The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories by Philip K. Dick

have to look her up.
    It was a crisis in his logic that he did not enjoy facing.
     
    At six in the morning he stood at Carol Holt Cupertino’s door. Many rings of the bell were required until at last the door of the small, single-unit dwelling opened; Carol, wearing a blue, pellucid nylon nightgown and white furry slippers, stood sleepily facing him. A cat hurried out past her.
    “Remember me?” Cupertino said, stepping aside for the cat.
    “Oh God.” She brushed the tumble of blonde hair back from her eyes, nodded. “What time is it?” Gray, cold light filled the almost deserted street; Carol shivered, folded her arms. “How come you’re up so early? You never used to be out of bed before eight.”
    “I haven’t gone to bed yet.” He stepped past her, entered the dark living room with its drawn shades. “How about some coffee?”
    “Sure.” Listlessly she made her way to the kitchen, pressed the HOT COFFEE button on the stove; first one, then a second cup appeared, giving off fragrant steam. “Cream for me,” she said, “cream and sugar for you. You’re more infantile.” She handed him his cup; the smell of her—warmth and softness and sleep—mixed with that of the coffee.
    Cupertino said, “You haven’t gotten a day older and it’s been well over three years.” In fact she was even more slender, more supple.
    Seating herself at the kitchen table, her arms still modestly folded, Carol said, “Is that suspicious?” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright.
    “No. A compliment.” He, too, seated himself. “Hagopian sent me here; he decided I should see you. Evidently—”
    “Yes,” Carol said, “I’ve seen him. I was in Northern California several times on business; I stopped by… he had asked me to in a letter. I like him. In fact you should be about cured by now.”
    “ ‘Cured’?” He shrugged. “I feel I am. Except—”
    “Except that you still have your idée fixe. Your basic, delusional, fixed idea that no amount of psychoanalysis will help. Right?”
    Cupertino said, “If you mean my recollection of killing you, yes; I still have it— I know it happened. Dr. Hagopian thought you could tell me something about it; after all, as he pointed out—”
    “Yes,” she agreed, “but is it really worth going over this with you? It’s so tedious, and my God, it’s only six A.M. Couldn’t I go back to bed and then sometime later get together with you, maybe in the evening? No?” she sighed. “Okay. Well, you tried to kill me. You did have a laser beam. It was at our conapt in New Detroit-G, on Ganymede, on March 12, 2014.”
    “Why did I try to kill you?”
    “You know.” Her tone was bitter; her breasts pulsed with resentment.
    “Yes.” In all his thirty-five years he had never made another mistake as serious. In their divorce litigation his wife’s knowledge of the impending revolt had given her the dominant position; she had been able to dictate settlement terms to him precisely as she wished. At last the financial components had proved unbearable and he had gone to the conapt which they had shared—by then he had moved out, gotten a small conapt of his own at the other end of the city—and had told her simply and truthfully that he could not meet her demands. And so the threat by Carol to go to the homeopapes, the news-gathering extensors of the New York Times and Daily News which operated on Ganymede.
    “You got out your little laser beam,” Carol was saying, “and you sat with it, fooling with it, not saying much. But you got your message over to me; either I accepted an unfair settlement which—”
    “Did I fire the beam?”
    “Yes.”
    “And it hit you?”
    Carol said, “You missed and I ran out of the conapt and down the hall to the elevator. I got downstairs to the sergeant at arms’ room on floor one and called the police from there. They came. They found you still in the conapt.” Her tone was withering. “You were crying.”
    “Christ,”