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diff --git a/22890-0.txt b/22890-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a383ad --- /dev/null +++ b/22890-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1146 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Worlds of If, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Worlds of If + +Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum + +Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22890] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLDS OF IF *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _A Martian Odyssey and Others_ + published in 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence + that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor + spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + +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 making it otherwise. +But the office was affable. "We'll hold the ship five minutes for you," +the clerk said. "That's the best we can do." + +So I rushed back to my taxi and we spun off to the third level and sped +across the Staten bridge like a comet treading a steel rainbow. I had to +be in Moscow by evening, by eight o'clock, in fact, for the opening of +bids on the Ural Tunnel. The Government required the personal presence +of an agent of each bidder, but the firm should have known better than +to send me, Dixon Wells, even though the N. J. Wells Corporation is, so +to speak, my father. I have a--well, an undeserved reputation for being +late to everything; something always comes up to prevent me from getting +anywhere on time. It's never my fault; this time it was a chance +encounter with my old physics professor, old Haskel van Manderpootz. I +couldn't very well just say hello and good-bye to him; I'd been a +favorite of his back in the college days of 2014. + +I missed the airliner, of course. I was still on the Staten Bridge when +I heard the roar of the catapult and the Soviet rocket _Baikal_ hummed +over us like a tracer bullet with a long tail of flame. + +We got the contract anyway; the firm wired our man in Beirut and he flew +up to Moscow, but it didn't help my reputation. However, I felt a great +deal better when I saw the evening papers; the _Baikal_, flying at the +north edge of the eastbound lane to avoid a storm, had locked wings with +a British fruitship and all but a hundred of her five hundred +passengers were lost. I had almost become "the late Mr. Wells" in a +grimmer sense. + +I'd made an engagement for the following week with old van Manderpootz. +It seems he'd transferred to N.Y.U. as head of the department of Newer +Physics--that is, of Relativity. He deserved it; the old chap was a +genius if ever there was one, and even now, eight years out of college, +I remember more from his course than from half a dozen calculus, steam +and gas, mechanics, and other hazards on the path to an engineer's +education. So on Tuesday night I dropped in an hour or so late, to tell +the truth, since I'd forgotten about the engagement until mid-evening. + +He was reading in a room as disorderly as ever. "Humph!" he grunted. +"Time changes everything but habit, I see. You were a good student, +Dick, but I seem to recall that you always arrived in class toward the +middle of the lecture." + +"I had a course in East Hall just before," I explained. "I couldn't seem +to make it in time." + +"Well, it's time you learned to be on time," he growled. Then his eyes +twinkled. "Time!" he ejaculated. "The most fascinating word in the +language. Here we've used it five times (there goes the sixth time--and +the seventh!) in the first minute of conversation; each of us +understands the other, yet science is just beginning to learn its +meaning. Science? I mean that _I_ am beginning to learn." + +I sat down. "You and science are synonymous," I grinned. "Aren't you one +of the world's outstanding physicists?" + +"One of them!" he snorted. "One of them, eh! And who are the others?" + +"Oh, Corveille and Hastings and Shrimski--" + +"Bah! Would you mention them in the same breath with the name of van +Manderpootz? A pack of jackals, eating the crumbs of ideas that drop +from my feast of thoughts! Had you gone back into the last century, +now--had you mentioned Einstein and de Sitter--there, perhaps, are names +worthy to rank with (or just below) van Manderpootz!" + +I grinned again in amusement. "Einstein was considered pretty good, +wasn't he?" I remarked. "After all, he was the first to tie time and +space to the laboratory. Before him they were just philosophical +concepts." + +"He didn't!" rasped the professor. "Perhaps, in a dim, primitive +fashion, he showed the way, but I--_I_, van Manderpootz--am the first to +seize time, drag it into my laboratory, and perform an experiment on +it." + +"Indeed? And what sort of experiment?" + +"What experiment, other than simple measurement, is it possible to +perform?" he snapped. + +"Why--I don't know. To travel in it?" + +"Exactly." + +"Like these time-machines that are so popular in the current magazines? +To go into the future or the past?" + +"Bah! Many bahs! The future or the past--pfui! It needs no van +Manderpootz to see the fallacy in that. Einstein showed us that much." + +"How? It's conceivable, isn't it?" + +"Conceivable? And you, Dixon Wells, studied under van Manderpootz!" He +grew red with emotion, then grimly calm. "Listen to me. You know how +time varies with the speed of a system--Einstein's relativity." + +"Yes." + +"Very well. Now suppose then that the great engineer Dixon Wells invents +a machine capable of traveling very fast, enormously fast, nine-tenths +as fast as light. Do you follow? Good. You then fuel this miracle ship +for a little jaunt of a half million miles, which, since mass (and with +it inertia) increases according to the Einstein formula with increasing +speed, takes all the fuel in the world. But you solve that. You use +atomic energy. Then, since at nine-tenths light-speed, your ship weighs +about as much as the sun, you disintegrate North America to give you +sufficient motive power. You start off at that speed, a hundred and +sixty-eight thousand miles per second, and you travel for two hundred +and four thousand miles. The acceleration has now crushed you to death, +but you have penetrated the future." He paused, grinning sardonically. +"Haven't you?" + +"Yes." + +"And how far?" + +I hesitated. + +"Use your Einstein formula!" he screeched. "How far? I'll tell you. _One +second!_" He grinned triumphantly. "That's how possible it is to travel +into the future. And as for the past--in the first place, you'd have to +exceed light-speed, which immediately entails the use of more than an +infinite number of horsepowers. We'll assume that the great engineer +Dixon Wells solves that little problem too, even though the energy +out-put of the whole universe is not an infinite number of horsepowers. +Then he applies this more than infinite power to travel at two hundred +and four thousand miles per second for _ten_ seconds. He has then +penetrated the past. How far?" + +Again I hesitated. + +"I'll tell you. _One second!_" He glared at me. "Now all you have to do +is to design such a machine, and then van Manderpootz will admit the +possibility of traveling into the future--for a limited number of +seconds. As for the past, I have just explained that all the energy in +the universe is insufficient for that." + +"But," I stammered, "you just said that you--" + +"I did _not_ say anything about traveling into either future or past, +which I have just demonstrated to you to be impossible--a practical +impossibility in the one case and an absolute one in the other." + +"Then how _do_ you travel in time?" + +"Not even van Manderpootz can perform the impossible," said the +professor, now faintly jovial. He tapped a thick pad of typewriter paper +on the table beside him. "See, Dick, this is the world, the universe." +He swept a finger down it. "It is long in time, and"--sweeping his hand +across it--"it is broad in space, but"--now jabbing his finger against +its center--"it is very thin in the fourth dimension. Van Manderpootz +takes always the shortest, the most logical course. I do not travel +along time, into past or future. No. Me, I travel across time, +sideways!" + +I gulped. "Sideways into time! What's there?" + +"What would naturally be there?" he snorted. "Ahead is the future; +behind is the past. Those are real, the worlds of past and future. What +worlds are neither past nor future, but contemporary and +yet--extemporal--existing, as it were, in time parallel to our time?" + +I shook my head. + +"Idiot!" he snapped. "The conditional worlds, of course! The worlds of +'if.' Ahead are the worlds to be; behind are the worlds that were; to +either side are the worlds that might have been--the worlds of 'if!'" + +"Eh?" I was puzzled. "Do you mean that you can see what will happen if I +do such and such?" + +"No!" he snorted. "My machine does not reveal the past nor predict the +future. It will show, as I told you, the conditional worlds. You might +express it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would have +happened.' The worlds of the subjunctive mode." + +"Now how the devil does it do that?" + +"Simple, for van Manderpootz! I use polarized light, polarized not in +the horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourth +dimension--an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossal +pressures, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in the +direction of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave, +though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerable +improvement over time-traveling in past or future, with its impossible +velocities and ridiculous distances!" + +"But--are those--worlds of 'if'--real?" + +"Real? What is real? They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is a +real number as opposed to √-2, which is imaginary. They are the worlds +that would have been _if_-- Do you see?" + +I nodded. "Dimly. You could see, for instance, what New York would have +been like if England had won the Revolution instead of the Colonies." + +"That's the principle, true enough, but you couldn't see that on the +machine. Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat (stolen from one of +my ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the device. Your +own mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if George +Washington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, he +could have seen what you suggest. We can't. You can't even see what +would have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but _I_ can. Do you +understand?" + +"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past experiences +of the user." + +"You're growing brilliant," he scoffed. "Yes. The device will show ten +hours of what would have happened _if_--condensed, of course, as in a +movie, to half an hour's actual time." + +"Say, that sounds interesting!" + +"You'd like to see it? Is there anything you'd like to find out? Any +choice you'd alter?" + +"I'll say--a thousand of 'em. I'd like to know what would have happened +if I'd sold out my stocks in 2009 instead of '10. I was a millionaire in +my own right then, but I was a little--well, a little late in +liquidating." + +"As usual," remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to the laboratory +then." + +The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered me +into the Physics Building, and thence into his own research laboratory, +much like the one I had visited during my courses under him. The +device--he called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated in +hypothetical worlds--occupied the entire center table. Most of it was +merely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy was +the prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart of +the instrument. + +Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. "Put it on," he said, and I +sat staring at the screen of the psychomat. I suppose everyone is +familiar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few years +ago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy; +sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a real aid to memory. A maze of +vague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen, +and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene or +circumstances he is trying to remember. He turns a knob that alters the +arrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the design +corresponds to his mental picture--presto! There is his scene re-created +under his eyes. Of course his own mind adds the details. All the screen +actually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but the thing +can be amazingly real. I've seen occasions when I could have sworn the +psychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality +itself; the illusion is sometimes as startling as that. + +Van Manderpootz switched on the light, and the play of shadows began. +"Now recall the circumstances of, say, a half-year after the market +crash. Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that point +I direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you have +nothing to do but watch." + +I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoate +sounds of the device hummed like distant voices, but without the added +suggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face flashed and +dissolved and then, finally, I had it. There was a picture of myself +sitting in an ill-defined room; that was all. I released the knob and +gestured. + +A click followed. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picture +cleared, and amazingly, another figure emerged, a woman. I recognized +her; it was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere of +the "Vision Varieties of '09." She was changed on that picture, but I +recognized her. + +I'll say I did! I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07 +to '10, trying to marry her, while old N. J. raved and ranted and +threatened to leave everything to the Society for Rehabilitation of the +Gobi Desert. I think those threats were what kept her from accepting me, +but after I took my own money and ran it up to a couple of million in +that crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened. + +Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came and +bounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favor +dropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were engaged, +in April we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been late +again. + +And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out, +and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring at +me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzes +became voices. + +"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go +back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and +your golf." + +"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd." + +"At least they're _alive_. You're a walking corpse. Just because you +were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're a +tin god." + +"Well, I _don't_ think _you're_ Cleopatra! Those friends of yours--they +trail after you because you give parties and spend money--_my_ money." + +"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!" + +"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real name.) "It +might help your figure--though I doubt if anything could!" + +She glared in rage and--well, that was a painful half hour. I won't give +all the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved into +meaningless colored clouds. + +"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been reading. + +"You liked it?" + +"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't regret it +from now on." + +"That," said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's great +contribution to human happiness. 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the +saddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick. +Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might have +been--worse!'" + + * * * * * + +It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when I +rose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father was +unnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'd +never been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me and +dragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcastically +to my missing the _Baikal_; I reminded him of the wrecking of the liner, +and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocket +would have been late, and so would have missed colliding with the +British fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention that +when he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in the +mountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that. + +"Dixon," he concluded, "you have no conception whatever of time. None +whatever." + +The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled to +ask, "And have you, sir?" + +"I have," he said grimly. "I most assuredly have. Time," he said +oracularly, "is money." + +You can't argue with a viewpoint like that. + +But those aspersions of his rankled, especially that about the _Baikal_. +Tardy I might be, but it was hardly conceivable that my presence aboard +the rocket could have averted the catastrophe. It irritated me; in a +way, it made me responsible for the deaths of those unrescued hundreds +among the passengers and crew, and I didn't like the thought. + +Of course, if they'd waited an extra five minutes for me, or if I'd been +on time and they'd left on schedule instead of five minutes late, or +if--_if_! + +If! The word called up van Manderpootz and his subjunctivisor--the +worlds of "if," the weird, unreal worlds that existed beside reality, +neither past nor future, but contemporary, yet extemporal. Somewhere +among their ghostly infinities existed one that represented the world +that would have been had I made the liner. I had only to call up Haskel +van Manderpootz, make an appointment, and then--find out. + +Yet it wasn't an easy decision. Suppose--just suppose that I found +myself responsible--not legally responsible, certainly; there'd be no +question of criminal negligence, or anything of that sort--not even +morally responsible, because I couldn't possibly have anticipated that +my presence or absence could weigh so heavily in the scales of life and +death, nor could I have known in which direction the scales would tip. +Just--responsible; that was all. Yet I hated to find out. + +I hated equally not finding out. Uncertainty has its pangs too, quite as +painful as those of remorse. It might be less nerve-racking to know +myself responsible than to wonder, to waste thoughts in vain doubts and +futile reproaches. So I seized the visiphone, dialed the number of the +University, and at length gazed on the broad, humorous, intelligent +features of van Manderpootz, dragged from a morning lecture by my call. + + * * * * * + +I was all but prompt for the appointment the following evening, and +might actually have been on time but for an unreasonable traffic officer +who insisted on booking me for speeding. At any rate, van Manderpootz +was impressed. + +"Well!" he rumbled. "I almost missed you, Dixon. I was just going over +to the club, since I didn't expect you for an hour. You're only ten +minutes late." + +I ignored this. "Professor, I want to use your--uh--your +subjunctivisor." + +"Eh? Oh, yes. You're lucky, then. I was just about to dismantle it." + +"Dismantle it! Why?" + +"It has served its purpose. It has given birth to an idea far more +important than itself. I shall need the space it occupies." + +"But what _is_ the idea, if it's not too presumptuous of me to ask?" + +"It is not too presumptuous. You and the world which awaits it so +eagerly may both know, but you hear it from the lips of the author. It +is nothing less than the autobiography of van Manderpootz!" He paused +impressively. + +I gaped. "Your autobiography?" + +"Yes. The world, though perhaps unaware, is crying for it. I shall +detail my life, my work. I shall reveal myself as the man responsible +for the three years' duration of the Pacific War of 2004." + +"You?" + +"None other. Had I not been a loyal Netherlands subject at that time, +and therefore neutral, the forces of Asia would have been crushed in +three months instead of three years. The subjunctivisor tells me so; I +would have invented a calculator to forecast the chances of every +engagement; van Manderpootz would have removed the hit or miss element +in the conduct of war." He frowned solemnly. "There is my idea. The +autobiography of van Manderpootz. What do you think of it?" + +I recovered my thoughts. "It's--uh--it's colossal!" I said vehemently. +"I'll buy a copy myself. Several copies. I'll send 'em to my friends." + +"I," said van Manderpootz expansively, "shall autograph your copy for +you. It will be priceless. I shall write in some fitting phrase, perhaps +something like _Magnificus sed non superbus_. 'Great but not proud!' +That well described van Manderpootz, who despite his greatness is +simple, modest, and unassuming. Don't you agree?" + +"Perfectly! A very apt description of you. But--couldn't I see your +subjunctivisor before it's dismantled to make way for the greater work?" + +"Ah! You wish to find out something?" + +"Yes, professor. Do you remember the _Baikal_ disaster of a week or two +ago? I was to have taken that liner to Moscow. I just missed it." I +related the circumstances. + +"Humph!" he grunted. "You wish to discover what would have happened had +you caught it, eh? Well, I see several possibilities. Among the world of +'if' is the one that would have been real if you had been on time, the +one that depended on the vessel waiting for your actual arrival, and the +one that hung on your arriving within the five minutes they actually +waited. In which are you interested?" + +"Oh--the last one." That seemed the likeliest. After all, it was too +much to expect that Dixon Wells could ever be on time, and as to the +second possibility--well, they _hadn't_ waited for me, and that in a way +removed the weight of responsibility. + +"Come on," rumbled van Manderpootz. I followed him across to the Physics +Building and into his littered laboratory. The device still stood on the +table and I took my place before it, staring at the screen of the +Horsten psychomat. The clouds wavered and shifted as I sought to impress +my memories on their suggestive shapes, to read into them some picture +of that vanished morning. + +Then I had it. I made out the vista from the Staten Bridge, and was +speeding across the giant span toward the airport. I waved a signal to +van Manderpootz, the thing clicked, and the subjunctivisor was on. + +The grassless clay of the field appeared. It is a curious thing about +the psychomat that you see only through the eyes of your image on the +screen. It lends a strange reality to the working of the toy; I suppose +a sort of self-hypnosis is partly responsible. + +I was rushing over the ground toward the glittering, silver-winged +projectile that was the _Baikal_. A glowering officer waved me on, and I +dashed up the slant of the gangplank and into the ship; the port dropped +and I heard a long "Whew!" of relief. + +"Sit down!" barked the officer, gesturing toward an unoccupied seat. I +fell into it; the ship quivered under the thrust of the catapult, grated +harshly into motion, and then was flung bodily into the air. The blasts +roared instantly, then settled to a more muffled throbbing, and I +watched Staten Island drop down and slide back beneath me. The giant +rocket was under way. + +"Whew!" I breathed again. "Made it!" I caught an amused glance from my +right. I was in an aisle seat; there was no one to my left, so I turned +to the eyes that had flashed, glanced, and froze staring. + +It was a girl. Perhaps she wasn't actually as lovely as she looked to +me; after all, I was seeing her through the half-visionary screen of a +psychomat. I've told myself since that she _couldn't_ have been as +pretty as she seemed, that it was due to my own imagination filling in +the details. I don't know; I remember only that I stared at curiously +lovely silver-blue eyes and velvety brown hair, and a small amused +mouth, and an impudent nose. I kept staring until she flushed. + +"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I--was startled." + +There's a friendly atmosphere aboard a trans-oceanic rocket. The +passengers are forced into a crowded intimacy for anywhere from seven to +twelve hours, and there isn't much room for moving about. Generally, one +strikes up an acquaintance with his neighbors; introductions aren't at +all necessary, and the custom is simply to speak to anybody you +choose--something like an all-day trip on the railroad trains of the +last century, I suppose. You make friends for the duration of the +journey, and then, nine times out of ten, you never hear of your +traveling companions again. + +The girl smiled. "Are you the individual responsible for the delay in +starting?" + +I admitted it. "I seem to be chronically late. Even watches lose time as +soon as I wear them." + +She laughed. "Your responsibilities can't be very heavy." + +Well, they weren't of course, though it's surprising how many clubs, +caddies, and chorus girls have depended on me at various times for +appreciable portions of their incomes. But somehow I didn't feel like +mentioning those things to the silvery-eyed girl. + +We talked. Her name, it developed, was Joanna Caldwell, and she was +going as far as Paris. She was an artist, or hoped to be one day, and of +course there is no place in the world that can supply both training and +inspiration like Paris. So it was there she was bound for a year of +study, and despite her demurely humorous lips and laughing eyes, I could +see that the business was of vast importance to her. I gathered that she +had worked hard for the year in Paris, had scraped and saved for three +years as fashion illustrator for some woman's magazine, though she +couldn't have been many months over twenty-one. Her painting meant a +great deal to her, and I could understand it. I'd felt that way about +polo once. + +So you see, we were sympathetic spirits from the beginning. I knew that +she liked me, and it was obvious that she didn't connect Dixon Wells +with the N. J. Wells Corporation. And as for me--well, after that first +glance into her cool silver eyes, I simply didn't care to look anywhere +else. The hours seemed to drip away like minutes while I watched her. + +You know how those things go. Suddenly I was calling her Joanna and she +was calling me Dick, and it seemed as if we'd been doing just that all +our lives. I'd decided to stop over in Paris on my way back from Moscow, +and I'd secured her promise to let me see her. She was different, I tell +you; she was nothing like the calculating Whimsy White, and still less +like the dancing, simpering, giddy youngsters one meets around at social +affairs. She was just Joanna, cool and humorous, yet sympathetic and +serious, and as pretty as a Majolica figurine. + +We could scarcely realize it when the steward passed along to take +orders for luncheon. Four hours out? It seemed like forty minutes. And +we had a pleasant feeling of intimacy in the discovery that both of us +liked lobster salad and detested oysters. It was another bond; I told +her whimsically that it was an omen, nor did she object to considering +it so. + +Afterwards we walked along the narrow aisle to the glassed-in +observation room up forward. It was almost too crowded for entry, but we +didn't mind that at all, as it forced us to sit very close together. We +stayed long after both of us had begun to notice the stuffiness of the +air. + +It was just after we had returned to our seats that the catastrophe +occurred. There was no warning save a sudden lurch, the result, I +suppose, of the pilot's futile last-minute attempt to swerve--just that +and then a grinding crash and a terrible sensation of spinning, and +after that a chorus of shrieks that were like the sounds of battle. + +It _was_ battle. Five hundred people were picking themselves up from the +floor, were trampling each other, milling around, being cast helplessly +down as the great rocket-plane, its left wing but a broken stub, circled +downward toward the Atlantic. + +The shouts of officers sounded and a loudspeaker blared. "Be calm," it +kept repeating, and then, "There has been a collision. We have contacted +a surface ship. There is no danger-- There is no danger--" + +I struggled up from the debris of shattered seats. Joanna was gone; just +as I found her crumpled between the rows, the ship struck the water with +a jar that set everything crashing again. The speaker blared, "Put on +the cork belts under the seats. The life-belts are under the seats." + +I dragged a belt loose and snapped it around Joanna, then donned one +myself. The crowd was surging forward now, and the tail end of the ship +began to drop. There was water behind us, sloshing in the darkness as +the lights went out. An officer came sliding by, stooped, and fastened a +belt about an unconscious woman ahead of us. "You all right?" he yelled, +and passed on without waiting for an answer. + +The speaker must have been cut on to a battery circuit. "And get as far +away as possible," it ordered suddenly. "Jump from the forward port and +get as far away as possible. A ship is standing by. You will be picked +up. Jump from the--". It went dead again. + +I got Joanna untangled from the wreckage. She was pale; her silvery eyes +were closed. I started dragging her slowly and painfully toward the +forward port, and the slant of the floor increased until it was like the +slide of a ski-jump. The officer passed again. "Can you handle her?" he +asked, and again dashed away. + +I was getting there. The crowd around the port looked smaller, or was it +simply huddling closer? Then suddenly, a wail of fear and despair went +up, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls had given. +I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down upon +us. I had been late again. + +That was all. I raised shocked and frightened eyes from the +subjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who was scribbling on the edge +of the table. + +"Well?" he asked. + +I 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 good-night, 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 life-belts 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Worlds of If, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLDS OF IF *** + +***** This file should be named 22890-0.txt or 22890-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/8/9/22890/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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