The shape of things - 2

Total number of words is 1216
Total number of unique words is 500
71.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words
81.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words
85.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.
"You'll be freaks," said Wolcott. "But you won't know it. You'll have
to lead a secluded life."
"Until you find a way to bring all three of us out together."
"That's right. Until then. It may be ten years, twenty. I won't
recommend it to you, you may both develop psychoses as a result of
feeling apart, different. If there's anything paranoid in you, it'll
come out. It's up to you, naturally."
Peter Horn looked at his wife, she looked back gravely.
"We'll go," said Peter Horn.
"Into Py's dimension?" said Wolcott.
"Into Py's dimension," said Peter Horn, quietly.
They stood up from their chairs. "We'll lose no other sense, you're
certain, doctor? Hearing or talking. Will you be able to understand us
when we talk to you? Py's talk is incomprehensible, just whistles."
"Py talks that way because that's what he thinks we sound like when our
talk comes through the dimensions to him. He imitates the sound. When
you are over there and talk to me, you'll be talking perfect English,
because you know _how_. Dimensions have to do with senses and time
and knowledge. Don't worry about that."
"And what about Py? When we come into his strata of existence. Will he
see us as humans, immediately, and won't that be a shock to him? Won't
it be dangerous."
"He's awfully young. Things haven't got too set for him. There'll be
a slight shock, but your odors will be the same, and your voices will
have the same timber and pitch and you'll be just as warm and loving,
which is most important of all. You'll get on with him well."
Horn scratched his head slowly. "This seems such a long way around to
where we want to go." He sighed. "I wish we could have another kid and
forget all about this one."
"This baby is the one that counts. I dare say Polly here wouldn't want
any other, would you, Polly? Besides, she _can't_ have another.
I didn't say anything before, but her first was her _last_. It's
either _this_ baby or none at all."
"This baby, _this_ baby," said Polly.
* * * * *
Wolcott gave Peter Horn a meaningful look. Horn interpreted it
correctly. This baby or no more Polly ever again. This baby or Polly
would be in a quiet room somewhere staring into space for the rest
of her life, quite insane. Polly took this whole thing as a personal
failure of her own. Somehow she supposed _she_ herself had forced
the child into an alien dimension. She lived only to make right that
wrong, to lose the sense of failure, fear and guilt. It had to be Py.
It just simply _had_ to be Py. You couldn't reason Polly out of
it. There was the evidence, the pyramid, to prove her guilt. It had to
be Py.
They walked toward the machine together. "I guess I can take it, if she
can," said Horn, taking her hand. "I've worked hard for a good many
years now, it might be fun retiring and being an abstract for a change."
"I envy you the journey, to be honest with you," said Wolcott, making
adjustments on the large dark machine. "I don't mind telling you that
as a result of your being 'over there' you may very well write a volume
of philosophy that will set Dewey, Bergson, Hegel or any of the others
on their ears. I might 'come over' to visit you one day."
"You'll be welcome. What do we need for the trip?"
"Nothing. Just lie on these tables and be still."
A humming filled the room. A sound of power and energy and warmth.
They lay on the tables, holding hands, Polly and Peter Horn. A double
black hood came down over them. They were both in darkness. From
somewhere far off in the hospital, a voice-clock sang, "Tick tock,
seven o'clock. Tick tock, seven o'clock ..." fading away in a little
soft gong.
The low humming grew louder. The machine glittered with hidden,
shifting, compressed power.
"Will we be killed, is there any chance of that?" cried Peter Horn.
"No, none!"
The power screamed! The very atoms of the room divided against
each other, into alien and enemy camps. The two sides fought for
supremacy. Horn opened his mouth to shout as he felt his insides
becoming pyramidal, oblong with the terrific electrical wrestlings in
the air. He felt a pulling, sucking, demanding power clawing at his
body. Wolcott was on the right track, by heavens! The power yearned
and nuzzled and pressed through the room. The dimensions of the
black hood over his body were stretched, pulled into wild planes of
incomprehension. Sweat, pouring down Horn's face, seemed more than
sweat, it seemed a dimensional essence!
He felt his body webbed into a dimensional vortex, wrenched, flung,
jabbed, suddenly caught and heated so it seemed to melt like running
wax.
A clicking sliding noise.
Horn thought swiftly, but calmly. How will it be in the future with
Polly and I and Py at home and people coming over for a cocktail party?
How will it be?
Suddenly he knew how it would be and the thought of it filled him with
a great awe and a sense of credulous faith and time. They would live in
the same white house on the same quiet green hill, with a high fence
around it to keep out the merely curious. And Dr. Wolcott would come
to visit, park his beetle in the yard below, come up the steps and at
the door would be a tall slim White Rectangle to meet him with a dry
martini in its snake-like hand.
And in an easy chair across the room would sit a Salt White Oblong
seated with a copy of Nietzsche open, reading, smoking a pipe. And on
the floor would be Py, running about. And there would be talk and more
friends would come in and the White Oblong and the White Rectangle
would laugh and joke and offer little finger sandwiches and more drinks
and it would be a good evening of talk and laughter.
That's how it would be.
_Click._
The humming noise stopped.
The hood lifted from Horn.
It was all over.
They were in another dimension.
He heard Polly cry out. There was much light. Then he slipped from the
table, stood blinking. Polly was running. She stooped and picked up
something from the floor.
It was Peter Horn's son. A living, pink-faced, blue-eyed boy, lying in
her arms, gasping and blinking and crying.
The pyramidal shape was gone. Polly was crying with happiness.
Peter Horn walked across the room, trembling, trying to smile himself,
to hold on to Polly and the boy baby, both at the same time, and cry
with them.
"Well!" said Wolcott, standing back. He did not move for a long while.
He only watched the White Oblong and the White slim Rectangle holding
the Blue Pyramid on the opposite side of the room. An assistant came in
the door.
"_Shh_," said Wolcott, hand to his lips. "They'll want to be alone
awhile. Come along." He took the assistant by the arm and tiptoed
across the room. The White Rectangle and the White Oblong didn't even
look up when the door closed.
You have read 1 text from English literature.
  • Parts
  • The shape of things - 1
    Total number of words is 4795
    Total number of unique words is 1190
    56.4 of words are in the 2000 most common words
    71.7 of words are in the 5000 most common words
    78.8 of words are in the 8000 most common words
    Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.
  • The shape of things - 2
    Total number of words is 1216
    Total number of unique words is 500
    71.3 of words are in the 2000 most common words
    81.2 of words are in the 5000 most common words
    85.6 of words are in the 8000 most common words
    Each bar represents the percentage of words per 1000 most common words.