Retirement of Roy Baty
The retirement of Roy Baty marks the final act of Rick Deckard's marathon assignment to eliminate eight escaped Nexus-6 androids. After killing Pris Stratton on the stairs, Deckard proceeds to the apartment where the Batys are hiding. He knocks on the door, impersonating the special John Isidore by stammering, "Let me in because I'm looking after you and t-t-two of you are women." The door opens, and within the darkened apartment he sees two indistinct shapes.
The Confrontation
The smaller shape, Irmgard Baty, says, "You have to administer tests." Deckard replies, "It's too late." The taller figure, Roy Baty, tries to push the door shut and activate some electronic equipment. Deckard says, "No, I have to come in." Roy Baty fires a laser beam at him, but Deckard twists out of the way. Deckard tells him, "You've lost your legal basis, by firing on me. You should have forced me to give you the Voigt-Kampff test. But now it doesn't matter." Roy Baty fires again, misses, drops the tube, and runs deeper into the apartment, abandoning the electronic hardware.
The Killings
Irmgard Baty asks, "Why didn't Pris get you?" Deckard answers, "There is no Pris. Only Rachael Rosen, over and over again." He sees the laser tube in Irmgard's dimly outlined hand; Roy Baty had slipped it to her, intending to decoy Deckard into the apartment so she could shoot him from behind. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Baty," Deckard says, and shoots her. 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 shoots Roy Baty; the big man's corpse lashes about, topples like an overstacked collection of separate, brittle entities, and smashes 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.
Aftermath
Deckard ignores the bodies, not seeing them. He realizes, "I got the last one. Six today; almost a record. And now it's over and I can go home, back to Iran and the goat. And we'll have enough money, for once." He sits down on the couch in the silence of the apartment, among the nonstirring objects. The special, John Isidore, appears at the door. Deckard warns him, "Better not look." Isidore is crying, having seen Pris on the stairs. Deckard tells him not to take it so hard, gets up laboriously, finds the phone, and dials Harry Bryant's office. He reports the completion of the assignment. After hanging up, he says savagely to Isidore, "Androids are stupid. Roy Baty couldn't tell me from you; it thought you were at the door." He tells Isidore to stay in another apartment until the police clean up, then leaves.
Significance
The retirement of Roy Baty completes the destruction of the eight-android group that had escaped from Mars. It is the moment when Deckard, having killed six Nexus-6 androids in a single day, reaches the end of his assignment and confronts the moral and psychological consequences of his work. The ease with which he dispatches the Batys—after the emotional ordeal of killing Pris Stratton, who resembled Rachael Rosen—underscores his transformation from a professional bounty hunter into a man haunted by what he has done. The event also marks the final failure of the androids' attempt to survive on Earth, as their leader Roy Baty, who had organized the escape and experimented with mind-fusing drugs to create an android equivalent of Mercerism, is killed in a desperate and ultimately futile stand.
