“That’s where I’m from,” Barthold said. “I’m a distant kinsman of yours from the future. And I’m here to offer you an enormous fortune!”
Bairthre promptly sheathed his sword. “That’s very kind of you, kinsman,” he said civilly.
“But, of course, it will call for considerable cooperation on your part.”
“I feared as much,” Bairthre sighed. “Well, let’s hear about it, kinsman.”
“Come with me,” Barthold said, and led the way to his Flipper.
All the materials were ready in the brown suitcase. He knocked Bairthre out with a palm hypo, since the Irishman was showing signs of nervousness. Then, attaching frontal electrodes to Bairthre’s forehead, he hypnoed into him a quick outline of world history, a concise course in English, and one in American manners and customs.
This took the better part of two days. Meanwhile, Barthold used the swiftgraft machine he had bought to transfer skin from his fingers to Bairthre’s. Now they had the same fingerprints. With normal cell-shedding, the prints would flake off in some months, revealing the original ones, but that wasn’t important. They did not have to be permanent.
Then, using a checklist, Barthold added some identifying marks that Bairthre was lacking and removed some they didn’t share. An electrolysis job took care of the fact that Barthold was balding and his kinsman hadn’t been.
When he was finished, Barthold pumped revitalizer into Bairthre’s veins and waited.
In a short while, Bairthre groaned, rubbed his hypno-stuffed head, and said in modern English, “Oh, man! What did you hit me with?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Barthold said. “Let’s get down to business.”
Briefly he explained his plan for getting rich at the expense of the Inter-Temporal Insurance Corporation.
“And they’ll actually pay?” Bairthre asked.
“They will, if they can’t disprove the claim.”
“And they will pay that much?”
“Yes. I checked beforehand. The compensation for double indemnity is fantastically high.”
“That’s the part I still don’t understand,” Bairthre said. “What is this double indemnity?”
“It occurs,” Barthold told him, “when a man, traveling into the past, has the misfortune to pass through a mirror-flaw in the temporal structure. It’s a very rare occurrence. But when it happens, it’s catastrophic. One man has gone into the past, you see. But two perfectly identical men return.”
“Oho!” said Bairthre. “So that’s double indemnity!”
“That’s it. Two men, indistinguishable from each other, return from the past. Each feels that his is the true and original identity and that he is the only possible claimant of his property, business, wife, and so forth. No coexistence is possible between them. One of them must forfeit all rights, leave his present, his home, wife, business, and go into the past to live. The other remains in his own time, but lives with constant fear, apprehension, guilt.”
Barthold paused for breath. “So you see,” he continued, “under the circumstances, double indemnity represents a calamity of the first order. Therefore, both parties are compensated accordingly.”
“Hmm,” said Bairthre, thinking hard. “Has this happened often, this double indemnity?”
“Less than a dozen times in the history of time travel. There are precautions against it, such as staying out of Paradox Points and respecting the thousand-year barrier.”
“You traveled more than a thousand years,” Bairthre pointed out.
“I accepted the risk and won.”
“But, look, if there’s so much money in this double indemnity thing, why haven’t others tried it?”
Barthold smiled wryly. “It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But now to business. Are you in this with me?”
“I could be a baron with that money,” Bairthre said dreamily. “A king, perhaps, in Ireland! I’m in this with you.”
“Fine. Sign this.”
“What is it?” Bairthre asked, frowning at the legal-looking document that Barthold had thrust before him.
“It simply states that, upon receiving adequate compensation as set by the Inter-Temporal Insurance Corporation, you will go at once to a past of your own choosing and there remain, waiving any and all rights to the Present. Sign it as Everett Barthold. I’ll fill in the date later.”
“But the signature—” Bairthre began to object, then halted and grinned. “Through hypno-learning, I know about hypno-learning and what it can do, including the fact that you didn’t have to give me the answers to my questions. As soon as I asked them, I knew the explanations. The mirror-flaw, too, by the way—that’s why you hypnoed me into being left-handed and left-eyed. And, of course, the grafted fingerprints go the opposite way, the same as if you saw them in a mirror.”
“Correct,” said Barthold. “Any other questions?”
“None I can think of at the moment. I don’t even have to compare our signatures. I know they’ll be identical, except—” Again he paused and looked angry. “That’s a lousy trick! I’ll be writing backward!”
Barthold smiled. “Naturally. How else would you be a mirror-image of me? And just in case you decide you like my time better than yours and try to have me sent back, remember the precautions I took beforehand. They’re good enough to send you to the Prison Planetoid for life.”
He handed the document to Bairthre.
“You don’t take any chances, do you?” Bairthre said, signing.
“I try to cover all eventualities. It’s my home and my present that we’re going to, and I plan to keep possession. Come on. You need a haircut and a general going-over.”
Side by side, the identical-looking men walked to the Flipper.
Mavis Barthold didn’t have to worry about overacting. When two Everett Bartholds walked in the front door, wearing identical garments, with the same expression of nervous embarrassment, and when two Everett Bartholds said, “Er, Mavis, this will take a little explaining ...”
It was just too much. Foreknowledge acted as no armor. She shrieked, threw her arms in the air, and fainted.
Later, when her two husbands had revived her, she regained some composure. “You did it, Everett!” she said. “Everett?”
“That’s me,” said Barthold. “Meet my kinsman, Connor Lough mac Bairthre.”
“It’s unbelievable!” cried Mrs. Barthold.
“Then we look alike?” her husband asked.
“Exactly alike. Just exactly!”
“From now on,” said Barthold, “think of us both as Everett Barthold. The insurance investigators will be watching you. Remember—either of us, or both, could be your husband. Treat us exactly alike.”
“As you wish, my dear,” Mavis said demurely.
“Except, of course, for the matter of—I mean except in the area of—of—damn it all, Mavis, can’t you really tell which one of us is me?”
“Of course I can, dear,” Mavis said. “A wife always knows her husband.” And she gave Bairthre a quick look, which he returned with interest.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Barthold. “Now I must contact the insurance company.” He hurried into the other room.
“So you’re a relative of my husband,” Mavis said to Bairthre. “How alike you look!”
“But I’m really quite different,” Bairthre assured her.
“Are you? You look so like him! I wonder if you really can be different.”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
“How?”
“By singing you a song of ancient Ireland,” Bairthre said, and proceeded at once in a fine, high tenor voice.
It wasn’t quite what Mavis had in mind. But she realized that anyone so like her husband would have to be obtuse about some things.
And from the other room, she could, hear Barthold saying, “Hello, Inter-Temporal Insurance Corporation? Mr. Gryns, please. Mr. Gryns? This is Everett Barthold. Something rather unfortunate seems to have happened ...”