“I thought I knew every handgun made,” Rick said. “Even those manufactured at and for use in the colonies.”
“We made this ourselves,” Kadalyi said, beaming like a Slavic Santa, his ruddy face inscribed with pride. “You like it? What is different about it, functionally, is — here, take it.” He passed the gun over to Rick, who inspected it expertly, by way of years of experience.
“How does it differ functionally?” Rick asked. He couldn’t tell.
“Press the trigger.”
Aiming upward, out the window of the car, Rick squeezed the trigger of the weapon. Nothing happened; no beam emerged. Puzzled, he turned to Kadalyi.
“The triggering circuit,” Kadalyi said cheerfully, “isn’t attached. It remains with me. You see?” He opened his hand, revealed a tiny unit. “And I can also direct it, within certain limits. Irrespective of where it’s aimed.”
“You’re not Polokov, you’re Kadalyi,” Rick said.
“Don’t you mean that the other way around? You’re a bit confused.”
“I mean you’re Polokov, the android; you’re not from the Soviet police.” Rick, with his toe, pressed the emergency button on the floor of his car.
“Why won’t my laser tube fire?” Kadalyi-Polokov said, switching on and off the miniaturized triggering and aiming device which he held in the palm of his hand.
“A sine wave,” Rick said. “That phases out laser emanation and spreads the beam into ordinary light.”
“Then I’ll have to break your pencil neck.” The android dropped the device and, with a snarl, grabbed with both hands for Rick’s throat.
As the android’s hands sank into his throat Rick fired his regulation issue old-style pistol from its shoulder holster; the .38 magnum slug struck the android in the head and its brain box burst. The Nexus-6 unit which operated it blew into pieces, a raging, mad wind which carried throughout the car. Bits of it, like the radioactive dust itself, whirled down on Rick. The retired remains of the android rocked back, collided with the car door, bounced off and struck heavily against him; he found himself struggling to shove the twitching remnants of the android away.
Shakily, he at last reached for the car phone, called in to the Hall of Justice. “Shall I make my report?” he said. “Tell Harry Bryant that I got Polokov.”
“‘You got Polokov.’ He’ll understand that, will he?”
“Yes,” Rick said, and hung up. Christ that came close, he said to himself. I must have overreacted to Rachael Rosen’s warning; I went the other way and it almost finished me. But I got Polokov, he said to himself. His adrenal gland, by degrees, ceased pumping its several secretions into his bloodstream; his heart slowed to normal, his breathing became less frantic. But he still shook. Anyhow I made myself a thousand dollars just now, he informed himself. So it was worth it. And I’m faster to react than Dave Holden. Of course, however, Dave’s experience evidently prepared me; that has to be admitted. Dave had not had such warning.
Again picking up the phone he placed a call home to his apt, to Iran. Meanwhile he managed to light a cigarette; the shaking had begun to depart.
His wife’s face, sodden with the six-hour self-accusatory depression which she had prophesied, manifested itself on the vidscreen. “Oh hello, Rick.”
“What happened to the 594 I dialed for you before I left? Pleased acknowledgment of — ”
“I redialed. As soon as you left. What do you want?” Her voice sank into a dreary drone of despond. “I’m so tired and I just have no hope left, of anything. Of our marriage — and you possibly getting killed by one of those andys. Is that what you want to tell me, Rick? That an andy got you?” In the background the racket of Buster Friendly boomed and brayed, eradicating her words; he saw her mouth moving but heard only the TV.
“Listen,” he broke in. “Can you hear me? I’m on to something. A new type of android that apparently nobody can handle but me. I’ve retired one already, so that’s a grand to start with. You know what we’re going to have before I’m through?”
Iran stared at him sightlessly. “Oh,” she said, nodding.
“I haven’t said yet!” He could tell, now; her depression this time had become too vast for her even to hear him. For all intents he spoke into a vacuum. “I’ll see you tonight,” he finished bitterly and slammed the receiver down. Damn her, he said to himself. What good does it do, my risking my life? She doesn’t care whether we own an ostrich or not; nothing penetrates. I wish I had gotten rid of her two years ago when we were considering splitting up. I can still do it, he reminded himself.
Broodingly, he leaned down, gathered together on the car floor his crumpled papers, including the info on Luba Luft. No support, he informed himself. Most androids I’ve known have more vitality and desire to live than my wife. She has nothing to give me.
That made him think of Rachael Rosen again. Her advice to me as to the Nexus-6 mentality, he realized, turned out to be correct. Assuming she doesn’t want any of the bounty money, maybe I could use her.
The encounter with Kadalyi-Polokov had changed his ideas rather massively.
Snapping on his hovercar’s engine he whisked nippity-nip up into the sky, heading toward the old War Memorial Opera House, where, according to Dive Holden’s notes, he would find Luba Luft this time of the day.
He wondered, now, about her, too. Some female androids seemed to him pretty; he had found himself physically attracted by several, and it was an odd sensation, knowing intellectually that they were machines but emotionally reacting anyhow.
For example Rachael Rosen. No, he decided; she’s too thin. No real development, especially in the bust. A figure like a child’s, flat and tame. He could do better. How old did the poop sheet say Luba Luft was? As he drove he hauled out the now wrinkled notes, found her so-called “age.” Twenty-eight, the sheet read. Judged by appearance, which, with andys, was the only useful standard.
It’s a good thing I know something about opera, Rick reflected. That’s another advantage I have over Dave; I’m more culturally oriented.
I’ll try one more andy before I ask Rachael for help, he decided. If Miss Luft proves exceptionally hard—but he had an intuition she wouldn’t. Polokov had been the rough one; the others, unaware that anyone actively hunted them, would crumble in succession, plugged like a file of ducks.
As he descended toward the ornate, expansive roof of the opera house he loudly sang a potpourri of arias, with pseudo-Italian words made up on the spot by himself; even without the Penfield mood organ at hand his spirits brightened into optimism. And into hungry, gleeful anticipation.
NINE
In the enormous whale-belly of steel and stone carved out to form the long-enduring old opera house Rick Deckard found an echoing, noisy, slightly miscontrived rehearsal taking place. As he entered he recognized the music: Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the first act in its final scenes. The moor’s slaves — in other words the chorus — had taken up their song a bar too soon and this had nullified the simple rhythm of the magic bells.
What a pleasure; he loved The Magic Flute. He seated himself in a dress circle scat (no one appeared to notice him) and made himself comfortable. Now Popageno in his fantastic pelt of bird feathers had joined Pamina to sing words which always brought tears to Rick’s eyes, when and if he happened to think about it.
Könnte jedar brave Mann
solche Glöckchen finden,
eine Feinde würden dann
ohne Muhe schwinden.
Well, Rick thought, in real life no such magic bells exist that make your enemy effortlessly disappear. Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died in his thirties — of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked paupers’ grave.
Thinking this he wondered if Mozart had had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have, too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name “Mozart” will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I’m part of the form-destroying process of entropy. The Rosen Association creates and I unmake. Or anyhow so it must seem to them.
On the stage Papageno and Pamina engaged in a dialogue. He stopped his introspection to listen.
Papageno: “My child, what should we now say.