Chief Cassandra July said resignedly, “Yes, I suppose we should all take the test.” She jabbed a finger at Sebastian. “But I'm warning you; you're not going to like the results.”

“Do you know what they'll be?” Sebastian asked snidely. He did not look pleased.

“I know almost to a hair,” Cassandra said curtly.

Sebastian fixed her with an expression of disdain and gestured with mock grandeur, as though inviting her to continue with her prediction. Cassandra pointedly ignored him. With a huff, Sebastian said, “Fine. Have it your way. I'll go upstairs and get the Boneli gear.” He strode to the door of the office, opened it, and disappeared out into the hall. “I'll be back in a few minutes,” he said to Blaine, looking him up and down once more with a self-assured smirk.

Reaching into the top drawer of her desk, Chief July fumbled about, then brought forth a laser tube and pointed it at Blaine.

“That's not going to make any difference,” Blaine said. “Smythe will have a postmortem run on me, the same as your lab ran on Azimio Adams. And he'll still insist on a – what did you call it – Boneli Reflex-Arc Test on you and on himself.”

Keeping the laser tube trained on Blaine, Cassandra fumbled in the drawer again and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Clenching it between her legs, she twisted off the cap and poured some into an opaque glass on her desk. She put the bottle back in the drawer and took a long swig from the cup, the laser tube pointing at Blaine the whole time. Finally, she said, “It was a bad day all day. Especially when I saw Officer Lynn bring you in. I had an intuition – that's why I intervened.” By degrees she lowered the laser beam and sighed. She turned it over in her hands a few times before returning it to the drawer, locking the drawer, and placing the key in her pocket.

“What will the tests on the three of us show?” Blaine asked.

Chief July said, “That damned fool Smythe.”

“He doesn't know?”

“He doesn't know; he doesn't suspect; he doesn't have the slightest idea. Otherwise he couldn't live out his life as a bounty hunter. It's a human occupation after all, hardly an android's preferred choice of job.” Chief July gestured toward Blaine's briefcase. “Those other printed sheets, the other suspects you're supposed to test and retire. I know them all.” She paused, then said, “We all came here together on the same ship from Mars. Not Smythe. He stayed behind another week, receiving the synthetic memory system.” She was silent, then.

Or rather, it was silent.

Blaine said, “What'll he do when he finds out?”

“I don't have the foggiest idea,” Cassandra said remotely, taking a moment to take a few more long gulps of her spiked drink. “It ought, from an abstract, intellectual viewpoint, to be interesting. He may kill me, kill himself; maybe you, too. He may kill everyone he can, human and android alike. I understand that such things happen, when there's been a synthetic memory system laid down. When one thinks it's human.”

“So when you do that, you're taking a chance.”

Chief July said, “It's a chance anyway, breaking free and coming here to Earth, where we're not even considered animals. Where every worm and wood louse is considered far more desirable than all of us put together.” Irritably, Cassandra shoved back a cuticle with a fingernail from the other hand, then took another swig of her drink. “Your position would be better if Sebastian Smythe could pass the Boneli test, if it was just me. The results, that way, would be predictable. To Smythe I'd just be another andy to retire as soon as possible. So you're not in a good position either, Anderson. Almost as bad, in fact, as I am. You know where I guessed wrong? I didn't know about Adams. He must have come here earlier. In another group entirely – no contact with ours. He was already entrenched in the W.P.O. when I arrived. I took a chance on the lab report, which I shouldn't have. Ryder Lynn, of course, took the same chance.”

“Azimio Adams was almost my finish, too,” Blaine said.

“Yes, there was something about him. I don't think he could have been the same brain unit type as the rest of us. He must have been souped up or tinkered with – an altered structure, unfamiliar even to us. A good one, too. Almost good enough.”

“I might have met another souped up model. But souped up in a different way. I never would have picked him out as an android without running my test, and even then, it took a lot more questions with him than it usually does,” Blaine said, looking into the distance and seeing the chestnut hair, blue eyes, and lithe figure that seemed to haunt him since this morning.

“Which one?” Cassandra asked curiously, looking at the sheaf of papers in Blaine's briefcase.

“He wasn't on my list,” Blaine said. Quickly he switched topics. “When I phoned my apartment, why didn't I get my wife?”

“All our phone lines here are trapped. They recirculate the call to other offices within the building. This is a homeostatic enterprise we're operating here, Anderson. We're a closed loop, cut off from the rest of San Francisco. We know about them but they don't know about us. Sometimes an isolated person such as yourself wanders in here or, as in your case, is brought here – for our protection.” She gestured toward the office door. “Here comes eager beaver Sebastian Smythe back with his handy dandy portable little test. Isn't he clever? He's going to destroy his own life and mine and possibly yours.”

“You androids,” Blaine said, “don't exactly cover for each other in times of stress.”

Chief July snarled, “I think you're right; it would seem we lack a specific talent you humans possess. I believe it's called empathy.”

The office door opened; Sebastian Smythe stood outlined, carrying a device which trailed wires. “Here we are,” he said, closing the door after him. He seated himself, plugging the device into an electrical outlet near his chair.

Bringing out her right hand, Cassandra pointed at Sebastian. At once Sebastian and Blaine rolled from their chairs and onto the floor; at the same time, Sebastian yanked a laser tube from his pocket and, as he fell, fired at Cassandra.

The laser beam, aimed with skill, based on years of training, bifurcated Chief Cassandra July's head. She slumped forward and, from her hand, her miniaturized laser beam rolled across the surface of her desk. The corpse teetered on the exercise ball for a brief moment before sliding off and crashing to the floor.

“It forgot,” Sebastian said smugly, “that this is my job. I can almost foretell what an android is going to do. I suppose you can, too.” Rising to his feet, he put his laser tube away, bent, and with curiosity, examined the body of his former supervisor. “What did it say to you while I was gone?”

“That she – it – was an android. And you – ” Blaine broke off, the conduits of his brain humming, calculating, and selecting; he altered what he had started to say. “ – would detect it,” he finished. “In a few more minutes.”

“What else?” Sebastian demanded, giving Blaine a knowing look.

“This building is android-infested.”

Smythe said introspectively, “That's going to make it hard for you and me to get out of here. Nominally I have the authority to leave any time I want, of course. And to take a prisoner with me.” He listened. No sound came from beyond the office. “I guess they didn't hear anything. There's evidently no bug installed here, monitoring everything…as there should be.” Gingerly, he nudged the body of the android with the toe of his shoe. “It certainly is remarkable, the sixth sense you develop in this business. I knew before I opened the office door that she would take a shot at me. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't kill you while I was upstairs.”

“She almost did,” Blaine said. “She had a big utility-model laser beam on me part of the time. She was considering it. But it was you she was worried about, not me.”

“The android flees,” Sebastian said humorlessly, “where the bounty hunter pursues. You realize, don't you, that you're going to have to double back to the Gold Coast Theater and get Rachel Berry before anyone here has a chance to warn her as to how this came out. Warn it, I should say. Keep them in their proper place. You call them ‘it', don't you?”

“I did at one time,” Blaine said. “When my conscience bothered me about the kind of work I do. I protected myself by thinking of them that way, but now I no longer find it necessary. All right, I'll head directly back to the theater. Assuming you can get me out of here.”

“Oh I'll take care of you, don't you worry about that,” Sebastian said, leaning a bit too close for Blaine's comfort. Blaine took a step back and Sebastian laughed.

Turning to the body, Sebastian said, “Suppose we sit her up at her desk? Get me a regular chair, would you?” Sebastian pushed the exercise ball toward the far corner of the room and dragged the corpse of the android upwards and into the chair Blaine brought around from in front of the desk. He arranged its arms and legs so that its posture appeared reasonably natural – if no one looked closely or came into the office. Pressing a key on the intercom, Sebastian said smoothly, “Chief July has asked that no calls be put through to her for the next half hour. She's involved in work that cannot be disturbed.”

“Yes, Mr. Smythe.”

Releasing the intercom key, Sebastian turned to Blaine with a sly grin, dangling a set of handcuffs in front of Blaine's face. “I'm going to cuff you to me while we're still in the building. But don't get too many kinky ideas,” he said teasingly, “I'm going to let you go once we're airborne.” He grabbed Blaine's wrist and pulled it toward him. The sensual, massaging touch before he closed the cuffs with a snap was so brief and unexpected that Blaine couldn't be sure whether it was real or imagined. Either way, it awakened something deep and secret within his gut, and Blaine cursed himself once again for his dangerous and inconvenient attractions. Drinking in Sebastian's face with wide eyes, he realized the man was handsome and the element of danger he exuded was exciting. At the same time, the man – or rather the android – had that quality Blaine hated most about the machines he hunted. That repulsive, aloof coldness, so ubiquitous in the humanoid robot.  

“Okay lover boy,” Sebastian said brusquely to a startled Blaine, who hadn't realized he had been staring, open-mouthed, at him, “let's go.” Sebastian squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and pushed open the office door.

Uniformed police stood or sat on every side, conducting their routine business of the day. None of them glanced up or paid any attention as Sebastian Smythe led Blaine across the lobby to the elevator.

“What I'm afraid of,” Sebastian said softly into Blaine's ear as they waited for the elevator, “is that – the one back there – had a dead man's throttle warning component built into it. But – ” He shrugged. “I would have expected it to go off by now; otherwise it's not much good.”

The elevator arrived. Several men and women, some in uniform and some in plain clothes, got off the elevator and clacked off across the lobby on their several errands. They paid no attention to Blaine or Sebastian.

“Do you think your department will take me on?” Sebastian asked, as the elevator doors shut, closing the two of them inside. He punched the roof button and the elevator silently rose. “After all, as of now I'm out of a job. To say the least.” Raising an eyebrow suggestively, he added, “Besides, it would give us the opportunity to spend some more quality time together.”

Ignoring the last comment, Blaine said guardedly, “I – don't see why not. Except that we already have two bounty hunters.” I've got to tell him, he said to himself. It's unethical and cruel not to. Mr. Smythe, you're an android, he thought to himself. You got me out of this place and here's your reward; you're everything we jointly despise. The essence of what we're committed to destroy.

“I can't get over it,” Sebastian said. “It doesn't seem possible. For three years I've been working under the direction of androids. Why didn't I suspect? I mean, obviously I did, but not enough to do something.”

“Maybe it hasn't been that long,” Blaine offered. “Maybe they only recently infiltrated this building.”

“They've been here all the time. Chief July has been my superior from the start, throughout my three years.”

“According to it,” Blaine said, “the bunch of them came to Earth together. And that wasn't as long ago as three years. It's only been a matter of months.”

“Then at one time an authentic Cassandra July existed,” Sebastian said. “And somewhere along the way got replaced.” His sharp face twisted and he struggled to understand. “Or – I've been implanted with a false memory system. Maybe I only remember July over the whole time. But – ” His face, suffused now with growing torment, continued to twist and work spastically. “Only androids show up with false memory systems. It's been shown ineffective in humans.”

The elevator reached its destination. The doors slid back, and there, spread out in front of them, deserted except for the empty vehicles, was the police station's roof field.

“Here's my car,” Sebastian said, unlocking the door of a nearby hovercar and waving Blaine inside. He leaned in close, looking into Blaine's eyes and for a moment, Blaine thought Sebastian was going to kiss him. He froze, not even breathing, until he felt the key click in the handcuff lock and suddenly his wrist was released and Sebastian was shutting his door and moving over to the driver's side of the vehicle. Blaine sucked in a few deep breaths, heart racing more than could be explained by the tension of walking through the false police building, and sternly told himself to pull himself together.

Sebastian got in behind the wheel and started up the motor. In a moment they had lifted into the sky and, turning north, headed back in the direction of the Gold Coast Theater. Preoccupied, Sebastian drove by reflex; his progressively more gloomy train of thought dominating his attention. “Listen, Anderson,” he said suddenly. “After we retire Rachel Berry – I want you to – ” His voice, husky and tormented, broke off. “You know. Give me the Boneli test or that empathy scale you have. To see about me.”

“We can worry about that later,” Blaine said evasively.

“You don't want me to take it, do you?” Sebastian glared at him sulkily. “I guess you think you know what the results will be. Cassandra must have told you something. Facts that I don't know.”

Blaine said, “It's going to be hard even for the two of us to take out Rachel Berry. She's more than I could handle, anyhow. Let's keep our attention focused on that.”

“My life for the last three years is not just a false memory,” Sebastian says, confidence creeping back into his voice. “I own an animal. Not a false one but the real thing. A chipmunk. I love the chipmunk, Anderson. Every goddamn morning I feed it and clean up its cage. And in the evening, when I get off of work, I let it loose in my apartment and it runs all over the place. It has a wheel in its cage. Ever seen a chipmunk running inside a wheel? It runs and runs, the wheel spins, but the chipmunk stays in the same spot. Acorn seems to like it, though.”

“I guess chipmunks aren't too bright,” Blaine said.

They flew on, then, in silence.