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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58730 ***
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+                           MIRACLE BY PRICE
+
+                         BY IRVING E. COX, JR.
+
+             _They said old Doctor Price was an inventive
+            genius but no miracle worker. Yet--if he didn't
+               work miracles in behalf of an over-worked
+              little guy named Cupid, what was he doing?_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+MEMO TO: Clayton, Croyden and Hammerstead, Attorneys
+
+ATTENTION: William Clayton
+
+FROM: Walter Gordon
+
+Dear Bill:
+
+Enclosed is the itemized inventory of the furnishings of the late Dr.
+Edward Price's estate. As you requested, I personally examined the
+laboratory. Candidly, Bill, you needed a psychiatrist for the job, not
+a graduate physicist. Dr. Price was undoubtedly an inventive genius a
+decade ago when he was still active in General Electronics, but his lab
+was an embarrassing example of senile clutter.
+
+You had an idea, Bill, that before he died Price might have been
+playing around with a new invention which the estate could develop and
+patent. I found a score of gadgets in the lab, none of them finished
+and none of them built for any functional purpose that I could discover.
+
+Only two seemed to be completed. One resembled a small, portable radio.
+It was a plastic case with two knobs and a two-inch speaker grid. There
+was no cord outlet. The machine may have been powered by batteries, for
+I heard a faint humming when I turned the knobs. Nothing else. Dr.
+Price had left a handwritten card on the box. He intended to call it
+a Semantic-Translator, but he had noted that the word combination was
+awkward for commercial exploitation, and I suppose he held up a patent
+application until he could think of a catchier name. One sentence on
+that card would have amused you, Bill. Price wrote, "Should wholesale
+for about three-fifty per unit." Even in his dotage, he had an eye for
+profit.
+
+The Semantic-Translator--whatever that may mean--might have had
+possibilities. I fully intended to take it back with me to General
+Electronics and examine it thoroughly.
+
+The second device, which Price had labeled a Transpositor, was large
+and rather fragile. It was a hollow cylinder of very small wires,
+perhaps a foot in diameter, fastened to an open-faced console crowded
+with a weird conglomeration of vacuum tubes, telescopic lenses and
+mirrors. The cylinder of wires was so delicate that the motion of my
+body in the laboratory caused it to quiver. Standing in front of the
+wire coil were two brass rods. A kind of shovel-like chute was fixed to
+one rod (Price called it the shipping board). Attached to the second
+rod was a long-handled pair of tongs which he called the grapple.
+
+The Transpositor was, I think, an outgrowth of Price's investigation
+of the relationship between light and matter. You may recall, Bill,
+the brilliant technical papers he wrote on that subject when he was
+still working in the laboratories of General Electronics. At the time
+Price was considered something of a pioneer. He believed that light and
+matter were different forms of the same basic element; he said that
+eventually science would learn how to change one into the other.
+
+I seriously believe that the Transpositor was meant to do precisely
+that. In other words, Price had expected to transpose the atomic
+structure of solid matter into light, and later to reconstruct the
+original matter again. Now don't assume, Bill, that Price was wandering
+around in a senile delusion of fourth dimensional nonsense. The theory
+may be sound. Our present knowledge of the physical world makes the
+basic structure of matter more of a mystery than it has ever been.
+
+Not that I think Price achieved the miracle. Even in his most
+brilliant and productive period he could not have done it. As yet
+our accumulation of data is too incomplete for such an experiment. I
+believe that Price created no more than a very realistic illusion with
+his arrangement of lenses and mirrors.
+
+I saw the illusion, too; I used the machine.
+
+There were two dials on the front of the console. One was lettered
+"time", and the other "distance". The "time" dial could be set for
+eons, centuries or hours, depending upon the position of a three-way
+switch beneath it; the "distance" dial could be adjusted to light
+years, thousand-mile units, or kilometers by a similar device. Since
+there was no indication which position would produce what results,
+I left the dials untouched. I plugged the machine into an electric
+outlet and pushed the starter button. The coil of wire blazed with
+light and the chute slid rapidly in and out of the cylinder.
+
+That was all, at first. The starter button was labeled "the shipper",
+and I gathered that Price had visualized the practical application of
+the Transpositor as a device for transporting goods from one point to
+another.
+
+I looked around the lab for something I could put into the chute.
+There was a card, written in red, warning me not to load beyond
+the dimensional limits of the chute. The only thing I saw that was
+small enough was the little radio-like gadget Price had called a
+Semantic-Translator. Loaded horizontally, it just barely fit the chute.
+
+I pushed the shipper button a second time. Again there was a blaze
+of light, brighter than before, which temporarily blinded me. For a
+moment I saw the Semantic-Translator in the heart of the fragile, wire
+cylinder. It had the glow of molten steel, pouring from a blast furnace.
+
+Then it was gone. The chute shot back to the front of the machine. The
+tray was empty.
+
+Was it an illusion? I believe that, Bill, because later on, when I
+thought of using the grapple....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Bertha Kent walked back the gravel trail from the dressing room.
+The early morning sun was bright and warm, but she held her woolen
+robe tight across her throat. She tried to avoid looking at the other
+camps--at the sleepy-eyed women coming out of tents, and the men
+starting morning fires in the stone rings.
+
+Bitterness was etched in acid in her soul. She made herself believe
+it was because she hated Yosemite. The vacation had been such a
+disappointment. She had expected so much and--as usual--it had all gone
+wrong.
+
+Her hope had been so high when school closed; this year was going to be
+different!
+
+"Are you going anywhere this summer?" Miss Emmy asked after the last
+faculty meeting in June.
+
+"To Yosemite for a couple of weeks, I think."
+
+"The Park's always crowded. You ought to meet a nice man up there,
+Bertha."
+
+"I'm not interested in men," Miss Kent had replied frostily. "I'm a
+botany teacher and it helps me professionally if I spend part of the
+summer observing the phenomenon of nature."
+
+"Don't kid me, Bertha. You can drop the fancy lingo, too; school's out.
+You want a man as much as I do."
+
+That was true, Miss Kent admitted--in the quiet of her own mind.
+Never aloud; never to anyone else. Six years ago, when Bertha Kent
+had first started to teach, she had been optimistic about it. She
+wanted to marry; she wanted a family of her own--instead of wasting
+her lifetime in a high school classroom playing baby sitter for other
+people's kids. She had saved her money for all sorts of exotic summer
+vacations--tours, cruises, luxury hotels--but somehow something always
+went wrong.
+
+To be sure, she had met men. She was pretty; she danced well; she was
+never prudish; she liked the out-of-doors. All positive qualities: she
+knew that. The fault lay always with the men. When she first met a
+stranger, everything was fine. Then, slowly, Miss Kent began to see his
+faults. Men were simply adult versions of the muscle-bound knot-heads
+the administration loaded into her botany classes.
+
+Bertha Kent wanted something better, an ideal she had held in her mind
+since her childhood. The dream-man was real, too. She had met him
+once and actually talked to him when she was a child. She couldn't
+remember where; she couldn't recall his face. But the qualities of his
+personality she knew as she did her own heart. If they had existed once
+in one man, she would find them again, somewhere. That was the miracle
+she prayed for every summer.
+
+She thought the miracle had happened again when she first came to
+Yosemite.
+
+She found an open campsite by the river. While she was putting up
+her tent, the man from the camp beside hers came to help. At first
+he seemed the prototype of everything she hated--a good-looking,
+beautifully co-ordinated physical specimen, as sharp-witted as a
+jellyfish. The front of his woolen shirt hung carelessly unbuttoned.
+She saw the mat of dark hair on his chest, the sculpted curves of
+sun-tanned muscle. No doubt he considered himself quite attractive.
+
+Then, that evening after the fire-fall, the young man asked her to
+go with him to the ranger's lecture at Camp Curry. Bertha discovered
+that he was a graduate physicist, employed by a large, commercial
+laboratory. They had at least the specialized area of science in
+common. By the time they returned from the lecture, they were calling
+each other by first names. The next day Walt asked her to hike up the
+mist trail with him to Nevada Falls.
+
+The familiar miracle began to take shape. She lay awake a long time
+that night, looking at the dancing pattern of stars visible through the
+open flap of her tent. This was it; Walt was the reality of her dream.
+She made herself forget that every summer for six years the same thing
+had happened. She always believed she had found her miracle; and always
+something happened to destroy it.
+
+For two days the idyll lasted. The inevitable awakening began the
+afternoon they drove along the Wawona highway to see the Mariposa Grove
+of giant sequoias. They left their car in the parking area and walked
+through the magnificent stand of cathedral trees. The trail was steep
+and sometimes treacherous. Twice Walt took her arm to help her. For
+some reason that annoyed her; finally she told him,
+
+"I'm quite able to look after myself, Walt."
+
+"So you've told me before."
+
+"After all, I've been hiking most of my life. I know exactly what to
+do--"
+
+"There isn't much you can't take care of for yourself, is there,
+Bertha?" His voice was suddenly very cold.
+
+"I'm not one of these rattle-brained clinging vines, if that's what you
+mean. I detest a woman who is always yelping to a man for help."
+
+"Independence is one thing, Bertha; I like that in a woman. But somehow
+you make a man feel totally inadequate. You set yourself up as his
+superior in everything."
+
+"That's nonsense, Walt. I'm quite ready to grant that you know a good
+deal more about physics than I do."
+
+"Say it right, Bertha. You respect the fact that I hold a PhD." He
+smiled. "That isn't the same thing as respecting me for a person. I
+knew you didn't need my help on the trail, but it was a normal courtesy
+to offer it. It seems to me it would be just as normal for you to
+accept it. Little things like that are important in relations between
+people."
+
+"Forget it, Walt." She slipped her hand through his. "There, see? I'll
+do it just the way you want."
+
+She was determined not to quarrel over anything so trivial, though what
+he said seemed childish and it tarnished the dream a little. But the
+rest was still good; the miracle could still happen.
+
+Yet, in spite of all her effort, they disagreed twice more before they
+left the Mariposa Grove. Bertha began to see Walt as he was: brilliant,
+no doubt, in the single area of physical science, but basically no
+different from any other man. She desperately wished that she could
+love him; she earnestly wished that the ideal, fixed so long in her
+mind, might be destroyed.
+
+But slowly she saw the miracle slip away from her. That night, after
+the fire-fall, Walt did not ask her to go with him to the lecture.
+Miserable and angry, Bertha Kent went into her tent, but not to sleep.
+
+She lay staring at the night sky, and thinking how ugly the pin-point
+lights of distant suns were on the velvet void. As the hours passed,
+she heard the clatter of pans and voices as people at the other
+campsites retired. She heard Walt when he returned, whistling
+tunelessly. He banged around for nearly an hour in the camp next to
+hers. He dropped a stack of pans; he overturned a box of food; he
+tripped over a tent line. She wondered if he were drunk. Had their
+quarreling driven him to that? Walt must have loved her, then.
+
+After a time all the Coleman lanterns in the camp were out. Still
+Bertha Kent did not sleep. The acid grief and bitterness tormented
+her with the ghost of another failure, another shattered dream. She
+listened to the soft music of the flowing stream, the gentle whisper of
+summer wind in the pines, but it gave her no peace.
+
+Suddenly she heard quiet footsteps and the crackling of twigs behind
+her tent. She was terrified. It must be Walt. If he had come home
+drunk, he could have planned almost any kind of violence by way of
+revenge.
+
+The footsteps moved closer. Bertha shook off the paralysis of fear
+and reached for her electric lantern. She flashed the beam into the
+darkness. She saw the black bulk of a bear who was pawing through her
+food box.
+
+She was so relieved she forgot that a bear might also be a legitimate
+cause of fear. She ran from the tent, swinging the light and shooing
+the animal away as she would have chased a puppy. The bear swung
+toward her, roaring and clawing at the air. She backed away. The bear
+swung its paws again, and her food box shattered on the ground, in a
+crescendo of sound.
+
+Bertha heard rapid footsteps under the pines. In the pale moonlight she
+saw Walt. He was wearing only a pair of red-striped boxer shorts. He
+was swinging his arms and shouting, but the noise of the falling box
+had already frightened the bear away.
+
+Walt stood in the moonlight, smiling foolishly.
+
+"I guess I came too late," he said.
+
+"I'm quite sure the bear would have left of its own accord, Walt.
+They're always quite tame in the national parks, you know." As soon
+as she said it, she knew it was a mistake. Even though he had done
+nothing, it would have cost her little to thank him. The words had come
+instinctively; she hadn't thought how her answer would affect him. Walt
+turned on his heel stiffly and walked back to his tent.
+
+With a little forethought--a little kindness--Bertha might even then
+have rescued her miracle. She knew that. She knew she had lost him now,
+for good. For the first time in her life she saw the dream as a barrier
+to her happiness, not an ideal. It held her imprisoned; it gave her
+nothing in exchange.
+
+She slept fitfully for the rest of the night. As soon as the sun was
+up, she pulled on her woolen robe and went to the dressing room to
+wash. She walked back along the gravel path, averting her eyes from
+the other camps and the men hunched over the smoking breakfast fires.
+She hated Yosemite. She hated all the people crowded around her. She
+had made up her mind to pack her tent and head for home. This was just
+another vacation lost, another year wasted.
+
+She went into her tent and put on slacks and a bright, cotton blouse.
+Then she sat disconsolate at her camp table surveying the mess the bear
+had made of her food box. There was nothing that she could rescue. She
+could drive to the village for breakfast, but the shops wouldn't open
+for another hour.
+
+Behind her she heard Walt starting his Coleman stove. Yesterday he
+would have offered her breakfast; now he'd ignored her. All along the
+stream camp fires were blazing in the stone rings. Bertha wondered if
+she could ask the couple on the other side of her campsite for help.
+They had attempted to be friendly once before, and Bertha hadn't
+responded with a great deal of cordiality. They weren't the type she
+liked--a frizzy-headed, coarse-voiced blonde, and a paunchy old man who
+hadn't enough sense to know what a fool he looked parading around camp
+in the faded bathing trunks he wore all day.
+
+Suddenly a light flashed in Bertha's face. A metal shovel slid out of
+nothingness and deposited a tiny, rectangular box on the table. For a
+long minute she stared at the box stupidly, vaguely afraid. Her mind
+must be playing her tricks. Such things didn't happen.
+
+She reached out timidly and touched the box. It seemed real enough. A
+miniature radio of some sort, with a two-inch speaker. She turned the
+dials. She heard a faint humming.
+
+The coarse-voiced blonde came toward the table.
+
+"We just heard what happened last night, Miss Kent," she said. "Me and
+George. About the bear, I mean."
+
+Bertha forced a smile. "It made rather a shambles, didn't it?"
+
+"Gee, you can't make breakfast out of a mess like this. Why don't you
+come and eat with us?"
+
+The blonde went on talking, apologizing for what she was serving and
+at the same time listing it with a certain pride. Strangely, Miss Kent
+heard not one voice, but two. The second came tinnily from the little
+box on the table,
+
+"You poor, dried-up old maid. That guy who's been hanging around would
+have been over long before this, if you knew the first thing about
+being nice to a man."
+
+Bertha gasped. "Really, if that's the way you feel--"
+
+"Why, honey, I just asked you over for breakfast," the blonde answered;
+at the same time the voice from the machine said,
+
+"I suppose George and me ain't good enough for you. O.K. by me, sister.
+I didn't really want you to come anyway."
+
+Trembling, Miss Kent stood up. "I've never been so insulted!"
+
+"What's eating you, Miss Kent?" The blonde seemed genuinely puzzled,
+but again the voice came from the plastic box,
+
+"The old maid's off her rocker. You'd think she was reading my mind."
+
+Switching her trim little hips, the blonde walked back to her own camp.
+Bertha Kent dropped numbly on the bench, staring at the ugly box.
+"Reading my mind," the woman had said. Somehow the machine had done
+precisely that, translating the blonde's spoken words into the real,
+emotional meaning behind them. It was a terrifying gadget. Bertha was
+hypnotized by its potential horror--like the brutal, devastating truth
+spoken by a child.
+
+A camper walked past on the road, waving at Miss Kent and calling out
+a cheerful good morning. But again the machine read the real meaning
+behind the pleasant words.
+
+"So you've finally lost your man, Miss Kent. The way you dished out the
+orders, it's a wonder he stayed around as long as he did. And a pity:
+you're an attractive woman. You should make some man a good wife."
+
+They all thought that. The whole camp had been watching her, laughing
+at her. Bertha felt helpless and alone. She needed--wanted--someone
+else; it surprised her when she faced that fact.
+
+Then it dawned on her: the camper was right; the blonde was right. She
+had lost Walt through her own ridiculous bull-headedness. In order to
+assert herself. To be an individualist, she had always thought. And
+what did that matter, if it imposed this crushing loneliness?
+
+For a moment a kind of madness seized her. It was the diabolical
+machine that was tormenting her, not the truth it told. She snatched a
+piece of her broken food box and struck at the plastic case blindly.
+There was a splash of fire; the gadget broke.
+
+She saw Walt look up from his stove. She saw him move toward her. But
+she stood paralyzed by a shattering trauma of pain. The voice still
+came from the speaker, and this time it was her own. Her mind was
+stripped naked; she saw herself whole, unsheltered by the protective
+veneer of rationalization.
+
+And she knew the pattern of the dream-man she had loved since her
+childhood; she knew why the dream had been self-defeating.
+
+For the idealization was her own father. That impossible paragon
+created by the worship of a child.
+
+The shock was its own cure. She was too well-balanced to accept the
+tempting escape of total disorientation. Grimly she fought back the
+tide of madness, and in that moment she found maturity. She ran toward
+Walt, tears of gratitude in her eyes. She felt his arms around her, and
+she clung to him desperately.
+
+"I was terrified; I needed you, Walt; I never want to be alone again."
+
+"Needed me?" he repeated doubtfully.
+
+"I love you." After a split-second's hesitation, she felt his lips warm
+on hers.
+
+From the corner of her eye she saw a chute dart out of nowhere and
+scoop up the broken plastic box from the camp table. They both vanished
+again. That was a miracle, too, she supposed; but not nearly as
+important as hers.
+
+Then the reason of a logical mind asserted its own form of realism:
+of course, none of it had happened. The mind-reading gadget had been
+a device created in her own subconscious, a psychological trick to
+by-pass the dream that had held her imprisoned. She knew enough
+psychology to understand that.
+
+She ran her fingers through Walt's dark hair and repeated softly,
+
+"I love you, Walt Gordon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was it an illusion? I believe that, Bill, because later on, when I
+thought of using the grapple, I brought the Semantic-Translator back
+from nowhere. Apparently the smaller gadget had been in the console or
+behind it. I hadn't seen it when I searched, because my eyes had been
+hurt by the glare of light.
+
+In the process the Translator somehow got twisted around, for the chute
+dragged it back vertically through the coil of wire. It touched the
+wall of the cylinder, and the whole machine exploded.
+
+It was impossible to save anything from the wreckage. But as a
+physicist I assure you, Bill, the transposition of matter into light
+is, in terms of our present science, a physical impossibility. It is
+certainly not the sort of invention that could have been produced by a
+senile old man, pottering around in a home laboratory. The only thing I
+regret is that I had no opportunity to examine the Semantic-Translator,
+but I'm sure it would have proved just as much nonsense.
+
+I'm going up to Yosemite tomorrow for a couple of weeks. If you want
+any further details on the Price inventory, look me up at the office
+when I come home.
+
+Yours,
+
+Walt Gordon
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracle by Price, by Irving E. Cox
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58730 ***