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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, 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 Ideal
+
+Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22897]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDEAL ***
+
+
+
+
+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 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 the devil's arts to God's ends, thereby cheating
+the fiend--Sst! There sounds vespers!_ Plena gratia, ave Virgo--"
+
+_But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the_ doctor mirabilis
+_watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the iron eyes dull,
+and no voice but the great man's own sounded in his monkish cell, nor
+was there ever an answer to all the questions that he asked--until one
+day when he sat surveying his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in
+distant Cologne--one day--_
+
+_"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly._
+
+_The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you
+give utterance, and to some assertion less obvious than that time is.
+For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without time--"_
+
+_"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly at the statue
+of Draco._
+
+_"Indeed time was," said the Monk. "Time was, is, and will be, for time
+is that medium in which events occur. Matter exists in space, but
+events--"_
+
+_The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in tones deep as
+the cathedral bell outside, and burst into ten thousand pieces_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the book, "is my
+classical authority in this experiment. This story, overlaid as it is
+with mediæval myth and legend, proves that Roger Bacon himself attempted
+the experiment--and failed." He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not
+get the impression, Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He
+was--extremely great, in fact; he lighted the torch that his namesake
+Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van Manderpootz
+rekindles."
+
+I stared in silence.
+
+"Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost be called a
+thirteenth century van Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first
+century Roger Bacon. His _Opus Majus_, _Opus Minus_, and _Opus
+Tertium_--"
+
+"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do with--that?" I
+indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the corner of the
+laboratory.
+
+"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz. "I'll--"
+
+At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal had ejaculated
+something like "_A-a-gh-rasp_" and had lunged a single pace toward the
+window, arms upraised. "What the devil!" I sputtered as the thing
+dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.
+
+"A car must have passed in the alley," said van Manderpootz
+indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon--"
+
+I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a
+statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his,
+I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems
+of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of
+the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde
+imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company.
+Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine;
+maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.
+
+I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation,
+Engineers Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an engineer myself; I say
+supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father
+hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of
+value of time, and I'm cursed with the unenviable quality of being late
+to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional
+designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're
+Post-Romanesque.
+
+Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and
+'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though
+that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient to be so dependent,
+and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped
+out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White,
+and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving
+that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as
+much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took
+me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another
+instance when I was a little late.
+
+Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the
+Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit
+eccentric. Judge for yourself.
+
+"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
+
+"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got to do with it?"
+
+He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile! To dream
+while van Manderpootz talks! Get out! Get out!"
+
+I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in
+the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from
+my father at the office.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in
+for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window,
+and I lost no time asking its purpose.
+
+"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he explained.
+"There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so
+connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates
+the mechanism. The thing's plugged into the light-circuit, but it really
+ought to run on gasoline."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile. See
+here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a
+streamlined car like those of that year. "Since only one eye is used,"
+he continued, "The thing can't tell the difference between a full-sized
+vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of
+perspective."
+
+He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly
+came its roar of "_A-a-gh-rasp!_" and it leaped forward a single pace,
+arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew the card, and again the thing
+relapsed stolidly into its place.
+
+"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What's it for?"
+
+"Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back of it? I use it
+as a demonstration in my seminar."
+
+"To demonstrate what?"
+
+"The power of reason," said van Manderpootz solemnly.
+
+"How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of electric power?"
+
+"One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van
+Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is,
+represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the
+tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. _This_ monster's
+jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the
+trails called streets. Understand?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van Manderpootz
+could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in the shadows of
+buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys; it skulks on
+deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring quietly. Then--an
+unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on the screen behind its
+eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging it in steel arms to its
+steel jaws. Through the metal throat of its victim crash steel teeth;
+the blood of its prey--the gasoline, that is--is drained into its
+stomach, or its gas-tank. With renewed strength it flings away the husk
+and prowls on to seek other prey. It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger
+of mechanics."
+
+I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that the brain of
+the great van Manderpootz was cracking. "What the--?" I gasped.
+
+"That," he said blandly, "is but a concept. I have many another use for
+the toy. I can prove anything with it, anything I wish."
+
+"You can? Then prove something."
+
+"Name your proposition, Dixon."
+
+I hesitated, nonplussed.
+
+"Come!" he said impatiently. "Look here; I will prove that anarchy is
+the ideal government, or that Heaven and Hell are the same place, or
+that--"
+
+"Prove that!" I said. "About Heaven and Hell."
+
+"Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I add a
+mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed valve; I add a
+mathematical sense with any of the calculating machines; I give it a
+voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse wire phonograph. Now
+the point I make is this: Granted an intelligent machine, does it not
+follow that every other machine constructed like it must have the
+identical qualities? Would not each robot given the same insides have
+exactly the same character?"
+
+"No!" I snapped. "Human beings can't make two machines exactly alike.
+There'd be tiny differences; one would react quicker than others, or one
+would prefer Fox Airsplitters as prey, while another reacted most
+vigorously to Carnecars. In other words, they'd have--_individuality_!"
+I grinned in triumph.
+
+"My point exactly," observed van Manderpootz. "You admit, then, that
+this individuality is the result of imperfect workmanship. If our means
+of manufacture were perfect, all robots would be identical, and this
+individuality would not exist. Is that true?"
+
+"I--suppose so."
+
+"Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our falling short of
+perfection. All of us--even van Manderpootz--are individuals only
+because we are not perfect. Were we perfect, each of us would be exactly
+like everyone else. True?"
+
+"Uh--yes."
+
+"But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect. Therefore,
+in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else, and _therefore_,
+everybody is thoroughly and completely bored! There is no torture like
+boredom, Dixon, and--Well, have I proved my point?"
+
+I was floored. "But--about anarchy, then?" I stammered.
+
+"Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here; with a perfect
+nation--that is, one whose individuals are all exactly alike, which I
+have just proved to constitute perfection--with a perfect nation, I
+repeat, laws and government are utterly superfluous. If everybody reacts
+to stimuli in the same way, laws are quite useless, obviously. If, for
+instance, a certain event occurred that might lead to a declaration of
+war, why, everybody in such a nation would vote for war at the same
+instant. Therefore government is unnecessary, and therefore anarchy is
+the ideal government, since it is the proper government for a perfect
+race." He paused. "I shall now prove that anarchy is _not_ the ideal
+government--"
+
+"Never mind!" I begged. "Who am I to argue with van Manderpootz? But is
+_that_ the whole purpose of this dizzy robot? Just a basis for logic?"
+The mechanism replied with its usual rasp as it leaped toward some
+vagrant car beyond the window.
+
+"Isn't that enough?" growled van Manderpootz. "However,"--his voice
+dropped--"I have even a greater destiny in mind. My boy, van Manderpootz
+has solved the riddle of the universe!" He paused impressively. "Well,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"Uh!" I gasped. "It's--uh--marvelous!"
+
+"Not for van Manderpootz," he said modestly.
+
+"But--what is it?"
+
+"Eh--Oh!" He frowned. "Well, I'll tell you, Dixon. You won't
+understand, but I'll tell you." He coughed. "As far back as the early
+twentieth century," he resumed, "Einstein proved that energy is
+particular. Matter is also particular, and now van Manderpootz adds that
+space and time are discrete!" He glared at me.
+
+"Energy and matter are particular," I murmured, "and space and time are
+discrete! How very moral of them!"
+
+"Imbecile!" he blazed. "To pun on the words of van Manderpootz! You know
+very well that I mean particular and discrete in the physical sense.
+Matter is composed of particles, therefore it is particular. The
+particles of matter are called electrons, protons, and neutrons, and
+those of energy, quanta. I now add two others, the particles of space I
+call spations, those of time, chronons."
+
+"And what in the devil," I asked, "are particles of space and time?"
+
+"Just what I said!" snapped van Manderpootz. "Exactly as the particles
+of matter are the smallest pieces of matter that can exist, just as
+there is no such thing as a half of an electron, or for that matter,
+half a quantum, so the chronon is the smallest possible fragment of
+time, and the spation the smallest possible bit of space. Neither time
+nor space is continuous; each is composed of these infinitely tiny
+fragments."
+
+"Well, how long is a chronon in time? How big is a spation in space?"
+
+"Van Manderpootz has even measured that. A chronon is the length of time
+it takes one quantum of energy to push one electron from one electronic
+orbit to the next. There can obviously be no shorter interval of time,
+since an electron is the smallest unit of matter and the quantum the
+smallest unit of energy. And a spation is the exact volume of a proton.
+Since nothing smaller exists, that is obviously the smallest unit of
+space."
+
+"Well, look here," I argued. "Then what's in between these particles of
+space and time? If time moves, as you say, in jerks of one chronon each,
+what's between the jerks?"
+
+"Ah!" said the great van Manderpootz. "Now we come to the heart of the
+matter. In between the particles of space and time, must obviously be
+something that is neither space, time, matter, nor energy. A hundred
+years ago Shapley anticipated van Manderpootz in a vague way when he
+announced his cosmo-plasma, the great underlying matrix in which time
+and space and the universe are embedded. Now van Manderpootz announces
+the ultimate unit, the universal particle, the focus in which matter,
+energy, time, and space meet, the unit from which electrons, protons,
+neutrons, quanta, spations, and chronons are all constructed. The riddle
+of the universe is solved by what I have chosen to name the cosmon." His
+blue eyes bored into me.
+
+"Magnificent!" I said feebly, knowing that some such word was expected.
+"But what good is it?"
+
+"What good is it?" he roared. "It provides--or will provide, once I work
+out a few details--the means of turning energy into time, or space into
+matter, or time into space, or--" He sputtered into silence. "Fool!" he
+muttered. "To think that you studied under the tutelage of van
+Manderpootz. I blush; I actually blush!"
+
+One couldn't have told it if he were blushing. His face was always
+rubicund enough. "Colossal!" I said hastily. "What a mind!"
+
+That mollified him. "But that's not all," he proceeded. "Van Manderpootz
+never stops short of perfection. I now announce the unit particle of
+thought--the psychon!"
+
+This was a little too much. I simply stared.
+
+"Well may you be dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz. "I presume you are
+aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of thought. The psychon,
+the unit of thought, is one electron plus one proton, which are bound so
+as to form one neutron, embedded in one cosmon, occupying a volume of
+one spation, driven by one quantum for a period of one chronon. Very
+obvious; very simple."
+
+"Oh, very!" I echoed. "Even I can see that that equals one psychon."
+
+He beamed. "Excellent! Excellent!"
+
+"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"
+
+"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even _past_ the heart of the matter, and
+return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward the robot. "Here I will
+create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy
+creature will rest such intelligence as not even van Manderpootz--I
+should say, as _only_ van Manderpootz--can conceive. It remains merely
+to construct my idealizator."
+
+"Your idealizator?"
+
+"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter,
+energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated that one can be
+transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the
+means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance, a
+Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make
+your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb
+brain of yours, but in _ideal_ form. Do you see? The psychons of your
+mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all electrons
+are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons"--his voice
+quavered--"are identical with those from the mind of--van Manderpootz!"
+He paused, shaken.
+
+"Actually?" I gasped.
+
+"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my
+idealizator shows your thought released from the impress of your
+personality. It shows it--ideal!"
+
+Well, I was late to the office again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere,
+and I didn't dare take anyone else out because I'd tried it once before
+and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally dropped
+around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually
+located him in his laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering
+around the table that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his,
+but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires,
+and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a
+grating of delicately scratched lines.
+
+"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.
+
+I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.
+
+"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit into Isaak's
+iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it out." He turned glittering
+blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're here. It will save the world
+a terrible risk."
+
+"A risk?"
+
+"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device will extract
+too many psychons, and leave the subject's mind in a sort of moronic
+condition. I was about to accept the risk, but I see now that it would
+be woefully unfair to the world to endanger the mind of van Manderpootz.
+But you are at hand, and will do very well."
+
+"Oh, no I won't!"
+
+"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible. In fact, I
+doubt whether the device will be able to extract _any_ psychons from
+_your_ mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly safe for a period of at
+least half an hour. I, with a vastly more productive mind, could
+doubtless stand the strain indefinitely, but my responsibility to the
+world is too great to chance it until I have tested the machine on
+someone else. You should be proud of the honor."
+
+"Well, I'm not!" But my protest was feeble, and after all, despite his
+overbearing mannerisms, I knew van Manderpootz liked me, and I was
+positive he would not have exposed me to any real danger. In the end I
+found myself seated before the table facing the etched mirror.
+
+"Put your face against the barrel," said van Manderpootz, indicating a
+stove-pipe-like tube. "That's merely to cut off extraneous sights, so
+that you can see only the mirror. Go ahead, I tell you! It's no more
+than the barrel of a telescope or microscope."
+
+I complied. "Now what?" I asked.
+
+"What do you see?"
+
+"My own face in the mirror."
+
+"Of course. Now I start the reflector rotating." There was a faint whir,
+and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with only a slightly blurred
+image of myself. "Listen, now," continued van Manderpootz. "Here is what
+you are to do. You will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance.
+If you think of house, you will see, not an individual house, but your
+ideal house, the house of all your dreams and desires. If you think of
+a horse, you will see what your mind conceives as the perfect horse,
+such a horse as dream and longing create. Do you understand? Have you
+chosen a topic?"
+
+"Yes." After all, I was only twenty-eight; the noun I had chosen
+was--girl.
+
+"Good," said the professor. "I turn on the current."
+
+There was a blue radiance behind the mirror. My own face still stared
+back at me from the spinning surface, but something was forming behind
+it, building up, growing. I blinked; when I focused my eyes again, it
+was--_she_ was--there.
+
+Lord! I can't begin to describe her. I don't even know if I saw her
+clearly the first time. It was like looking into another world and
+seeing the embodiment of all longings, dreams, aspirations, and ideals.
+It was so poignant a sensation that it crossed the borderline into pain.
+It was--well, exquisite torture or agonized delight. It was at once
+unbearable and irresistible.
+
+But I gazed. I had to. There was a haunting familiarity about the
+impossibly beautiful features. I had seen the face--somewhere--sometime.
+In dreams? No; I realized suddenly what was the source of that
+familiarity. This was no living woman, but a synthesis. Her nose was the
+tiny, impudent one of Whimsy White at her loveliest moment; her lips
+were the perfect bow of Tips Alva; her silvery eyes and dusky velvet
+hair were those of Joan Caldwell. But the aggregate, the sum total, the
+face in the mirror--that was none of these; it was a face impossibly,
+incredibly, outrageously beautiful.
+
+Only her face and throat were visible, and the features were cool,
+expressionless, and still as a carving. I wandered suddenly if she could
+smile, and with the thought, she did. If she had been beautiful before,
+now her beauty flamed to such a pitch that it was--well, insolent; it
+was an affront to be so lovely; it was insulting. I felt a wild surge of
+anger that the image before me should flaunt such beauty, and yet
+be--_non-existent_! It was deception, cheating, fraud, a promise that
+could never be fulfilled.
+
+Anger died in the depths of that fascination. I wondered what the rest
+of her was like, and instantly she moved gracefully back until her full
+figure was visible. I must be a prude at heart, for she wasn't wearing
+the usual cuirass-and-shorts of that year, but an iridescent
+four-paneled costume that all but concealed her dainty knees. But her
+form was slim and erect as a column of cigarette smoke in still air, and
+I knew that she could dance like a fragment of mist on water. And with
+that thought she did move, dropping in a low curtsy, and looking up with
+the faintest possible flush crimsoning the curve of her throat. Yes, I
+must be a prude at heart; despite Tips Alva and Whimsy White and the
+rest, my ideal was modest.
+
+It was unbelievable that the mirror was simply giving back my thoughts.
+She seemed as real as myself, and--after all--I guess she was. As real
+as myself, no more, no less, because she was part of my own mind. And at
+this point I realized that van Manderpootz was shaking me and bellowing,
+"Your time's up. Come out of it! Your half-hour's up!"
+
+He must have switched off the current. The image faded, and I took my
+face from the tube, dropping it on my arms.
+
+"O-o-o-o-o-oh!" I groaned.
+
+"How do you feel?" he snapped.
+
+"Feel? All right--physically." I looked up.
+
+Concern flickered in his blue eyes. "What's the cube root of 4913?" he
+crackled sharply.
+
+I've always been quick at figures. "It's--uh--17," I returned dully.
+"Why the devil--?"
+
+"You're all right mentally," he announced. "Now--why were you sitting
+there like a dummy for half an hour? My idealizator must have worked, as
+is only natural for a van Manderpootz creation, but what were you
+thinking of?"
+
+"I thought--I thought of 'girl'," I groaned.
+
+He snorted. "Hah! You would, you idiot! 'House' or 'horse' wasn't good
+enough; you had to pick something with emotional connotations. Well, you
+can start right in forgetting her, because she doesn't exist."
+
+I couldn't give up hope, as easily as that. "But can't you--can't
+you--?" I didn't even know what I meant to ask.
+
+"Van Manderpootz," he announced, "is a mathematician, not a magician. Do
+you expect me to materialize an ideal for you?" When I had no reply but
+a groan, he continued. "Now I think it safe enough to try the device
+myself. I shall take--let's see--the thought 'man.' I shall see what the
+superman looks like, since the ideal of van Manderpootz can be nothing
+less than superman." He seated himself. "Turn that switch," he said.
+"Now!"
+
+I did. The tubes glowed into low blue light. I watched dully,
+disinterestedly; nothing held any attraction for me after that image of
+the ideal.
+
+"Huh!" said van Manderpootz suddenly. "Turn it on, I say! I see nothing
+but my own reflection."
+
+I stared, then burst into a hollow laugh. The mirror was spinning; the
+banks of tubes were glowing; the device was operating.
+
+Van Manderpootz raised his face, a little redder than usual. I laughed
+half hysterically. "After all," he said huffily, "one might have a lower
+ideal of man than van Manderpootz. I see nothing nearly so humorous as
+your situation."
+
+The laughter died. I went miserably home, spent half the remainder of
+the night in morose contemplation, smoked nearly two packs of
+cigarettes, and didn't get to the office at all the next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tips Alva got back to town for a week-end broadcast, but I didn't even
+bother to see her, just phoned her and told her I was sick. I guess my
+face lent credibility to the story, for she was duly sympathetic, and
+her face in the phone screen was quite anxious. Even at that, I couldn't
+keep my eyes away from her lips because, except for a bit too lustrous
+make-up, they were the lips of the ideal. But they weren't enough; they
+just weren't enough.
+
+Old N. J. began to worry again. I couldn't sleep late of mornings any
+more, and after missing that one day, I kept getting down earlier and
+earlier until one morning I was only ten minutes late. He called me in
+at once.
+
+"Look here, Dixon," he said. "Have you been to a doctor recently?"
+
+"I'm not sick," I said listlessly.
+
+"Then for Heaven's sake, marry the girl! I don't care what chorus she
+kicks in, marry her and act like a human being again."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"Oh. She's already married, eh?"
+
+Well, I couldn't tell him she didn't exist. I couldn't say I was in love
+with a vision, a dream, an ideal. He thought I was a little crazy,
+anyway, so I just muttered "Yeah," and didn't argue when he said
+gruffly: "Then you'll get over it. Take a vacation. Take _two_
+vacations. You might as well for all the good you are around here."
+
+I didn't leave New York; I lacked the energy. I just mooned around the
+city for a while, avoiding my friends, and dreaming of the impossible
+beauty of the face in the mirror. And by and by the longing to see that
+vision of perfection once more began to become overpowering. I don't
+suppose anyone except me can understand the lure of that memory; the
+face, you see, had been my ideal, my concept of perfection. One sees
+beautiful women here and there in the world; one falls in love, but
+always, no matter how great their beauty or how deep one's love, they
+fall short in some degree of the secret vision of the ideal. But not the
+mirrored face; she was my ideal, and therefore, whatever imperfections
+she might have had in the minds of others, in my eyes she had none.
+None, that is, save the terrible one of being only an ideal, and
+therefore unattainable--but that is a fault inherent in all perfection.
+
+It was a matter of days before I yielded. Common sense told me it was
+futile, even foolhardy, to gaze again on the vision of perfect
+desirability. I fought against the hunger, but I fought hopelessly, and
+was not at all surprised to find myself one evening rapping on van
+Manderpootz's door in the University Club. He wasn't there; I'd been
+hoping he wouldn't be, since it gave me an excuse to seek him in his
+laboratory in the Physics Building, to which I would have dragged him
+anyway.
+
+There I found him, writing some sort of notations on the table that held
+the idealizator. "Hello, Dixon," he said. "Did it ever occur to you that
+the ideal university cannot exist? Naturally not since it must be
+composed of perfect students and perfect educators, in which case the
+former could have nothing to learn and the latter, therefore, nothing
+to teach."
+
+What interest had I in the perfect university and its inability to
+exist? My whole being was desolate over the non-existence of another
+ideal. "Professor," I said tensely, "may I use that--that thing of yours
+again? I want to--uh--see something."
+
+My voice must have disclosed the situation, for van Manderpootz looked
+up sharply. "So!" he snapped. "So you disregarded my advice! Forget her,
+I said. Forget her because she doesn't exist."
+
+"But--I can't! Once more, Professor--only once more!"
+
+He shrugged, but his blue, metallic eyes were a little softer than
+usual. After all, for some inconceivable reason, he likes me. "Well,
+Dixon," he said, "you're of age and supposed to be of mature
+intelligence. I tell you that this is a very stupid request, and van
+Manderpootz always knows what he's talking about. If you want to stupefy
+yourself with the opium of impossible dreams, go ahead. This is the last
+chance you'll have, for tomorrow the idealizator of van Manderpootz goes
+into the Bacon head of Isaak there. I shall shift the oscillators so
+that the psychons, instead of becoming light quanta, emerge as an
+electron flow--a current which will actuate Isaak's vocal apparatus and
+come out as speech." He paused musingly. "Van Manderpootz will hear the
+voice of the ideal. Of course Isaak can return only what psychons he
+receives from the brain of the operator, but just as the image in the
+mirror, the thoughts will have lost their human impress, and the words
+will be those of an ideal." He perceived that I wasn't listening, I
+suppose. "Go ahead, imbecile!" he grunted.
+
+I did. The glory that I hungered after flamed slowly into being,
+incredible in loveliness, and somehow, unbelievably, even more beautiful
+than on that other occasion. I know why now; long afterwards, van
+Manderpootz explained that the very fact that I had seen an ideal once
+before had altered my ideal, raised it to a higher level. With that face
+among my memories, my concept of perfection was different than it had
+been.
+
+So I gazed and hungered. Readily and instantly the being in the mirror
+responded to my thoughts with smile and movement. When I thought of
+love, her eyes blazed with such tenderness that it seemed as if--I--I,
+Dixon Wells--were part of those pairs who had made the great romances of
+the world, Heloise and Abelard, Tristram and Isolde, Aucassin and
+Nicolette. It was like the thrust of a dagger to feel van Manderpootz
+shaking me, to hear his gruff voice calling, "Out of it! Out of it!
+Time's up."
+
+I groaned and dropped my face on my hands. The Professor had been right,
+of course; this insane repetition had only intensified an unfulfillable
+longing, and had made a bad mess ten times as bad. Then I heard him
+muttering behind me. "Strange!" he murmured. "In fact, fantastic.
+Oedipus--oedipus of the magazine covers and billboards."
+
+I looked dully around. He was standing behind me, squinting, apparently,
+into the spinning mirror beyond the end of the black tube. "Huh?" I
+grunted wearily.
+
+"That face," he said. "Very queer. You must have seen her features on a
+hundred magazines, on a thousand billboards, on countless 'vision
+broadcasts. The oedipus complex in a curious form."
+
+"Eh? Could _you_ see her?"
+
+"Of course!" he grunted. "Didn't I say a dozen times that the psychons
+are transmuted to perfectly ordinary quanta of visible light? If you
+could see her, why not I?"
+
+"But--what about billboards and all?"
+
+"That face," said the professor slowly. "It's somewhat idealized, of
+course, and certain details are wrong. Her eyes aren't that pallid
+silver-blue you imagined; they're green--sea-green, emerald colored."
+
+"What the devil," I asked hoarsely, "are you talking about?"
+
+"About the face in the mirror. It happens to be, Dixon, a close
+approximation of the features of de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly!"
+
+"You mean--she's real? She exists? She lives? She--"
+
+"Wait a moment, Dixon. She's real enough, but in accordance with your
+habit, you're a little late. About twenty-five years too late, I should
+say. She must now be somewhere in the fifties--let's see--fifty-three, I
+think. But during your very early childhood, you must have seen her face
+pictured everywhere, de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly."
+
+I could only gulp. That blow was devastating.
+
+"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are implanted very
+early. That's why you continually fall in love with girls who possess
+one or another feature that reminds you of her, her hair, her nose, her
+mouth, her eyes. Very simple, but rather curious."
+
+"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Everytime I look into one of
+your damned contraptions I find myself in love with a myth! A girl who's
+dead, or married, or unreal, or turned into an old woman! Curious, eh?
+Damned funny, isn't it?"
+
+"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens, Dixon, that
+she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles her mother. And what's
+still more, she's arriving in New York next week to study American
+letters at the University here. She writes, you see."
+
+That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How--how do you know?" I
+gasped.
+
+It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness of van
+Manderpootz ruffled. He reddened a trifle, and said slowly, "It also
+happens, Dixon, that many years ago in Amsterdam, Haskel van Manderpootz
+and de Lisle d'Agrion were--very friendly--more than friendly, I might
+say, but for the fact that two such powerful personalities as the Dragon
+Fly and van Manderpootz were always at odds." He frowned. "I was almost
+her second husband. She's had seven, I believe; Denise is the daughter
+of her third."
+
+"Why--why is she coming here?"
+
+"Because," he said with dignity, "van Manderpootz is here. I am still a
+friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the complex device on the
+table. "Hand me that wrench," he ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and
+tomorrow start reconstructing it for Isaak's head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when, the following week, I rushed eagerly back to van Manderpootz's
+laboratory, the idealizator was still in place. The professor greeted me
+with a humorous twist to what was visible of his bearded mouth. "Yes,
+it's still here," he said, gesturing at the device. "I've decided to
+build an entirely new one for Isaak, and besides, this one has afforded
+me considerable amusement. Furthermore, in the words of Oscar Wilde, who
+am I to tamper with a work of genius. After all, the mechanism is the
+product of the great van Manderpootz."
+
+He was deliberately tantalizing me. He knew that I hadn't come to hear
+him discourse on Isaak, or even on the incomparable van Manderpootz.
+Then he smiled and softened, and turned to the little inner office
+adjacent, the room where Isaak stood in metal austerity. "Denise!" he
+called, "come here."
+
+I don't know exactly what I expected, but I do know that the breath left
+me as the girl entered. She wasn't exactly my image of the ideal, of
+course; she was perhaps the merest trifle slimmer, and her eyes--well,
+they must have been much like those of de Lisle d'Agrion, for they were
+the clearest emerald I've ever seen. They were impudently direct eyes,
+and I could imagine why van Manderpootz and the Dragon Fly might have
+been forever quarreling; that was easy to imagine, looking into the eyes
+of the Dragon Fly's daughter.
+
+Nor was Denise, apparently, quite as femininely modest as my image of
+perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing costume of the day,
+which covered, I suppose, about as much of her as one of the one-piece
+swimming suits of the middle years of the twentieth century. She gave an
+impression, not so much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple
+strength, an air of independence, frankness, and--I say it
+again--impudence.
+
+"Well!" she said coolly as van Manderpootz presented me. "So you're the
+scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation. Every now and then your escapades
+enliven the Paris Sunday supplements. Wasn't it you who snared a million
+dollars in the market so you could ask Whimsy White--?"
+
+I flushed. "That was greatly exaggerated," I said hastily, "and anyway I
+lost it before we--uh--before I--"
+
+"Not before you made somewhat of a fool of yourself, I believe," she
+finished sweetly.
+
+Well, that's the sort she was. If she hadn't been so infernally lovely,
+if she hadn't looked so much like the face in the mirror, I'd have
+flared up, said "Pleased to have met you," and never have seen her
+again. But I couldn't get angry, not when she had the dusky hair, the
+perfect lips, the saucy nose of the being who to me was ideal.
+
+So I did see her again, and several times again. In fact, I suppose I
+occupied most of her time between the few literary courses she was
+taking, and little by little I began to see that in other respects
+besides the physical she was not so far from my ideal. Beneath her
+impudence was honesty, and frankness, and, despite herself, sweetness,
+so that even allowing for the head-start I'd had, I fell in love pretty
+hastily. And what's more, I knew she was beginning to reciprocate.
+
+That was the situation when I called for her one noon and took her over
+to van Manderpootz's laboratory. We were to lunch with him at the
+University Club, but we found him occupied in directing some experiment
+in the big laboratory beyond his personal one, untangling some sort of
+mess that his staff had blundered into. So Denise and I wandered back
+into the smaller room, perfectly content to be alone together. I simply
+couldn't feel hungry in her presence; just talking to her was enough of
+a substitute for food.
+
+"I'm going to be a good writer," she was saying musingly. "Some day,
+Dick, I'm going to be famous."
+
+Well, everyone knows how correct that prediction was. I agreed with her
+instantly.
+
+She smiled. "You're nice, Dick," she said. "Very nice."
+
+"Very?"
+
+"_Very!_" she said emphatically. Then her green eyes strayed over to the
+table that held the idealizator. "What crack-brained contraption of
+Uncle Haskel's is that?" she asked.
+
+I explained, rather inaccurately, I'm afraid, but no ordinary engineer
+can follow the ramifications of a van Manderpootz conception.
+Nevertheless, Denise caught the gist of it and her eyes glowed emerald
+fire.
+
+"It's fascinating!" she exclaimed. She rose and moved over to the table.
+"I'm going to try it."
+
+"Not without the professor, you won't! It might be dangerous."
+
+That was the wrong thing to say. The green eyes glowed brighter as she
+cast me a whimsical glance. "But I am," she said. "Dick, I'm going
+to--see my ideal man!" She laughed softly.
+
+I was panicky. Suppose her ideal turned out tall and dark and powerful,
+instead of short and sandy-haired and a bit--well, chubby, as I am.
+"No!" I said vehemently. "I won't let you!"
+
+She laughed again. I suppose she read my consternation, for she said
+softly, "Don't be silly, Dick." She sat down, placed her face against
+the opening of the barrel, and commanded. "Turn it on."
+
+I couldn't refuse her. I set the mirror whirling, then switched on the
+bank of tubes. Then immediately I stepped behind her, squinting into
+what was visible of the flashing mirror, where a face was forming,
+slowly--vaguely.
+
+I thrilled. Surely the hair of the image was sandy. I even fancied now
+that I could trace a resemblance to my own features. Perhaps Denise
+sensed something similar, for she suddenly withdrew her eyes from the
+tube and looked up with a faintly embarrassed flush, a thing most
+unusual for her.
+
+"Ideals are dull!" she said. "I want a real thrill. Do you know what I'm
+going to see? I'm going to visualize ideal horror. That's what I'll do.
+I'm going to see absolute horror!"
+
+"Oh, no you're not!" I gasped. "That's a terribly dangerous idea." Off
+in the other room I heard the voice of van Manderpootz, "Dixon!"
+
+"Dangerous--bosh!" Denise retorted. "I'm a writer, Dick. All this means
+to me is material. It's just experience, and I want it."
+
+Van Manderpootz again. "Dixon! Dixon! Come here." I said, "Listen,
+Denise. I'll be right back. Don't try anything until I'm here--please!"
+
+I dashed into the big laboratory. Van Manderpootz was facing a cowed
+group of assistants, quite apparently in extreme awe of the great man.
+
+"Hah, Dixon!" he rasped. "Tell these fools what an Emmerich valve is,
+and why it won't operate in a free electronic stream. Let 'em see that
+even an ordinary engineer knows that much."
+
+Well, an ordinary engineer doesn't, but it happened that I did. Not that
+I'm particularly exceptional as an engineer, but I _did_ happen to know
+that because a year or two before I'd done some work on the big tidal
+turbines up in Maine, where they have to use Emmerich valves to guard
+against electrical leakage from the tremendous potentials in their
+condensers. So I started explaining, and van Manderpootz kept
+interpolating sarcasms about his staff, and when I finally finished, I
+suppose I'd been in there about half an hour. And then--I remembered
+Denise!
+
+I left van Manderpootz staring as I rushed back, and sure enough, there
+was the girl with her face pressed against the barrel, and her hands
+gripping the table edge. Her features were hidden, of course, but there
+was something about her strained position, her white knuckles--
+
+"Denise!" I yelled. "Are you all right? _Denise!_"
+
+She didn't move. I stuck my face in between the mirror and the end of
+the barrel and peered up the tube at her visage, and what I saw left me
+all but stunned. Have you ever seen stark, mad, infinite terror on a
+human face? That was what I saw in Denise's--inexpressible, unbearable
+horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were
+widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were
+contorted, her whole face strained into a mask of sheer terror.
+
+I rushed for the switch, but in passing I caught a single glimpse of--of
+what showed in the mirror. Incredible! Obscene, terror-laden, horrifying
+things--there just aren't words for them. There are no words.
+
+Denise didn't move as the tubes darkened. I raised her face from the
+barrel and when she glimpsed me she moved. She flung herself out of that
+chair and away, facing me with such mad terror that I halted.
+
+"Denise!" I cried. "It's just Dick. Look, Denise!"
+
+But as I moved toward her, she uttered a choking scream, her eyes
+dulled, her knees gave, and she fainted. Whatever she had seen, it must
+have been appalling to the uttermost, for Denise was not the sort to
+faint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a week later that I sat facing van Manderpootz in his little
+inner office. The grey metal figure of Isaak was missing, and the table
+that had held the idealizator was empty.
+
+"Yes," said van Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One of van
+Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of
+incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I
+continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to
+judge them by the brain of van Manderpootz."
+
+I said nothing. I was thoroughly disheartened and depressed, and
+whatever the professor said about my lack of intelligence, I felt it
+justified.
+
+"Hereafter," resumed van Manderpootz, "I shall credit nobody except
+myself with intelligence, and will doubtless be much more nearly
+correct." He waved a hand at Isaak's vacant corner. "Not even the Bacon
+head," he continued. "I've abandoned that project, because, when you
+come right down to it, what need has the world of a mechanical brain
+when it already has that of van Manderpootz?"
+
+"Professor," I burst out suddenly, "why won't they let me see Denise?
+I've been at the hospital every day, and they let me into her room just
+once--just once, and that time she went right into a fit of hysterics.
+Why? Is she--?" I gulped.
+
+"She's recovering nicely, Dixon."
+
+"Then why can't I see her?"
+
+"Well," said van Manderpootz placidly, "it's like this. You see, when
+you rushed into the laboratory there, you made the mistake of pushing
+your face in front of the barrel. She saw your features right in the
+midst of all those horrors she had called up. Do you see? From then on
+your face was associated in her mind with the whole hell's brew in the
+mirror. She can't even look at you without seeing all of it again."
+
+"_Good--God!_" I gasped. "But she'll get over it, won't she? She'll
+forget that part of it?"
+
+"The young psychiatrist who attends her--a bright chap, by the way, with
+a number of my own ideas--believes she'll be quite over it in a couple
+of months. But personally, Dixon, I don't think she'll ever welcome the
+sight of your face, though I myself have seen uglier visages somewhere
+or other."
+
+I ignored that. "Lord!" I groaned. "What a mess!" I rose to depart, and
+then--then I knew what inspiration means!
+
+"Listen!" I said, spinning back. "Listen, professor! Why can't you get
+her back here and let her visualize the ideally beautiful? And then
+I'll--I'll stick my face into that!" Enthusiasm grew. "It can't fail!" I
+cried. "At the worst, it'll cancel that other memory. It's marvelous!"
+
+"But as usual," said van Manderpootz, "a little late."
+
+"Late? Why? You can put up your idealizator again. You'd do that much,
+wouldn't you?"
+
+"Van Manderpootz," he observed, "is the very soul of generosity. I'd do
+it gladly, but it's still a little late, Dixon. You see, she married the
+bright young psychiatrist this noon."
+
+Well, I've a date with Tips Alva tonight, and I'm going to be late for
+it, just as late as I please. And then I'm going to do nothing but stare
+at her lips all evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ideal, by Stanley G. Weinbaum
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, 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 Ideal
+
+Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22897]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDEAL ***
+
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+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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+</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 IDEAL</h1>
+
+
+
+<p class="cap"><i>"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.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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."</i></p>
+
+<p><i>"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 the devil's arts to
+God's ends, thereby cheating the fiend&mdash;Sst! There sounds vespers!</i>
+Plena gratia, ave Virgo&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><i>But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the</i> doctor
+mirabilis <i>watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the
+iron eyes dull, and no voice but the great man's own sounded
+in his monkish cell, nor was there ever an answer to all the
+questions that he asked&mdash;until one day when he sat surveying
+his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in distant Cologne&mdash;one
+day&mdash;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time
+it is that you give utterance, and to some assertion less obvious
+than that time is. For of course time is, else there were nothing
+at all. Without time&mdash;"</i></p>
+
+<p><i>"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly
+at the statue of Draco.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>"Indeed time was," said the Monk. "Time was, is, and
+will be, for time is that medium in which events occur. Matter
+exists in space, but events&mdash;"</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in
+tones deep as the cathedral bell outside, and burst into ten
+thousand pieces</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"There," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the
+book, "is my classical authority in this experiment. This story,
+overlaid as it is with medi&aelig;val myth and legend, proves that
+Roger Bacon himself attempted the experiment&mdash;and failed."
+He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not get the impression,
+Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He was&mdash;extremely
+great, in fact; he lighted the torch that his namesake
+Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van
+Manderpootz rekindles."</p>
+
+<p>I stared in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost
+be called a thirteenth century van Manderpootz, or van
+Manderpootz a twenty-first century Roger Bacon. His <i>Opus
+Majus</i>, <i>Opus Minus</i>, and <i>Opus Tertium</i>&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do with&mdash;that?"
+I indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the
+corner of the laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz. "I'll&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal
+had ejaculated something like "<i>A-a-gh-rasp</i>" and had lunged a
+single pace toward the window, arms upraised. "What the
+devil!" I sputtered as the thing dropped its arms and returned
+stolidly to its place.</p>
+
+<p>"A car must have passed in the alley," said van Manderpootz
+indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined
+to finish a statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As
+an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to
+drift to certain personal problems of my own, particularly Tips
+Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes,
+I mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde imp who
+entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company.
+Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine;
+maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.</p>
+
+<p>I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells
+Corporation, Engineers Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an
+engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since
+my graduation, my father hasn't given me much opportunity to
+prove it. He has a strong sense of value of time, and I'm cursed
+with the unenviable quality of being late to anything and for
+everything. He even asserts that the occasional designs I submit
+are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're Post-Romanesque.</p>
+
+<p>Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the
+stage and 'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my
+allowance, though that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient
+to be so dependent, and sometimes I regret that unfortunate
+market crash of 2009 that wiped out my own money, although
+it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White, and van
+Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving
+that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out
+nearly as much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were
+concerned. It took me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and
+her silvery eyes. Just another instance when I was a little late.</p>
+
+<p>Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head
+of the Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius,
+but a bit eccentric. Judge for yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got
+to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile!
+To dream while van Manderpootz talks! Get out!
+Get out!"</p>
+
+<p>I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than
+usual in the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture
+on promptness from my father at the office.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next
+time I dropped in for an evening. The robot still stood in the
+corner near the window, and I lost no time asking its purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he
+explained. "There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the
+right eye, so connected that when a certain pattern is thrown
+on them, it activates the mechanism. The thing's plugged into
+the light-circuit, but it really ought to run on gasoline."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile.
+See here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut
+in the outlines of a streamlined car like those of that year. "Since
+only one eye is used," he continued, "The thing can't tell the
+difference between a full-sized vehicle at a distance and this
+small outline nearby. It has no sense of perspective."</p>
+
+<p>He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism.
+Instantly came its roar of "<i>A-a-gh-rasp!</i>" and it leaped
+forward a single pace, arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew
+the card, and again the thing relapsed stolidly into its
+place.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What's it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back
+of it? I use it as a demonstration in my seminar."</p>
+
+<p>"To demonstrate what?"</p>
+
+<p>"The power of reason," said van Manderpootz solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of
+electric power?"</p>
+
+<p>"One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the
+grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature,
+imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is
+the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap
+on living prey. <i>This</i> monster's jungle is the city; its prey is
+the unwary machine that follows the trails called streets. Understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van
+Manderpootz could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in
+the shadows of buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys;
+it skulks on deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring
+quietly. Then&mdash;an unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on
+the screen behind its eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging
+it in steel arms to its steel jaws. Through the metal throat
+of its victim crash steel teeth; the blood of its prey&mdash;the gasoline,
+that is&mdash;is drained into its stomach, or its gas-tank. With
+renewed strength it flings away the husk and prowls on to seek
+other prey. It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger of mechanics."</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that
+the brain of the great van Manderpootz was cracking. "What
+the&mdash;?" I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"That," he said blandly, "is but a concept. I have many
+another use for the toy. I can prove anything with it, anything
+I wish."</p>
+
+<p>"You can? Then prove something."</p>
+
+<p>"Name your proposition, Dixon."</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated, nonplussed.</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" he said impatiently. "Look here; I will prove that
+anarchy is the ideal government, or that Heaven and Hell are the
+same place, or that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Prove that!" I said. "About Heaven and Hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I
+add a mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed
+valve; I add a mathematical sense with any of the calculating
+machines; I give it a voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse
+wire phonograph. Now the point I make is this:
+Granted an intelligent machine, does it not follow that every
+other machine constructed like it must have the identical qualities?
+Would not each robot given the same insides have exactly
+the same character?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I snapped. "Human beings can't make two machines
+exactly alike. There'd be tiny differences; one would react
+quicker than others, or one would prefer Fox Airsplitters as
+prey, while another reacted most vigorously to Carnecars. In
+other words, they'd have&mdash;<i>individuality</i>!" I grinned in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"My point exactly," observed van Manderpootz. "You
+admit, then, that this individuality is the result of imperfect
+workmanship. If our means of manufacture were perfect, all
+robots would be identical, and this individuality would not exist.
+Is that true?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our
+falling short of perfection. All of us&mdash;even van Manderpootz&mdash;are
+individuals only because we are not perfect. Were we perfect,
+each of us would be exactly like everyone else. True?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect.
+Therefore, in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else,
+and <i>therefore</i>, everybody is thoroughly and completely bored!
+There is no torture like boredom, Dixon, and&mdash;Well, have I
+proved my point?"</p>
+
+<p>I was floored. "But&mdash;about anarchy, then?" I stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here;
+with a perfect nation&mdash;that is, one whose individuals are all exactly
+alike, which I have just proved to constitute perfection&mdash;with
+a perfect nation, I repeat, laws and government are utterly
+superfluous. If everybody reacts to stimuli in the same way,
+laws are quite useless, obviously. If, for instance, a certain event
+occurred that might lead to a declaration of war, why, everybody
+in such a nation would vote for war at the same instant. Therefore
+government is unnecessary, and therefore anarchy is the
+ideal government, since it is the proper government for a perfect
+race." He paused. "I shall now prove that anarchy is <i>not</i>
+the ideal government&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind!" I begged. "Who am I to argue with van
+Manderpootz? But is <i>that</i> the whole purpose of this dizzy robot?
+Just a basis for logic?" The mechanism replied with its
+usual rasp as it leaped toward some vagrant car beyond the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that enough?" growled van Manderpootz. "However,"&mdash;his
+voice dropped&mdash;"I have even a greater destiny in
+mind. My boy, van Manderpootz has solved the riddle of the
+universe!" He paused impressively. "Well, why don't you say
+something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh!" I gasped. "It's&mdash;uh&mdash;marvelous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for van Manderpootz," he said modestly.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh&mdash;Oh!" He frowned. "Well, I'll tell you, Dixon. You
+won't understand, but I'll tell you." He coughed. "As far
+back as the early twentieth century," he resumed, "Einstein proved
+that energy is particular. Matter is also particular, and now van
+Manderpootz adds that space and time are discrete!" He glared
+at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Energy and matter are particular," I murmured, "and space
+and time are discrete! How very moral of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Imbecile!" he blazed. "To pun on the words of van Manderpootz!
+You know very well that I mean particular and
+discrete in the physical sense. Matter is composed of particles,
+therefore it is particular. The particles of matter are called
+electrons, protons, and neutrons, and those of energy, quanta. I
+now add two others, the particles of space I call spations, those
+of time, chronons."</p>
+
+<p>"And what in the devil," I asked, "are particles of space
+and time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I said!" snapped van Manderpootz. "Exactly
+as the particles of matter are the smallest pieces of matter that
+can exist, just as there is no such thing as a half of an electron,
+or for that matter, half a quantum, so the chronon is the smallest
+possible fragment of time, and the spation the smallest possible
+bit of space. Neither time nor space is continuous; each is composed
+of these infinitely tiny fragments."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how long is a chronon in time? How big is a
+spation in space?"</p>
+
+<p>"Van Manderpootz has even measured that. A chronon is
+the length of time it takes one quantum of energy to push one
+electron from one electronic orbit to the next. There can obviously
+be no shorter interval of time, since an electron is the
+smallest unit of matter and the quantum the smallest unit of
+energy. And a spation is the exact volume of a proton. Since
+nothing smaller exists, that is obviously the smallest unit of
+space."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, look here," I argued. "Then what's in between
+these particles of space and time? If time moves, as you say, in
+jerks of one chronon each, what's between the jerks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said the great van Manderpootz. "Now we come
+to the heart of the matter. In between the particles of space
+and time, must obviously be something that is neither space,
+time, matter, nor energy. A hundred years ago Shapley anticipated
+van Manderpootz in a vague way when he announced his
+cosmo-plasma, the great underlying matrix in which time and
+space and the universe are embedded. Now van Manderpootz
+announces the ultimate unit, the universal particle, the focus in
+which matter, energy, time, and space meet, the unit from which
+electrons, protons, neutrons, quanta, spations, and chronons are
+all constructed. The riddle of the universe is solved by what
+I have chosen to name the cosmon." His blue eyes bored into
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"Magnificent!" I said feebly, knowing that some such word
+was expected. "But what good is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What good is it?" he roared. "It provides&mdash;or will provide,
+once I work out a few details&mdash;the means of turning energy
+into time, or space into matter, or time into space, or&mdash;" He
+sputtered into silence. "Fool!" he muttered. "To think that
+you studied under the tutelage of van Manderpootz. I blush; I
+actually blush!"</p>
+
+<p>One couldn't have told it if he were blushing. His face
+was always rubicund enough. "Colossal!" I said hastily. "What
+a mind!"</p>
+
+<p>That mollified him. "But that's not all," he proceeded.
+"Van Manderpootz never stops short of perfection. I now announce
+the unit particle of thought&mdash;the psychon!"</p>
+
+<p>This was a little too much. I simply stared.</p>
+
+<p>"Well may you be dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz.
+"I presume you are aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of
+thought. The psychon, the unit of thought, is one electron plus
+one proton, which are bound so as to form one neutron, embedded
+in one cosmon, occupying a volume of one spation, driven by
+one quantum for a period of one chronon. Very obvious; very
+simple."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very!" I echoed. "Even I can see that that equals
+one psychon."</p>
+
+<p>He beamed. "Excellent! Excellent!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even <i>past</i> the heart of the
+matter, and return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward
+the robot. "Here I will create Roger Bacon's mechanical head.
+In the skull of this clumsy creature will rest such intelligence
+as not even van Manderpootz&mdash;I should say, as <i>only</i> van Manderpootz&mdash;can
+conceive. It remains merely to construct my
+idealizator."</p>
+
+<p>"Your idealizator?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as
+real as matter, energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated
+that one can be transformed, through the cosmon, into
+any other? My idealizator is the means of transforming psychons
+to quanta, just as, for instance, a Crookes tube or X-ray
+tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make your thoughts
+visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb brain
+of yours, but in <i>ideal</i> form. Do you see? The psychons of your
+mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all
+electrons are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your
+psychons"&mdash;his voice quavered&mdash;"are identical with those from
+the mind of&mdash;van Manderpootz!" He paused, shaken.</p>
+
+<p>"Actually?" I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore,
+my idealizator shows your thought released from the impress
+of your personality. It shows it&mdash;ideal!"</p>
+
+<p>Well, I was late to the office again.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on
+tour somewhere, and I didn't dare take anyone else out because
+I'd tried it once before and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing
+to do, I finally dropped around to the professor's quarter,
+found him missing, and eventually located him in his laboratory
+at the Physics Building. He was puttering around the table
+that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his, but now
+it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires,
+and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched
+with a grating of delicately scratched lines.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.</p>
+
+<p>I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit
+into Isaak's iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it out." He
+turned glittering blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're
+here. It will save the world a terrible risk."</p>
+
+<p>"A risk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device
+will extract too many psychons, and leave the subject's mind in
+a sort of moronic condition. I was about to accept the risk,
+but I see now that it would be woefully unfair to the world to
+endanger the mind of van Manderpootz. But you are at hand,
+and will do very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible.
+In fact, I doubt whether the device will be able to extract <i>any</i>
+psychons from <i>your</i> mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly
+safe for a period of at least half an hour. I, with a vastly more
+productive mind, could doubtless stand the strain indefinitely,
+but my responsibility to the world is too great to chance it until
+I have tested the machine on someone else. You should be
+proud of the honor."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not!" But my protest was feeble, and after
+all, despite his overbearing mannerisms, I knew van Manderpootz
+liked me, and I was positive he would not have exposed
+me to any real danger. In the end I found myself seated before
+the table facing the etched mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"Put your face against the barrel," said van Manderpootz,
+indicating a stove-pipe-like tube. "That's merely to cut off extraneous
+sights, so that you can see only the mirror. Go ahead,
+I tell you! It's no more than the barrel of a telescope or
+microscope."</p>
+
+<p>I complied. "Now what?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you see?"</p>
+
+<p>"My own face in the mirror."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Now I start the reflector rotating." There was
+a faint whir, and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with
+only a slightly blurred image of myself. "Listen, now," continued
+van Manderpootz. "Here is what you are to do. You
+will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance. If you think
+of house, you will see, not an individual house, but your ideal
+house, the house of all your dreams and desires. If you think
+of a horse, you will see what your mind conceives as the perfect
+horse, such a horse as dream and longing create. Do you understand?
+Have you chosen a topic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." After all, I was only twenty-eight; the noun I had
+chosen was&mdash;girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said the professor. "I turn on the current."</p>
+
+<p>There was a blue radiance behind the mirror. My own face
+still stared back at me from the spinning surface, but something
+was forming behind it, building up, growing. I blinked; when
+I focused my eyes again, it was&mdash;<i>she</i> was&mdash;there.</p>
+
+<p>Lord! I can't begin to describe her. I don't even know
+if I saw her clearly the first time. It was like looking into
+another world and seeing the embodiment of all longings,
+dreams, aspirations, and ideals. It was so poignant a sensation
+that it crossed the borderline into pain. It was&mdash;well, exquisite
+torture or agonized delight. It was at once unbearable and
+irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>But I gazed. I had to. There was a haunting familiarity
+about the impossibly beautiful features. I had seen the face&mdash;somewhere&mdash;sometime.
+In dreams? No; I realized suddenly
+what was the source of that familiarity. This was no living woman,
+but a synthesis. Her nose was the tiny, impudent one of
+Whimsy White at her loveliest moment; her lips were the perfect
+bow of Tips Alva; her silvery eyes and dusky velvet hair
+were those of Joan Caldwell. But the aggregate, the sum total,
+the face in the mirror&mdash;that was none of these; it was a face
+impossibly, incredibly, outrageously beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Only her face and throat were visible, and the features were
+cool, expressionless, and still as a carving. I wandered suddenly
+if she could smile, and with the thought, she did. If she had
+been beautiful before, now her beauty flamed to such a pitch
+that it was&mdash;well, insolent; it was an affront to be so lovely; it
+was insulting. I felt a wild surge of anger that the image before
+me should flaunt such beauty, and yet be&mdash;<i>non-existent</i>! It was
+deception, cheating, fraud, a promise that could never be fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Anger died in the depths of that fascination. I wondered
+what the rest of her was like, and instantly she moved gracefully
+back until her full figure was visible. I must be a prude at heart,
+for she wasn't wearing the usual cuirass-and-shorts of that year,
+but an iridescent four-paneled costume that all but concealed
+her dainty knees. But her form was slim and erect as a column
+of cigarette smoke in still air, and I knew that she could dance
+like a fragment of mist on water. And with that thought she
+did move, dropping in a low curtsy, and looking up with the
+faintest possible flush crimsoning the curve of her throat. Yes,
+I must be a prude at heart; despite Tips Alva and Whimsy
+White and the rest, my ideal was modest.</p>
+
+<p>It was unbelievable that the mirror was simply giving back
+my thoughts. She seemed as real as myself, and&mdash;after all&mdash;I
+guess she was. As real as myself, no more, no less, because she
+was part of my own mind. And at this point I realized that van
+Manderpootz was shaking me and bellowing, "Your time's up.
+Come out of it! Your half-hour's up!"</p>
+
+<p>He must have switched off the current. The image faded,
+and I took my face from the tube, dropping it on my arms.</p>
+
+<p>"O-o-o-o-o-oh!" I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel?" he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Feel? All right&mdash;physically." I looked up.</p>
+
+<p>Concern flickered in his blue eyes. "What's the cube root
+of 4913?" he crackled sharply.</p>
+
+<p>I've always been quick at figures. "It's&mdash;uh&mdash;17," I returned
+dully. "Why the devil&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're all right mentally," he announced. "Now&mdash;why
+were you sitting there like a dummy for half an hour? My idealizator
+must have worked, as is only natural for a van Manderpootz
+creation, but what were you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought&mdash;I thought of 'girl'," I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>He snorted. "Hah! You would, you idiot! 'House' or
+'horse' wasn't good enough; you had to pick something with
+emotional connotations. Well, you can start right in forgetting
+her, because she doesn't exist."</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't give up hope, as easily as that. "But can't you&mdash;can't
+you&mdash;?" I didn't even know what I meant to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Van Manderpootz," he announced, "is a mathematician,
+not a magician. Do you expect me to materialize an ideal for
+you?" When I had no reply but a groan, he continued. "Now
+I think it safe enough to try the device myself. I shall take&mdash;let's
+see&mdash;the thought 'man.' I shall see what the superman
+looks like, since the ideal of van Manderpootz can be nothing
+less than superman." He seated himself. "Turn that switch,"
+he said. "Now!"</p>
+
+<p>I did. The tubes glowed into low blue light. I watched
+dully, disinterestedly; nothing held any attraction for me after
+that image of the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" said van Manderpootz suddenly. "Turn it on, I
+say! I see nothing but my own reflection."</p>
+
+<p>I stared, then burst into a hollow laugh. The mirror was
+spinning; the banks of tubes were glowing; the device was
+operating.</p>
+
+<p>Van Manderpootz raised his face, a little redder than usual.
+I laughed half hysterically. "After all," he said huffily, "one
+might have a lower ideal of man than van Manderpootz. I see
+nothing nearly so humorous as your situation."</p>
+
+<p>The laughter died. I went miserably home, spent half the
+remainder of the night in morose contemplation, smoked nearly
+two packs of cigarettes, and didn't get to the office at all the
+next day.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Tips Alva got back to town for a week-end broadcast, but
+I didn't even bother to see her, just phoned her and told her I
+was sick. I guess my face lent credibility to the story, for she
+was duly sympathetic, and her face in the phone screen was
+quite anxious. Even at that, I couldn't keep my eyes away from
+her lips because, except for a bit too lustrous make-up, they
+were the lips of the ideal. But they weren't enough; they just
+weren't enough.</p>
+
+<p>Old N. J. began to worry again. I couldn't sleep late of
+mornings any more, and after missing that one day, I kept getting
+down earlier and earlier until one morning I was only ten minutes
+late. He called me in at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Dixon," he said. "Have you been to a doctor
+recently?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sick," I said listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then for Heaven's sake, marry the girl! I don't care what
+chorus she kicks in, marry her and act like a human being again."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh. She's already married, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Well, I couldn't tell him she didn't exist. I couldn't say
+I was in love with a vision, a dream, an ideal. He thought I
+was a little crazy, anyway, so I just muttered "Yeah," and didn't
+argue when he said gruffly: "Then you'll get over it. Take a
+vacation. Take <i>two</i> vacations. You might as well for all the
+good you are around here."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't leave New York; I lacked the energy. I just mooned
+around the city for a while, avoiding my friends, and dreaming
+of the impossible beauty of the face in the mirror. And by and
+by the longing to see that vision of perfection once more began
+to become overpowering. I don't suppose anyone except me
+can understand the lure of that memory; the face, you see, had
+been my ideal, my concept of perfection. One sees beautiful
+women here and there in the world; one falls in love, but always,
+no matter how great their beauty or how deep one's love, they
+fall short in some degree of the secret vision of the ideal. But
+not the mirrored face; she was my ideal, and therefore, whatever
+imperfections she might have had in the minds of others,
+in my eyes she had none. None, that is, save the terrible one
+of being only an ideal, and therefore unattainable&mdash;but that is
+a fault inherent in all perfection.</p>
+
+<p>It was a matter of days before I yielded. Common sense
+told me it was futile, even foolhardy, to gaze again on the vision
+of perfect desirability. I fought against the hunger, but I fought
+hopelessly, and was not at all surprised to find myself one evening
+rapping on van Manderpootz's door in the University Club.
+He wasn't there; I'd been hoping he wouldn't be, since it gave
+me an excuse to seek him in his laboratory in the Physics Building,
+to which I would have dragged him anyway.</p>
+
+<p>There I found him, writing some sort of notations on the
+table that held the idealizator. "Hello, Dixon," he said. "Did
+it ever occur to you that the ideal university cannot exist?
+Naturally not since it must be composed of perfect students and
+perfect educators, in which case the former could have nothing
+to learn and the latter, therefore, nothing to teach."</p>
+
+<p>What interest had I in the perfect university and its inability
+to exist? My whole being was desolate over the non-existence
+of another ideal. "Professor," I said tensely, "may I use that&mdash;that
+thing of yours again? I want to&mdash;uh&mdash;see something."</p>
+
+<p>My voice must have disclosed the situation, for van Manderpootz
+looked up sharply. "So!" he snapped. "So you disregarded
+my advice! Forget her, I said. Forget her because
+she doesn't exist."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I can't! Once more, Professor&mdash;only once more!"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged, but his blue, metallic eyes were a little softer
+than usual. After all, for some inconceivable reason, he likes me.
+"Well, Dixon," he said, "you're of age and supposed to be of
+mature intelligence. I tell you that this is a very stupid request,
+and van Manderpootz always knows what he's talking
+about. If you want to stupefy yourself with the opium of impossible
+dreams, go ahead. This is the last chance you'll have,
+for tomorrow the idealizator of van Manderpootz goes into the
+Bacon head of Isaak there. I shall shift the oscillators so that
+the psychons, instead of becoming light quanta, emerge as an
+electron flow&mdash;a current which will actuate Isaak's vocal apparatus
+and come out as speech." He paused musingly. "Van
+Manderpootz will hear the voice of the ideal. Of course Isaak
+can return only what psychons he receives from the brain of
+the operator, but just as the image in the mirror, the thoughts
+will have lost their human impress, and the words will be those
+of an ideal." He perceived that I wasn't listening, I suppose.
+"Go ahead, imbecile!" he grunted.</p>
+
+<p>I did. The glory that I hungered after flamed slowly into
+being, incredible in loveliness, and somehow, unbelievably, even
+more beautiful than on that other occasion. I know why now;
+long afterwards, van Manderpootz explained that the very fact
+that I had seen an ideal once before had altered my ideal, raised
+it to a higher level. With that face among my memories, my concept
+of perfection was different than it had been.</p>
+
+<p>So I gazed and hungered. Readily and instantly the being
+in the mirror responded to my thoughts with smile and movement.
+When I thought of love, her eyes blazed with such tenderness
+that it seemed as if&mdash;I&mdash;I, Dixon Wells&mdash;were part of
+those pairs who had made the great romances of the world,
+Heloise and Abelard, Tristram and Isolde, Aucassin and Nicolette.
+It was like the thrust of a dagger to feel van Manderpootz
+shaking me, to hear his gruff voice calling, "Out of it! Out of
+it! Time's up."</p>
+
+<p>I groaned and dropped my face on my hands. The Professor
+had been right, of course; this insane repetition had only
+intensified an unfulfillable longing, and had made a bad mess
+ten times as bad. Then I heard him muttering behind me.
+"Strange!" he murmured. "In fact, fantastic. Oedipus&mdash;oedipus
+of the magazine covers and billboards."</p>
+
+<p>I looked dully around. He was standing behind me, squinting,
+apparently, into the spinning mirror beyond the end of the
+black tube. "Huh?" I grunted wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"That face," he said. "Very queer. You must have seen
+her features on a hundred magazines, on a thousand billboards,
+on countless 'vision broadcasts. The oedipus complex in a curious
+form."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? Could <i>you</i> see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" he grunted. "Didn't I say a dozen times that
+the psychons are transmuted to perfectly ordinary quanta of
+visible light? If you could see her, why not I?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;what about billboards and all?"</p>
+
+<p>"That face," said the professor slowly. "It's somewhat
+idealized, of course, and certain details are wrong. Her eyes
+aren't that pallid silver-blue you imagined; they're green&mdash;sea-green,
+emerald colored."</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil," I asked hoarsely, "are you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"About the face in the mirror. It happens to be, Dixon,
+a close approximation of the features of de Lisle d'Agrion, the
+Dragon Fly!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;she's real? She exists? She lives? She&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a moment, Dixon. She's real enough, but in accordance
+with your habit, you're a little late. About twenty-five
+years too late, I should say. She must now be somewhere
+in the fifties&mdash;let's see&mdash;fifty-three, I think. But during your
+very early childhood, you must have seen her face pictured everywhere,
+de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly."</p>
+
+<p>I could only gulp. That blow was devastating.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are
+implanted very early. That's why you continually fall in love
+with girls who possess one or another feature that reminds you
+of her, her hair, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Very simple,
+but rather curious."</p>
+
+<p>"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Everytime I
+look into one of your damned contraptions I find myself in
+love with a myth! A girl who's dead, or married, or unreal, or
+turned into an old woman! Curious, eh? Damned funny, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens,
+Dixon, that she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles
+her mother. And what's still more, she's arriving in New York
+next week to study American letters at the University here. She
+writes, you see."</p>
+
+<p>That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How&mdash;how
+do you know?" I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness
+of van Manderpootz ruffled. He reddened a trifle, and
+said slowly, "It also happens, Dixon, that many years ago in
+Amsterdam, Haskel van Manderpootz and de Lisle d'Agrion
+were&mdash;very friendly&mdash;more than friendly, I might say, but for
+the fact that two such powerful personalities as the Dragon Fly
+and van Manderpootz were always at odds." He frowned. "I
+was almost her second husband. She's had seven, I believe;
+Denise is the daughter of her third."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why is she coming here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," he said with dignity, "van Manderpootz is here.
+I am still a friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the
+complex device on the table. "Hand me that wrench," he
+ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and tomorrow start reconstructing
+it for Isaak's head."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>But when, the following week, I rushed eagerly back to
+van Manderpootz's laboratory, the idealizator was still in place.
+The professor greeted me with a humorous twist to what was
+visible of his bearded mouth. "Yes, it's still here," he said,
+gesturing at the device. "I've decided to build an entirely new
+one for Isaak, and besides, this one has afforded me considerable
+amusement. Furthermore, in the words of Oscar Wilde,
+who am I to tamper with a work of genius. After all, the
+mechanism is the product of the great van Manderpootz."</p>
+
+<p>He was deliberately tantalizing me. He knew that I hadn't
+come to hear him discourse on Isaak, or even on the incomparable
+van Manderpootz. Then he smiled and softened, and
+turned to the little inner office adjacent, the room where Isaak
+stood in metal austerity. "Denise!" he called, "come here."</p>
+
+<p>I don't know exactly what I expected, but I do know that
+the breath left me as the girl entered. She wasn't exactly my
+image of the ideal, of course; she was perhaps the merest
+trifle slimmer, and her eyes&mdash;well, they must have been much
+like those of de Lisle d'Agrion, for they were the clearest emerald
+I've ever seen. They were impudently direct eyes, and I could
+imagine why van Manderpootz and the Dragon Fly might have
+been forever quarreling; that was easy to imagine, looking into
+the eyes of the Dragon Fly's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Denise, apparently, quite as femininely modest as
+my image of perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing
+costume of the day, which covered, I suppose, about as much
+of her as one of the one-piece swimming suits of the middle
+years of the twentieth century. She gave an impression, not so
+much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple strength, an
+air of independence, frankness, and&mdash;I say it again&mdash;impudence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" she said coolly as van Manderpootz presented me.
+"So you're the scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation. Every
+now and then your escapades enliven the Paris Sunday supplements.
+Wasn't it you who snared a million dollars in the market
+so you could ask Whimsy White&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>I flushed. "That was greatly exaggerated," I said hastily,
+"and anyway I lost it before we&mdash;uh&mdash;before I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not before you made somewhat of a fool of yourself, I
+believe," she finished sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>Well, that's the sort she was. If she hadn't been so infernally
+lovely, if she hadn't looked so much like the face in
+the mirror, I'd have flared up, said "Pleased to have met you,"
+and never have seen her again. But I couldn't get angry, not
+when she had the dusky hair, the perfect lips, the saucy nose of
+the being who to me was ideal.</p>
+
+<p>So I did see her again, and several times again. In fact,
+I suppose I occupied most of her time between the few literary
+courses she was taking, and little by little I began to see that
+in other respects besides the physical she was not so far from
+my ideal. Beneath her impudence was honesty, and frankness,
+and, despite herself, sweetness, so that even allowing for the
+head-start I'd had, I fell in love pretty hastily. And what's more,
+I knew she was beginning to reciprocate.</p>
+
+<p>That was the situation when I called for her one noon and
+took her over to van Manderpootz's laboratory. We were to
+lunch with him at the University Club, but we found him occupied
+in directing some experiment in the big laboratory beyond
+his personal one, untangling some sort of mess that his
+staff had blundered into. So Denise and I wandered back into
+the smaller room, perfectly content to be alone together. I
+simply couldn't feel hungry in her presence; just talking to her
+was enough of a substitute for food.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to be a good writer," she was saying musingly.
+"Some day, Dick, I'm going to be famous."</p>
+
+<p>Well, everyone knows how correct that prediction was. I
+agreed with her instantly.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. "You're nice, Dick," she said. "Very nice."</p>
+
+<p>"Very?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Very!</i>" she said emphatically. Then her green eyes strayed
+over to the table that held the idealizator. "What crack-brained
+contraption of Uncle Haskel's is that?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I explained, rather inaccurately, I'm afraid, but no ordinary
+engineer can follow the ramifications of a van Manderpootz conception.
+Nevertheless, Denise caught the gist of it and her
+eyes glowed emerald fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fascinating!" she exclaimed. She rose and moved over
+to the table. "I'm going to try it."</p>
+
+<p>"Not without the professor, you won't! It might be
+dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>That was the wrong thing to say. The green eyes glowed
+brighter as she cast me a whimsical glance. "But I am," she
+said. "Dick, I'm going to&mdash;see my ideal man!" She laughed
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>I was panicky. Suppose her ideal turned out tall and dark
+and powerful, instead of short and sandy-haired and a bit&mdash;well,
+chubby, as I am. "No!" I said vehemently. "I won't let you!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again. I suppose she read my consternation,
+for she said softly, "Don't be silly, Dick." She sat down, placed
+her face against the opening of the barrel, and commanded.
+"Turn it on."</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't refuse her. I set the mirror whirling, then
+switched on the bank of tubes. Then immediately I stepped
+behind her, squinting into what was visible of the flashing
+mirror, where a face was forming, slowly&mdash;vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>I thrilled. Surely the hair of the image was sandy. I even
+fancied now that I could trace a resemblance to my own features.
+Perhaps Denise sensed something similar, for she suddenly
+withdrew her eyes from the tube and looked up with a
+faintly embarrassed flush, a thing most unusual for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ideals are dull!" she said. "I want a real thrill. Do you
+know what I'm going to see? I'm going to visualize ideal horror.
+That's what I'll do. I'm going to see absolute horror!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no you're not!" I gasped. "That's a terribly dangerous
+idea." Off in the other room I heard the voice of van
+Manderpootz, "Dixon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous&mdash;bosh!" Denise retorted. "I'm a writer, Dick.
+All this means to me is material. It's just experience, and I
+want it."</p>
+
+<p>Van Manderpootz again. "Dixon! Dixon! Come here."
+I said, "Listen, Denise. I'll be right back. Don't try anything
+until I'm here&mdash;please!"</p>
+
+<p>I dashed into the big laboratory. Van Manderpootz was
+facing a cowed group of assistants, quite apparently in extreme
+awe of the great man.</p>
+
+<p>"Hah, Dixon!" he rasped. "Tell these fools what an Emmerich
+valve is, and why it won't operate in a free electronic
+stream. Let 'em see that even an ordinary engineer knows
+that much."</p>
+
+<p>Well, an ordinary engineer doesn't, but it happened that I
+did. Not that I'm particularly exceptional as an engineer, but I
+<i>did</i> happen to know that because a year or two before I'd done
+some work on the big tidal turbines up in Maine, where they
+have to use Emmerich valves to guard against electrical leakage
+from the tremendous potentials in their condensers. So I started
+explaining, and van Manderpootz kept interpolating sarcasms
+about his staff, and when I finally finished, I suppose I'd been
+in there about half an hour. And then&mdash;I remembered Denise!</p>
+
+<p>I left van Manderpootz staring as I rushed back, and sure
+enough, there was the girl with her face pressed against the
+barrel, and her hands gripping the table edge. Her features
+were hidden, of course, but there was something about her
+strained position, her white knuckles&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Denise!" I yelled. "Are you all right? <i>Denise!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She didn't move. I stuck my face in between the mirror
+and the end of the barrel and peered up the tube at her visage,
+and what I saw left me all but stunned. Have you ever seen
+stark, mad, infinite terror on a human face? That was what I
+saw in Denise's&mdash;inexpressible, unbearable horror, worse than
+the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were widened
+so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were
+contorted, her whole face strained into a mask of sheer terror.</p>
+
+<p>I rushed for the switch, but in passing I caught a single
+glimpse of&mdash;of what showed in the mirror. Incredible! Obscene,
+terror-laden, horrifying things&mdash;there just aren't words for them.
+There are no words.</p>
+
+<p>Denise didn't move as the tubes darkened. I raised her face
+from the barrel and when she glimpsed me she moved. She
+flung herself out of that chair and away, facing me with such mad
+terror that I halted.</p>
+
+<p>"Denise!" I cried. "It's just Dick. Look, Denise!"</p>
+
+<p>But as I moved toward her, she uttered a choking scream,
+her eyes dulled, her knees gave, and she fainted. Whatever she
+had seen, it must have been appalling to the uttermost, for
+Denise was not the sort to faint.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was a week later that I sat facing van Manderpootz in his
+little inner office. The grey metal figure of Isaak was missing,
+and the table that had held the idealizator was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said van Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One
+of van Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where
+a pair of incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It
+seems that I continually overestimate the intelligence of others.
+I suppose I tend to judge them by the brain of van
+Manderpootz."</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing. I was thoroughly disheartened and depressed,
+and whatever the professor said about my lack of intelligence,
+I felt it justified.</p>
+
+<p>"Hereafter," resumed van Manderpootz, "I shall credit nobody
+except myself with intelligence, and will doubtless be
+much more nearly correct." He waved a hand at Isaak's vacant
+corner. "Not even the Bacon head," he continued. "I've
+abandoned that project, because, when you come right down to
+it, what need has the world of a mechanical brain when it already
+has that of van Manderpootz?"</p>
+
+<p>"Professor," I burst out suddenly, "why won't they let me
+see Denise? I've been at the hospital every day, and they let
+me into her room just once&mdash;just once, and that time she went
+right into a fit of hysterics. Why? Is she&mdash;?" I gulped.</p>
+
+<p>"She's recovering nicely, Dixon."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why can't I see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said van Manderpootz placidly, "it's like this. You
+see, when you rushed into the laboratory there, you made the
+mistake of pushing your face in front of the barrel. She saw
+your features right in the midst of all those horrors she had called
+up. Do you see? From then on your face was associated in
+her mind with the whole hell's brew in the mirror. She can't
+even look at you without seeing all of it again."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Good&mdash;God!</i>" I gasped. "But she'll get over it, won't
+she? She'll forget that part of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The young psychiatrist who attends her&mdash;a bright chap,
+by the way, with a number of my own ideas&mdash;believes she'll be
+quite over it in a couple of months. But personally, Dixon, I
+don't think she'll ever welcome the sight of your face, though I
+myself have seen uglier visages somewhere or other."</p>
+
+<p>I ignored that. "Lord!" I groaned. "What a mess!" I
+rose to depart, and then&mdash;then I knew what inspiration means!</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" I said, spinning back. "Listen, professor! Why
+can't you get her back here and let her visualize the ideally
+beautiful? And then I'll&mdash;I'll stick my face into that!" Enthusiasm
+grew. "It can't fail!" I cried. "At the worst, it'll
+cancel that other memory. It's marvelous!"</p>
+
+<p>"But as usual," said van Manderpootz, "a little late."</p>
+
+<p>"Late? Why? You can put up your idealizator again.
+You'd do that much, wouldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Van Manderpootz," he observed, "is the very soul of generosity.
+I'd do it gladly, but it's still a little late, Dixon. You
+see, she married the bright young psychiatrist this noon."</p>
+
+<p>Well, I've a date with Tips Alva tonight, and I'm going
+to be late for it, just as late as I please. And then I'm going to
+do nothing but stare at her lips all evening.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,1381 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, 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 Ideal
+
+Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22897]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDEAL ***
+
+
+
+
+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 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 the devil's arts to God's ends, thereby cheating
+the fiend--Sst! There sounds vespers!_ Plena gratia, ave Virgo--"
+
+_But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the_ doctor mirabilis
+_watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the iron eyes dull,
+and no voice but the great man's own sounded in his monkish cell, nor
+was there ever an answer to all the questions that he asked--until one
+day when he sat surveying his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in
+distant Cologne--one day--_
+
+_"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly._
+
+_The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you
+give utterance, and to some assertion less obvious than that time is.
+For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without time--"_
+
+_"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly at the statue
+of Draco._
+
+_"Indeed time was," said the Monk. "Time was, is, and will be, for time
+is that medium in which events occur. Matter exists in space, but
+events--"_
+
+_The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in tones deep as
+the cathedral bell outside, and burst into ten thousand pieces_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the book, "is my
+classical authority in this experiment. This story, overlaid as it is
+with mediaeval myth and legend, proves that Roger Bacon himself attempted
+the experiment--and failed." He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not
+get the impression, Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He
+was--extremely great, in fact; he lighted the torch that his namesake
+Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van Manderpootz
+rekindles."
+
+I stared in silence.
+
+"Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost be called a
+thirteenth century van Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first
+century Roger Bacon. His _Opus Majus_, _Opus Minus_, and _Opus
+Tertium_--"
+
+"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do with--that?" I
+indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the corner of the
+laboratory.
+
+"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz. "I'll--"
+
+At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal had ejaculated
+something like "_A-a-gh-rasp_" and had lunged a single pace toward the
+window, arms upraised. "What the devil!" I sputtered as the thing
+dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.
+
+"A car must have passed in the alley," said van Manderpootz
+indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon--"
+
+I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a
+statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his,
+I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems
+of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of
+the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde
+imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company.
+Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine;
+maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.
+
+I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation,
+Engineers Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an engineer myself; I say
+supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father
+hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of
+value of time, and I'm cursed with the unenviable quality of being late
+to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional
+designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're
+Post-Romanesque.
+
+Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and
+'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though
+that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient to be so dependent,
+and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped
+out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White,
+and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving
+that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as
+much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took
+me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another
+instance when I was a little late.
+
+Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the
+Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit
+eccentric. Judge for yourself.
+
+"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
+
+"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got to do with it?"
+
+He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile! To dream
+while van Manderpootz talks! Get out! Get out!"
+
+I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in
+the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from
+my father at the office.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in
+for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window,
+and I lost no time asking its purpose.
+
+"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he explained.
+"There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so
+connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates
+the mechanism. The thing's plugged into the light-circuit, but it really
+ought to run on gasoline."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile. See
+here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a
+streamlined car like those of that year. "Since only one eye is used,"
+he continued, "The thing can't tell the difference between a full-sized
+vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of
+perspective."
+
+He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly
+came its roar of "_A-a-gh-rasp!_" and it leaped forward a single pace,
+arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew the card, and again the thing
+relapsed stolidly into its place.
+
+"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What's it for?"
+
+"Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back of it? I use it
+as a demonstration in my seminar."
+
+"To demonstrate what?"
+
+"The power of reason," said van Manderpootz solemnly.
+
+"How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of electric power?"
+
+"One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van
+Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is,
+represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the
+tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. _This_ monster's
+jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the
+trails called streets. Understand?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van Manderpootz
+could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in the shadows of
+buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys; it skulks on
+deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring quietly. Then--an
+unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on the screen behind its
+eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging it in steel arms to its
+steel jaws. Through the metal throat of its victim crash steel teeth;
+the blood of its prey--the gasoline, that is--is drained into its
+stomach, or its gas-tank. With renewed strength it flings away the husk
+and prowls on to seek other prey. It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger
+of mechanics."
+
+I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that the brain of
+the great van Manderpootz was cracking. "What the--?" I gasped.
+
+"That," he said blandly, "is but a concept. I have many another use for
+the toy. I can prove anything with it, anything I wish."
+
+"You can? Then prove something."
+
+"Name your proposition, Dixon."
+
+I hesitated, nonplussed.
+
+"Come!" he said impatiently. "Look here; I will prove that anarchy is
+the ideal government, or that Heaven and Hell are the same place, or
+that--"
+
+"Prove that!" I said. "About Heaven and Hell."
+
+"Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I add a
+mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed valve; I add a
+mathematical sense with any of the calculating machines; I give it a
+voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse wire phonograph. Now
+the point I make is this: Granted an intelligent machine, does it not
+follow that every other machine constructed like it must have the
+identical qualities? Would not each robot given the same insides have
+exactly the same character?"
+
+"No!" I snapped. "Human beings can't make two machines exactly alike.
+There'd be tiny differences; one would react quicker than others, or one
+would prefer Fox Airsplitters as prey, while another reacted most
+vigorously to Carnecars. In other words, they'd have--_individuality_!"
+I grinned in triumph.
+
+"My point exactly," observed van Manderpootz. "You admit, then, that
+this individuality is the result of imperfect workmanship. If our means
+of manufacture were perfect, all robots would be identical, and this
+individuality would not exist. Is that true?"
+
+"I--suppose so."
+
+"Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our falling short of
+perfection. All of us--even van Manderpootz--are individuals only
+because we are not perfect. Were we perfect, each of us would be exactly
+like everyone else. True?"
+
+"Uh--yes."
+
+"But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect. Therefore,
+in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else, and _therefore_,
+everybody is thoroughly and completely bored! There is no torture like
+boredom, Dixon, and--Well, have I proved my point?"
+
+I was floored. "But--about anarchy, then?" I stammered.
+
+"Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here; with a perfect
+nation--that is, one whose individuals are all exactly alike, which I
+have just proved to constitute perfection--with a perfect nation, I
+repeat, laws and government are utterly superfluous. If everybody reacts
+to stimuli in the same way, laws are quite useless, obviously. If, for
+instance, a certain event occurred that might lead to a declaration of
+war, why, everybody in such a nation would vote for war at the same
+instant. Therefore government is unnecessary, and therefore anarchy is
+the ideal government, since it is the proper government for a perfect
+race." He paused. "I shall now prove that anarchy is _not_ the ideal
+government--"
+
+"Never mind!" I begged. "Who am I to argue with van Manderpootz? But is
+_that_ the whole purpose of this dizzy robot? Just a basis for logic?"
+The mechanism replied with its usual rasp as it leaped toward some
+vagrant car beyond the window.
+
+"Isn't that enough?" growled van Manderpootz. "However,"--his voice
+dropped--"I have even a greater destiny in mind. My boy, van Manderpootz
+has solved the riddle of the universe!" He paused impressively. "Well,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"Uh!" I gasped. "It's--uh--marvelous!"
+
+"Not for van Manderpootz," he said modestly.
+
+"But--what is it?"
+
+"Eh--Oh!" He frowned. "Well, I'll tell you, Dixon. You won't
+understand, but I'll tell you." He coughed. "As far back as the early
+twentieth century," he resumed, "Einstein proved that energy is
+particular. Matter is also particular, and now van Manderpootz adds that
+space and time are discrete!" He glared at me.
+
+"Energy and matter are particular," I murmured, "and space and time are
+discrete! How very moral of them!"
+
+"Imbecile!" he blazed. "To pun on the words of van Manderpootz! You know
+very well that I mean particular and discrete in the physical sense.
+Matter is composed of particles, therefore it is particular. The
+particles of matter are called electrons, protons, and neutrons, and
+those of energy, quanta. I now add two others, the particles of space I
+call spations, those of time, chronons."
+
+"And what in the devil," I asked, "are particles of space and time?"
+
+"Just what I said!" snapped van Manderpootz. "Exactly as the particles
+of matter are the smallest pieces of matter that can exist, just as
+there is no such thing as a half of an electron, or for that matter,
+half a quantum, so the chronon is the smallest possible fragment of
+time, and the spation the smallest possible bit of space. Neither time
+nor space is continuous; each is composed of these infinitely tiny
+fragments."
+
+"Well, how long is a chronon in time? How big is a spation in space?"
+
+"Van Manderpootz has even measured that. A chronon is the length of time
+it takes one quantum of energy to push one electron from one electronic
+orbit to the next. There can obviously be no shorter interval of time,
+since an electron is the smallest unit of matter and the quantum the
+smallest unit of energy. And a spation is the exact volume of a proton.
+Since nothing smaller exists, that is obviously the smallest unit of
+space."
+
+"Well, look here," I argued. "Then what's in between these particles of
+space and time? If time moves, as you say, in jerks of one chronon each,
+what's between the jerks?"
+
+"Ah!" said the great van Manderpootz. "Now we come to the heart of the
+matter. In between the particles of space and time, must obviously be
+something that is neither space, time, matter, nor energy. A hundred
+years ago Shapley anticipated van Manderpootz in a vague way when he
+announced his cosmo-plasma, the great underlying matrix in which time
+and space and the universe are embedded. Now van Manderpootz announces
+the ultimate unit, the universal particle, the focus in which matter,
+energy, time, and space meet, the unit from which electrons, protons,
+neutrons, quanta, spations, and chronons are all constructed. The riddle
+of the universe is solved by what I have chosen to name the cosmon." His
+blue eyes bored into me.
+
+"Magnificent!" I said feebly, knowing that some such word was expected.
+"But what good is it?"
+
+"What good is it?" he roared. "It provides--or will provide, once I work
+out a few details--the means of turning energy into time, or space into
+matter, or time into space, or--" He sputtered into silence. "Fool!" he
+muttered. "To think that you studied under the tutelage of van
+Manderpootz. I blush; I actually blush!"
+
+One couldn't have told it if he were blushing. His face was always
+rubicund enough. "Colossal!" I said hastily. "What a mind!"
+
+That mollified him. "But that's not all," he proceeded. "Van Manderpootz
+never stops short of perfection. I now announce the unit particle of
+thought--the psychon!"
+
+This was a little too much. I simply stared.
+
+"Well may you be dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz. "I presume you are
+aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of thought. The psychon,
+the unit of thought, is one electron plus one proton, which are bound so
+as to form one neutron, embedded in one cosmon, occupying a volume of
+one spation, driven by one quantum for a period of one chronon. Very
+obvious; very simple."
+
+"Oh, very!" I echoed. "Even I can see that that equals one psychon."
+
+He beamed. "Excellent! Excellent!"
+
+"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"
+
+"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even _past_ the heart of the matter, and
+return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward the robot. "Here I will
+create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy
+creature will rest such intelligence as not even van Manderpootz--I
+should say, as _only_ van Manderpootz--can conceive. It remains merely
+to construct my idealizator."
+
+"Your idealizator?"
+
+"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter,
+energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated that one can be
+transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the
+means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance, a
+Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make
+your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb
+brain of yours, but in _ideal_ form. Do you see? The psychons of your
+mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all electrons
+are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons"--his voice
+quavered--"are identical with those from the mind of--van Manderpootz!"
+He paused, shaken.
+
+"Actually?" I gasped.
+
+"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my
+idealizator shows your thought released from the impress of your
+personality. It shows it--ideal!"
+
+Well, I was late to the office again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere,
+and I didn't dare take anyone else out because I'd tried it once before
+and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally dropped
+around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually
+located him in his laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering
+around the table that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his,
+but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires,
+and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a
+grating of delicately scratched lines.
+
+"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.
+
+I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.
+
+"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit into Isaak's
+iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it out." He turned glittering
+blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're here. It will save the world
+a terrible risk."
+
+"A risk?"
+
+"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device will extract
+too many psychons, and leave the subject's mind in a sort of moronic
+condition. I was about to accept the risk, but I see now that it would
+be woefully unfair to the world to endanger the mind of van Manderpootz.
+But you are at hand, and will do very well."
+
+"Oh, no I won't!"
+
+"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible. In fact, I
+doubt whether the device will be able to extract _any_ psychons from
+_your_ mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly safe for a period of at
+least half an hour. I, with a vastly more productive mind, could
+doubtless stand the strain indefinitely, but my responsibility to the
+world is too great to chance it until I have tested the machine on
+someone else. You should be proud of the honor."
+
+"Well, I'm not!" But my protest was feeble, and after all, despite his
+overbearing mannerisms, I knew van Manderpootz liked me, and I was
+positive he would not have exposed me to any real danger. In the end I
+found myself seated before the table facing the etched mirror.
+
+"Put your face against the barrel," said van Manderpootz, indicating a
+stove-pipe-like tube. "That's merely to cut off extraneous sights, so
+that you can see only the mirror. Go ahead, I tell you! It's no more
+than the barrel of a telescope or microscope."
+
+I complied. "Now what?" I asked.
+
+"What do you see?"
+
+"My own face in the mirror."
+
+"Of course. Now I start the reflector rotating." There was a faint whir,
+and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with only a slightly blurred
+image of myself. "Listen, now," continued van Manderpootz. "Here is what
+you are to do. You will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance.
+If you think of house, you will see, not an individual house, but your
+ideal house, the house of all your dreams and desires. If you think of
+a horse, you will see what your mind conceives as the perfect horse,
+such a horse as dream and longing create. Do you understand? Have you
+chosen a topic?"
+
+"Yes." After all, I was only twenty-eight; the noun I had chosen
+was--girl.
+
+"Good," said the professor. "I turn on the current."
+
+There was a blue radiance behind the mirror. My own face still stared
+back at me from the spinning surface, but something was forming behind
+it, building up, growing. I blinked; when I focused my eyes again, it
+was--_she_ was--there.
+
+Lord! I can't begin to describe her. I don't even know if I saw her
+clearly the first time. It was like looking into another world and
+seeing the embodiment of all longings, dreams, aspirations, and ideals.
+It was so poignant a sensation that it crossed the borderline into pain.
+It was--well, exquisite torture or agonized delight. It was at once
+unbearable and irresistible.
+
+But I gazed. I had to. There was a haunting familiarity about the
+impossibly beautiful features. I had seen the face--somewhere--sometime.
+In dreams? No; I realized suddenly what was the source of that
+familiarity. This was no living woman, but a synthesis. Her nose was the
+tiny, impudent one of Whimsy White at her loveliest moment; her lips
+were the perfect bow of Tips Alva; her silvery eyes and dusky velvet
+hair were those of Joan Caldwell. But the aggregate, the sum total, the
+face in the mirror--that was none of these; it was a face impossibly,
+incredibly, outrageously beautiful.
+
+Only her face and throat were visible, and the features were cool,
+expressionless, and still as a carving. I wandered suddenly if she could
+smile, and with the thought, she did. If she had been beautiful before,
+now her beauty flamed to such a pitch that it was--well, insolent; it
+was an affront to be so lovely; it was insulting. I felt a wild surge of
+anger that the image before me should flaunt such beauty, and yet
+be--_non-existent_! It was deception, cheating, fraud, a promise that
+could never be fulfilled.
+
+Anger died in the depths of that fascination. I wondered what the rest
+of her was like, and instantly she moved gracefully back until her full
+figure was visible. I must be a prude at heart, for she wasn't wearing
+the usual cuirass-and-shorts of that year, but an iridescent
+four-paneled costume that all but concealed her dainty knees. But her
+form was slim and erect as a column of cigarette smoke in still air, and
+I knew that she could dance like a fragment of mist on water. And with
+that thought she did move, dropping in a low curtsy, and looking up with
+the faintest possible flush crimsoning the curve of her throat. Yes, I
+must be a prude at heart; despite Tips Alva and Whimsy White and the
+rest, my ideal was modest.
+
+It was unbelievable that the mirror was simply giving back my thoughts.
+She seemed as real as myself, and--after all--I guess she was. As real
+as myself, no more, no less, because she was part of my own mind. And at
+this point I realized that van Manderpootz was shaking me and bellowing,
+"Your time's up. Come out of it! Your half-hour's up!"
+
+He must have switched off the current. The image faded, and I took my
+face from the tube, dropping it on my arms.
+
+"O-o-o-o-o-oh!" I groaned.
+
+"How do you feel?" he snapped.
+
+"Feel? All right--physically." I looked up.
+
+Concern flickered in his blue eyes. "What's the cube root of 4913?" he
+crackled sharply.
+
+I've always been quick at figures. "It's--uh--17," I returned dully.
+"Why the devil--?"
+
+"You're all right mentally," he announced. "Now--why were you sitting
+there like a dummy for half an hour? My idealizator must have worked, as
+is only natural for a van Manderpootz creation, but what were you
+thinking of?"
+
+"I thought--I thought of 'girl'," I groaned.
+
+He snorted. "Hah! You would, you idiot! 'House' or 'horse' wasn't good
+enough; you had to pick something with emotional connotations. Well, you
+can start right in forgetting her, because she doesn't exist."
+
+I couldn't give up hope, as easily as that. "But can't you--can't
+you--?" I didn't even know what I meant to ask.
+
+"Van Manderpootz," he announced, "is a mathematician, not a magician. Do
+you expect me to materialize an ideal for you?" When I had no reply but
+a groan, he continued. "Now I think it safe enough to try the device
+myself. I shall take--let's see--the thought 'man.' I shall see what the
+superman looks like, since the ideal of van Manderpootz can be nothing
+less than superman." He seated himself. "Turn that switch," he said.
+"Now!"
+
+I did. The tubes glowed into low blue light. I watched dully,
+disinterestedly; nothing held any attraction for me after that image of
+the ideal.
+
+"Huh!" said van Manderpootz suddenly. "Turn it on, I say! I see nothing
+but my own reflection."
+
+I stared, then burst into a hollow laugh. The mirror was spinning; the
+banks of tubes were glowing; the device was operating.
+
+Van Manderpootz raised his face, a little redder than usual. I laughed
+half hysterically. "After all," he said huffily, "one might have a lower
+ideal of man than van Manderpootz. I see nothing nearly so humorous as
+your situation."
+
+The laughter died. I went miserably home, spent half the remainder of
+the night in morose contemplation, smoked nearly two packs of
+cigarettes, and didn't get to the office at all the next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tips Alva got back to town for a week-end broadcast, but I didn't even
+bother to see her, just phoned her and told her I was sick. I guess my
+face lent credibility to the story, for she was duly sympathetic, and
+her face in the phone screen was quite anxious. Even at that, I couldn't
+keep my eyes away from her lips because, except for a bit too lustrous
+make-up, they were the lips of the ideal. But they weren't enough; they
+just weren't enough.
+
+Old N. J. began to worry again. I couldn't sleep late of mornings any
+more, and after missing that one day, I kept getting down earlier and
+earlier until one morning I was only ten minutes late. He called me in
+at once.
+
+"Look here, Dixon," he said. "Have you been to a doctor recently?"
+
+"I'm not sick," I said listlessly.
+
+"Then for Heaven's sake, marry the girl! I don't care what chorus she
+kicks in, marry her and act like a human being again."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"Oh. She's already married, eh?"
+
+Well, I couldn't tell him she didn't exist. I couldn't say I was in love
+with a vision, a dream, an ideal. He thought I was a little crazy,
+anyway, so I just muttered "Yeah," and didn't argue when he said
+gruffly: "Then you'll get over it. Take a vacation. Take _two_
+vacations. You might as well for all the good you are around here."
+
+I didn't leave New York; I lacked the energy. I just mooned around the
+city for a while, avoiding my friends, and dreaming of the impossible
+beauty of the face in the mirror. And by and by the longing to see that
+vision of perfection once more began to become overpowering. I don't
+suppose anyone except me can understand the lure of that memory; the
+face, you see, had been my ideal, my concept of perfection. One sees
+beautiful women here and there in the world; one falls in love, but
+always, no matter how great their beauty or how deep one's love, they
+fall short in some degree of the secret vision of the ideal. But not the
+mirrored face; she was my ideal, and therefore, whatever imperfections
+she might have had in the minds of others, in my eyes she had none.
+None, that is, save the terrible one of being only an ideal, and
+therefore unattainable--but that is a fault inherent in all perfection.
+
+It was a matter of days before I yielded. Common sense told me it was
+futile, even foolhardy, to gaze again on the vision of perfect
+desirability. I fought against the hunger, but I fought hopelessly, and
+was not at all surprised to find myself one evening rapping on van
+Manderpootz's door in the University Club. He wasn't there; I'd been
+hoping he wouldn't be, since it gave me an excuse to seek him in his
+laboratory in the Physics Building, to which I would have dragged him
+anyway.
+
+There I found him, writing some sort of notations on the table that held
+the idealizator. "Hello, Dixon," he said. "Did it ever occur to you that
+the ideal university cannot exist? Naturally not since it must be
+composed of perfect students and perfect educators, in which case the
+former could have nothing to learn and the latter, therefore, nothing
+to teach."
+
+What interest had I in the perfect university and its inability to
+exist? My whole being was desolate over the non-existence of another
+ideal. "Professor," I said tensely, "may I use that--that thing of yours
+again? I want to--uh--see something."
+
+My voice must have disclosed the situation, for van Manderpootz looked
+up sharply. "So!" he snapped. "So you disregarded my advice! Forget her,
+I said. Forget her because she doesn't exist."
+
+"But--I can't! Once more, Professor--only once more!"
+
+He shrugged, but his blue, metallic eyes were a little softer than
+usual. After all, for some inconceivable reason, he likes me. "Well,
+Dixon," he said, "you're of age and supposed to be of mature
+intelligence. I tell you that this is a very stupid request, and van
+Manderpootz always knows what he's talking about. If you want to stupefy
+yourself with the opium of impossible dreams, go ahead. This is the last
+chance you'll have, for tomorrow the idealizator of van Manderpootz goes
+into the Bacon head of Isaak there. I shall shift the oscillators so
+that the psychons, instead of becoming light quanta, emerge as an
+electron flow--a current which will actuate Isaak's vocal apparatus and
+come out as speech." He paused musingly. "Van Manderpootz will hear the
+voice of the ideal. Of course Isaak can return only what psychons he
+receives from the brain of the operator, but just as the image in the
+mirror, the thoughts will have lost their human impress, and the words
+will be those of an ideal." He perceived that I wasn't listening, I
+suppose. "Go ahead, imbecile!" he grunted.
+
+I did. The glory that I hungered after flamed slowly into being,
+incredible in loveliness, and somehow, unbelievably, even more beautiful
+than on that other occasion. I know why now; long afterwards, van
+Manderpootz explained that the very fact that I had seen an ideal once
+before had altered my ideal, raised it to a higher level. With that face
+among my memories, my concept of perfection was different than it had
+been.
+
+So I gazed and hungered. Readily and instantly the being in the mirror
+responded to my thoughts with smile and movement. When I thought of
+love, her eyes blazed with such tenderness that it seemed as if--I--I,
+Dixon Wells--were part of those pairs who had made the great romances of
+the world, Heloise and Abelard, Tristram and Isolde, Aucassin and
+Nicolette. It was like the thrust of a dagger to feel van Manderpootz
+shaking me, to hear his gruff voice calling, "Out of it! Out of it!
+Time's up."
+
+I groaned and dropped my face on my hands. The Professor had been right,
+of course; this insane repetition had only intensified an unfulfillable
+longing, and had made a bad mess ten times as bad. Then I heard him
+muttering behind me. "Strange!" he murmured. "In fact, fantastic.
+Oedipus--oedipus of the magazine covers and billboards."
+
+I looked dully around. He was standing behind me, squinting, apparently,
+into the spinning mirror beyond the end of the black tube. "Huh?" I
+grunted wearily.
+
+"That face," he said. "Very queer. You must have seen her features on a
+hundred magazines, on a thousand billboards, on countless 'vision
+broadcasts. The oedipus complex in a curious form."
+
+"Eh? Could _you_ see her?"
+
+"Of course!" he grunted. "Didn't I say a dozen times that the psychons
+are transmuted to perfectly ordinary quanta of visible light? If you
+could see her, why not I?"
+
+"But--what about billboards and all?"
+
+"That face," said the professor slowly. "It's somewhat idealized, of
+course, and certain details are wrong. Her eyes aren't that pallid
+silver-blue you imagined; they're green--sea-green, emerald colored."
+
+"What the devil," I asked hoarsely, "are you talking about?"
+
+"About the face in the mirror. It happens to be, Dixon, a close
+approximation of the features of de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly!"
+
+"You mean--she's real? She exists? She lives? She--"
+
+"Wait a moment, Dixon. She's real enough, but in accordance with your
+habit, you're a little late. About twenty-five years too late, I should
+say. She must now be somewhere in the fifties--let's see--fifty-three, I
+think. But during your very early childhood, you must have seen her face
+pictured everywhere, de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly."
+
+I could only gulp. That blow was devastating.
+
+"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are implanted very
+early. That's why you continually fall in love with girls who possess
+one or another feature that reminds you of her, her hair, her nose, her
+mouth, her eyes. Very simple, but rather curious."
+
+"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Everytime I look into one of
+your damned contraptions I find myself in love with a myth! A girl who's
+dead, or married, or unreal, or turned into an old woman! Curious, eh?
+Damned funny, isn't it?"
+
+"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens, Dixon, that
+she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles her mother. And what's
+still more, she's arriving in New York next week to study American
+letters at the University here. She writes, you see."
+
+That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How--how do you know?" I
+gasped.
+
+It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness of van
+Manderpootz ruffled. He reddened a trifle, and said slowly, "It also
+happens, Dixon, that many years ago in Amsterdam, Haskel van Manderpootz
+and de Lisle d'Agrion were--very friendly--more than friendly, I might
+say, but for the fact that two such powerful personalities as the Dragon
+Fly and van Manderpootz were always at odds." He frowned. "I was almost
+her second husband. She's had seven, I believe; Denise is the daughter
+of her third."
+
+"Why--why is she coming here?"
+
+"Because," he said with dignity, "van Manderpootz is here. I am still a
+friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the complex device on the
+table. "Hand me that wrench," he ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and
+tomorrow start reconstructing it for Isaak's head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when, the following week, I rushed eagerly back to van Manderpootz's
+laboratory, the idealizator was still in place. The professor greeted me
+with a humorous twist to what was visible of his bearded mouth. "Yes,
+it's still here," he said, gesturing at the device. "I've decided to
+build an entirely new one for Isaak, and besides, this one has afforded
+me considerable amusement. Furthermore, in the words of Oscar Wilde, who
+am I to tamper with a work of genius. After all, the mechanism is the
+product of the great van Manderpootz."
+
+He was deliberately tantalizing me. He knew that I hadn't come to hear
+him discourse on Isaak, or even on the incomparable van Manderpootz.
+Then he smiled and softened, and turned to the little inner office
+adjacent, the room where Isaak stood in metal austerity. "Denise!" he
+called, "come here."
+
+I don't know exactly what I expected, but I do know that the breath left
+me as the girl entered. She wasn't exactly my image of the ideal, of
+course; she was perhaps the merest trifle slimmer, and her eyes--well,
+they must have been much like those of de Lisle d'Agrion, for they were
+the clearest emerald I've ever seen. They were impudently direct eyes,
+and I could imagine why van Manderpootz and the Dragon Fly might have
+been forever quarreling; that was easy to imagine, looking into the eyes
+of the Dragon Fly's daughter.
+
+Nor was Denise, apparently, quite as femininely modest as my image of
+perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing costume of the day,
+which covered, I suppose, about as much of her as one of the one-piece
+swimming suits of the middle years of the twentieth century. She gave an
+impression, not so much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple
+strength, an air of independence, frankness, and--I say it
+again--impudence.
+
+"Well!" she said coolly as van Manderpootz presented me. "So you're the
+scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation. Every now and then your escapades
+enliven the Paris Sunday supplements. Wasn't it you who snared a million
+dollars in the market so you could ask Whimsy White--?"
+
+I flushed. "That was greatly exaggerated," I said hastily, "and anyway I
+lost it before we--uh--before I--"
+
+"Not before you made somewhat of a fool of yourself, I believe," she
+finished sweetly.
+
+Well, that's the sort she was. If she hadn't been so infernally lovely,
+if she hadn't looked so much like the face in the mirror, I'd have
+flared up, said "Pleased to have met you," and never have seen her
+again. But I couldn't get angry, not when she had the dusky hair, the
+perfect lips, the saucy nose of the being who to me was ideal.
+
+So I did see her again, and several times again. In fact, I suppose I
+occupied most of her time between the few literary courses she was
+taking, and little by little I began to see that in other respects
+besides the physical she was not so far from my ideal. Beneath her
+impudence was honesty, and frankness, and, despite herself, sweetness,
+so that even allowing for the head-start I'd had, I fell in love pretty
+hastily. And what's more, I knew she was beginning to reciprocate.
+
+That was the situation when I called for her one noon and took her over
+to van Manderpootz's laboratory. We were to lunch with him at the
+University Club, but we found him occupied in directing some experiment
+in the big laboratory beyond his personal one, untangling some sort of
+mess that his staff had blundered into. So Denise and I wandered back
+into the smaller room, perfectly content to be alone together. I simply
+couldn't feel hungry in her presence; just talking to her was enough of
+a substitute for food.
+
+"I'm going to be a good writer," she was saying musingly. "Some day,
+Dick, I'm going to be famous."
+
+Well, everyone knows how correct that prediction was. I agreed with her
+instantly.
+
+She smiled. "You're nice, Dick," she said. "Very nice."
+
+"Very?"
+
+"_Very!_" she said emphatically. Then her green eyes strayed over to the
+table that held the idealizator. "What crack-brained contraption of
+Uncle Haskel's is that?" she asked.
+
+I explained, rather inaccurately, I'm afraid, but no ordinary engineer
+can follow the ramifications of a van Manderpootz conception.
+Nevertheless, Denise caught the gist of it and her eyes glowed emerald
+fire.
+
+"It's fascinating!" she exclaimed. She rose and moved over to the table.
+"I'm going to try it."
+
+"Not without the professor, you won't! It might be dangerous."
+
+That was the wrong thing to say. The green eyes glowed brighter as she
+cast me a whimsical glance. "But I am," she said. "Dick, I'm going
+to--see my ideal man!" She laughed softly.
+
+I was panicky. Suppose her ideal turned out tall and dark and powerful,
+instead of short and sandy-haired and a bit--well, chubby, as I am.
+"No!" I said vehemently. "I won't let you!"
+
+She laughed again. I suppose she read my consternation, for she said
+softly, "Don't be silly, Dick." She sat down, placed her face against
+the opening of the barrel, and commanded. "Turn it on."
+
+I couldn't refuse her. I set the mirror whirling, then switched on the
+bank of tubes. Then immediately I stepped behind her, squinting into
+what was visible of the flashing mirror, where a face was forming,
+slowly--vaguely.
+
+I thrilled. Surely the hair of the image was sandy. I even fancied now
+that I could trace a resemblance to my own features. Perhaps Denise
+sensed something similar, for she suddenly withdrew her eyes from the
+tube and looked up with a faintly embarrassed flush, a thing most
+unusual for her.
+
+"Ideals are dull!" she said. "I want a real thrill. Do you know what I'm
+going to see? I'm going to visualize ideal horror. That's what I'll do.
+I'm going to see absolute horror!"
+
+"Oh, no you're not!" I gasped. "That's a terribly dangerous idea." Off
+in the other room I heard the voice of van Manderpootz, "Dixon!"
+
+"Dangerous--bosh!" Denise retorted. "I'm a writer, Dick. All this means
+to me is material. It's just experience, and I want it."
+
+Van Manderpootz again. "Dixon! Dixon! Come here." I said, "Listen,
+Denise. I'll be right back. Don't try anything until I'm here--please!"
+
+I dashed into the big laboratory. Van Manderpootz was facing a cowed
+group of assistants, quite apparently in extreme awe of the great man.
+
+"Hah, Dixon!" he rasped. "Tell these fools what an Emmerich valve is,
+and why it won't operate in a free electronic stream. Let 'em see that
+even an ordinary engineer knows that much."
+
+Well, an ordinary engineer doesn't, but it happened that I did. Not that
+I'm particularly exceptional as an engineer, but I _did_ happen to know
+that because a year or two before I'd done some work on the big tidal
+turbines up in Maine, where they have to use Emmerich valves to guard
+against electrical leakage from the tremendous potentials in their
+condensers. So I started explaining, and van Manderpootz kept
+interpolating sarcasms about his staff, and when I finally finished, I
+suppose I'd been in there about half an hour. And then--I remembered
+Denise!
+
+I left van Manderpootz staring as I rushed back, and sure enough, there
+was the girl with her face pressed against the barrel, and her hands
+gripping the table edge. Her features were hidden, of course, but there
+was something about her strained position, her white knuckles--
+
+"Denise!" I yelled. "Are you all right? _Denise!_"
+
+She didn't move. I stuck my face in between the mirror and the end of
+the barrel and peered up the tube at her visage, and what I saw left me
+all but stunned. Have you ever seen stark, mad, infinite terror on a
+human face? That was what I saw in Denise's--inexpressible, unbearable
+horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were
+widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were
+contorted, her whole face strained into a mask of sheer terror.
+
+I rushed for the switch, but in passing I caught a single glimpse of--of
+what showed in the mirror. Incredible! Obscene, terror-laden, horrifying
+things--there just aren't words for them. There are no words.
+
+Denise didn't move as the tubes darkened. I raised her face from the
+barrel and when she glimpsed me she moved. She flung herself out of that
+chair and away, facing me with such mad terror that I halted.
+
+"Denise!" I cried. "It's just Dick. Look, Denise!"
+
+But as I moved toward her, she uttered a choking scream, her eyes
+dulled, her knees gave, and she fainted. Whatever she had seen, it must
+have been appalling to the uttermost, for Denise was not the sort to
+faint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a week later that I sat facing van Manderpootz in his little
+inner office. The grey metal figure of Isaak was missing, and the table
+that had held the idealizator was empty.
+
+"Yes," said van Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One of van
+Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of
+incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I
+continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to
+judge them by the brain of van Manderpootz."
+
+I said nothing. I was thoroughly disheartened and depressed, and
+whatever the professor said about my lack of intelligence, I felt it
+justified.
+
+"Hereafter," resumed van Manderpootz, "I shall credit nobody except
+myself with intelligence, and will doubtless be much more nearly
+correct." He waved a hand at Isaak's vacant corner. "Not even the Bacon
+head," he continued. "I've abandoned that project, because, when you
+come right down to it, what need has the world of a mechanical brain
+when it already has that of van Manderpootz?"
+
+"Professor," I burst out suddenly, "why won't they let me see Denise?
+I've been at the hospital every day, and they let me into her room just
+once--just once, and that time she went right into a fit of hysterics.
+Why? Is she--?" I gulped.
+
+"She's recovering nicely, Dixon."
+
+"Then why can't I see her?"
+
+"Well," said van Manderpootz placidly, "it's like this. You see, when
+you rushed into the laboratory there, you made the mistake of pushing
+your face in front of the barrel. She saw your features right in the
+midst of all those horrors she had called up. Do you see? From then on
+your face was associated in her mind with the whole hell's brew in the
+mirror. She can't even look at you without seeing all of it again."
+
+"_Good--God!_" I gasped. "But she'll get over it, won't she? She'll
+forget that part of it?"
+
+"The young psychiatrist who attends her--a bright chap, by the way, with
+a number of my own ideas--believes she'll be quite over it in a couple
+of months. But personally, Dixon, I don't think she'll ever welcome the
+sight of your face, though I myself have seen uglier visages somewhere
+or other."
+
+I ignored that. "Lord!" I groaned. "What a mess!" I rose to depart, and
+then--then I knew what inspiration means!
+
+"Listen!" I said, spinning back. "Listen, professor! Why can't you get
+her back here and let her visualize the ideally beautiful? And then
+I'll--I'll stick my face into that!" Enthusiasm grew. "It can't fail!" I
+cried. "At the worst, it'll cancel that other memory. It's marvelous!"
+
+"But as usual," said van Manderpootz, "a little late."
+
+"Late? Why? You can put up your idealizator again. You'd do that much,
+wouldn't you?"
+
+"Van Manderpootz," he observed, "is the very soul of generosity. I'd do
+it gladly, but it's still a little late, Dixon. You see, she married the
+bright young psychiatrist this noon."
+
+Well, I've a date with Tips Alva tonight, and I'm going to be late for
+it, just as late as I please. And then I'm going to do nothing but stare
+at her lips all evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ideal, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
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