Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick

kicked with his hind legs, and leaped away, out of reach, beet leaves still dangling from his maw. A flock of ducks, startled by his activity, honked in various stages of panic as they all scattered, and Ignatz laughed. Ducks took things so seriously.
    After he had broken the board for his fire, he returned to the shack, the cats still trailing; he shut the door in their faces—not before one kitten managed to squeeze past and inside—and then he squatted by the cast iron trash burner and began building the fire.
    On the kitchen table his current wife, Elsie, lay sleeping under a pile of blankets; she would not getup until he had started the fire and fixed coffee. He did not blame her. On these cold mornings no one liked to get up; it was late in the morning before Gandhitown stirred, except of course for those Heebs who had wandered all night.
    From the sole bedroom of the shack a small child appeared, naked, stood with thumb in mouth, watching him silently as he lit the fire.
    Behind the child blared the noise of the TV set; the sound worked but not the picture. The children could not watch, could only listen. I ought to fix that, Ignatz said to himself, but he felt no urgency; before the moon’s TV transmitter at Da Vinci Heights had gone into operation, life had been simpler.
    When he started to make coffee he found that part of the pot was missing. So, rather than spend time searching, he made boiled coffee; he heated a pan of water over the propane burner, then, just as it boiled, dropped in a large, unmeasured handful of ground beans. The warm, rich smell filled the shack; he inhaled with gratitude.
    He was standing there at the stove, God knew how long, smelling the coffee, hearing the crackling of the fire as it warmed the shack, when by degrees he discovered that he was having a vision.
    Transfixed, he remained there; meanwhile the kitten which had squeezed in managed to climb to the sink, where it found a mass of discarded food left over from last night—it ate greedily, and the sound and sight of it mixed with the other sounds and sights. And the vision grew stronger.
    “I want cornmeal mush for breakfast,” the naked child at the bedroom door announced.
    Ignatz Ledebur did not answer; the vision held him, now, in another land. Or rather in a land so real that ithad no place; it obliterated the spacial dimension, was neither there nor here. And in terms of time—
    It seemed always to have been, but as to this aspect he possessed no certitude. Perhaps what he saw did not exist in time at all, had no start and, no matter what he did, would never terminate, because it was too large. It had burst loose from time entirely perhaps.
    “Hey,” Elsie murmured sleepily. “Where’s my coffee?”
    “Wait,” he said.
    “Wait? I can smell it, goddam it; where is it?” She struggled to a sitting position, throwing the covers aside, her body bare, breasts hanging. “I feel awful. I feel like throwing up. I suppose those kids of yours are in the bathroom.” She slid from the table, walked unsteadily from the room. “Why are you standing there like that?” she demanded, pausing at the entrance of the bathroom, suspiciously.
    Ignatz said, “Leave me alone.”
    “‘Leave me alone’ my ass—it was your idea I live here. I never wanted to leave Frank.” Entering the bathroom she slammed the door; it swung back open and she pushed it, held it shut, with her foot.
    The vision, now, had ended; Ignatz, disappointed, turned away, went with the pan of coffee to the table, shoved the blankets to the floor, laid out two mugs—left over from last night’s meal—and filled them with hot coffee from the pan; swollen grounds floated at the surface of each mug.
    From the bathroom Elsie said, “What was that, another of your so-called trances? You saw something, like God?” Her disgust was enormous. “I not only have to live with a Heeb—I have to live with one who has visions, like a Skitz. Are you a Heeb or a