Short Fiction, Stanley G. Weinbaum [chromebook ebook reader .TXT] 📗

shuddered. “Horrible!” I murmured. “We⁠—I guess we wouldn’t have been among the survivors.”

“We, eh? We?” His eyes twinkled.

I did not enlighten him. I thanked him, bade him goodnight, and went dolorously home.

Even my father noticed something queer about me. The day I got to the office only five minutes late, he called me in for some anxious questioning as to my health. I couldn’t tell him anything, of course. How could I explain that I’d been late once too often, and had fallen in love with a girl two weeks after she was dead?

The thought drove me nearly crazy. Joanna! Joanna with her silvery eyes now lay somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic. I went around half dazed, scarcely speaking. One night I actually lacked the energy to go home and sat smoking in my father’s big overstuffed chair in his private office until I finally dozed off. The next morning, when old N. J. entered and found me there before him, he turned pale as paper, staggered, and gasped, “My heart!” It took a lot of explaining to convince him that I wasn’t early at the office but just very late going home.

At last I felt that I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something⁠—anything at all. I thought finally of the subjunctivisor. I could see⁠—yes, I could see what would have transpired if the ship hadn’t been wrecked! I could trace out that weird, unreal romance hidden somewhere in the worlds of “if.” I could, perhaps, wring a somber, vicarious joy from the things that might have been. I could see Joanna once more!

It was late afternoon when I rushed over to van Manderpootz’s quarters. He wasn’t there; I encountered him finally in the hall of the Physics Building.

“Dick!” he exclaimed. “Are you sick?”

“Sick? No. Not physically. Professor. I’ve got to use your subjunctivisor again. I’ve got to!”

“Eh? Oh⁠—that toy. You’re too late, Dick. I’ve dismantled it. I have a better use for the space.”

I gave a miserable groan and was tempted to damn the autobiography of the great van Manderpootz. A gleam of sympathy showed in his eyes, and he took my arm, dragging me into the little office adjoining his laboratory.

“Tell me,” he commanded.

I did. I guess I made the tragedy plain enough, for his heavy brows knit in a frown of pity. “Not even van Manderpootz can bring back the dead,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, Dick. Take your mind from the affair. Even were my subjunctivisor available, I wouldn’t permit you to use it. That would be but to turn the knife in the wound.” He paused. “Find something else to occupy your mind. Do as van Manderpootz does. Find forgetfulness in work.”

“Yes,” I responded dully. “But who’d want to read my autobiography? That’s all right for you.”

“Autobiography? Oh! I remember. No, I have abandoned that. History itself will record the life and works of van Manderpootz. Now I am engaged in a far grander project.”

“Indeed?” I was utterly, gloomily disinterested.

“Yes. Gogli has been here, Gogli the sculptor. He is to make a bust of me. What better legacy can I leave to the world than a bust of van Manderpootz, sculptured from life? Perhaps I shall present it to the city, perhaps to the university. I would have given it to the Royal Society if they had been a little more receptive, if they⁠—if⁠—if!” The last in a shout.

“Huh?”

“If!” cried van Manderpootz. “What you saw in the subjunctivisor was what would have happened if you had caught the ship!”

“I know that.”

“But something quite different might really have happened! Don’t you see? She⁠—she⁠—Where are those old newspapers?”

He was pawing through a pile of them. He flourished one finally. “Here! Here are the survivors!”

Like letters of flame, Joanna Caldwell’s name leaped out at me. There was even a little paragraph about it, as I saw once my reeling brain permitted me to read:

“At least a score of survivors owe their lives to the bravery of twenty-eight-year-old Navigator Orris Hope, who patrolled both aisles during the panic, lacing lifebelts on the injured and helpless, and carrying many to the port. He remained on the sinking liner until the last, finally fighting his way to the surface through the broken walls of the observation room. Among those who owe their lives to the young officer are: Patrick Owensby, New York City; Mrs. Campbell Warren, Boston; Miss Joanna Caldwell, New York City⁠—”

I suppose my shout of joy was heard over in the Administration Building, blocks away. I didn’t care; if van Manderpootz hadn’t been armored in stubby whiskers, I’d have kissed him. Perhaps I did anyway; I can’t be sure of my actions during those chaotic minutes in the professor’s tiny office.

At last I calmed. “I can look her up!” I gloated. “She must have landed with the other survivors, and they were all on that British tramp freighter the Osgood, that docked here last week. She must be in New York⁠—and if she’s gone over to Paris, I’ll find out and follow her!”

Well, it’s a queer ending. She was in New York, but⁠—you see, Dixon Wells had, so to speak, known Joanna Caldwell by means of the professor’s subjunctivisor, but Joanna had never known Dixon Wells. What the ending might have been if⁠—if⁠—But it wasn’t; she had married Orris Hope, the young officer who had rescued her. I was late again.

The Ideal

“This,” said the Franciscan, “is my Automaton, who at the proper time will speak, answer whatsoever question I may ask, and reveal all secret knowledge to me.” He smiled as he laid his hand affectionately on the iron skull that topped the pedestal.

The youth gazed open-mouthed, first at the head and then at the Friar. “But it’s iron!” he whispered. “The head is iron, good father.”

“Iron without, skill within, my son,” said Roger Bacon. “It will speak, at the proper time and in its own manner, for so have I made it. A clever man can twist