“You go ahead on your own,” Bryant decided. “And then on the next one, which’ll be a Miss Luba Luft — you have the sheet there on her, too — you can bring in Kadalyi.”
Having stuffed the onionskin carbons in his briefcase, Rick left his superior’s office and ascended once more to the roof and his parked hovercar. And now let’s visit Mr. Polokov, he said to himself. He patted his laser tube.
For his first try at the android Polokov, Rick stopped off at the offices of the Bay Area Scavengers Company.
“I’m looking for an employee of yours,” he said to the severe, gray-haired switchboard woman. The scavengers’ building impressed him; large and modern, it held a good number of high-cllass purely office employees. The deep-pile carpets, the expensive genuine wood desks, reminded him that garbage collecting and trash disposal had, since the war, become one of Earth’s important industries. The entire planet had begun to disintegrate into junk, and to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally . . . or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer — not of radioactive dust — but of kipple.
“Mr. Ackers,” the switchboard woman informed him. “He’s the personnel manager.” She pointed to an impressive but imitation oak desk at which sat a prissy, tiny, bespectacled individual, merged with his plethora of paperwork.
Rick presented his police ID. “Where’s your employee Polokov right now? At his job or at home?”
After reluctantly consulting his records Mr. Ackers said, “Polokov ought to be at work. Flattening hovercars at our Daly City plant and dumping them into the Bay. However — ” The personnel manager consulted a further document, then picked up his vidphone and made an inside call to someone else in the building. “He’s not, then,” he said, terminating the call; hanging up he said to Rick, “Polokov didn’t show up for work today. No explanation. What’s he done, officer? ”
“If he should show up,” Rick said, “don’t tell him I here asking about him. You understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Ackers said sulkily, as if his deep schooling in police matters had been derided.
In the department’s beefed-up hovercar Rick next flew to Polokov’s apartment building in the Tenderloin. We’ll never get him, he told himself. They — Bryant and Holden — waited too long. Instead of sending me to Seattle, Bryant should have sicced me on Polokov — better still last night, as soon as Dave Holden got his.
What a grimy place, he observed as he walked across the roof to the elevator. Abandoned animal pens, encrusted with months of dust. And, in one cage, a no longer functioning false animal, a chicken. By elevator he descended to Polokov’s floor, found the hall limit, like a subterranean cave. Using his police A-powered sealed-beam light he illuminated the hall and once again glanced over the onionskin carbon. The Voigt-Kampff test had been administered to Polokov; that part could be bypassed, and he could go directly to the task of destroying the android.
Best to get him from out here, he decided. Setting down his weapons kit he fumbled it open, got out a nondirectional Penfield wave transmitter; he punched the key for catalepsy, himself protected against the mood emanation by means of a counterwave broadcast through the transmitter’s metal hull directed to him alone.
They’re now all frozen stiff, he said to himself as he shut off the transmitter. Everyone, human and andy alike, in the vicinity. No risk to me; all I have to do is walk in and laser him. Assuming, of course, that he’s in his apartment, which isn’t likely.
Using an infinity key, which anayzed and opened all forms of locks known, he entered Polokov’s apartment, laser beam in hand.
No Polokov. Only semi-ruined furniture, a place of kipple and decay. In fact no personal articles: what greeted him consisted of unclaimed debris which Polokov had inherited when he took the apartment and which in leaving he had abandoned to the next — if any — tenant.
I knew it, he said to himself. Well, there goes the first thousand dollars bounty; probably skipped all the way to the Antarctic Circle. Out of my jurisdiction; another bounty hunter from another police department will retire Polokov and claim the money. On, I suppose, to the andys who haven’t been warned, as was Polokov. On to Luba Luft.
Back again on the roof in his hovercar he reported by phone to Harry Bryant. “No luck on Polokov. Left probably right after he lasered Dave.” He inspected his wristwatch. “Want me to pick up Kadalyi at the field? It’ll save time and I’m eager to get started on Miss Luft.” He already had the poop sheet on her laid out before him, had begun a thorough study of it.
“Good idea,” Bryant said, “except that Mr. Kadalyi is already here; his Aeroflot ship — as usual, he says — arrived early. Just a moment.” An invisible conference. “He’ll fly over and meet you where you are now,” Bryant said, returning to the screen. “Meanwhile read up on Miss Luft.”
“An opera singer. Allegedly from Germany. At present attached to the San Francisco Opera Company.” He nodded in reflexive agreement, mind on the poop sheet. “Must have a good voice to make connections so fast. Okay, I’ll wait here for Kadalyi.” He gave Bryant his location and rang off.
I’ll pose as an opera fan, Rick decided as he read further. I particularly would like to see her as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. In my personal collection I have tapes by such oldtime greats as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Lotte Lehmann and Lisa Della Casa; that’ll give us something to discuss while I set up my Voigt-Kampff equipment.
His car phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver.
The police operator said, “Mr. Deckard, a call for Von from Seattle; Mr. Bryant said to put it through to you. From the Rosen Association.”
“Okay,” Rick said, and waited. What do they want? he wondered. As far as he could discern, the Rosens had already proven to be bad news. And undoubtedly would continue so, whatever they intended.
Rachel Rosen’s face appeared on the tiny screen. “Hello, Officer Deckard.” Her tone seemed placating; that caught his attention. “Are you busy right now or can I talk to you?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“We of the association have been discussing your situation regarding the escaped Nexus-6 types and knowing them as we do we feel that you’ll have better luck if one of us works in conjunction with you.”
“By doing what?”
“Well, by one of us coming along with you. When you go out looking for them.”
“Why? What would you add?”
Rachael said, “The Nexus-6s would be wiry at being approached by a human. But if another Nexus-6 made the contact — ”
You specifically mean yourself.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her face sober.
“I’ve got too much help already.”
“But I really think you need me.”
“I doubt it. I’ll think it over and call you back.” At some distant, unspecified future time, he said to himself. Or more likely never. That’s all I need: Rachael Rosen popping up through the dust at every step.
“You don’t really mean it,” Rachael said. “You’ll never call me. You don’t realize how agile an illegal escaped Nexus-6 is, how impossible it’ll be for you. We feel we owe you this because of — you know. What we did.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.” He started to hang up.
“Without me,” Rachael said, “one of them will get you before you can get it.”
“Good-by,” he said and hung up. What kind of world is it, he asked himself, when an android phones up a bounty hunter and offers him assistance? He rang the police operator back. “Don’t put any more calls through to me from Seattle,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Deckard. Has Mr. Kadalyi reached you, yet?”
“I’m still waiting. And he had better hurry because I’m not going to be here long.” Again he hung up.
As he resumed reading the poop sheet on Luba Luft a hovercar taxi spun down to land on the roof a few yards off. From it a red-faced, cherubic-looking man, evidently in his mid-fifties, wearing a heavy and impressive Russian-style greatcoat, stepped and, smiling, his hand extended, approached Rick’s car.
“Mr. Deckard?” the man asked with a Slavic accent. “The bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department?” The empty taxi rose, and the Russian watched it go, absently. “I’m Sandor Kadalyi,” the man said, and opened the car door to squeeze in beside Rick.
As he shook hands with Kadalyi, Rick noticed that the W.P.O. representative carried an unusual type of laser tube, a subform which he had never seen before.
“Oh, this?” Kadalyi said. “Interesting, isn’t it?” He tugged it from his belt holster. “I got this on Mars.”