Now it was only Burke who smiled. "By George," he said, "that's right. There's no wedding on record, is there, Joe?"

"Wedding?" Joe repeated blankly. "I made her. I created her. Of course there's no—"

"Of course, of course, of course," Alice shrilled. "That's all you know. You're the original 'of course' kid. Things aren't that certain, Junior. I've known you just long enough and just well enough to detest you." Now she pointed at Burke. "That's what I want. That's my kind of man."

Burke gulped and grinned, nodded. "To coin a phrase, you said it, kiddo." He smiled at Joe. "I'll run her right down to the Center and get her registered, and take out an intent option. I guess we can't fight fate, Joe, can we?"

Joe took a deep breath of air. "I guess not. I guess it's—kismet."

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.

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