorocket to Mars. You're out at night-bumbling across the open space, and all of a sudden you see a flare, and there's a rocket, cracked open, with old pre-colonial fiction magazines spilling out everywhere. A fortune. But of course you read them before you sell them.' She warmed to her topic. 'Of all -,
A knock sounded on the hall door.
Ashen Pris whispered, 'I can't go. Don't make any noise; just sit.' She strained, listening. 'I wonder if the door's locked,' she said almost inaudibly. 'God, I hope so.' Her eyes, wild and powerful, fixed themselves beseechingly on him, as if praying to him to make it true.
A far-off voice from the hall called, 'Pris, are you in there?'
A man's voice. 'It's Roy and Irmgard. We got your card.'
Rising and, going into the bedroom, Pris reappeared carrying a pen and a scrap of paper; she reseated herself, scratched out a hasty message.
YOU GO TO THE DOOR.
Isidore, nervously, took the pen from her and wrote:
AND SAY WHAT?
With anger, Pris scratched out:
SEE IF IT'S REALLY THEM.
Getting up, he walked glumly into the living-room. How would I know if it was them? he inquired of himself. He opened the door.
Two people stood in the dim hall, a small woman, lovely in the manner of Greta Garbo, with blue eyes and yellow blonde hair; the man larger, with intelligent eyes but flat, Mongolian features which gave him a brutal look. The woman wore a fashionable wrap, high shiny boots, and tapered pants; the man lounged in a rumpled shirt and stained trousers, giving an air of almost deliberate vulgarity. He smiled at Isidore but his bright, small eyes remained oblique.
'We're looking -' the small blonde woman began, but then she saw past Isidore; her face dissolved in rapture and she whisked past him, calling. 'Pris! How are you!' Isidore turned. The two women were embracing. He stepped aside, and Roy Baty entered, sombre and large, smiling his crooked, tuneless smile.

14

'Can we talk?' Roy said, indicating Isidore.
Pris, vibrant with bliss, said, 'It's okay up to a point.' To Isidore she said, 'Excuse us.' She led the Batys off to one side and muttered at them; then the three of them returned to confront J.R. Isidore, who felt uncomfortable and out of place. 'This is Mr Isidore,' Pris said. 'He's taking care of me.' The words came out tinged with an almost malicious sarcasm; Isidore blinked. 'See? He brought me some natural food.'
'Food,' Irmgard Baty echoed, and trotted lithely into the kitchen to see. 'Peaches,' she said, immediately picking up a bowl and spoon; smiling at Isidore she ate with brisk little animal bites. Her smile, different from Pris's, provided simple warmth; it had no veiled overtones.
Going after her - he felt attracted to her - Isidore said, 'You're from Mars.'
Defensive plans;
'Yes, we gave up.' Her voiced bobbed, as, with birdish acumen, her blue eyes sparkled at him. 'What an awful building you live in. Nobody else lives here, do they? We didn't see any other lights.'
'I live upstairs,' Isidore said.
'Oh, I thought you and Pris were maybe living together.' Irmgard Baty did not sound disapproving; she meant it, obviously, as merely a statement.
Dourly - but still smiling his smile - Roy Baty said, 'Well, they got Polokov.'
The joy which had appeared on Pris's face at seeing her friends at once melted away. 'Who else?'
'They got Garland,' Roy Baty said. 'They got Anders and Gitchel and then just a little earlier today they got Luba.' He delivered the news as if, perversely, it pleased him to be telling this. As if he derived pleasure from Pris's shock. 'I didn't think they'd get Luba; remember I kept saying that during the trip?'
'So that leaves -' Pris said.
'The three of us,' Irmgard said with apprehensive urgency.
'That's why we're here.' Roy Baty's voice boomed out with new, unexpected warmth; the worse the situation the more he seemed to enjoy it. Isidore could not fathom him in the slightest.
'Oh god,' Pris said, stricken.
'Well, they had this investigator, this bounty hunter.' Irmgard said in agitation, 'named Dave Holden.' Her lips dripped venom at the name. 'And then Polokov almost got him.'
'Almost got him,' Roy echoed, his smile now immense.
'So he's in this hospital, this Holden,' Irmgard continued, 'And evidently they gave his list to another bounty hunter, and Polokov almost got him, too. But it wound up with him retiring Polokov. And then he went after Luba; we know that because she managed to get hold of Garland and he sent out someone to capture the bounty hunter and take him to the Mission Street building. See, Luba called us after Garland's agent picked up the bounty hunter. She was sure it would be okay; she was sure that Garland would kill him.' She added, 'But evidently something went wrong on Mission. We don't know what. Maybe we never will.'
Pris asked, 'Does this bounty hunter have our names?'
'Oh yes, dear, I suppose he does,' Irmgard said. 'But he doesn't know where we are. Roy and I aren't going back to our apartment; we have as much stuff in our car as we could cram in, and we've decided to take one of these abandoned apartments in this ratty old building.'
'Is that wise?' Isidore spoke up, summoning courage. 'T-t-to all be in one place?'
'Well, they got everybody else,' Irmgard said, matter-of-factly; she, too, like her husband, seemed strangely resigned, despite her superficial agitation. All of them, Isidore thought; they're all strange. He sensed it without being able to finger It. As if a peculiar and malign abstractness pervaded their mental processes. Except, perhaps, for Pris; certainly she was radically frightened. Pris seemed almost right, almost natural. But -
'Why don't you move in with him?' Roy said to Pris, indicating Isidore. 'He could give you a certain amount of protection.'
'A chickenhead?' Pris said. 'I'm not going to live with a chickenhead.' Her nostrils flared.
Irmgard said rapidly, 'I think you're foolish to be a snob at a time like this. Bounty hunters move fast; he may try to tie it up this evening. There may be a bonus in it for him if he got it done by-'
'Keerist, close the hall door,' Roy said, going over to it; he slammed it with one blow of his hand, thereupon summarily locking it. 'I think you should move in with Isidore, Pris, and I think Irm and I should be here in the same building; that way we can help each other. I've got some electronic components in my car, junk I ripped off the ship. I'll install a two way bug so Pris you can hear us and we can hear you, and I'll rig up an alarm system that any of the four of us can set off. It's obvious that the synthetic identities didn't work out, even Garland's. Of course, Garland put his head in the noose by bringing the bounty hunter to the Mission Street building; that was a mistake. And Polokov, instead of staying as far away as possible from the hunter, chose to approach him. We won't do that; we'll stay put.' He did not sound worried in the slightest; the situation seemed to rouse him to crackling near-manic energy. 'I think -' He sucked in his breath noisily, holding the attention of everyone else in the room, including Isidore. 'I think that there's a reason why the three of us are still alive. I think if he had any clue as to where we are he'd have shown up here by now. The whole idea in bounty hunting is to work as fast as hell. That's where the profit comes.'
'And if he waits,' Irmgard said in agreement, 'we slip away, like we've done. I bet Roy is right; I bet he has our names but no location. Poor Luba; stuck in the War Memorial Opera House, right out in the open. No difficulty finding her.'
'Well,' Roy said stiltedly, 'she wanted it that way; she believed she'd be safer as a public figure.'
'You told her otherwise,' Irmgard said.
'Yes,' Roy agreed, 'I told her, and I told Polokov not to try to pass himself off as a W.P.O. man. And I told Garland that one of his own bounty hunters would get him, which is very possibly, just conceivably, exactly what did happen.' He rocked back and forth on his heavy heels, his face wise with profundity.
Isidore spoke up. 'I-I-I gather from l-l-listening to Mr Baty that he's your n-n-natural leader.'
'Oh yes, Roy's a leader,' Irmgard said.
Pris said, 'He organized our - trip. From Mars to here.'
Isisdores imagine of a blade runner
'Then,' Isidore said, 'you better do what h-h-he suggests.' His voice broke with hope and tension. 'I think it would be t-t-terrific, Pris, if you I-I-lived with me. I'll stay home a couple of days from my job - I have a vacation coming. To make sure you're okay,' And maybe Milt, who was very inventive, could design a weapon for him to use. Something imaginative, which would slay bounty hunters ... whatever they were. He had an indistinct, glimpsed-darkly impression: of something merciless that carried a printed list and a gun, that moved machine-like through the flat, bureaucratic job of killing. A thing without emotions, or even a face; a thing that if killed got replaced immediately by another resembling it. And so on, until everyone real and alive had been shot.
Incredible, he thought, that the police can't do anything. I can't believe that. These people must have done something. Perhaps they emigrated back to Earth illegally. We're told - the TV tells us - to report any landing of a ship outside the approved pads. The police must be watching for this.
But even so, no one got killed deliberately any more. It ran contrary to Mercerism..
'The chickenhead,' Pris said, 'likes me.'
'Don't call him that, Pris,' Irmgard said; she gave Isidore a look of compassion. 'Think what he could call you.'
Pris said nothing. Her expression became enigmatic.
'I'll go start rigging up the bug,' Roy said. 'Irmgard and I'll stay in this apartment; Pris you go with - Mr Isidore.' He started toward the door, striding with amazing speed for a man so heavy. In a blur he disappeared out the door, which banged back as he flung it open. Isidore, then, had a momentary, strange hallucination; he saw briefly a frame of metal, a platform of pullies and circuits and batteries and turrets and gears and then the slovenly shape of Roy Baty faded back into view. Isidore felt a laugh rise up inside him; he nervously choked it off. And felt bewildered.
'A man,' Pris said distantly, 'of action. Too bad he's so poor with his hands, doing mechanical things.'
'If we get saved,' Irmgard said in a scolding, severe tone, as if chiding her, 'it'll be because of Roy.'
'But is it worth it,' Pris said, mostly to herself. She shrugged, then nodded to Isidore. 'Okay, J.R. I'll move in with you and you can protect me.'
'A-a-all of you,' Isidore said immediately.
Solemnly, in a formal little voice, Irmgard Baty said to him, 'I want you to know we appreciate it very much, Mr Isidore. You're the first friend I think any of us have found here on Earth. It's very nice of you and maybe sometime we can repay you.' She glided over to pat him on the arm.
'Do you have any pre-colonial fiction I could read?' he asked her.
'Pardon?' Irmgard Baty glanced inquiringly at Pris.
'Those old magazines,' Pris said; she had gathered a few things together to take with her, and Isidore lifted the bundle from her arms, feeling the glow that comes only from satisfaction at a goal achieved. 'No, J.R. We didn't bring any back with us, for reasons I explained.'
'I'll g-g-go to a library tomorrow,' he said, going out into the hall. 'And g-g-get you and me too some to read, so you'll have something to do besides just waiting.'

He led Pris upstairs to his own apartment, dark and empty and stuffy and lukewarm as it was; carrying her possessions into the bedroom, he at once turned on the heater, lights, and the TV to its sole channel.
'I like this,' Pris said, but in the same detached and remote tone as before. She meandered about, hands thrust in her skirt pockets; on her face a sour expretsion, almost righteous in the degree of its displeasure, appeared. In contrast to her stated reaction.
'What's the matter?' he asked as he laid her possessions out on the couch.
'Nothing.' She halted at the picture window, drew the drapes back, and gazed morosely out.
'If you think they're looking for you -' he began.
'It's a dream,' Pris said. 'Induced by drugs that Roy gave me.'
'P-pardon?'
'You really think that bounty hunters exist?'
'Mr Baty said they killed your friends.'
'Roy Baty is as crazy as I am,' Pris said. 'Our trip was between a mental hospital on the East Coast and here. We're all schizophrenic, with defective emotional lives - flattening of affect, it's called. And we have group hallucinations.'
'I didn't think it was true,' he said full of relief.
'Why didn't you?' She swivelled to stare intently at him; her scrutiny was so strict that he felt himself flushing.
'B-b-because things like that don't happen. The g-g-goverment never kills anyone, for any crime. And Mercerism -'
'But you see,' Pris said, 'if you're not human, then it's all different.'
That's not true. Even animals - even eels and gophers and snakes and spiders - are sacred.'
Pris, stiff regarding him fixedly, said, 'So it can't be, can it? As you say, even animals are protected by law. All life. Everything organic that wriggles or squirms or burrows or flies or swarms or lays eggs or -' She broke off, becuse Roy Baty had appeared, abruptly throwing the door of the apartment open and entering; a trail of wire rustled after him.
'Insects,' he said, showing no embarrassment at overhearing them, 'are especially sacrosanct.' Lifting a picture from the wall of the living-room he attached a small electronic device to the nail, stepped back, viewed it, then replaced the picture. 'Now the alarm.' He gathered up the trailing wire, which led to a complex assembly. Smiling his discordant smile, he showed the assembly to Pris and John Isidore. 'The alarm. These wires go under the carpet; they're antennae. It picks up the presence of a -' He hesitated. 'A mentational entity,' he said obscurely, 'which isn't one of us four.'
'So it rings,' Pris said, 'and then what? He'll have a gun. We can't fall on him and bite him to death.'
'This assembly,' Roy continued, 'has a Penfield unit built into it. When the alarm has been triggered it radiates a mood of panic to the - intruder. Unless he acts very fast, which he may. Enormous panic; I have the gain turned all the way up. No human being can remain in the vicinity more than a matter of seconds. That's the nature of panic: it leads to random circus-motions, purposeless flight, and muscle - and neural spasms.' He concluded, 'Which will give us an opportunity to get him. Possibly. Depending on how good he is.'
Isidore said, 'Won't the alarm affect us?'
'That's right,' Pris said to Roy Baty. 'It'll affect Isidore.'
'Well, so what,' Roy said. And resumed his task of installation. 'So they both go racing out of here panic-stricken. It'll still give us time to react. And they won't kill Isidore; he's not on their list. That's why he's usable as a cover.'
Pris said brusquely, 'You can't do any better, Roy?'
'No,' he answered, 'I can't.'
'I'll be able to g-g-get a weapon tomorrow,' Isidore spoke up.
'You're sure Isidore's presence here won't set off the alarm?' Pris said. 'After all, he's - you know.'
'I've compensated for his cephalic emanations,' Roy explained. 'Their sum won't trip anything; it'll take an additional human. Person.' Scowling, he glanced at Isidore, aware of what he had said.
'You're androids,' Isidore said. But he didn't care; it made no difference to him. 'I see why they want to kill you,' he said. 'Actually you're not alive.' Everything made sense to him, now. The bounty hunter, the killing of their friends, the trip to Earth, all these precautions.
'When I used the word "human",' Roy Baty said to Pris, 'I used the wrong word.'
'That's right, Mr Baty,' Isidore said. 'But what does it matter to me? I mean, I'm a special; they don't treat me very well either, like for instance I can't emigrate.' He found himself yabbering away like a folletto. 'You can't come here; I can't -' He calmed himself.
After a pause Roy Baty said laconically, 'You wouldn't enjoy Mars. You're missing nothing.'
'I wondered how long it would be,' Pris said to Isidore, 'before you realized. We are different, aren't we?'
'That's what probably tripped up Garland and Max Polokov,' Roy Baty said. 'They were so goddamn sure they could pass. Luba, too.'
'You're intellectual,' lsidore said; he felt excited again at having understood. Excitement and pride. 'You think abstractly, and you don't -' He gesticulated, his words tangling up with one another. As usual. 'I wish I had an I like you have; then I could pass the test, I wouldn't be a chickenhead. I think you're very superior; I could learn a lot from you.'
After an interval Roy Baty said 'I'll finish wiring up the alarm.' He resumed work.
'He doesn't understand yet,' Pris said in a sharp, brittle stentorian voice, 'how we got off Mars. What we did there.'
'What we couldn't help doing,' Roy Baty grunted.
At the open door to the hall Irmgard Baty had been standing they noticed her as she spoke up. 'I don't think we have to worry about Mr Isidore,' she said earnestly; she walked swiftly toward him, looked up into his face. 'They don't treat him very well either, as he said. And what we did on Mars he isn't interested in; he knows us and he likes us and an emotional acceptance like that - it's everything to him. It's hard for us to grasp that, but it's true.' To Isidore she said, standing very close to him once again and peering up at him, 'You could a lot of money by turning us in; do you realize that?'Twisting she said to her husband, 'See, he realizes that but still he wouldn't say anything.'
'You're a great man, Isidore,' Pris said. 'You're a credit to your race.'
If he was an android,' Roy said heartily, 'he'd turn us in about ten tomorrow morning. He'd take off for his job and that would be it. I'm overwhelmed with admiration.' His tone could not be deciphered; at least Isidore could not crack it. And we imagined this would be a friendless world, a planet of hostile faces, all turned against us.' He barked out a laugh.
'I'm not at all worried,' Irmgard said.
'You ought to be scared to the soles of your feet,' Roy said.
'Let's vote,' Pris said. 'As we did on the ship, when we had a disagreement.'
'Well,' Irmgard said, 'I won't say anything more. But if we turn this down I don't think we'll find any other human being who'll take us in and help us? Mr Isidore is -' She searched for word.
'Special,' Pris said.


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