Retirement of Irmgard Baty
The retirement of Irmgard Baty is the penultimate killing in Rick Deckard's twenty-four-hour hunt of eight escaped Nexus-6 androids, a moment that completes his physical mission while deepening his moral exhaustion. After he has already killed Pris Stratton—a duplicate of Rachael Rosen—and cornered Roy and Irmgard Baty in John Isidore's apartment, Irmgard attempts a decoy ambush, but Deckard shoots her before she can fire. Her death, together with Roy's, ends the last of the illegal android group, yet the act leaves Deckard hollow, confirming his growing conviction that he has become an instrument of entropy rather than justice.
The Ambush and the Killing
When Deckard reaches the apartment door, he impersonates the stuttering chickenhead John Isidore, saying, "Let me in because I'm looking after you and t-t-two of you are women." The door opens into darkness. Irmgard Baty, the smaller shape, says, "You have to administer tests." But Deckard knows it is too late for tests. Roy Baty fires first, missing, and then runs deeper into the apartment, abandoning his laser tube. Irmgard picks it up, intending to shoot Deckard from behind while Roy decoys him forward. Deckard sees the laser tube in her dimly outlined hand and says, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Baty," and shoots her. The killing is swift and without the Voigt-Kampff test that would have legally justified it; Roy Baty's initial shot has already forfeited that protection.
Roy Baty's Anguish and Deckard's Emptiness
From the other room, Roy Baty lets out a cry of anguish. Deckard tells him, "Okay, you loved her. And I loved Rachael. And the special loved the other Rachael." He then shoots Roy Baty, whose corpse lashes about and topples into the kitchen table, carrying dishes and flatware down with it. Reflex circuits in the corpse make it twitch and flutter, but it has died. Deckard ignores it, not seeing it and not seeing that of Irmgard Baty by the front door. He sits down on the couch in the silence of the apartment, among the nonstirring objects. The special Mr. Isidore appears at the door, crying. Deckard tells him, "Better not look," and then, "Don't take it so hard." He gets dizzily to his feet, finds the phone, and dials Harry Bryant's office to report the completion of the assignment.
Thematic Significance: The End of the Hunt
Irmgard Baty's death marks the moment when Deckard's professional role as a bounty hunter reaches its climax—six Nexus-6 androids retired in a single day, almost a record—yet the act brings him no satisfaction. He has killed without the procedural cover of the empathy test, and he has killed a being who, like Rachael Rosen, was capable of love and loyalty. The radioactive dust that has driven species to extinction and created the "special" classification is the same slow violence that has made androids illegal immigrants on Earth. Deckard, as a bounty hunter, has become part of that form-destroying process of entropy, as he himself reflects earlier in the novel. The retirement of Irmgard Baty is not a triumph but a necessary wrong, the kind Mercer told him he would be required to do no matter where he went. After the killing, Deckard drives north to a desolate area near the Oregon border, where he experiences a solitary ascent that mirrors Mercer's climb, and where he finds—or thinks he finds—a living toad, the creature most sacred to Mercer. But even that discovery is undercut when Iran later reveals the toad is electric. The cycle of creation and unmaking continues, and Deckard's role in it leaves him permanently altered.
