VAN NUYS PET HOSPITAL. Pink letters, with a shiver of blue around their edges.
And a cartoon puppy face, shifting every two seconds from sad and injured to happy and bandaged. He’d always figured that every resurrection should be so easy.
The spinner dropped toward the landing deck atop the building. “Why we going here?” asked Deckard. “You got a kitten with ear mites or something?”
“No—” Andersson took his hands from the controls, the descent locked on auto. He smiled humorlessly. “Orders from Miss Tyrell. You’ve got an appointment.”
Deckard let himself be hustled into the elevator. even before the other two spinners touched down. He’d come this far without putting up a fight; no point in starting one now. He watched as the man beside him punched in a security code. The elevator doors slid together; the tiny space sank into the faint but unmistakable odors of disinfectant and animal droppings.
Panel lights charted the descent into the building’s midsection. When the doors opened, he found himself gazing into the spectacled eyes of a smaller man, lab-coated, drooping tabby asleep in the cradle of his arms.
“Should I stick around, Mr. Isidore?” Andersson held the elevator door from reclosing.
“No . . . I don’t think that’ll be nuh-necessary.” Scratching behind the tabby’s ears, the gnomish figure tilted his head, brow wrinkling. “I’m sure our guh-guh-guest will behave himself.”
“I have a choice?”
“Well . . .” Isidore mulled, frowned. “Probably nuh-not.”
“Don’t,” whispered Andersson into Deckard’s ear, “do anything stupid.” He stepped back into the elevator, hit the buttons, and disappeared behind the stainless-steel doors.
“Not to worry.” The tabby stirred and yawned. “They’re puh-paid to act like thuh-that. It’s all an act. You should nuh-know.”
Deckard followed the man. “Sometimes it’s not an act.” “Oh, yes . . .” Isidore glanced over his shoulder. “You know that tuh-tuh-too. That’s when people—and other things—thuh-that’s when they get hurt.” He held the tabby closer against his chest, as though protecting it.
The concrete-floored space narrowed to a corridor lined with cages, stacked three or four deep, and larger kennels. The air beneath the bare fluorescents was laced with mingled animal scents. As Isidore passed by, the small creatures—cats, rabbits, toy breeds of dogs, a few guinea pigs—pressed against the wire doors, mewing or yapping for the man’s attention.
Deckard turned his head, getting a closer look. Some of the animals in the cages weren’t animals. Not real ones.
A partially disassembled simulacrum suckled a row of squirming kittens; its white fur had been peeled back to reveal the polyethylene tubes and webbing beneath aluminum ribs; the optic sensors in its skull gazed out with maternal placidity. A wasp-waisted greyhound danced quivering excitement, front paws flurrying at the kennel gate; all four legs were abstract steel and miniature hydraulic cylinders.
A headless rabbit bumped against a water dish. Its mate—flesh and blood as far as Deckard could tell—nuzzled against its flank.
“Wuh-what’s wrong?” Isidore had caught a hiss of inhaled breath behind him.
“These things give me the creeps.”
“Really?” Isidore stopped in his tracks. He looked amazed; even the tabby in his arms blinked open its eyes. “Why?”
“They’re not real.” He had seen plenty of fake animals before, out in the dealers’ souk, and they’d never bothered him. But those had had their skins and pelts intact. These, with their electromechanical innards exposed, flaunted a raw nakedness.
“Guh-gosh.” It seemed to come as news to Isidore. He looked down at the tabby for a moment. “I guess I duh-don’t see it thuh-that wuh-wuh-way. They all seem real to me. I mean . . . you can tuh-touch them.” Leaning toward Deckard, lifting the tabby closer to him. “Here.”
He scratched the cat’s head, getting an audible purr in response. It might have been real.
Or well made, well programmed.
“You suh-see? It must be real.” Isidore managed to open one of the empty cages and off-loaded the tabby into it. “There you go, tuh-Tiger.” The cat complained for a moment, then curled nose to tail and closed its eyes. “Come on. My office’s juh-just over here. I’ll close the door . . . so you won’t huh-have to see anything you don’t want to.” The gaze behind the glasses narrowed, then he turned and started walking again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh . . . nothing . . .” Turning a key in a lock, Isidore directed a thin smile at him.
“Juh-just that I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so . . . suh-sensitive.” He stepped through the doorway. “Given your domestic arrangements and all.”
“Got a point.” Deckard walked into a low-ceilinged, windowless cubicle, walls covered with freebie calendars and thumb-tacked photos of pets and their owners; satisfied clients, he figured. “Except Rachael’s all in one piece. That’s the difference.” He had to remember to keep cool, to get through whatever drill he’d been brought down here for. So he could get back to the sleeping, dying, waiting woman up north.
“Please . . . sit duh-down.” The other man dropped himself into a swivel chair behind a desk covered with mounds of papers and empty foam cups. “Really . . . I do wuh-want you to be comfortable. We have a lot to talk about.”
“This says your name’s Hannibal Sloat.” Sitting, he’d picked up the cheap wooden plaque from the desk. He held it by one end. “You or somebody else?”
“Mr. Sloat was my boss. A luh-luh-long tuh-time ago. Then he died.” Isidore looked around at the office’s moulting walls, then pointed. “That’s him up there.”
He turned his head and saw a hard-copy newspaper clipping, browned with age, stuck to the wall. In the low-rez photo, a fat man with pockmarked skin held a dangling cat out to a couple, the woman stroking the animal with one delicate hand, the man turning a slightly embarrassed smile toward the camera. Deckard shifted around in the chair. “Nice guy?”
“Oh, sure. Real nuh-nice. In his will . . . he left me the puh-pet hospital.” He brought his gaze back down to Deckard’s. “He left me . . . everything. Really.” The swivel chair seemed to have grown larger, as though it were capable of swallowing him up, as he folded his hands in his lap. “It’s a big responsibility.”
“What is? Giving distemper shots? Lube job on a replica Pekingese, maybe. Doesn’t seem like anything you couldn’t handle.”
“Thuh-that’s what I used to think. There wasn’t any thuh-thing more to the job than that. Even when old Mr. Sloat was still uh-uh-live and I was working for him. That’s what I thought the Van Nuys Pet Hospital’s buh-business was. Like you said—shu-shots and ruh-ruh-pairs.”
“So if it’s not that . . .” Deckard set the plaque down on the desk’s corner. “Then what is it?”
“Well . . . you’d probably say we duh-deal in fuh-fakes. Like out in the souk. Fuh-phony goldfish, and kuh-kuh-cats and dogs and stuff. That you can’t tell from the real thing. I mean . . . the living thing. What yuh-you’d call the living thing.”
“Don’t you? I thought that’s where the money is. That’s what people like. The fakes. The real ones . . . they just make a mess. It’s just easier dealing with the simulations.”
The other nodded slowly, wisps of silky white hair drifting over his pink scalp. “I guess that’s what somebody who spent so much time as a buh-blade runner wuh-would think. You had your own wuh-way of dealing with those . . . suh-suh-simulations. Didn’t you?”