Short Fiction by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Author:Stanley G. Weinbaum
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2015-05-12T00:01:00+00:00

* * *

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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