"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Ideal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

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 stovepipe-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 wasтАФgirl.

"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 wasтАФshe wasтАФthere.

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 wasтАФwell, 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 faceтАФsomewhereтАФ 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 mirrorтАФthat 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
wondered 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 wasтАФwell, 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
beтАФnon-existent! It was deception, cheating, fraud, a promise that could never be fulfilled.