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

amphetamine dispenser. Didn’t that indicate something was subtly, terribly wrong?
    Perhaps the dispenser hadn’t really been there.
     
    The next day he and Mary Ableseth visited one of the few remaining parks. In the southern part of Utah, near the mountains, the park although small was bright green and attractive. Milt Biskle lolled on the grass watching a squirrel progressing toward a tree in wicket-like leaps, its tail flowing behind it in a gray stream.
    “No squirrels on Mars,” Milt Biskle said sleepily.
    Wearing a slight sunsuit, Mary Ableseth stretched out on her back, eyes shut. “It’s nice here, Milt. I imagine Mars is like this.” Beyond the park heavy traffic moved along the freeway; the noise reminded Milt of the surf of the Pacific Ocean. It lulled him. All seemed well, and he tossed a peanut to the squirrel. The squirrel veered, wicket-hopped toward the peanut, its intelligent face twitching in response.
    As it sat upright, holding the nut, Milt Biskle tossed a second nut off to the right. The squirrel heard it land among the maple leaves; its ears pricked up, and this reminded Milt of a game he once had played with a cat, an old sleepy tom which had belonged to him and his brother in the days before Terra had been so overpopulated, when pets were still legal. He had waited until Pumpkin—the tomcat—was almost asleep and then he had tossed a small object into the corner of the room. Pumpkin woke up. His eyes had flown open and his ears had pricked, turned, and he had sat for fifteen minutes listening and watching, brooding as to what had made the noise. It was a harmless way of teasing the old cat, and Milt felt sad, thinking how many years Pumpkin had been dead, now, his last legal pet. On Mars, though, pets would be legal again. That cheered him.
    In fact on Mars, during his years of reconstruct work, he had possessed a pet. A Martian plant. He had brought it with him to Terra and it now stood on the living room coffee table in Mary Ableseth’s conapt, its limbs draped rather unhappily. It had not prospered in the unfamiliar Terran climate.
    “Strange,” Milt murmured, “that my wug-plant isn’t thriving. I’d have thought in such a moist atmosphere…”
    “It’s the gravity,” Mary said, eyes still shut, her bosom rising and falling regularly. She was almost asleep. “Too much for it.”
    Milt regarded the supine form of the woman, remembering Pumpkin under similar circumstances. The hypnogogic moment, between waking and sleeping, when consciousness and unconsciousness became blended… reaching, he picked up a pebble.
    He tossed the pebble into the leaves near Mary’s head.
    At once she sat up, eyes open startled, her sunsuit falling from her.
    Both her ears pricked up.
    “But we Terrans,” Milt said, “have lost control of the musculature of our ears, Mary. On even a reflex basis.”
    “What?” she murmured, blinking in confusion as she retied her sunsuit.
    “Our ability to prick up our ears has atrophied,” Milt explained. “Unlike the dog and cat. Although to examine us morphologically you wouldn’t know because the muscles are still there. So you made an error.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mary said, with a trace of sullenness. She turned her attention entirely to arranging the bra of her sunsuit, ignoring him.
    “Let’s go back to the conapt,” Milt said, rising to his feet. He no longer felt like lolling in the park, because he could no longer believe in the park. Unreal squirrel, unreal grass… was it actually? Would they ever show him the substance beneath the illusion? He doubted it.
    The squirrel followed them a short way as they walked to their parked ‘copter, then turned its attention to a family of Terrans which included two small boys; the children threw nuts to the squirrel and it scampered in vigorous activity.
    “Convincing,” Milt said. And it really was.
    Mary said, “Too bad you couldn’t have seen Dr. DeWinter more,