Free Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick Page B

everything flows. Of course, I have to have all the pieces; I can’t do it with a fraction of the pot not present.” I’m beginning to talk like she does, he said to himself. She must be a strong personality and I’m subconsciously sensing this. As Jung pointed out, there is the anima archetype, which men experience when they encounter women. The archetypal image projected onto first one woman and then the next, giving them a charismatic power. I had better be careful, he reflected. After all, my involvement with Kate suggests that my anima-figure is strong-willed and dominating, rather than receptive and passive. I don’t want to make the same mistake all over again, he said to himself. The mistake called Katherine Hurley Blaine.
    “The SSA computer has obtained the data,” the stewardess informed him and Mali Yojez. She removed the electrodes from their scalps. “It will take two or three minutes for it to process them.”
    “What form does its extrapolation take?” Joe asked. “Written on a paper ribbon in punch form, or—”
    “You will be presented pictorially with a representative moment of your two lives entwined together a year from now,” the stewardess said. “Projected in 3-D and color on the far wall.” She lowered the lights in the lounge.
    “Can I smoke?” Mali Yojez said. “We’re not bound by Terran law out here.”
    “The smoking of tobacco cigarettes is forbidden on the ship during its entire flight,” the stewardess said. “Because of the high oxygen content of the retained atmosphere.”
    The lights dimmed; everything around Joe sank into cloudy darkness, and each object became indistinct, including the girl beside him. A moment passed, and then an illuminated square materialized, in depth, near the SSA machine. Colorsflashed by; colors and variegated images: he saw himself at work healing pots; he saw himself eating dinner; he saw her seated at her vanity table combing her hair. The images continued to flutter past, and then, all at once, the visual representation locked into place.
    He saw, in 3-D and in color, himself and Mali holding hands and walking, slowly, along the twilight beach of some deserted, other world. The fish-eye lens-system zoomed in, and he saw his own face and hers. Both their faces expressed the most tender love possible. He knew at once, seeing his expression a year from now, that he had never had such a look on his face; life had never held anything like that before for him. Perhaps, he thought, it had never held this for her either. He glanced toward her but could not make out her features; he could not see how she was taking this.
    “My, but you two look happy,” the stewardess said.
    Mali Yojez said, “Please leave us. Now.”
    “Well,” the stewardess said. “I’m very sorry I was here at all.” She left the lounge; the door clicked after her.
    “They’re everywhere,” Mali Yojez said, by way of explanation. “The entire flight. They never leave you. Leave alone.”
    “But she showed us how the mechanism worked,” Joe said.
    “Hell, I can make a SSA machine work; I’ve it several times done.” She sounded cross and tense, as if what she saw did not appeal to her.
    “It looks like we’d be good for each other,” Joe offered.
    “Oh Christ!” Mali Yojez screeched; she banged her fist down on the arm of her chair. “That’s what it said before. I and Ralf. Perfect outworking in everywhere. And it were not!” Her voice sank to a husky growl; her anger pervaded the lounge, as palpable as animal musk. He felt her glowering next to him; he intuited her immense emotional reaction to the representative scene projected by the machine.
    “As the stewardess explained,” Joe said, “the SSA mechanismcan’t see the future; it can only put together all the data from my mind and yours and work out a trend of greatest probability.”
    “Why then use it at all?” Mali Yojez countered.
    “Consider it like fire insurance,” Joe said.