Arl shook his head. "You're forgetting the relationship between the three and four dimensional worlds again. Remember, it's like you and that square on the table. How would you get a necklace out of that square without crossing any of its lines?"
"Why—why, I'd simply lift the necklace up and then put it down on the other side of one of the lines."
"Exactly. That's what Narka's doing. She sees what she likes, lifts it up out of your three-dimensional existence, momentarily carries it through the fourth dimension, and puts it down here. When she has all she wants, she'll come for her booty, then I'm afraid she'll take me home with her. Only she'll be very mad. She won't speak to me for a week—she'll do other things, bad things. I wish you had never called me, George."
Something went plop, and George saw a small velvet cushion on the floor. Like a pin cushion. And pinned to it were a number of jeweled brooches. George did not know too much about jewelry, but he didn't have to be an expert to know that these were valuable pieces. Even if he didn't know it himself, he could tell by the way Myra sighed. Myra would not sigh at imitations.
George laughed. "Now I know how Ali Baba must have felt after he said 'Open, Sesamee.'"
Myra nodded, but she hardly heard him. She walked from one treasure to the next, as each new one plunked down on the floor or the chairs or the tables. She was running, soon, with excited little gasps, feeling the jewels with her hands, caressing them, holding them to her throat and letting them caress her, raising them to the window so she could see the sun shine on them.
Arl said wearily, "I have seen this many times before. It's always the same the first time. Narka collects the treasure and someone here in this three-dimensional world sees the treasure come in. The result is always the same. It's quite a sight the first time. Narka has sufficient jewelry here to buy this city."
"Well, it doesn't affect me that way," said George. But he only said it—he didn't feel it at all. This interdimensional travel was the answer to all his dreams. You saw something you wanted, you lifted it out into the fourth dimension, you came back with it to the world of three dimensions—and that's all there was to it.
"Don't tell me you're not thinking the same thing they all have thought in the past," Arl said. "I know you are. Everyone does. But I warn you, George: that way lies madness."