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ELEVEN
Garland said, "I guess so." He jabbed a finger at
the bounty hunter Phil Resch. "But I'm warning you:
you're not going to like the results of the tests."
"Do you know what they'll be?" Resch asked, with
visible surprise; he did not look pleased.
"I know almost to a hair," Inspector Garland said.
"Okay." Resch nodded. "I'll go upstairs and get the
Boneli gear." He strode to the door of the office,
opened it, and disappeared out into the hall. "I'll be
back in three or four minutes," he said to Rick. The
door shut after him.
Reaching into the right-hand top drawer of his desk,
Inspector Garland fumbled about, then brought forth a
laser tube; he swiveled it until it pointed at Rick.
"That's not going to make any difference," Rick
said. "Resch will have a postmortem run on me, the
same as your lab ran on Polokov. And he'll still insist
on a -- what did you call it -- Boneli Reflex-Arc Test
on you and on himself."
The laser tube remained in its position, and then
Inspector Garland said, "It was a bad day all day. Especially when I saw Officer Crams bringing you in; I
had an intuition -- that's why I intervened." By degrees
he lowered the laser beam; he sat gripping it and then
he shrugged and returned it to the desk drawer, locking
the drawer and restoring the key to his pocket.
"What will tests on the three of us
show?" Rick
asked.
Garland said, "That damn fool Resch."
"He actually doesn't know?"
"He doesn't know; he doesn't suspect; he doesn't
have the slightest idea. Otherwise he couldn't live out a
life as a bounty hunter, a human occupation -- hardly
an android occupation." Garland gestured toward
Rick's briefcase. "Those other carbons, the other sus
pects you're supposed to test and retire. I know them
all." He paused, then said, "We all came here together
on the same ship from Mars. Not Resch; he stayed
behind another week, receiving the synthetic memory
system." He was silent, then.
Or rather it was silent.
Rick said, "What'll he do when he finds out?"
"I don't have the foggiest idea," Garland said remotely. "It ought, from an abstract, intellectual view-point, to be interesting. He may kill me, kill himself;
maybe you, too. He may kill everyone he can, human
and android alike. I understand that such things happen, when there's been a synthetic memory system laid
down. When one thinks it's human."
"So when you do that, you're taking a chance."
Garland said, "It's a chance anyway, breaking free
and coming here to Earth, where we're not even considered animals. Where every worm and wood louse is
considered more desirable than all of us put together."
Irritably, Garland picked at his lower lip. "Your position would be better if Phil Resch could pass the Boneli
test, if it was just me. The results, that way, would be
predictable; to Resch I'd just be another andy to retire
as soon as possible. So you're not in a good position
either, Deckard. Almost as bad, in fact, as I am. You
know where I guessed wrong? I didn't know about
Polokov. He must have come here earlier; obviously he
came here earlier. In another group entirely -- no contact with ours. He was already entrenched in the W.P.O.
when I arrived. I took a chance on the lab report,
which I shouldn't have. Crams, of course, took the
same chance."
"Polokov was almost my finish, too," Rick said.
"Yes, there was something about him. I don't think
he could have been the same brain unit type as we; he
must have been souped up or tinkered with -- an altered structure,
unfamiliar even to us. A good one, too. Almost good enough."
"When I phoned my apartment," Rick said, "why
didn't I get my wife?"
"All our vidphone lines here are trapped. They recirculate the call to other offices within the building.
This is a homeostatic enterprise we're operating here,
Deckard. We're a closed loop, cut off from the rest of
San Francisco. We know about them but they don't
know about us. Sometimes an isolated person such as
yourself wanders in here or, as in your case, is brought
here -- for our protection." He gestured convulsively
toward the office door. "Here comes eagerbeaver Phil
Resch back with his handy dandy portable little test.
Isn't he clever? He's going to destroy his own life and
mine and possibly yours."
"You androids," Rick said, "don't exactly cover for
each other in times of stress."
Garland snapped, "I think you're right; it would
seem we lack a specific talent you humans possess. I
believe it's called empathy."
The office door opened; Phil Resch stood outlined,
carrying a device which trailed wires. "Here we are," he
said, closing the door after him; he seated himself,
plugging the device into the electrical outlet.
Bringing out his right hand, Garland pointed at
Resch. At once Resch -- and also Rick Deckard -- rolled
from their chairs and onto the floor; at the same time,
Resch yanked a laser tube and, as he fell, fired at Garland.
The laser beam, aimed with skill, based on years of
training, bifurcated Inspector Garland's head. He
slumped forward and, from his hand, his miniaturized
laser beam rolled across the surface of his desk. The
corpse teetered on its chair and then, like a sack of
eggs, it slid to one side and crashed to the floor.
"It forgot," Resch said, rising to his feet, "that this is
my job. I can almost foretell what an android is going to
do. I suppose you can, too." He put his laser beam
away, bent, and, with curiosity, examined the body of
his quondam superior. "What did it say to you while I
was gone?"
"That he -- it -- was an android. And you
--" Rick
broke off, the conduits of his brain humming, calculaing, and selecting; he altered what he had started to say.
"-- would detect it," he finished. "In a few more minutes."
"Anything else?"
"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, moni-toring 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 Luft before anyone here has
a chance to warn her as to how this came out. Warn it,
I should say. Do you think of 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 him for the next
half hour. He's involved in 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 in the building. Once we're airborne I'll naturaIly let you go." He produced a pair of cuffs, slapped
one onto Rick's wrist and the other around his own.
"Come on; let's get it over with." He squared hisshoulders, 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 police-like 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 take out Luba Luft; she's more than I could handle, anyhow. Let's keep our attention focused on that."
"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.
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