Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Read Online Free PDF

suspected. It had been a pit of corpses and dead bones and he had struggled for years to get up from it. The donkey and especially the toad, the creatures most important to him, had vanished, had become extinct; only rotting fragments, an eyeless head here, part of a hand there, remained. At last a bird which had come there to die told him where he was. He had sunk down into the tomb world. He could not get out until the bones strewn around him grew back into living creatures; he had become joined to the metabolism of other lives, and until they rose he could not rise either.
    How long that part of the cycle had lasted he did not now know; nothing had happened, generally, so it had been measureless. But at last the bones had regained flesh; the empty eyepits had filled up and the new eyes had seen, while meantime the restored beaks and mouths had cackled, barked, and caterwauled. Possibly he had done it; perhaps the extrasensory node of his brain had finally grown back. Or maybe he hadn’t accomplished it; very likely it could have been a natural process. Anyhow he was no longer sinking; he had begun to ascend, along with the others. Long ago he had lost sight of them. He found himself evidently climbing alone. But they were there. They still accompanied him; he felt them, strangely, inside him.
    Isidore stood holding the two handles, experiencing himself as encompassing every other living thing, and then, reluctantly, he let go. It had to end, as always, and anyhow his arm ached and bled where the rock had struck it.
    Releasing the handles, he examined his arm, then made his way unsteadily to the bathroom of his apartment to wash the cut off. This was not the first wound he had received while in fusion with Mercer, and it probably would not be the last. People, especially elderly ones, had died, particularly later on at the top of the hill when the torment began in earnest. I wonder if I can go through that part again, he said to himself as he swabbed the injury. Chance of cardiac arrest; be better, he reflected, if I lived in town where those buildings have a doctor standing by with those electro-spark machines. Here, alone in this place, it’s too risky.
    But he knew he’d take the risk. He always had before. As did most people, even oldsters who were physically fragile.
    Using a Kleenex, he dried his damaged arm.
    And heard, muffled and far off, a TV set.
    It’s someone else in this building, he thought wildly, unable to believe it. Not my TV; that’s off, and I can feel the floor resonance. It’s below, on another level entirely!
    I’m not alone here any more, he realized. Another resident has moved in, taken one of the abandoned apartments, and close enough for me to hear him. Must be level two or level three, certainly no deeper. Let’s see, he thought rapidly. What do you do when a new resident moves in? Drop by and borrow something, is that how it’s done? He could not remember; this had never happened to him before, here or anywhere else: people moved out, people emigrated, but nobody ever moved in. You take them something, he decided. Like a cup of water or rather milk; yes, it’s milk or flour or maybe an egg—or, specifically, their ersatz substitutes.
    Looking in his refrigerator—the compressor had long since ceased working—he found a dubious cube of margarine. And, with it, set off excitedly, his heart laboring, for the level below. I have to keep calm, he realized. Not let him know I’m a chickenhead. If he finds out I’m a chickenhead he won’t talk to me; that’s always the way it is for some reason. I wonder why?
    He hurried down the hall.

 

    3

    On his way to work Rick Deckard, as lord knew how many other people, stopped briefly to skulk about in front of one of San Francisco’s larger pet shops, along animal row. In the center of the block-long display window an ostrich, in a heated clear-plastic cage, returned his stare. The bird, according to the info plaque attached to the cage,