Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Chapter 9

In the enormous whale-belly of steel and stone carved out to form the long-enduring old opera house Jeon Jungkook 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 Jungkook'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, Jungkook 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, Jungkook 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 Kim 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.
Pamina: " - the truth. That's what we will say."
Leaning forward and peering, Jungkook studied Pamina in her heavy, convoluted robes, with her wimple trailing its veil about her shoulders and face. He reexamined the poop sheet, then leaned back, satisfied. I've now seen my third Nexus-6 android, he realized. This is Kim Seokjin. A little ironic, the sentiment his role calls for. However vital, active, and nice-looking, an escaped android could hardly tell the truth; about itself, anyhow.
On the stage Kim Seokjin sang, and he found himself surprised at the quality of his voice; it rated with that of the best, even that of notables in his collection of historic tapes. The Kim Associaion built him well, he had to admit. And again he perceived himself sub specie aeternitatis, the formdestroyer called forth by what he heard and saw here. Perhaps the better he functions, the better a singer he is, the more I am needed. If the androids had remained substandard, like the ancient q-40s made by Derain Associates - there would be no problem and no need of my skill. I wonder when I should do it, he asked himself. As soon as possible, probably. At the end of the rehearsal when he goes to his dressing room.
At the end of the act the rehearsal ended temporarily. It would resume, the conductor said in English, French, and German, in an hour and a half. The conductor then departed; the musicians left their instruments and also left. Getting to his feet Jungkook made his way backstage to the dressing rooms; he followed the tail end of the cast, taking his time and thinking, It's better this way, getting it immediately over with. I'll spend as short a time talking to him and testing him as possible. As soon as I'm sure - but technically he could not be sure until after the test. Maybe yongguk guessed wrong on him, he conjectured. I hope so. But he doubted it. Already, instinctively, his professional sense had responded. And he had yet to err . . . throughout years with the department.
Stopping a super he asked for Mr. Kim's dressing room; the super, wearing makeup and the costume of an Egyptian spear carrier, pointed. Jungkook arrived at the indicated door, saw an ink-written note tacked to it reading MR KIM PRIVATE, and knocked. "Come in."
He entered. The boy sat at his dressing table, a much-handled clothbound score open on his knees, marking here and there with a ball-point pen. He still wore his costume and makeup, except for the wimple; that he had set down on its rack.
"Yes?" he said, looking up. The stage makeup enlarged his eyes, enormous and brown they fixed on him and did not waver. "I am busy, as you can see." His English contained no remnant of an accent.
Jungkook said, "You compare favorably to Schwarzkopf."
"Who are you?" His tone held cold reserve - and that other cold, which he had encountered in so many androids. Always the same: great intellect, ability to accomplish much, but also this. He deplored it. And yet, without it, he could not track them down. "I'm from the San Francisco Police Department," he said.
"Oh?" The huge and intense eyes did not flicker, did not respond. "What are you here about?" His tone, oddly, seemed gracious.
Seating himself in a nearby chair he unzipped his briefcase. "I have been sent here to administer a standard personality-profile test to you. It won't take more than a few minutes."
"Is it necessary?" He gestured toward the big clothbound score. "I have a good deal I must do." Now he had begun to look apprehensive.
"It's necessary." He got out the Voigt-Kampff instruments, began setting them up.
"An IQ test?
"No. Empathy."
"I'll have to put on my glasses." He reached to open a drawer of his dressing table.
"If you can mark the score without your glasses you can take this test. I'll show you some pictures and ask you several questions. Meanwhile - " He got up and walked to Seokjin, and, bending, pressed the adhesive pad of sensitive grids against his deeply tinted cheek. "And this light," he said, adjusting the angle of the pencil beam, "and that's it."
"Do you think I'm an android? Is that it?" His voice had faded almost to extinction. "I'm not an android. I haven't even been on Mars; I've never even seen an android!" His elongated lashes shuddered involuntarily; he saw him trying to appear calm.
"Do you have information that there's an android in the cast? I'd be glad to help you, and if I were an android would I be glad to help you?"
"An android," he said, "doesn't care what happens to any other android. That's one of the indications we look for."
"Then," Mr. Kim said, "you must be an android." That stopped him; he stared at him.
"Because," he continued, "Your job is to kill them, isn't it? You're what they call - " he tried to remember.
"A bounty hunter," Jungkook said. "But I'm not an android."
"This test you want to give me." His voice, now, had begun to return. "Have you taken it?"
"Yes." He nodded. "A long, long time ago; when I first started with the department."
"Maybe that's a false memory. Don't androids sometimes go around with false memories?"
Jungkook said, "My superiors know about the test. It's mandatory.
"Maybe there was once a human who looked like you, and somewhere along the line you killed him and took his place. And your superiors don't know." He smiled. As if inviting him to agree.
"Let's get on with the test," he said, getting out the sheets of questions.
"I'll take the test," Kim Seokjin said, "if you'll take it first."
Again he stared at him, stopped in his tracks.
"Wouldn't that be more fair?" he asked. "Then I could be sure of you. I don't know; you seem so peculiar and hard and strange." He shivered, then smiled again. Hopefully.
"You wouldn't be able to administer the Voigt-Kampff test. It takes considerable experience. Now please listen carefully. These questions will deal with social situations which you might find yourself in; what I want from you is a statement of response, what you'd do. And I want the response as quickly as you can give it. One of the factors I'll record is the time lag, if any." He selected his initial question. "You're sitting watching TV and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist." He checked with his watch, counting the seconds. And checked, too, with the twin dials.
"What's a wasp?" Kim Seokjin asked.
"A stinging bug that flies."
"Oh, how strange." His immense eyes widened with child-like acceptance, as if he had revealed the cardinal mystery of creation. "Do they still exist? I've never seen one."
"They died out because of the dust. Don't you really know what a wasp is? You must have been alive when there were wasps; that's only been - "
"Tell me the German word."
He tried to think of the German word for wasp but couldn't.
"Your English is perfect," he said angrily.
"My accent," he corrected, "is perfect. It has to be, for roles, for Purcell and Walton and Vaughn Williams. But my vocabulary isn't very large." He glanced at him shyly. "Wespe," he said, remembering the German word.
"Ach yes; eine Wespe." he laughed. "And what was the question? I forget already."
"Let's try another." Impossible now to get a meaningful response. "You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from before the war. It shows a banquet in progress; the entrée" - he skipped over the first part of the question - "consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice."
"Nobody would kill and eat a dog," Kim Seokjin said. "They're worth a fortune. But I guess it would be an imitation dog: ersatz. Right? But those are made of wires and motors; they can't be eaten."
"Before the war," he grated.
"I wasn't alive before the war."
"But you've seen old movies on TV."
"Was the movie made in the Philippines?"
"Why?"
"Because," Kim Seokjin said, "they used to eat boiled dog stuffed with rice in the Philippines. I remember reading that."
"But your response," he said. "I want your social, emotional, moral reaction."
"To the movie?" he pondered. "I'd turn it off and watch Buster Friendly."
"Why would you turn it off?"
"Well," he said hotly, "who the hell wants to watch an old movie set in the Philippines? What ever happened in the Philippines except the Bataan Death March, and would you want to watch that?" He glared at him indignantly. On his dials the needles swung in all directions. After a pause he said carefully, "You rent a mountain cabin."
"Ja." he nodded. "Go on; I'm waiting."
"In an area still verdant."
"Pardon?" He cupped his ear. "I don't ever hear that term."
"Still trees and bushes growing. The cabin is rustic knotty pine with a huge fireplace. On the walls someone has hung old snaps, Currier and Ives prints, and above the fireplace a deer's head has been mounted, a full stag with developed horns. The people with you admire the decor of the cabin and - "
"I don't understand 'Currier' or 'Ives' or 'decor,"' Kim Seokjin said; he seemed to be struggling, however, to make out the terms. "Wait." he held up his hand earnestly. "With rice, like in the dog. Currier is what makes the rice currier rice. It's Curry in German."
He could not fathom, for the life of him, if Kim Seokjin's semantic fog had purpose. After consultation with himself he decided to try another question; what else could he do?
"You're dating a woman," he said, "and she asks you to visit her apartment. While you're there - "
"O nein," Seokjin broke in. "I wouldn't be there. That's easy to answer."
"That's not the question!"
"Did you get the wrong question? But I understand that; why is a question I understand the wrong one? Aren't I supposed to understand?" Nervously fluttering he rubbed his cheek and detached the adhesive disk. It dropped to the floor, skidded, and rolled under his dressing table.
"Ach Gott," he muttered, bending to retrieve it. A ripping sound, that of cloth tearing. His elaborate costume.
"I'll get it," he said, and lifted Seokjin aside; he knelt down, groped under the dressing table until his fingers located the disk.
When he stood up he found himself looking into a laser tube.
"Your questions," Kim Seokjin said in a crisp, formal voice, "began to do with sex. I thought they would finally. You're not from the police department; you're a sexual deviant."
"You can look at my identification." He reached toward his coat pocket. His hand, he saw, had again begun to shake, as it had with Polokov.
"If you reach in there," Kim Seokjin said, "I'll kill you."
"You will anyhow." He wondered how it would have worked out if he had waited until Kim Taehyung could join him. Well, no use dwelling on that.
"Let me see some more of your questions." He held out his hand and, reluctantly, he passed him the sheets. "'In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude boy.' Well, that's one. The pattern of your questioning is obvious. I'm going to call the police." Still holding the laser tube in his direction he crossed the room, picked up the vidphone, dialed the operator.
"Connect me with the San Francisco Police Department," he said. "I need a policeman."
"What you're doing," Jungkook said, with relief, "is the best idea possible." Yet it seemed strange to him that Seokjin had decided to do this; why didn't he simply kill him? Once the patrolman arrived his chance would disappear and it all would go his way.
He must think he's human, he decided. Obviously he doesn't know.
A few minutes later, during which Seokjin carefully kept the laser tube on him, a large harness bull arrived, in his archaic blue uniform with gun and star. "All right," he said at once to Seokjin. "Put that thing away." Seokjin set down the laser tube and he picked it up to examine it, to see if it carried a charge.
"Now what's been going on here?" he asked him. Before he could answer he turned to Jungkook. "Who are you?" he demanded.
Kim Seokjin said, "He came into my dressing room; I've never seen him before in my life. He pretended to be taking a poll or something and he wanted to ask me questions; I thought it was all right and I said okay, and then he began asking me obscene questions."
"Let's see your identification," the harness bull said to Jungkook, his hand extended. As he got out his ID Jungkook said, "I'm a bounty hunter with the department."
"I know all the bounty hunters," the harness bull said to Jungkook as he examined Jungkook's wallet. "With the S. F. Police Department? "
"My supervisor is Inspector Harry Bryant," Jungkook said. "I've taken over Bang Yongguk's list, now that Yongguk's in the hospital."
"As I say, I know all the bounty hunters," the harness bull said, "and I've never heard of you." He handed Jungkook's ID back to him.
"Call Inspector Bryant," Jungkook said.
"There isn't any Inspector Bryant," the harness bull said.
It came to Jungkook what was going on.
"You're an android," he said to the harness bull. "Like Mr. kim."
Going to the vidphone he picked up the receiver himself. "I'm going to call the department." He wondered how far be would get before the two androids stopped him. "The number," the harness bull said, "is - "
"I know the number." Jungkook dialed, presently had the police switchboard operator. "Let me talk to Inspector Bryant," he said. "Who is calling, please?"
"This is Jeon Jungkook." He stood waiting; meanwhile, off to one side, the harness bull was getting a statement from Kim Seokjin; neither paid any attention to him.
A pause and then Harry Bryant's face appeared on the vidscreen. "What's doing?" he asked Jungkook.
"Some trouble," Jungkook said. "One of those on Yongguk's list managed to call in and get a so-called patrolman out here. I can't seem to prove to him who I am; he says he knows all about the hunters in the department and he's never heard of me." He added, "He hasn't heard of you either."
Bryant said, "Let me talk to him."
"Inspector Bryant wants to talk to you." Jungkook held out the vidphone receiver. The harness bull ceased questioning Mr. kim and came over to take it.
"Officer Crams," the harness bull said briskly. A pause. "Hello?" He listened, said hello several times more, waited, then turned to Jungkook. "There's nobody on the line. And nobody on the screen." He pointed to the vidphone screen and Jungkook saw nothing on it.
Taking the receiver from the harness bull Jungkook said, "Mr. Bryant?" He listened, waited; nothing. "I'll dial again." He hung up, waited, then redialed the familiar number. The phone rang, but no one answered it; the phone rang on and on.
"Let me try," Officer Crams said, taking the receiver away from Jungkook.
"You must have misdialed" He dialed. "The number is 842 - "
"I know the number," Jungkook said.
"Officer Crams calling in," the harness bull said into the Phone receiver. "Is there an Inspector Bryant connected with the department?" A short pause. "Well, what about a bounty hunter named Jeon Jungkook?" Again a pause. "You're sure? Could he have recently - oh, I see; okay, thanks. No, I have it under control." Officer Crams rang off, turned toward Jungkook.
"I had him on the line," Jungkook said. "I talked to him; he said he'd talk to you. It must be phone trouble; the connection must have been broken somewhere along the way. Didn't you see - Bryant's face showed on the screen and then it didn't." He felt bewildered.
Officer Crams said, "I have Kim Seokjin's statement, Jeon. So let's go down to the Hall of Justice so I can book you."
"Okay," Jungkook said. To Kim Seokjin he said, "I'll be back in a short while. I'm still not finished testing you."
"He's a deviant," Kim Seokjin said to Officer Crams. "He gives me the creeps." he shivered.
"What opera are you practicing to give?" Officer Crams asked him.
"The Magic Flute," Jungkook said.
"I didn't ask you; I asked him." The harness buff gave him a glance of dislike.
"I'm anxious to get to the Hall of Justice," Jungkook said. "This matter should be straightened out." He started toward the door of the dressing room, his briefcase gripped.
"I'll search you first." Officer Crams deftly frisked him, and came up with Jungkook's service pistol and laser tube. He appropriated both, after a moment of sniffing the muzzle of the pistol.
"This has been fired recently," he said.
"I retired an andy just now," Jungkook said. "The remains are still in my car, up on the roof."
"Okay," Officer Crams said. "We'll go up and have a look."
As the two of them started from the dressing room, Mr. Kim followed as far as the door. "He won't come back again, will he, Officer? I'm really afraid of him; he's so strange."
"If he's got the body of someone he killed upstairs in his car," Crams said, "he won't be coming back." He nudged Jungkook forward and, together, the two of them ascended by elevator to the roof of the opera house.
Opening the door of Jungkook's car, Officer Crams silently inspected the body of Polokov.
"An android," Jungkook said. "I was sent after him. He almost got me by pretending to be - "
"They'll take your statement at the Hall of Justice," Officer Crams interrupted. He nudged Jungkook over to his parked, plainly marked police car; there, by police radio, he put in a call for someone to come pick up Polokov. "Okay, Jeon," he said, then, ringing off. "Let's get started." With the two of them aboard, the patrol car zummed up from the roof and headed south. Something, Jungkook noticed, was not as it should be. Officer Crams had steered the car in the wrong direction.
"The Hall of justice," Jungkook said, "is north, on Lombard."
"That's the old Hall of Justice," Officer Crams said. "The new one is on Mission. That old building, it's disintegrating; it's a ruin. Nobody's used that for years. Has it been that long since you last got booked?"
"Take me there," Jungkook said. "To Lombard Street." He understood it all, now; saw what the androids, working together, had achieved. He would not live beyond this ride; for him it was the end, as it had almost been for Yongguk - and probably eventually would be.
"That boy's quite a looker," Officer Crams said. "Of course, with that costume you can't tell about his figure. But I'd say it's damn okay."
Jungkook said, "Admit to me that you're an android."
"Why? I'm not an android. What do you do, roam around killing people and telling yourself they're androids? I can see why Mr. Kim was scared. It's a good thing for him that he called us."
"Then take me to the Hall of Justice, on Lombard."
"Like I said - "
"It'll take about three minutes," Jungkook said. "I want to see it. Every morning I check in for work, there; I want to see that it's been abandoned for years, as you say."
"Maybe you're an android," Officer Crams said. "With a false memory, like they give them. Had you thought of that?" He grinned frigidly as he continued to drive south.
Conscious of his defeat and failure, Jungkook settled back. And, helplessly, waited for what came next. Whatever the androids had planned, now that they had physical possession of him. But I did get one of them, he told himself; I got Polokov. And Yongguk got two. Hovering over Mission, Officer Crams's police car prepared to descend for its landing.