Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

looks and acts so much like an anthead that Dave forgot. Are you sure about the Voigt-Kampff scale now? You’re absolutely certain, from what happened up in Seattle, that—”
    “I am,” Rick 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,” Rick said. “And Dave found two. Three, if you count Polokov. Okay, I’ll retire Polokov today, and then maybe tonight or tomorrow talk to Dave.” 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. Sandor Kadalyi, 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?” Rick 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.
    Rick 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 Kadalyi to hit town.”
    “You go ahead on your own,” Bryant decided. “And then on the next one, which’ll be a Miss Luba Luft—you have the sheet there on her, too—you can bring in Kadalyi.”
    Having stuffed the onionskin carbons in his briefcase, Rick 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, Rick 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.
    Rick 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 Rick,