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Weinbaum + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + h1 {text-align: center; clear: both; margin-bottom: 2em;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin: 2em auto; clear: both;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .blockquot{margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .trans1 {border: solid 1px; margin: 2em 15% 4em; padding: 1em; text-align: justify;} + + p.cap:first-letter {padding-left: 50%; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: 4em; line-height: .7em;} + p.cap:first-line {font-variant: small-caps;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +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: ISO-8859-1 + +*** 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 + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<div class="trans1"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b><br /> +This etext was produced from <i>A Martian Odyssey and Others</i> 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.</div> + + + + +<h1>THE WORLDS OF IF</h1> + + + + +<p class="cap">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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Baikal</i> hummed over us like a tracer bullet with a long tail of +flame.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Baikal</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"I had a course in East Hall just before," I explained. "I +couldn't seem to make it in time."</p> + +<p>"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>I</i> am +beginning to learn."</p> + +<p>I sat down. "You and science are synonymous," I grinned. +"Aren't you one of the world's outstanding physicists?"</p> + +<p>"One of them!" he snorted. "One of them, eh! And who +are the others?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Corveille and Hastings and Shrimski—"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"He didn't!" rasped the professor. "Perhaps, in a dim, primitive +fashion, he showed the way, but I—<i>I</i>, van Manderpootz—am +the first to seize time, drag it into my laboratory, and perform +an experiment on it."</p> + +<p>"Indeed? And what sort of experiment?"</p> + +<p>"What experiment, other than simple measurement, is it +possible to perform?" he snapped.</p> + +<p>"Why—I don't know. To travel in it?"</p> + +<p>"Exactly."</p> + +<p>"Like these time-machines that are so popular in the current +magazines? To go into the future or the past?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"How? It's conceivable, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And how far?"</p> + +<p>I hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Use your Einstein formula!" he screeched. "How far? I'll +tell you. <i>One second!</i>" 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 <i>ten</i> seconds. He has then +penetrated the past. How far?"</p> + +<p>Again I hesitated.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you. <i>One second!</i>" 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."</p> + +<p>"But," I stammered, "you just said that you—"</p> + +<p>"I did <i>not</i> 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."</p> + +<p>"Then how <i>do</i> you travel in time?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>I gulped. "Sideways into time! What's there?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>I shook my head.</p> + +<p>"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!'"</p> + +<p>"Eh?" I was puzzled. "Do you mean that you can see what +will happen if I do such and such?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Now how the devil does it do that?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"But—are those—worlds of 'if'—real?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>if</i>— Do you see?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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>I</i> can. Do you +understand?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past +experiences of the user."</p> + +<p>"You're growing brilliant," he scoffed. "Yes. The device will +show ten hours of what would have happened <i>if</i>—condensed, of +course, as in a movie, to half an hour's actual time."</p> + +<p>"Say, that sounds interesting!"</p> + +<p>"You'd like to see it? Is there anything you'd like to find out? +Any choice you'd alter?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"As usual," remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to +the laboratory then."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."</p> + +<p>"At least they're <i>alive</i>. You're a walking corpse. Just because +you were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, +you think you're a tin god."</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>don't</i> think <i>you're</i> Cleopatra! Those friends of +yours—they trail after you because you give parties and spend +money—<i>my</i> money."</p> + +<p>"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a +mountainside!"</p> + +<p>"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real +name.) "It might help your figure—though I doubt if anything +could!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been +reading.</p> + +<p>"You liked it?"</p> + +<p>"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't +regret it from now on."</p> + +<p>"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!'"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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 <i>Baikal</i>; +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.</p> + +<p>"Dixon," he concluded, "you have no conception whatever +of time. None whatever."</p> + +<p>The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I +was impelled to ask, "And have you, sir?"</p> + +<p>"I have," he said grimly. "I most assuredly have. Time," +he said oracularly, "is money."</p> + +<p>You can't argue with a viewpoint like that.</p> + +<p>But those aspersions of his rankled, especially that about the +<i>Baikal</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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—<i>if</i>!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>I ignored this. "Professor, I want to use your—uh—your +subjunctivisor."</p> + +<p>"Eh? Oh, yes. You're lucky, then. I was just about to dismantle +it."</p> + +<p>"Dismantle it! Why?"</p> + +<p>"It has served its purpose. It has given birth to an idea far +more important than itself. I shall need the space it occupies."</p> + +<p>"But what <i>is</i> the idea, if it's not too presumptuous of me +to ask?"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>I gaped. "Your autobiography?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Magnificus sed non superbus</i>. +'Great but not proud!' That well described van Manderpootz, +who despite his greatness is simple, modest, and unassuming. +Don't you agree?"</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! You wish to find out something?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, professor. Do you remember the <i>Baikal</i> disaster of a +week or two ago? I was to have taken that liner to Moscow. +I just missed it." I related the circumstances.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>hadn't</i> waited +for me, and that in a way removed the weight of responsibility.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>I was rushing over the ground toward the glittering, silver-winged +projectile that was the <i>Baikal</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>couldn't</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I—was startled."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The girl smiled. "Are you the individual responsible for +the delay in starting?"</p> + +<p>I admitted it. "I seem to be chronically late. Even watches +lose time as soon as I wear them."</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Your responsibilities can't be very heavy."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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—"</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Well?" he asked.</p> + +<p>I shuddered. "Horrible!" I murmured. "We—I guess we +wouldn't have been among the survivors."</p> + +<p>"We, eh? <i>We?</i>" His eyes twinkled.</p> + +<p>I did not enlighten him. I thanked him, bade him good-night, +and went dolorously home.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Dick!" he exclaimed. "Are you sick?"</p> + +<p>"Sick? No. Not physically. Professor. I've got to use your +subjunctivisor again. I've <i>got</i> to!"</p> + +<p>"Eh? Oh—that toy. You're too late, Dick. I've dismantled +it. I have a better use for the space."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," he commanded.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I responded dully. "But who'd want to read my +autobiography? That's all right for you."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?" I was utterly, gloomily disinterested.</p> + +<p>"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—<i>if</i>!" The last in a shout.</p> + +<p>"Huh?"</p> + +<p>"<i>If!</i>" cried van Manderpootz. "What you saw in the subjunctivisor +was what would have happened <i>if</i> you had caught the +ship!"</p> + +<p>"I know that."</p> + +<p>"But something quite different might really have happened! +Don't you see? She—she— Where are those old newspapers?"</p> + +<p>He was pawing through a pile of them. He flourished one +finally. "Here! Here are the survivors!"</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"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—"</p></div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Osgood</i>, 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!"</p> + +<p>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—<i>if</i>— But +it wasn't; she had married Orris Hope, the young officer +who had rescued her. I was late again.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +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-h.htm or 22890-h.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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