The Worlds of If
I stopped on the way to the Staten Island Airport to call up, and that was a mistake, doubtless, since I had a chance of
sound came.
At last she spoke. “I can’t, dearest one! Oh, I can’t! A law forbids it!” She stood suddenly erect, pallid as an ivory carving. “Leucon calls!” she said, and darted away. Dan followed along the pebbled path, but her speed was beyond his powers; at the portal he found only the Grey Weaver standing cold and stern. He raised his hand as Dan appeared.
“Your time is short,” he said. “Go, thinking of the havoc you have done.”
“Where’s Galatea?” gasped Dan.
“I have sent her away.” The old man blocked the entrance; for a moment Dan would have struck him aside, but something withheld him. He stared wildly about the meadow—there! A flash of silver beyond the river, at the edge of the forest. He turned and raced toward it, while motionless and cold the Grey Weaver watched him go.
“Galatea!” he called. “Galatea!”
He was over the river now, on the forest bank, running through columned vistas that whirled about him like mist. The world had gone cloudy; fine flakes danced like snow before his eyes; Paracosma was dissolving around him. Through the chaos he fancied a glimpse of the girl, but closer approach left him still voicing his hopeless cry of “Galatea!”
After an endless time, he paused; something familiar about the spot struck him, and just as the red sun edged above him, he recognized the place—the very point at which he had entered Paracosma! A sense of futility overwhelmed him as for a moment he gazed at an unbelievable apparition—a dark window hung in midair before him through which glowed rows of electric lights. Ludwig’s window!
It vanished. But the trees writhed and the sky darkened, and he swayed dizzily in turmoil. He realized suddenly that he was no longer standing, but sitting in the midst of the crazy glade, and his hands clutched something smooth and hard—the arms of that miserable hotel chair. Then at last he saw her, close before him—Galatea, with sorrow-stricken features, her tear-filled eyes on his. He made a terrific effort to rise, stood erect, and fell sprawling in a blaze of coruscating lights.
He struggled to his knees; walls—Ludwig’s room—encompassed him; he must have slipped from the chair. The magic spectacles lay before him, one lens splintered and spilling a fluid no longer water-clear, but white as milk.
“God!” he muttered. He felt shaken, sick, exhausted, with a bitter sense of bereavement, and his head ached fiercely. The room was drab, disgusting; he wanted to get out of it. He glanced automatically at his watch: four o’clock—he must have sat here nearly five hours. For the first time he noticed Ludwig’s absence; he was glad of it and walked dully out of the door to an automatic elevator. There was no response to his ring; someone was using the thing. He walked three flights to the street and back to his own room.
In love with a vision! Worse—in love with a girl who had never lived, in a fantastic Utopia that was literally nowhere! He threw himself on his bed with a groan that was half a sob.
He saw finally the implication of the name Galatea. Galatea—Pygmalion’s statue, given life by Venus in the ancient Grecian myth. But his Galatea, warm and lovely and vital, must remain forever without the gift of life, since he was neither Pygmalion nor God.
He woke late in the morning, staring uncomprehendingly about for the fountain and pool of Paracosma. Slow comprehension dawned; how much—how much—of last night’s experience had been real? How much was the product of alcohol? Or had old Ludwig been right, and was there no difference between reality and dream?
He changed his rumpled attire and wandered despondently to the street. He found Ludwig’s hotel at last; inquiry revealed that the diminutive professor had checked out, leaving no forwarding address.
What of it? Even Ludwig couldn’t give what he sought, a living Galatea. Dan was glad that he had disappeared; he hated the little professor. Professor? Hypnotists called themselves “professors.” He dragged through a weary day and then a sleepless night back to Chicago.
It was midwinter when he saw a suggestively tiny figure ahead of him in the Loop. Ludwig! Yet what use to hail him? His cry was automatic. “Professor Ludwig!”
The elfin figure turned, recognized him, smiled. They stepped into the shelter of a building.
“I’m sorry about your machine, Professor. I’d be glad to pay for the damage.”
“Ach, that was nothing—a cracked glass. But you—have you been ill? You look much the worse.”
“It’s nothing,” said Dan. “Your show was marvelous, Professor—marvelous! I’d have told you so, but you were gone when it ended.”
Ludwig shrugged. “I went to the lobby for a cigar. Five hours with a wax dummy, you know!”
“It was marvelous!” repeated Dan.
“So real?” smiled the other. “Only because you cooperated, then. It takes self-hypnosis.”
“It was real, all right,” agreed Dan glumly. “I don’t understand it—that strange beautiful country.”
“The trees were club-mosses enlarged by a lens,” said Ludwig. “All was trick photography, but stereoscopic, as I told you—three dimensional. The fruits were rubber; the house is a summer building on our campus—Northern University. And the voice was mine; you didn’t speak at all, except your name at the first, and I left a blank for that. I played your part, you see; I went around with the photographic apparatus strapped on my head, to keep the viewpoint always that of the observer. See?” He grinned wryly. “Luckily I’m rather short, or you’d have seemed a giant.”
“Wait a minute!” said Dan, his mind whirling. “You say you played my part. Then Galatea—is she real too?”
“Tea’s real enough,” said the Professor. “My niece, a senior at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped me out with the thing. Why? Want to meet her?”
Dan answered vaguely, happily. An ache had vanished; a pain was eased. Paracosma was attainable at last!
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