Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Chapter 8

After parking the departments speedy beefed-up hovercar on the roof of the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Lombard Street, bounty hunter Jeon Jungkook, briefcase in hand, descended to Harry Bryant's office.
"You're back awfully soon," his superior said, leaning back in his chair and taking a pinch of Specific No. 1 snuff.
"I got what you sent me for." Jungkook seated himself facing the desk. He set his briefcase down. I'm tired, he realized. It had begun to hit him, now that he had gotten back; he wondered if he would be able to recoup enough for the job ahead. "How's Yongguk?" he asked. "Well enough for me to go talk to him? I want to before I tackle the first of the andys."
Bryant said, "You'll be trying for Polokov first. The one that lasered Yongguk. Best to get him right out of it, since he knows we've got him listed."
"Before I talk to Yongguk?"
Bryant reached for a sheet of onionskin paper, a blurred third or fourth carbon. "Polokov has taken a job with the city as a trash collector, a scavenger."
"Don't only specials do that kind of work?"
"Polokov is mimicking a special, an anthead. Very deteriorated - or so he pretends to be. That's what suckered Yongguk; Polokov apparently looks and acts so much like an anthead that Yongguk forgot. Are you sure about the Voigt-Kampff scale now? You're absolutely certain, from what happened up in Seattle, that - "
"I am," Jungkook said shortly. He did not amplify.
Bryant said, "I'll take your word for it. But there can't be even one slip-up."
"There never could be in andy hunting. This is no different."
"The Nexus-6 is different."
"I already found my first one," Jungkook said. "And Yongguk found two. Three, if you count Polokov. Okay, I'll retire Polokov today, and then maybe tonight or tomorrow talk to Yongguk." He reached for the blurred carbon, the poop sheet on the android Polokov.
"One more item," Bryant said. "A Soviet cop, from the W.P.O., is on his way here. While you were in Seattle I got a call from him; he's aboard an Aeroflot rocket that'll touch down at the public field, here, in about an hour. Kwon Jiyong, his name is."
"What's he want?" Rarely if ever did W.P.O. cops show up in San Francisco.
"W.P.O. is enough interested in the new Nexus-6 types that they want a man of theirs to be with you. An observer and also, if he can, he'll assist you. It's for you to decide when and if he can be of value. But I've already given him permission to tag along."
"What about the bounty?" Jungkook said.
"You won't have to split it," Bryant said, and smiled creakily.
"I just wouldn't regard it as financially fair."
He had absolutely no intention of sharing his winnings with a thug from W.P.O. He studied the poop sheet on Polokov; it gave a description of the man - or rather the andy - and his current address and place of business: The Bay Area Scavengers Company with offices on Geary.
"Want to wait on the Polokov retirement until the Soviet cop gets here to help you?" Bryant asked.
Jungkook bristled. "I've always worked alone. Of course, it's your decision - I'll do whatever you say. But I'd just as soon tackle Polokov right now, without waiting for Kwon to hit town."
"You go ahead on your own," Bryant decided. "And then on the next one, which'll be a Mr.Kim Seokjin - you have the sheet there on him, too - you can bring in Kwon."
Having stuffed the onionskin carbons in his briefcase, Jungkook 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, Jungkook 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-class 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.
Jungkook 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 Jungkook, "Polokov didn't show up for work today. No explanation. What's he done, officer? "
"If he should show up," Jungkook said, "don't tell him I was 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 Jungkook next flew to Polokov's apartment building in the Tenderloin. We'll never get him, he told himself. They - Bryant and Bang - waited too long. Instead of sending me to Seattle, Bryant should have sicced me on Polokov - better still last night, as soon as Bang Yongguk 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 Kim Seokjin.
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 Yongguk." He inspected his wristwatch. "Want me to pick up Kwon at the field? It'll save time and I'm eager to get started on Mr.Kim." He already had the poop sheet on him laid out before him, had begun a thorough study of it.
"Good idea," Bryant said, "except that Mr. Kwon 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 Mr.Kim."
"An opera singer. Allegedly from Korea. 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 Kwon." He gave Bryant his location and rang off.
I'll pose as an opera fan, Jungkook decided as he read further. I particularly would like to see him 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. Jeon, a call for Von from Seattle; Mr. Bryant said to put it through to you. From the Kim Association."
"Okay," Jungkook said, and waited. What do they want? he wondered. As far as he could discern, the Kims had already proven to be bad news. And undoubtedly would continue so, whatever they intended.
Kim Taehyung's's face appeared on the tiny screen. "Hello, Officer Jeon." His 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?"
Taehyung said, "The Nexus-6s would be wary at being approached by a human. But if another Nexus-6 made the contact
-"
"You specifically mean yourself."
"Yes." He nodded, his 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: Kim Taehyung popping up through the dust at every step.
"You don't really mean it," Taehyung 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," Taehyung 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. Jeon. Has Mr. Kwon 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 Kim Seokjin a hovercar taxi spun down to land on the
roof a few yards off. From it a thin-faced, small-looking man, evidently in his mid-twenties, wearing a heavy and impressive Russian-style greatcoat, stepped and, smiling, his hand extended, approached Jungkook's car.
"Mr. Jeon?" the man asked with a shocking Slavic accent. Considering he looked Asian.
"The bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department?" The empty taxi rose, and the Russian watched it go, absently. "I'm Kwon Jiyong," the man said, and opened the car door to squeeze in beside Jungkook.
As he shook hands with Kwon, Jungkook noticed that the W.P.O. representative carried an unusual type of laser tube, a subform which he had never seen before.
"Oh, this?" Kwon said. "Interesting, isn't it?" He tugged it from his belt holster. "I got this on Mars."
"I thought I knew every handgun made," Jungkook said. "Even those manufactured at and for use in the colonies."
"We made this ourselves," Kwon said, beaming like a child, his face inscribed with pride.
"You like it? What is different about it, functionally, is - here, take it." He passed the gun over to, who inspected it expertly, by way of years of experience.
"How does it differ functionally?" Jungkook asked. He couldn't tell. "Press the trigger."
Aiming upward, out the window of the car, Jungkook squeezed the trigger of the weapon. Nothing happened; no beam emerged. Puzzled, he turned to Kwon.
"The triggering circuit," Kwon 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 Kwon," Jungkook 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." Jungkook, with his toe, pressed the emergency button on the floor of his car.
"Why won't my laser tube fire?" Kwon-Polokov said, switching on and off the miniaturized triggering and aiming device which he held in the palm of his hand.
"A sine wave," Jungkook 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 Jungkook's throat.
As the android's hands sank into his throat Jungkook 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 Jungkook. 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 Kim Taehyung'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 Bang Yongguk. Of course, however, Yongguk's experience evidently prepared me; that has to be admitted. Yongguk had not had such warning.
Again picking up the phone he placed a call home to his apt, to Jimin. Meanwhile he managed to light a cigarette; the shaking had begun to depart.
His husband's face, sodden with the six-hour self-accusatory depression which he had prophesied, manifested itself on the vidscreen. "Oh hello, Jungkook."
"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?" His 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, Jungkook? That an andy got you?" In the background the racket of Buster Friendly boomed and brayed, eradicating his words; he saw Jimin's 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?"
Jimin stared at him sightlessly. "Oh," he said, nodding.
"I haven't said yet!" He could tell, now; his depression this time had become too vast for him 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 him, he said to himself. What good does it do, my risking my life? He doesn't care whether we own an ostrich or not; nothing penetrates. I wish I had gotten rid of him 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 Kim Seokjin. No support, he informed himself. Most androids I've known have more vitality and desire to live than my husband. He has nothing to give me.
That made him think of Kim Taehyung again. His advice to me as to the Nexus-6 mentality, he realized, turned out to be correct. Assuming he doesn't want any of the bounty money, maybe I could use him.
The encounter with Kwon-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 Bang Yongguk's notes, he would find Kim Seokjin this time of the day.
He wondered, now, about him, too. Some male 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 Kim Taehyung. No, he decided; he's too thin. No real development. A figure like a child's, flat and tame. He could do better. How old did the poop sheet say Kim Seokjin was? As he drove he hauled out the now wrinkled notes, found his 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, Jungkook reflected. That's another advantage I have over Yongguk; I'm more culturally oriented.
I'll try one more andy before I ask Taehyung for help, he decided. If Mr.Kim Seokjin proves exceptionally hard- but he had an intuition he 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.