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TWENTY
Good," Harry 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
scourge, 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.
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