Roy Baty, in the other room, let out a cry of anguish.
“Okay, you loved her,” Rick said. “And I loved Rachael. And the special loved the other Rachael.” He shot Roy Baty; the big man’s corpse lashed about, toppled like an overstacked collection of separate, brittle entities; it smashed into the kitchen table and carried dishes and flatware down with it. Reflex circuits in the corpse made it twitch and flutter, but it had died; Rick ignored it, not seeing it and not seeing that of Irmgard Baty by the front door. I got the last one, Rick realized. Six today; almost a record. And now it’s over and I can go home, back to Iran and the goat. And we’ll have enough money, for once.
He sat down on the couch and presently as he sat there in the silence of the apartment, among the nonstirring objects, the special Mr. Isidore appeared at the door.
“Better not look,” Rick said.
“I saw her on the stairs. Pris.” The special was crying.
“Don’t take it so hard,” Rick said. He got dizzily to his feet, laboring. “Where’s your phone?”
The special said nothing, did nothing except stand. So Rick hunted for the phone himself, found it, and dialed Harry Bryant’s office.
TWENTY
“Good,” Harrv Bryant said, after he had been told. “Well, go get some rest. We’ll send a patrol car to pick up the three bodies.”
Rick Deckard hung up. “Androids are stupid,” he said savagely to the special. “Roy Baty couldn’t tell me from you; it thought you were at the door. The police will clean up in here; why don’t you stay in another apartment until they’re finished? You don’t want to be in here with what’s left.”
“I’m leaving this b-b-building,” Isidore said. “I’m going to l-l-live deeper in town where there’s m-m-more people.”
“I think there’s a vacant apartment in my building,” Rick said.
Isidore stammered, “I don’t w-w-want to live near you.”
“Go outside or upstairs,” Rick said. “Don’t stay in here.”
The special floundered, not knowing what to do; a variety of mute expressions crossed his face and then, turning, he shuffled out of the apartment, leaving Rick alone.
What a job to have to do, Rick thought. I’m a scoure, like famine or plague. Where I go the ancient curse follows.
As Mercer said, I am required to do wrong. Everything I’ve done has been wrong from the start. Anyhow now it’s time to go home. Maybe, after I’ve been there awhile with Iran I’ll forget.
When he got back to his own apartment building, Iran met him on the roof. She looked at him in a deranged, peculiar way; in all his years with her he had never seen her like this.
Putting his arm around her he said, “Anyhow it’s over. And I’ve been thinking; maybe Harry Bryant can assign me to a — ”
“Rick,” she said, “I have to tell you something. I’m sorry. The goat is dead.”
For some reason it did not surprise him; it only made him feel worse, a quantitative addition to the weight shrinking him from every side. “I think there’s a guarantee in the contract,” he said. “If it gets sick within ninety days the dealer — ”
“It didn’t get sick. Someone” — Iran cleared her throat and went on huskily — “someone came here, got the goat out of its cage, and dragged it to the edge of the roof.”
“And pushed it off?” he said.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“Did you see who did it?”
“I saw her very clearly,” Iran said. “Barbour was still up here fooling around; he came down to get me and we called the police, but by then the animal was dead and she had left. A small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black eyes, very thin. Wearing a long fish-scale coat. She had a mail-pouch purse. And she made no effort to keep us from seeing her. As if she didn’t care.”
“No, she didn’t care,” he said. “Rachael wouldn’t give a damn if you saw her; she probably wanted you to, so I’d know who had done it.” He kissed her. “You’ve been waiting up here all this time?”
“Only for half an hour. That’s when it happened; half an hour ago.” Iran, gently, kissed him back. It’s so awful. So needless.”
He turned toward his parked car, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel. “Not needless,” he said. “She had what seemed to her a reason.” An android reason, he thought.
“Where are you going? Won’t you come downstairs and be with me? There was the most shocking news on TV; Buster Friendly claims that Mercer is a fake. What do you think about that, Rick? Do you think it could be true?”
“Everything is true,” he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought.” He snapped on the car motor.
“Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, and thought, And I’m going to die. Both those are true, too. He closed the car door, flicked a signal with his hand to Iran, and then swept up into the night sky.
Once, he thought, I would have seen the stars. Years ago. But now it’s only the dust; no one has seen a star in years, at least not from Earth. Maybe I’ll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.
TWENTY-ONE
In the early morning light the land below him extended seemingly forever, gray and refuse-littered. Pebbles the size of houses had rolled to a stop next to one another and he thought, It’s like a shipping room when all the merchandise has left. Only fragments of crates remain, the containers which signify nothing in themselves. Once, he thought, crops grew here and animals grazed. What a remarkable thought, that anything could have cropped grass here.
What a strange place he thought for all of that to die.
He brought the hovercar down, coasted above the surface for a time. What would Dave Holden say about me now? he asked himself. In one sense I’m now the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived; no one ever retired six Nexus-6 types in one twenty-four-hour span and no one probably ever will again. I ought to call him, he said to himself.
A cluttered hillside swooped up at him; he lifted the hovercar as the world came close. Fatigue, he thought; I shouldn’t be driving still. He clicked off the ignition, glided for an interval, and then set the hovercar down. It tumbled and bounced across the hillside, scattering rocks; headed upward, it came at last to a grinding, skittering stop.
Picking up the receiver of the car’s phone he dialed the operator at San Francisco. “Give me Mount Zion Hospital” he told her.
Presently he had another operator on the vidscreen. “Mount Zion Hospital.”
“You have a patient named Dave Holden,” he said. “Would it be possible to talk to him? Is he well enough?”
“Just a moment and I’ll check on that, sir.” The screen temporarily blanked out. Time passed. Rick took a pinch of Dr. Johnson Snuff and shivered; without the car’s heater the temperature had begun to plunge. “Dr. Costa says that Mr. Holden is not receiving calls,” the operator told him, reappearing.
“This is police business,” he said; he held his flat pack of ID up to the screen.
“Just a moment.” Again the operator vanished. Again Rick inhaled a pinch of Dr. Johnson Snuff; the menthol in it tasted foul, so early in the morning. He rolled down the car window and tossed the little yellow tin out into the rubble. “No, sir,” the operator said, once more on his screen. “Dr. Costa does not feel Mr. Holden’s condition will permit him to take any calls, no matter how urgent, for at least — ”
“Okay,” Rick said. He hung up.
The air, too, had a foul quality; he rolled up the window again. Dave is really out, he reflected. I wonder why they didn’t get me. Because I moved too fast, he decided. All in one day; they couldn’t have expected it. Harry Bryant was right.
The car had become too cold, now, so he opened the door and stepped out. A noxious, unexpected wind filtered through his clothes and he began to walk, rubbing his hands together.
It would have been rewarding to talk to Dave, he decided. Dave would have approved what I did. But also he would have understood the other part, which I don’t think even Mercer comprehends. For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I’ve done, he thought; that’s become alien to me. In fact everything about me has become unnatural; I’ve become an unnatural self.