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.Cut off by—or despite—its outcry.“He did a woodcut of this,” Rick said, reading the card tacked below the painting.“I think,” Phil Resch said, “that this is how an andy must feel.” He traced in the air the convolutions, visible in the picture, of the creature’s cry.“I don’t feel like that, so maybe I’m not an—” He broke off as several persons strolled up to inspect the picture.“There’s Luba Luft.” Rick pointed and Phil Resch halted his somber introspection and defense; the two of them walked at a measured pace toward her, taking their time as if nothing confronted them; as always, it was vital to preserve the atmosphere of the commonplace.Other humans, having no knowledge of the presence of androids among them, had to be protected at all costs—even that of losing the quarry.Holding a printed catalogue, Luba Luft, wearing shiny tapered pants and an illuminated gold vestlike top, stood absorbed in the picture before her: a drawing of a young girl, hands clasped together, seated on the edge of a bed, an expression of bewildered wonder and new, groping awe imprinted on the face.“Want me to buy it for you?” Rick said to Luba Luft; he stood beside her, holding laxly onto her upper arm, informing her by his loose grip that he knew he had possession of her—he did not have to strain in an effort to detain her.On the other side of her Phil Resch put his hand on her shoulder and Rick saw the bulge of the laser tube.Phil Resch did not intend to take chances, not after the near miss with Inspector Garland.“It’s not for sale.” Luba Luft glanced at him idly, then violently as she recognized him; her eyes faded and the color dimmed from her face, leaving it cadaverous, as if already starting to decay.As if life had in an instant retreated to some point far inside her, leaving the body to its automatic ruin.“I thought they arrested you.Do you mean they let you go?”“Miss Luft,” he said, “this is Mr.Resch.Phil Resch, this is the quite well-known opera singer Luba Luft.” To Luba he said, “The harness bull that arrested me is an android.So was his superior.Do you know—did you know—an Inspector Garland? He told me that you all came here in one ship as a group.”“The police department which you called,” Phil Resch said to her, “operating out of a building on Mission, is the organizing agency by which it would appear your group keeps in touch.They even feel confident enough to hire a human bounty hunter; evidently—”“You?” Luba Luft said.“You’re not human.No more than I am: you’re an android, too.”An interval of silence passed and then Phil Resch said in a low but controlled voice, “Well, we’ll deal with that at the proper time.” To Rick he said, “Let’s take her to my car.”One of them on each side of her, they prodded her in the direction of the museum elevator.Luba Luft did not come willingly, but on the other hand she did not actively resist; seemingly she had become resigned.Rick had seen that before in androids, in crucial situations.The artificial life force animating them seemed to fail if pressed too far…at least in some of them.But not all.And it could flare up again furiously.Androids, however, had, as he knew, an innate desire to remain inconspicuous.In the museum, with so many people roaming around, Luba Luft would tend to do nothing.The real encounter—for her probably the final one—would take place in the car, where no one else could see.Alone, with appalling abruptness, she could shed her inhibitions.He prepared himself—and did not think about Phil Resch.As Resch had said, it would be dealt with at a proper time.At the end of the corridor near the elevators, a little storelike affair had been set up; it sold prints and art books, and Luba halted there, tarrying.“Listen,” she said to Rick.Some of the color had returned to her face; once more she looked—at least briefly—alive.“Buy me a reproduction of that picture I was looking at when you found me.The one of the girl sitting on the bed.”After a pause Rick said to the clerk, a heavy-jowled, middle-aged woman with netted gray hair, “Do you have a print of Munch’s Puberty?”“Only in this book of his collected work,” the clerk said, lifting down a handsome glossy volume [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]