He was still standing there when he heard the front door slam. He kept
staring at the machine, not seeing it, hearing instead all she had
said. She knew him better than anyone who lived. Better, actually, than
he knew himself, because she didn't rationalize, being outside his
mental sphere now. You might say she'd been in his mind and detested
what she had found there.
It was a crawling feeling, the knowledge that he had been guilty
of rationalization himself, that he had faults his mind refused to
acknowledge. He couldn't doubt that he was all the cold and gruesome
things she had called him. The worst shock, however, was that he
had studied psychology and honestly had believed he was an objective
thinker.
But who, he realized, could be completely honest about himself?
* * * * *
He looked at the machine and saw the non-rationalization electrodes. He
had used that on her and she had seen clearly what he still couldn't
recognize. What he needed, apparently, was a good, objective look at
his own mind.
He set the contact clock for objectivity maximum and clamped the
electrodes on his head. He reached for the switch, had to close his
eyes before he could throw it.
He didn't see the second hand going around and around the clock, but he
felt the prejudice-erasing impulses, the objective-appraisal stimuli,
revealing memories that had shaped him, humiliations that had twisted
him and been forgotten, urgings and longings and guilts that he had
never known existed.
He saw himself. It was highly unpleasant.
There was a final buzz and the clock stopped. Joe opened his eyes, both
figuratively and literally. He unclamped the helmet with the electrodes
and stepped from the chair, holding onto the arm, looking at the
mirrored inside walls of the mold.
He had made an image of himself and it had turned on him. Now he
had made--what? An image of his image's image of him? It was very
confusing, yet somehow clear.
He went slowly up the stairs, smelling the perfume. It wasn't Alice's
and that was peculiar, because she had practically swabbed herself with
the stuff, knowing he liked it, and she had just left.
It was Vera's perfume.
He remembered her waiting at the station, making her ridiculous bids at
the card table, gossiping witlessly with Mrs. Harvey, hitting her thumb
when she tried to hang his pictures in the study.
Vera....
He prowled dissatisfiedly through the house, as though in search of
something, and then went out to the car. He took the super-pike almost
all the way to the Center. There were bright cards on posts every few
hundred feet:
IT'S NOT TOO LATE
TO GET A MATE
THE GIRLS ARE GREAT
AT THE DOMESTIC CENTER
He pulled into the sweeping circular drive at the huge group of
buildings. A troupe of singing girls came out, dressed in majorette
costumes, opened the door, helped him out, parked the car, escorted
him into the lavish reception room. Music came from somewhere, soft
and moody. There were murals all over the walls, every one romantic. A
dispensing machine held engagement and wedding rings with a series of
finger-holes on the left side for matching sizes.
* * * * *
The matron recognized him and said, "Mr. Tullgren has gone home for the
day. Is there anything I can do?"
He told her what he wanted and she thumbed through a register.
"Yes, she's still here," the matron said finally. "She's refused
exactly thirty-two offers up to yesterday. You were thinking of
a--reconciliation?"