Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array: The Incomplete Enchanter

The woman — girl — was a tawny blonde. She was the chief nurse at the Garaden Hospital. She possessed — but did not rejoice in — the name of Gertrude Mugler.

The other two men were psychologists like Shea and members of the same group. The oldest, the director of the others’ activities, was bushy-haired, and named Reed Chalmers. He had just been asking Shea what the devil he meant by coming to work in such conspicuous garb.

Shea said, defensively: «I’m going to ride a horse when I leave this afternoon. Honest.»

«Ever ridden a horse?» asked the remaining member of the group, a large, sleepy-looking young man named Walter Bayard.

«No,» replied Shea, «but it’s about time I learned.»

Walter Bayard snorkled. «What you ought to say is that you’re going to ride a horse so as to have an excuse for looking like something out of Esquire. First there was that phony English accent you put on for a while. Then you took up fencing. Then Last winter you smeared the place with patent Norwegian ski-grease, and went skiing just twice.»

«So what?» demanded Shea.

Gertrude Mugler spoke up: «Don’t let them kid you about your clothes, Harold.»

«Thanks, Gert.»

«Personally I think you look sweet in them.»

«Unh.» Shea’s expression was less grateful.

«But you’re foolish to go horseback riding. It’s a useless accomplishment anyway, with automobiles —»

Shea held up a hand. «I’ve got my own reasons, Gert.» Gertrude looked at her wrist watch. She rose. «I have to go on duty. Don’t do anything foolish, Harold. Remember, you’re taking me to dinner tonight.»

«Uh-huh.»

«Dutch.»

Shea winced. «Gert!»

«So long, everybody,» said Gertrude. She departed in a rustle of starched cotton.

Walter Bayard snickered. «Big he-man. Dutch!»

Shea tried to laugh it off. «I’ve tried to train her not to pull those in public. Anyway she makes more money than I do, and if she’d rather have four dates a week Dutch than two on my budget, why not? She’s a good kid.»

Bayard said: «She thinks you’re the wistful type, Harold. She told the super —»

«She did? Goddamn it.»

Chalmers said: «I cannot see, Harold, why you continue to — uh — keep company with a young woman who irritates you so.»

Shea shrugged. «I suppose it’s because she’s the one not impossible on the staff with whom I’m sure I’ll never do anything irrevocable.»

«While waiting for the dream-girl?» grinned Bayard. Shea simply shrugged again.

«That’s not it,» said Bayard. «The real reason, Doctor, is that she got the psychological jump on him the first time he took her out. Now he’s afraid to quit.»

«It’s not a matter of being afraid,» snapped Shea. He stood up and his voice rose to a roar of surprising volume: «And furthermore, Walter, I don’t see that it’s any damn business of yours.»

«Now, now Harold,» said Chalmers. «There’s nothing to be gained by these outbursts. Aren’t you satisfied with your work here?» he asked worriedly.

Shea relaxed. «Why shouldn’t I be? We do about as we damn please, thanks to old man Garaden’s putting that requirement for a psychology institute into his bequest to the hospital. I could use more money, but so could everybody.»

«That’s not the point,» said Chalmers. «These poses of yours and these outbreaks of temper point to an inner conflict, a maladjustment with your environment.»

Shea grinned. «Call it a little suppressed romanticism. I figured it out myself long ago. Look. Walt here spends his time trying to become midwestern tennis champ. What good’ll it do him? And Gert spends hours at the beauty parlour trying to look like a fallen Russian countess, which she’s not built for. Another fixation on the distant romantic. I like to dress up. So what?»

«That’s all right,» Chalmers admitted, «if you don’t start taking your imaginings seriously.»

Bayard put in: «Like thinking dream-girls exist.» Shea gave him a quick glare.

Chalmers continued: «Oh, well, if you start suffering from — uh — depressions, let me know. Let’s get down to business now.»

Shea asked: «More tests on hopheads?»

«No,» said Chalmers. «We will discuss the latest hypotheses in what we hope will be our new science of paraphysics, and see whether we have not reached the stage where more experimental corroboration is possible.

«I’ve told you how I checked my premise, that the world we live in is composed of impressions received through the senses. But there is an infinity of possible worlds, and if the senses can be attuned to receive a different series of impressions, we should infallibly find ourselves living in a different world. That’s where I got my second check, here at the hospital, in the examination of — uh — dements, mainly paranoiacs. You» — he nodded at Bayard — «set me on the right track with that report on the patient with Korsakov’s psychosis.»

«The next step would be to translate this theoretical data into experiment: that is, to determine how to transfer persons and objects from one world into another. Among the dements, the shift is partial and involuntary, with disastrous results to the psyche. When —»

«Just a minute,» interrupted Shea. «Do you mean that a complete shift would actually transfer a man’s body into one of these other worlds?»

«Very likely,» agreed Chalmers, «since the body records whatever sensations the mind permits. For complete demonstration it would be necessary to try it, and I don’t know that the risk would be worth it. The other world might have such different laws that it would be impossible to return.»

Shea asked: «You mean, if the world were that of classical mythology, for instance, the laws would be those of Greek magic instead of modern physics?»

«Precisely. But —»

«Hey!» said Shea. «Then this new science of paraphysics is going to include the natural laws of all these different worlds, and what we call physics is just a special case of paraphysics —»

«Not so fast, young man,» said Chalmers. «For the present, I think it wise to restrict the meaning of our term ‘Paraphysics’ to the branch of knowledge that concerns the relationship of these multiple universes to each other, assuming that they actually exist. You will recall that careless use of the analogous term ‘metaphysics’ has resulted in its becoming practically synonymous with ‘philosophy’.»

«Which,» said Shea, «is regarded by some as a kind of scientific knowledge; by others as a kind of knowledge outside of science; and by still others as unscientific and therefore not knowledge of any kind.»

«My, my, very neatly put,» said Chalmers, fishing out a little black notebook. «E. T. Bell could not have said it more trenchantly. I shall include that statement of the status of philosophy in my next book.»

«Hey,» said Shea, sitting up sharply, «don’t I even get a commission?»

Chalmers smiled blandly. «My dear Harold, you’re at perfect liberty to write a book of your own; in fact I encourage you.»

Bayard grinned: «Harold would rather play cowboy. When I think of a verbal pearl, I don’t go around casting it promiscuously. I wait till I can use it in print and get paid for it. But to get back to our subject, how would you go about working the shift?»

Chalmers frowned. «I’ll get to that, if you give me time. As I see it, the method consists of filling your mind with the fundamental assumptions of the world in question. Now, what are the fundamental assumptions of our world? Obviously, those of scientific logic.»

«Such as —» said Shea.

«Oh, the principle of dependence, for instance. ‘Any circumstance in which alone a case of the presence of a given phenomenon differs from the case of its absence is casually relevant to that phenomenon.’»