The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Part 14

As they returned, Galatea sang a strange song, plaintive and sweet as the medley of river and flower music. And again her eyes were sad.

'What song is that?' he asked.

'It is a song sung by another Galatea,' she answered, 'who is my mother.' She laid her hand on his arm. 'I will make it into English for you.' She sang:

'The River lies in flower and fern, in flower and fern it breathes a song.

It breathes a song of your return, Of your return in years too long.

In years too long its murmurs bring Its murmurs bring their vain replies, Their vain replies the flowers sing, The flowers sing, 'The River lies!'

Her voice quavered on the final notes; there was silence save for the tinkle of water and the flower bugles. Dan said, 'Galatea-' and paused. The girl was again somber-eyed, tearful. He said huskily, 'That's a sad song, Galatea. Why was your mother sad? You said everyone was happy in Paracosma.'

'She broke a law,' replied the girl tonelessly. 'It is the inevitable way to sorrow.' She faced him. 'She fell in love with a phantom!' Galatea said. 'One of your shadowy race, who came and stayed and then had to go back. So when her appointed lover came, it was too late; do you understand? But she yielded finally to the law, and is forever unhappy, and goes wandering from place to place about the world.' She paused. 'I shall never break a law,' she said defiantly.

Dan took her hand. 'I would not have you unhappy, Galatea. I want you always happy.'

She shook her head. 'I am happy,' she said, and smiled a tender, wistful smile.They were silent a long time as they trudged the way homeward. The shadows of the forest giants reached out across the river as the sun slipped behind them. For a distance they walked hand in hand, but as they reached the path of pebbly brightness near the house, Galatea drew away and sped swiftly before him. Dan followed as quickly as he might; when he arrived, Leucon sat on his bench by the portal, and Galatea had paused on the threshold. She watched his approach with eyes in which he again fancied the glint of tears.

'I am very tired,' she said, and slipped within.

Dan moved to follow, but the old man raised a staying hand.

'Friend from the shadows,' he said, 'will you hear me a moment?'

Dan paused, acquiesced, and dropped to the opposite bench. He felt a sense of foreboding; nothing pleasant awaited him.

'There is something to be said,' Leucon continued, 'and I say it without desire to pain you, if phantoms feel pain. It is this: Galatea loves you, though I think she has not yet realized it.'

'I love her too,' said Dan.

The Gray Weaver stared at him. 'I do not understand. Substance, indeed, may love shadow, but how can shadow love substance?'

'I love her,' insisted Dan.

'Then woe to both of you! For this is impossible in Paracosma; it is a confliction with the laws.

Galatea's mate is appointed, perhaps even now approaching.'

'Laws! Laws!' muttered Dan. 'Whose laws are they? Not Galatea's nor mine!'

'But they are,' said the Gray Weaver. 'It is not for you nor for me to criticize them-though I yet wonder what power could annul them to permit your presence here!'

'I had no voice in your laws.'

The old man peered at him in the dusk. 'Has anyone, anywhere, a voice in the laws?' he queried.

'In my country we have,' retorted Dan.

'Madness!' growled Leucon. 'Man-made laws! Of what use are man-made laws with only man-made penalties, or none at all? If you shadows make a law that the wind shall blow only from the east, does the west wind obey it?'

'We do pa.s.s such laws,' acknowledged Dan bitterly. 'They may be stupid, but they're no more unjust than yours.'

'Ours,' said the Gray Weaver, 'are the unalterable laws of the world, the laws of Nature. Violation is always unhappiness. I have seen it; I have known it in another, in Galatea's mother, though Galatea is stronger than she.' He paused. 'Now,' he continued, 'I ask only for mercy; your stay is short, and I ask that you do no more harm than is already done. Be merciful; give her no more to regret.'

He rose and moved through the archway; when Dan followed a moment later, he was already removing a square of silver from his device in the corner. Dan turned silent and unhappy to his own chamber, where the jet of water tinkled faintly as a distant bell.

Again he rose at the glow of dawn, and again Galatea was before him, meeting him at the door with her bowl of fruit. She deposited her burden, giving him a wan little smile of greeting, and stood facing him as if waiting.

'Come with me, Galatea,' he said.

'Where?'

'To the river bank. To talk.'

They trudged in silence to the brink of Galatea's pool. Dan noted a subtle difference in the world about him; outlines were vague, the thin flower pipings less audible and the very landscape was queerly unstable, shifting like smoke when he wasn't looking at it directly. And strangely, though he had brought the girl here to talk to her, he had now nothing to say, but sat in aching silence with his eyes on the loveliness of her face.

Galatea pointed at the red ascending sun. 'So short a time,' she said, 'before you go back to your phantom world. I shall be sorry, very sorry.' She touched his cheek with her fingers. 'Dear shadow!'

'Suppose,' said Dan huskily, 'that I won't go. What if I won't leave here?' His voice grew fiercer. 'I'llnot go! I'm going to stay!'

The calm mournfulness of the girl's face checked him; he felt the irony of struggling against the inevitable progress of a dream. She spoke. 'Had I the making of the laws, you should stay. But you can't, dear one. You can't!'

Forgotten now were the words of the Gray Weaver. 'I love you, Galatea,' he said.

'And I you,' she whispered. 'See, dearest shadow, how I break the same law my mother broke, and am glad to face the sorrow it will bring.' She placed her hand tenderly over his. 'Leucon is very wise and I am bound to obey him, but this is beyond his wisdom because he let himself grow old.' She paused. 'He let himself grow old,' she repeated slowly. A strange light gleamed in her dark eyes as she turned suddenly to Dan.

'Dear one!' she said tensely. 'That thing that happens to the old- that death of yours! What follows it?'

'What follows death?' he echoed. 'Who knows?'

'But-' Her voice was quivering. 'But one can't simply vanish! There must be an awakening.'

'Who knows?' said Dan again. 'There are those who believe we wake to a happier world, but-' He shook his head hopelessly.

'It must be true! Oh, it must be!' Galatea cried. 'There must be more for you than the mad world you speak of!' She leaned very close. 'Suppose, dear,' she said, 'that when my appointed lover arrives, I send him away. Suppose I bear no child, but let myself grow old, older than Leucon, old until death. Would I join you in your happier world?'

'Galatea!' he cried distractedly. 'Oh, my dearest-what a terrible thought!'

'More terrible than you know,' she: whispered, still very close to him. 'It is more than violation of a law; it is rebellion. Everything is planned, everything was foreseen, except this; and if I bear no child, her place will be left unfilled, and the places of her children, and of their children, and so on until some day the whole great plan of Paracosma fails of whatever its destiny was to be.' Her whisper grew very faint and fearful. 'It is destruction, but I love you more than I fear death!'

Dan's arms were about her. 'No, Galatea! No! Promise me!'

She murmured, 'I can promise and then break my promise.' She drew his head down; their lips touched, and he felt a fragrance and a taste like honey in her kiss. 'At least,' she breathed. 'I can give you a name by which to love you. Philometros! Measure of my love!'

'A name?' muttered Dan. A fantastic idea shot through his mind-a way of proving to himself that all this was reality, and not just a page that any one could read who wore old Ludwig's magic spectacles. If Galatea would speak his name! Perhaps, he thought daringly, perhaps then he could stay! He thrust her away.

'Galatea!' he cried. 'Do you remember my name?'

She nodded silently, her unhappy eyes on his.

'Then say it! Say it, dear!'

She stared at him dumbly, miserably, but made no sound.

'Say it, Galatea!' he pleaded desperately. 'My name, dear-just my name!' Her mouth moved; she grew pale with effort and Dan could have sworn that his name trembled on her quivering lips, though no sound came.

At last she spoke. 'I can't, dearest one! Oh, I can't. A law forbids it!' She stood suddenly erect, pallid as an ivory carving. 'Leucon calls!' she said, and darted away. Dan followed along the pebbled path, but her speed was beyond his powers; at the portal he found only the Gray Weaver standing cold and stern. He raised his hand as Dan appeared.

'Your time is short,' he said. 'Go, thinking of the havoc you have done.'

'Where's Galatea?' gasped Dan.

'I have sent her away.' The old man blocked the entrance; for a moment Dan would have struck him aside, but something withheld him. He stared wildly about the meadow-there! A flash of silver beyond the river, at the edge of the forest. He turned and raced toward it, while motionless and cold the Gray Weaver watched him go.

'Galatea!' he called. 'Galatea!'He was over the river now, on the forest bank, running through columned vistas that whirled about him like mist. The world had gone cloudy; fine flakes danced like snow before his eyes; Paracosma was dissolving around him. Through the chaos he fancied a glimpse of the girl, but closer approach left him still voicing his hopeless cry of 'Galatea!'

After an endless time, he paused; something familiar about the spot struck him, and just as the red sun edged above him, he recognized the place-the very point at which he had entered Paracosma! A sense of futility overwhelmed him as for a moment he gazed at an unbelievable apparition-a dark window hung in mid-air before him through which glowed rows of electric lights. Ludwig's window!

It vanished. But the trees writhed and the sky darkened, and he swayed dizzily in turmoil. He realized suddenly that he was no longer standing, but sitting in the midst of the crazy glade, and his hands clutched something smooth and hard-the arms of that miserable hotel chair. Then at last he saw her, close before him-Galatea, with sorrow-stricken features, her tear-filled eyes on his. He made a terrific effort to rise, stood erect, and fell sprawling in a blaze of coruscating lights.

He struggled to his knees; walls-Ludwig's room-encompa.s.sed him; he must have slipped from the chair. The magic spectacles lay before him, one lens splintered and spilling a fluid no longer water-clear, but white as milk.

'G.o.d!' he muttered. He felt shaken, sick, exhausted, with a bitter sense of bereavement, and his head ached fiercely. The room was drab, disgusting; he wanted to get out of it. He glanced automatically at his watch: four o'clock-he must have sat here nearly five hours. For the first time he noticed Ludwig's absence; he was glad of it and walked dully out of the door to an automatic elevator. There was no response to his ring; someone was using the thing. He walked three flights to the street and back to his own room.

In love with a vision! Worse-in love with a girl who had never lived, in a fantastic Utopia that was literally nowhere! He threw himself on his bed with a groan that was half a sob.

He saw finally the implication of the name Galatea. Galatea- Pygmalion's statue, given life by Venus in the ancient Grecian myth. But his Galatea, warm and lovely and vital, must remain forever without the gift of life, since he was neither Pygmalion nor G.o.d.

He woke late in the morning, staring uncomprehendingly about for the fountain and pool of Paracosma. Slow comprehension dawned; how much- how much of last night's experience had been real? How much was the product of alcohol? Or had old Ludwig been right, and was there no difference between reality and dream?

He changed his rumpled attire and wandered despondently to the street. He found Ludwig's hotel at last; inquiry revealed that the diminutive professor had checked out, leaving no forwarding address.

What of it? Even Ludwig couldn't give what he sought, a living Galatea. Dan was glad that he had disappeared; he hated the little professor. Professor? Hypnotists called themselves 'professors.' He dragged through a weary day and then a sleepless night back to Chicago.

It was mid-winter when he saw a suggestively tiny figure ahead of him in the Loop. Ludwig! Yet what use to hail him? His cry was automatic. 'Professor Ludwig!'

The elfin figure turned, recognized him, smiled. They stepped into the shelter of a building.

'I'm sorry about your machine, Professor. I'd be glad to pay for the damage.'

'Ach, that was nothing-a cracked gla.s.s. But you-have you been ill? You look much the worse.'

'It's nothing,' said Dan. 'Your show was marvelous, Professor- marvelous! I'd have told you so, but you were gone when it ended.'

Ludwig shrugged. 'I went to the lobby for a cigar. Five hours with a wax dummy, you know!'

'It was marvelous,' repeated Dan.

'So real?' smiled the other. 'Only because you co-operated, then. It takes self-hypnosis.'

'It was real, all right,' agreed Dan glumly. 'I don't understand it -that strange beautiful country.'

'The trees were club-mosses enlarged by a lens,' said Ludwig. 'All was trick photography, but stereoscopic, as I told you-three dimensional. The fruits were rubber; the house is a summer building on our campus-Northern University. And the voice was mine; you didn't speak at all, except your name at the first, and I left a blank for that. I played your part, you see; I went around with the photographicapparatus strapped on my head, to keep the viewpoint always that of the observer. See?' He grinned wryly. 'Luckily I'm rather short, or you'd have seemed a giant.'

'Wait a minute!' said Dan, his mind whirling. 'You say you played my part. Then Galatea-is she real too?'

'She's real enough,' said the Professor. 'My niece, a senior at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped me out with the thing. Why? Want to meet her?'

Dan answered vaguely, happily. An ache had vanished; a pain was eased. Paracosma was attainable at last!

SHIFTING SEAS.

IT DEVELOPED LATER that Ted Welling was one of the very few eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, or rather, that among the million and a half eyewitnesses, he was among the half dozen that survived. At the time, he was completely unaware of the extent of the disaster, although it looked bad enough to him in all truth!

He was in a Colquist gyro, just north of the spot where Lake Nicaragua drains its brown overflow into the San Juan, and was bound for Managua, seventy-five miles north and west across the great inland sea. Below him, quite audible above the m.u.f.fled whir of his motor, sounded the intermittent clicking of his tripanoramic camera, adjusted delicately to his speed so that its pictures could be a.s.sembled into a beautiful relief map of the terrain over which he pa.s.sed. That, in fact, was the sole purpose of his flight; he had left San Juan del Norte early that morning to traverse the route of the proposed Nicaragua Ca.n.a.l, flying for the Topographical branch of the U. S. Geological Survey. The United States, of course, had owned the rights to the route since early in the century - a safeguard against any other nation's aspirations to construct a compet.i.tor for the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

Now, however, the Nicaragua Ca.n.a.l was actually under consideration. The over-burdened ditch that crossed the Isthmus was groaning under vastly increased traffic, and it became a question of either cutting the vast trench another eighty-five feet to sealevel or opening an alternate pa.s.sage. The Nicaragua route was feasible enough; there was the San Juan emptying from the great lake into the Atlantic, and there was Lake Managua a dozen miles or so from the Pacific. It was simply a matter of choice, and Ted Welling, of the Topographical Service of the Geological Survey, was doing his part to aid the choice.

At precisely 10:40 it happened. Ted was gazing idly through a faintly misty morning toward Ometepec, its cone of a peak plumed by dusky smoke. A hundred miles away, across both Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua, the fiery mountain was easily visible from his alt.i.tude. All week, he knew, it had been rumbling and smoking, but now, as he watched it, it burst like a mighty Roman candle.

There was a flash of white fire not less brilliant than the sun. There was a column of smoke with a red core that spouted upward like a fountain and then mushroomed out. There was a moment of utter silence in which the camera clicked methodically, and then there was a roar as if the very roof of h.e.l.l had blown away to let out the bellows of the d.a.m.ned!

Ted had one amazed thought - the sound had followed too quickly on the eruption! It should have taken minutes to reach him at that distance - and then his thoughts were forcibly diverted as the Colquist tossed and skittered like a leaf in a hurricane. He caught an astonished glimpse of the terrain below, of Lake Nicaragua heaving and boiling as if it were the seas that lash through the Straits of Magellan instead of a body of landlocked fresh water. On the sh.o.r.e to the east a colossal wave was breaking, and there in a banana grove frightened figures were scampering away. And then, exactly as if by magic, a white mist condensed about him, shutting out all view of the world below.

He fought grimly for alt.i.tude. He had had three thousand feet, but now, tossed in this wild ocean of fog, of up-drafts and down-drafts, of pockets and b.u.mps, he had no idea at all of his position. His altimeter needle quivered and jumped in the changing pressure, his compa.s.s spun, and he had not the vaguest conception of the direction of the ground. So he struggled as best he could, listening anxiously to the changing whine of his blades as strain grew and lessened. And below, deep as thunder, came intermittent rumblings that were, unless he imagined it, accompanied by the flash of jagged fires.Suddenly he was out of it. He burst abruptly into clear air, and for a horrible instant it seemed to him that he was actually flying inverted. Apparently below him was the white sea of mist, and above was what looked at first glance like dark ground, but a moment's scrutiny revealed it as a world-blanketing canopy of smoke or dust, through which the sun shone with a fantastic blue light. He had heard of blue suns, he recalled; they were one of the rarer phenomena of volcanic eruptions.

His altimeter showed ten thousand. The vast plain of mist heaved in gigantic ridges like rolling waves, and he fought upward away from it. At twenty thousand the air was steadier, but still infinitely above was the sullen ceiling of smoke. Ted leveled out, turning at random north-cast, and relaxed.

"Whew!" he breathed. "What - what happened?"

He couldn't land, of course, in that impenetrable fog. He flew doggedly north and cast, because there was an airport at Bluefields, if this heaving sea of white didn't blanket it.

But it did. He had still half a tank of fuel, and, he bored grimly north. Far away was a pillar of fire, and beyond it to the right, another and a third. The first, of course, was Ometepec, but what were the others? Fuego and Tajumulco? It seemed impossible.

Three hours later the fog was still below him, and the grim roof of smoke was dropping as if to crush him between. He was going to have to land soon; even now he must have spanned Nicaragua and be somewhere over Honduras. With a sort of desperate calm he slanted down toward the fog and plunged in. He expected to crash; curiously, the only thing he really regretted was dying without a chance to say goodbye to Kay Lovell, who was far off in Washington with her father, old Sir Joshua Lovell, Amba.s.sador from Great Britain.

When the needle read two hundred, he leveled off - and then, like a train bursting out of a tunnel, he came clear again! But under him was wild and raging ocean, whose waves seemed almost to graze the ship. He spun along at a low level, wondering savagely how he could possibly have wandered out to sea.