"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

then we may have developed a better scale." He picked the phone up. "You want to get
started? Use a department car and fuel yourself at our pumps."
Standing, Rick said, "Can I take Dave Holden's notes with me? I want to read them along
the way."
Bryant said, "Let's wait until you've tried out your scale in Seattle." His tone was
interestingly merciless, and Rick Deckard noted it.

When he landed the police department hovercar on the roof of the Rosen Association
Building in Seattle he found a young woman waiting for him. Black-haired and slender,
wearing the new huge dust-filtering glasses, she approached his car, her hands deep in the
pockets of her brightly striped long coat. She had, on her sharply defined small face, an
expression of sullen distaste.
"What's the matter?" Rick said as he stepped from the parked car.
The girl said, obliquely, "Oh, I don't know. Something about the way we got talked to on the
phone. It doesn't matter." Abruptly she held out her hand; he reflexively took it. "I'm Rachael
Rosen. I guess you're Mr. Deckard."
"This is not my idea," he said.
"Yes, Inspector Bryant told us that. But you're officially the San Francisco Police
Department, and it doesn't believe our unit is to the public benefit." She eyed him from
beneath long black lashes, probably artificial.
Rick said, "A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a
benefit and a hazard very rapidly. As a benefit it's not our problem."
"But as a hazard," Rachael Rosen said, "then you come in. Is it true, Mr. Deckard, that
you're a bounty hunter?"
He shrugged, with reluctance, nodded.
"You have no difficulty viewing an android as inert," the girl said. "So you can 'retire' it, as
they say."
"Do you have the group selected out for me?" he said. "I'd like to Ч " He broke off.
Because, all at once, he had seen their animals.
A powerful corporation, he realized, would of course be able to afford this. In the back of
his mind, evidently, he had anticipated such a collection; it was not surprise that he felt but
more a sort of yearning. He quietly walked away from the girl, toward the closest pen.
Already he could smell them, the several scents of the creatures standing or sitting, or, in the
case of what appeared to be a raccoon, asleep.
Never in his life had he personally seen a raccoon. He knew the animal only from 3-D films
shown on television. For some reason the dust had struck that species almost as hard as it
had the birds Ч of which almost none survived, now. In an automatic response he brought
out his much Ч thumbed Sidney's and looked up raccoon with all the sublistings. The list
prices, naturally, appeared in italics; like Percheron horses, none existed on the market for
sale at any figure. Sidney's catalogue simply listed the price at which the last transaction
involving a raccoon had taken place. It was astronomical.
"His name is Bill," the girl said from behind him. "Bill the raccoon. We acquired him just
last year from a subsidiary corporation." She pointed past him and he then perceived the
armed company guards, standing with their machine guns, the rapid-fire little light Skoda
issue; the eyes of the guards had been fastened on him since his car landed. And, he
thought, my car is clearly marked as a police vehicle.
"A major manufacturer of androids," he said thoughtfully, "invests its surplus capital on
living animals."
"Look at the owl," Rachael Rosen said. "Here, I'll wake it up for you." She started toward a
small, distant cage, in the center of which jutted up a branching dead tree.