Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
Pygmalion's Spectacles - Stanley G Weinbaum
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- Duration:
- 46m
- Broadcast on:
- 05 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now, at Bluehost.com. Pygmalion Spectacles by Stanley Grum and Weinbaum. "What is reality?" asked the gnome-like man. He gestured at the tall banks of buildings that loomed around Central Park, with their countless windows glowing like the cave fires of a city of crow-magnomed people. All is dream, all is illusion. I'm your vision as you are mine. Dan Burke, struggling for clarity of thought through the fumes of liquor, stared without comprehension at the tiny figure of his companion. He began to regret the impulse that had driven him to leave the party to seek fresh air in the park, and to fall by chance to the company of this diminutive old madman. But he needed escape. This was one party too many and not even the presence of Claire with her trim ankles could hold him there. He felt an angry desire to go home. Not to his hotel, but home to Chicago into the comparative piece of the board of trade. But he was leaving tomorrow anyway. "You drink," said the Elfen-buted face. "To make real a dream, is it not so? It is to dream that what you seek is yours, or also dream that what you hate is conquered. You drink to escape reality, and the irony is that even reality is a dream." "Cract," thought Dan again. "Or so," concluded the other, says the philosopher Berkeley. "Berkeley?" echoed Dan. His head was clearing memories of a sophomore course in elementary philosophy directed back. "Bishop Berkeley, eh?" "You know him, then. The philosopher of idealism, no. The one who argues that we do not see, feel, hear, taste the object, but that we have only this sensation of seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting. I sort of recall it. Ha! But sensations are mental phenomena. They exist in our minds. How then do we know that the objects themselves not exist only in our minds? He waved again at the light-flect buildings. "You do not see that wall of masonry? You perceive only a sensation of feeling sight. The rest you interpret. You see the same thing," retorted Dan. "How do you know I do? Even if you knew that what I call red would not be green, could you see through my eyes? Even if you knew that, how do you know that I too am not a dream of yours?" Dan laughed. "Of course nobody knows anything. You just get one information you can through the windows of your five senses and then you make your guesses. When they're wrong, you pay the penalty. His mind was clear now, say, for a mild headache. "Listen," he said suddenly. "You can argue a reality away to an illusion. That's easy. But if your friend Berkeley is right, why can't you take a dream and make it real? If it works one way it must work the other." The beard waggled, elf-bright eyes glittered clearly at him. "All artists do that," said the old man softly. Dan felt that something more quivered on the verge of utterance. "That's an evasion," he grunted. "Anybody can tell the difference between a picture and the real thing or between a movie and life." But whispered the other. The realer, the better, no. And if one could make a movie very real indeed, what would you say then? Nobody can though. The eyes glittered strangely again. "I can," he whispered. "I did." Did what? Made of real a dream. The voice turned angry. Fools, I bring it here to sell to Westman, the camera people. And what did they say? It isn't clear. Only one person can use it at a time. It's too expensive. Fools, fools! Huh? Listen, I'm Albert Ludwig, Professor Ludwig. As Dan was silent, he continued. It means nothing to you, huh? But listen, a movie that gives one fight and sound. Suppose now I had taste, smell, even touch, if your interest is taken by the story. Suppose I make it so that you are in the story. You speak to the shadows and the shadows reply. And instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you and you were in it. Would that be to make real a dream? How the devil could you do that? How? How? But simply, first my liquid positive, then my magic spectacles. I photographed the story in a liquid with light-sensitive chromates. I build up a complex solution, do you see? I had taste chemically and sound electronically. And when the story is recorded, then I put the solution in my spectacle, my movie projector. I electrolyze the solution, break it down. The older chromates go first and out comes the story, sight, sound, smell, taste, all. Touch? If your interest is taken, your mind supplies that. Eagerness crept into his voice. You will look at it, Mr. Burke said Dan, a swindle he thought, then a spark of recklessness glowed out of the vanishing themes of alcohol. Why not? He grunted. He rose. Ludwig's standing came scarcely to his shoulder. A queer, gnome-like old man Dan thought as he followed him across the park and into one of the scores of apartment hotels in the vicinity. In his room, Ludwig fumbled in a bag producing a device vaguely remissed of a gas mask. There were goggles and a rubber mouthpiece, Dan examined it curiously, while the little bearded professor brandished a bottle of watery liquid. "Here it is," he gloated, "my liquid positive, the story, her photography, and fernally hard therefore the simplest story. A utopia, just two characters and you, the audience. Now put the spectacles on. Put them on and tell me what the fools the Westmen people are. He decanted some of the liquid into the mask and trailed a twist wire to a device on the table. A rectifier, he explained, for the electrolysis. Does he use all the liquid, ask Dan, "If you use part, do you see only part of the story and which part?" Each drop has all of it, but you must fill the eyepieces, then as Dan slipped the device gingerly on, "So, now what do you see?" Not a damn thing, just the windows and the lights across the street. "Of course, but now I start the electrolysis, now!" There's a moment of chaos, liquid before Dan's eyes clouded suddenly white, and formless sounds buzzed. He moved to tear the device from his head, but emerging forms in the mistiness caught his interest. Giant things were writhing there. The scene studied, the whiteness was dissipating like mist and summer. Unbelieving, still gripping the arms of that unseen chair, he was staring out of forest. But what a forest! Incredible, unearthly, beautiful! Whose bulls ascended inconveniently toward a brightening sky, trees bizarre as the forests of the Carboniferous Age. Infinitely overhead swayed misty fronds, and the verdues showed brown and green in the heights. And there were birds, at least curiously lovely pipings and twitterings were all about him, though he saw no creatures, thin elf and whistlings like fairy bugles sounded softly. He set frozen and tranced, a loud fragment of melody drifted down to him, mounting an exquisite ecstatic burst, now clear a sounding metal, and a soft as remembered music. For a moment he forgot the chair whose arms he gripped, the miserable hotel room invisibly about him. O Ludwig, his aching head, he imagined himself alone in the midst of that lovely glade. "Eden," he muttered, and the swelling music of unseen voices answered. Some measure of reason returned; illusion, he told himself; clever optic devices, not reality. He groped for the chair's arm, found it, and clung to it. He scraped his feet and found again an inconsistency. To his eyes the ground was mossy verdure; to his touch it was really a thin hotel carpet. The elf and bugling sounded gently, a faint, deliciously sweet perfume breathed against him. He glanced up to watch the opening of a great crimson blossom on the nearest tree, and a tiny reddish sun edged into a circle of sky above him. The fairy orchestra swelled louder in its light, and the note sent a thrill of wistfulness through him. Illusion? If it were, it made reality almost unbearable. He wanted to believe that somewhere, somewhere this side of dreams, there actually existed this region of loveliness, an outpost of paradise, perhaps. And then, far through the softening mists, he caught a movement that was not the swaying of verdure, a shimmer of silver more solid than mist. Something approached, he watched the figure as it moved, now visible, now hidden by trees. Every soon he perceived that it was human, but it was almost upon him before he realized that it was a girl. She wore a robe of silvery half-translucent stuff, luminous as star-beings, a thin band of silver-bound glowing black hair about her forehead, and other garment or ornament she had none. Her tiny white feet were bare to the mossy forest floor as she stood no more than a pace from him, staring dark-eyed. The thin music sounded again. She smiled. Dan's thumb and stumbling thoughts, was his being also illusion? Had she no more reality than the loveliness of the forest? He opened his lips to speak, but a strained, excited voice sounded in his ears. Who are you? Have you spoken? The voice I'd come as if from another, like the sound of one's words and fever. The girl smiled again, "English!" she said in queer soft tones, "I can speak a little English." She spoke slowly, carefully. I learned it from, she hesitated, "My mother's father, whom they call the grey weaver." Again came the voice in Dan's ears. "Who are you?" "I am called Galatea," she said, "I came to find you." "To find me?" echoed the voice that was Dan's. "Lucan, who is called the grey weaver told me," she explained, smiling. "He said you will stay with us until the second noon from this." She cast a quick, slanting glance at the pale sun, now full above the clearing, then stepped closer. "What are you called?" "Dan," he muttered. His voice sounded oddly different. "What a strange name!" said the girl. She stretched out her bare arm. "Come!" she smiled. Dan touched her extended hand, feeling without any surprise a living warmth of her fingers. He had forgotten the paradoxes of illusion. This was no longer allusion to him, but reality itself. It seemed to him that he followed her, walking over the shadowed turf that gave with springy crunched beneath his tread, though Galatea left Harley an imprint. He glanced down, noting that he himself wore a silver garment, and that his feet were bare. With the glance he felt a feathery breeze on his body in his sense of mossy earth on his feet. "Galatea!" said his voice. "Galatea, what place is this? What language do you speak?" She glanced back, laughing. "Why, this is paracosma, of course! And this is our language!" "Paracosma!" muttered Dan. "Paracosma?" A fragment of Greek that had survived somehow from a sophomore course a decade in the past came strangely back to him. "Paracosma! Land beyond the world!" Galatea cast a smiling glance at him. "Does the real world seem strange?" she queried. "After that shadow land of yours?" "Shadowland!" echoed Dan bewildered. "This is shadow, not my world!" The girl smiled, turned quizzical. "Phew!" she retorted with an impudently lovely pout. "And I suppose, then, that I am the phantom instead of you," she laughed. "Do I seem ghostlike?" Dan made no reply. He was puzzling over unanswerable questions as he trod behind the life figure of his guide. The aisle between the unearthly trees widened, and the giants were fewer. It seemed a mile, perhaps, before a sound of tinkling water obscured that other strange music. They emerged on the bank of a little river, swift and crystalline, that rippled in gurgle that's way from glowing pool to flashing rapids, sparkling under the pale sun. Galatea bent over the brink and cupped her hands, raising a few mouthfuls of water to her lips. Dan followed her example, finding the liquid stinging cold. "How do we cross?" he asked. "You can wade up there," the dry-eyed who led him gestured to a sunlit shallows above a tiny falls. But I always cross here. She poised herself for a moment on the green bank, then dove like a silver arrow into the pool. Dan followed. The water stung his body like champagne, but a stroker too carried him across to where Galatea had already emerged with the glistening of creamy bare limbs. Her garment clung tight as a metal sheath to her wet body. He felt a breath taking thrill at the sight of her, and then miraculously the silver cloth was dry. The droplets rolled off as if from oiled silk, and they moved briskly on. The incredible forest had ended with the river. They walked over a meadow studded with little, many huge star-shaped flowers, whose fronds underfoot were soft as a lawn, yet still the sweet pipings follow them, now loud, now whisper soft. In a tenuous web of melody, Galatea sedained finily, "Where is the music coming from?" She looked back amazed, "You silly one!" she laughed. "From the flowers, of course! See?" She plucked a purple star and held it to his ear. True enough of faint and plaintive melody, hummed out of the blossom. She tossed it in his startled face and skipped on. A little cops appeared ahead. Thought of the gigantic forest trees, but of lesser gross, bearing flowers and fruits of iridescent colors, and a tiny brook bubble through, and there stood the objective of their journey, a building of white marble-like stones single-storied and vine-covered, with broad, glassless windows. They trotted a path of bright pebbles to the arched entrance, and here, on an intricate stone bench that a gray-bearded patriarchal individual, Galatea addressed him in a little liquid language that reminded Dan of the flower-pypings, since he turned. This is Lucan, she said, as the ancient rose from his seat and spoke in English. "We are happy, Galatea and I, to welcome you, since visitors are a rare pleasure here, and those from your shadowy country most rare." Dan uttered puzzled words of thanks, and the old man nodded, receding himself on the carbon bench, Galatea skipped through the arched entrance, and Dan, after an irresolute mobin, dropped the remaining bench. Once more his thoughts were whirling in perplexed turbulence, was all this indeed but illusion? Was he sitting in actuality, in a prosaic hotel room peering through magical spectacles that pictured this world about him, or was he transported by some miracle, really sitting here in this land of loveliness? He touched the bench, stone, hard, and an yielding met his fingers. "Lucan," said his voice, "how did you know I was coming?" I was told, said the other, "by whom? By no one." "Why, someone must have told you!" The gray reaver shook his solemn head. I was just told. Dan seized his questioning, "contents for the moment to drink the beauty about him, and Dan, Galatea, returned, bearing a crystal bowl of the strange fruits. They were piled in colorful disorder, red, purple, orange, and yellow, pear-shaped, egg-shaped, and clustered spheroids, fantastic unearthly. He selected a pale, transparent ovid, bit into it, and was deluged by a flood of sweet liquid, to the amusement of the girl. She laughed and chose a similar morsel, biting a tiny puncture in the end. He squeezed the contents into her mouth. Dan took a different sort, purple and tart as rainish wine, and then another, filled with edible, almond-like seeds. Galatea laughed alightedly at his surprises, and even Lucan smiled a gray smile. Finally Dan tossed the last husk into the brook beside him, where it danced briskly toward the river. "Galatea," he said, "do you ever go to a city? What cities are in Pericosma?" "Cities?" "What are cities?" "Places where many people live close together." "Oh," said the girl, frowning, "No, there are no cities here." "Then where are the people of Pericosma? You must have neighbors." The girl looked puzzled. "A man did a woman live off there," she said, gesturing toward a distant blue range of hills dim in the horizon. "Far away over there. I went there once, but Lucan and I prefer the valley." "But Galatea, for tested Dan, are you and Lucan alone in this valley? Where--what happened to your parents? Your father and mother?" They went away. That way, towards the sunrise, they'll return some day. "And if they don't, why foolish one, what could hinder them?" "Well, beasts," said Dan, poisonous insects, disease, floods, storm, lawless people, death. "I never heard those words, Galatea. There are no such things here," she stiff contemptuously, flawless people. "Not." "Death? What is death?" "It's," Dan paused helplessly, "it's like falling asleep and never waking. It's what happens to everyone at the end of life." "I have never heard of such a thing as the end of life," said the girl decidedly. "There isn't such a thing." "What happens, then?" queried Dan desperately, "when one grows old." "Nothing, silly! No one grows old unless one wants to, like Lucan. A person grows the age he likes best and then stops. It's a law." Dan gathered his chaotic thoughts. He stared at Galatea's dark, lovely eyes. "Have you stopped yet?" The dark eyes dropped. He was amazed to see a deep, embarrassed flesh spread over her cheeks. She looked at Lucan, nodding reflexively on his bench, then back to Dan, meeting his gaze. "Not yet," he said. "And when will you, Galatea?" When I have had the one child permitted me, you see, she stared at her dainty toes. One cannot bear children afterwards. Permitted. Permitted by whom? By a law. Laws! Is everything here governed by laws? What of chance and accidents? What are those? Chance and accidents? Things unexpected, things unforeseen. Nothing is unforeseen, so Galatea is still soberly. She repeated slowly. Nothing is unforeseen. Many fancied her voice was wistful. Lucan looked up. "Enough of this," he said abruptly. He turned to Dan. "I know these words of yours, Chance, disease, death. They are not for Pericosma. Keep them in your unreal country." "Where did you hear them then?" "From Galatea's mother," said the gray weaver. "Who had them from your predecessor? A phantom who visited here before Galatea was born?" Galatea had a vision of Ludluk's face. "What was he like?" "Much like you, but his name. The old man's mouth was suddenly grim. You do not speak of him." He said in Rose entering the dwelling in a cold silence. He goes to weave. So Galatea, after a moment, her lovely pecan't face was still troubled. What does he weave? "This," she fingered this silver cloth of her gown. She weaves it out of metal bars on a very clever machine. I do not know the method. Who made the machine? It was here. But Galatea, who built the house, who planted these fruit trees? They were here. The house and the trees were always here. She lifted her eyes. I told you everything had been foreseen. From the beginning until eternity, everything, the house and the trees and machine were ready for Luke, and my parents and me. There is a place for my child, who will be a girl, and a place for her child, and so on forever. Did you thought a moment? Were you born here? I don't know. He noted in sudden consent. The following is a high five moment from high five casino dot com. By one! Yahoo! Private, put down your phone. This is the army. Sword. High five casino is a social casino. It's on your phone. Goes wherever you go. Great spins, cash, prizes, free den rewards, over twelve hundred games. I won again! Platoon presents cell phones. High five. High five. Casino. Casino. When did high five casino? The home! High five casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Were prohibited. Play responsibly conditions apply. See website for details. High five casino. Learn that her eyes were glistening with tears. Galatea, dear. Why are you unhappy? What's wrong? Why nothing? She shook her black curls, smiled suddenly at him. What could be wrong? How can one be unhappy in Pericosma? She sprang erect and seized his hand. Come! Let's gather fruit for tomorrow. She darted off in a whirl of flashing silver, and Dan followed her around the wing of the edifice. Grace, while as a dancer, she leapt from a branch above her head, caught it laughingly, and tossed a great golden globe to him. She noticed his arms with the prizes, and sent him back to the bench, and when he returned she piled it so full of fruit that deluge of colorful spears dropped around him. She laughed again and sent them spinning into the brook with thrust of her rosy toes, while Dan watched her with an aching wisfulness. Then suddenly she was facing him. For a long, tense instant they stood motionless, eyes upon eyes, and then she turned away and walked slowly around the arched portal. He followed her with his burden of fruit. His mind once mourned a turmoil of doubt and perplexity. The little sun was losing itself behind the trees, of that colossal forest to the west, and a coolness stirred among the long shadows. The brook was purple-hued in the dusk, but its cherry notes mingled still with the flower music. Then the sun was hidden, the shadow fingers darkened the meadow. Of a sudden the flowers were still, and the brook gurgled alone in the world of silence. In silence, too, Dan entered the doorway. The chamber within was a spacious one. Flored with the large black and white squares, exquisite benches of carved marble were here and there. Ode-lu caught in a far corner, bent over an intricate glistening mechanism, and as Dan entered he drew a shining length of silver cloth from it, folded it and placed it carefully aside. There was a curious, unearthly fact that Dan noted, despite windows open to the evening, no night insects circled the globes that glowed at intervals from niches on the walls. Galateus did an adorway to his left, leaning half-wearily against the frame. He placed the bowl of fruit on a bench at the entrance and moved to her side. "This is yours," she said, indicating the room beyond. He looked in upon a pleasant, smaller chamber, a window framed as starry square, and it then swift, nearly silent stream of water, gushed from the mouth of a carved human head on the left wall, curving into a six-foot base and sunken the floor. Another of the graceful benches covered with silver cloth completed the furnishings. A single glowing spear pendant by a chain from the ceiling illuminated the room. Dan turned to the girl whose eyes were still unwontingly serious. "This is ideal," he said, "but Galatea, how am I to turn out the light?" "Turn it out," she said, "you must cap it, so." A faint smile showed again on her lips as she dropped a metal covering over the shining sphere. They stood tense in the darkness, Dan sensed her nearness acingly, and then the light was on once more. She moved towards the door, and their paws taking his hand. "Dear shadow," she said softly, "I hope your dreams are music." She was gone. Dan stood a resolute in his chamber. He glanced into the large room where Liu Kahn still bent over his work, and the gray reaver raised a hand in solemn salutation, but said nothing. He felt no urge for the old man's silent company and turned back into his room to prepare for slumber. Almost instantly it seemed that Dan was upon him, and bright elf-and-pipings were all about him, while the odd, ruddy sun sent a broad, slanting pain of light across the room. He rose as fully aware of his surroundings, as if he had not slept at all. The pool tempted him, and he bathed in stinging water. Thereafter he emerged into the central chamber, noting curiously that the globe still glowed in dim rivalry to the daylight. He touched one casually. It was cool as metal to his fingers, and lifted freely from its standard. For a moment he held the cold, flaming thing in his hands, then replaced it and wandered to the dawn. Galatea was dancing upon the path, eating a strange fruit as rosy as her lips. She was merry again. Once more the happy nymph who had greeted him, and she gave him a bright smile as he chose a sweet, green ovid for his breakfast. "Come on!" she called, "to the river!" She skipped away toward the unbelievable forest Dan followed, marbling that her light speed was so easy a match for a stronger muscles. Then they were laughing in the pool, splashing about until Galatea drew herself to the bank, glowing and panting. He followed her as she lay relaxed strangely. He was neither tired nor breathless, with no sense of exertion. A question recurred to him. As yet a nask. "Galatea," said his voice, "whom will you take as a mate?" Her eyes went serious, "I don't know," she said, "at the proper time you will come, that is law." "And will you be happy?" "Of course! She seemed troubled. Isn't everyone happy?" "Not where I live, Galatea." "Then that must be a strange place, that ghostly world of yours, a rather terrible place." "It is often enough, Dan agreed. I wish," he paused, "what did he wish? Was he not talking to an illusion, a dream, an apparition?" He looked at the girl, at her glistening black hair, her eyes, her soft white skin, and then, for a tragic moment, he tried to feel the arms that drab hotel tear beneath his hands, and failed. He smiled. He reached out his fingers to touch her bare arm, and furnished it she looked back at him with startled sober eyes and sprang to her feet. "Come on, I want to show you my country." She set off down the stream, and Dan rose reluctantly to follow. "What a day that was!" They traced a little river from still pool to stinging rapids, and ever about them were strange twitterings and pipings that were the voices of the flowers. Every turn brought a new vist of beauty, every moment brought a new sense of delight. They talked or silent when they were thirsty, the cool river was at hand. When they were hungry, fruit offered itself. When they retired, there was always a deep pool in a mossy bank, and when they were rested a new beauty beckoned. The incredible trees towered in numberless forms of fantasy, but on their own side of the river, was still the flower-starred meadow. Galatea twisted him in a bright, blossom garland for his head, and thereafter he moved always with the sweet seeing about him. But little by little the red sun slanted toward the forest and the hour stripped away. It was Dan who pointed it out, and reluctantly they turned homeward. As they returned Galatea sang a strange song, plaintive and sweet as the melody of the river and flower music, and again her eyes were sad. What song is that he asked? "It is a song sung by another Galatea," she answered, "who is my mother." She later handed his arm, "I will make it into English for you," she sang. The river lies in flower and fern, and flower and fern breathes a song. It breathes a song of your return, of your returning years too long. In years too long it murmurs, bring it murmurs, bring their vain replies. The vain replies of flower sing, the flower sing the river lies. Her voice quavered on the final notes, they were silent save for the tinkle of the water and the flower bugles. Dan said, "Galatea," and paused. The girl was again somber-eyed, tearful. He said huskily, "That's a sad song, Galatea. Why was your mother sad?" He said, "Every woman is happy in Pericosma." She broke a law, replied the girl tonelessly. "It is the inevitable way to sorrow," she faced him. "She fell in love with the phantom," Galatea said. "One of your shadowy race you came to state in then had to go back. So when her appointed lover came, it was too late. Do you understand?" But she yielded finally to the law in this river unhappy, and goes wandering from place to place about the world. She paused. "I shall never break a law," she said defiantly. Dan took her hand. "I would not have you unhappy, Galatea. I want you always happy." She shook her head. "I AM happy," she said, and smiled a tender whistle smile. They were silent a long time as they trudged the way homeward. The shadows of the forest giants reached out across the river as the sun slipped behind them. For a distance they walked hand in hand, but as they reached the path of pebbly brightness to the house, Galatea drew away and sped swiftly before him. Dan followed as quickly as he might, when he arrived. Blue con sat on his bench by the portal, and Galatea had paused on the threshold. She watched his approach with eyes in which he again fancied the glint of tears. "I am very tired," she said and slipped within. Dan moved to follow, but the old man raised a staying hand. "Friend from the shadows," he said, "will you hear me a moment?" Dan paused acquiesced and dropped to the opposite bench. He felt a sense of foreboding, nothing pleasant a way to him. There is something to be said, Blue con continued, and I say it without desire to pain you if phantoms feel pain. It is this, Galatea loves you, though I think she has not yet realized it. I love her too, said Dan. The grey weaver stared at him. I do not understand, substance indeed my love shadow, but how can shadow love substance. I love her, insisted Dan, then woe to both of you, for this is impossible in Pericosma. It is a confliction with the laws. Galatea is made as appointed, perhaps even now approaching. Laws! Laws muttered, Dan. Whose laws are they? Not Galatea's nor mine. But they are, said the grey weaver. It is not for you, nor for me to criticize them, though I yet wonder what power could annul them to permit your presence here. I had no voice in your laws. The old man peered at him in the dusk. Has anyone anywhere of voice nor laws, he queried, and my country would have retorted Dan. Man, this, Graglucon, man-made laws, of what use are man-made laws with only man-made penalties, or not at all. If you shadows make a law that the wind shall blow only from the east, does the west win obey it? Would you not pass such laws, acknowledged Dan bitterly? They may be stupid, but they are no more unjust than yours. Hours, said the grey weaver, are the unalterable laws of the world, the laws of nature. Violation is always unhappiness, I have seen it. I have known it in another, and Gallate his mother. Though Gallate is stronger than she, he paused. Now, he continued, "I ask only for mercy. Your stay is short. And I ask that you do no more harm than is already done. Be merciful, give her no more to regret." He rose and moved through the archway, when Dan followed a moment later he was already removing a square of silver from his device in the corner. Dan turned silent and happy to his own chamber, where the jet of water tingled faintly as a distant bell. Again he rose at the glow of dawn, and again Gallate was before him, meeting him at the door with her bowl of fruit. She deposited her burden, giving him a wane little smile of greeting, and stood facing him as if waiting. "Come with me, Gallate," he said. "Where?" "To the riverbank, to talk." They trudged in silence to the brink of Gallate's pool. Dan noted a subtle difference in the world around him. As for vague, the thin flower-pipings less audible, and the very landscape was clearly unstable, shifting like smoke when he wasn't looking at it directly. And strangely, though he had brought the girl here to talk to her, he had now nothing to say, but sat an aching silence with his eyes on the loveliness of her face. Gallate had pointed at the red, ascending sun. "So short a time," she said, "before you go back to your phantom world. I shall be sorry, very sorry." She touched his cheek with her fingers. "Dear Shadow, suppose," said Dan Huskily, "that I won't go. What if I won't leave here?" His voice grew fiercer. "I'll not go. I'm going to stay." The calm, mournfulness of the girl's face checked him. He felt the irony of struggling against the inevitable progress of a dream. She spoke. "Had I the making of the laws, you should stay, but you can't, dear one. You can't." "Forgotten hour, the words of the Grey Reaver. I love you, Gallate, he said. And I, you," she whispered. "See, dear Shadow, how I break the same law my mother broke. And I'm glad to face a sorrow over him." She placed her hand tenderly over his. "Lucan is very wise, and I am bound to obey him. But this is beyond his wisdom, because he let himself grow old." She paused. He let himself grow old, she repeated slowly. A strange light gleamed in her dark eyes as she turned suddenly to Dan. "Dear one," she said tensely, "that thing that happens to the old, that death of yours. What follows it?" "What follows death?" he echoed. "Who knows?" "But," her voice was quivering, "but one can't simply vanish. There must be an awakening." "Who knows?" said Dan again. "They're those who believe we wake to a happier world, but," he shook his head hopelessly. "It must be true what must be Gallate cried. There must be more for you than the mad world you speak of." She leaned very close, "supposed," she said, "that when my pointed lover rises, I send him away. Suppose I bear no children but let myself grow old, older than Lucan, old until death. Would I join you in your happier world?" "Gailatea!" criedestractically, "Oh, my dears, but a terrible thought!" "More terrible than you know," she whispered, still very close to him, "it is more than violation of a law, it is rebellion. Everything is planned, everything was foreseen except this, and if I bear no child, her place will be left unfulfilled, and the places of her children, and of their children. And so one until some day the whole great plane of Paracosma fails of whatever his destiny was to be, who whispered grew very faint and fearful, "it is destruction, but I love you more than I feared death!" Dam's arms were about her, "No, Gallatea, no, promise me," she murmured, "I can promise and then break my promise," he drew his head down, their lips touched, and he felt fragrance in a taste like honey in her kiss. At least she breathed, "I can give you a name by which to love you," Philometro's measure of my love. "A name," muttered Dan, "a fantastic idea shot through his mind, a way of proving to himself that all this was reality, and not just a page that anyone could read, who wore old Ludwig's magic spectacles. At Gallatea would speak his name, perhaps he thought daringly, "Perhaps any could stay!" He thrust her away, "Gailatea!" he cried, "Do you remember my name?" She nodded, silently, her unhappy eyes on his, "Then say it, say it, dear!" She stared at him dumbly, miserably, but made no sound. "Say it, Gallatea," he pleaded desperately, "my name, dear, just my name!" Her mouth moved. She grew pale with effort, and Dan could have sworn that his name trembled on her quivering lips. The no sound. At last she spoke, "I can't, dearest one, oh I can't, a lot forbids it!" She stood suddenly erect, recurbing, "Lukon call!" she said, and darted away. Dan followed along the pebbled path, but her speed was beyond his powers. At the portal he found only a weaver standing cold and stern. He raised his hand as Dan appeared. "Your time," said, "Go, thinking of the havoc you have done." "Where's Gallatea, Gascan?" "I've sent her away." The old man blocked the entrance for a moment Dan would have struck him aside, but something withheld him. He stared wily about the meadow, "There! A flash of silver beyond the river at the edge of the--" He turned and raced towards it while motionless and cold the gray weaver watched him go. "Gallatea, you can't!" He was over the river now in the forest bank, running through column vistas that whirled around him like mist. The world had gone cloudy, find flake, stand-flake, snow before his eyes. Paracosma was dissolving around him. Through the chaos he fancied a glimpse of the girl, but closer approached left him still voicing his hopeless cry of Gallatea. 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 to mess for a moment he gazed at an unbelievable apparition, a dark window hung in mid-air 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. Gallatea was sorrow-stricken features, her tear-filled eyes on his. He made a terrific effort to rise, to direct and fell sprawling and ablaze of... Chorus skating lights. He struggled to his knees, walls, Ludwig's room encompassed him. He must have slipped from the chair, the magic specked go late before him, one lens splintered and spilling a fluid and a longer water-clear but white as milk. "God!" he muttered, he felt shake and 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, glanced automatically at his watch, four o'clock. He must have sat here in nearly five hours, for the first time he noticed Ludwig's absence. He was glad of it, and walked 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 the vision, worse, in love with the 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 Gallatea. Gallatea picked melee and statue, given life by Venus in the ancient Grecian myth. But his Gallatea—warm and lovely and vital—must remain forever without the gift of life, since he was neither pig-malion nor God. He woke late in the morning staring uncomprehensingly 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 lube been right, and was there no difference between reality and dream? He changed his rumpled attire and wandered despondently to the street. He found Lubewood's hotel at last, inquiry revealed that the diminutive professor had checked out, leaving no forwarding address. What of it? Even Lubewood couldn't give what he saw at a living Gallatea. Dayne was glad that he had disappeared. He hated a little professor. Professor? Hypnotists called themselves professors. He dragged through a weary day and then a sleepless night back to Chicago. It was mid-winter when he saw a suggestively tiny figure ahead of him in the Lube—Ludewig! He had what used to hail him. His cry was automatic. Professor Ludewig! The elephant figure turned, recognized him, smiled. They stepped into the shelter of the building. I'm sorry about your machine, Professor. I'll be glad to pay for the damage. Ah, that was nothing, a crack glass. But you! Have you been ill? You look much the worse. It's nothing, Sedan. Your show is marvellous, Professor. Marvelous! I'd have told you so, but you were gone when I ended. Ludewig shrugged. I went to the lobby for a cigar—five hours with a wax dummy, you know. It was marvellous, repeated, Dan. So real, smiled the other. Only because he cooperated, then. It takes self-hypnosis. It was real, alright, agreed, Dan Glumly. I don't understand it, that strange beautiful country. The trees were club mosses enlarged by a lens of Ludewig. All was trick photography. But stereoscope as I told you, three-dimensional. The fruits were rubber, the houses of summer building on our campus, Northern University. And the voice was mine. You didn't speak at all, except your name at the first. I left a blank for that. I played your part, you see. I went around with photographic apparatus dropped on my head. To keep the viewpoints always out of the observer, see? He grinned wily. 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?" "He's real enough," said the professor. "My niece, a senior at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped me out with a thing. Why, want to meet her?" Dan answered vaguely happily, and naked vanished, and pain was ceased. Paracosma was attainable at last. The following is a high-five moment from high-five casino.com. "Welcome to Burger Yiffy. Would you like a high-apple pie today?" Yes, yes, yes, I won! Woo-hoo! "So, that's a yes on the apple pie?" I just went big time playing high-five casino on my phone. Real cash prizes. Free daily rewards. Over 1,200 games. Woo-hoo! "So, yes or no on the apple pie." Woo-hoo! I won again! "I'll take that as a yes. Drive around." 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