“He didn’t come,” Bairthre said.
“What?” Barthold asked, waking with a start.
“Snap out of it, man! We’re safe. Is it morning yet in your Present?”
“It’s morning,” Barthold said, rubbing his eyes.
“Then we’ve won and I’ll be a king in Ireland!”
“Yes, we’ve won,” Barthold said. “Victory at last is—damn!”
“What’s the matter?”
“That investigator! Look over there!”
Bairthre stared across the fields, muttering, “I don’t see a thing. Are you sure—”
Barthold struck him across the back of the skull with a stone. He had picked it up during the night and saved it for this purpose.
He bent over and felt Bairthre’s pulse. The Irishman still lived but would be unconscious for a few hours. When he recovered, he would be alone and kingdomless.
Too bad, Barthold thought. But under the circumstances, it would be risky to bring Bairthre back with him. How much easier it would be to walk up to Inter-Temporal himself and collect a check for Everett Barthold. Then return in half an hour and collect another check for Everett Barthold.
And how much more profitable it would be!
He climbed into the Flipper and looked once more at his unconscious kinsman. What a shame, he thought, that he will never be a king in Ireland.
But then, he thought, history would probably find it confusing if he had succeeded.
He activated the controls, headed straight for the Present.
He reappeared in the back yard of his house. Quickly he bounded up the steps and pounded on the door.
“Who’s there?” Mavis called.
“Me!” Barthold shouted. “It’s all right, Mavis—everything has worked out fine!”
“Who?” Mavis opened the door, stared at him, and let out a shriek.
“Calm down,” Barthold said. “I know it’s been a strain, but it’s all over now. I’m going for the check and then we’ll—”
He stopped. A man had just appeared in the doorway beside Mavis. He was a short man, beginning to bald, his features ordinary, and his eyes were mild behind horn-rimmed glasses.
It was himself.
“Oh, no!” Barthold groaned.
“Oh, yes,” his double said. “One cannot venture beyond the thousand-year barrier with impunity, Everett. Sometimes there is a sound reason for a law. I am your time-identical.”
Barthold stared at the Barthold in the doorway. He said, “I was chased—”
“By me,” his double told him. “In disguise, of course, since you have a few enemies in time. You imbecile, why did you run?”
“I thought you were an investigator. Why were you chasing me?”
“For one reason and one reason only.”
“What was that?”
“We could have been rich beyond our wildest dreams,” his double said, “if only you hadn’t been so guilty and frightened! The three of us—you, Bairthre, and me—could have gone to Inter-Temporal and claimed triple indemnity!”
“Triple indemnity!” Barthold breathed. “I never thought of it.”
“The sum would have been staggering. It would have been infinitely more than for double indemnity. You disgust me.”
“Well,” Barthold said, “what’s done is done. At least we can collect for double indemnity, then decide—”
“I collected both checks and signed the release forms for you. You weren’t here, you know.”
“In that case, I’d like my share.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” his double told him.
“But it’s mine! I’ll go to Inter-Temporal and tell them—”
“They won’t listen. I’ve waived all your rights. You can’t even stay in the Present, Everett.”
“Don’t do this to me!” Barthold begged.
“Why not? Look at what you did to Bairthre.”
“Damn it, you can’t judge me!” Barthold cried. “You’re me!”
“Who else is there to judge you except yourself?” his double asked him.
Barthold couldn’t cope with that. He turned to Mavis.
“Darling,” he said, “you always told me you’d know your own husband. Don’t you know me now?”
Mavis moved back into the house. As she went, Barthold noticed the flash of ruumstones around her neck and asked no more.
Barthold and Barthold stood face to face. The double raised his arm. A police heli, hovering low, dropped to the ground. Three policemen piled out.
“This is what I was afraid of, officers,” the double said. “My double collected his check this morning, as you know. He waived his rights and went into the past. I was afraid he’d return and try for more.”
“He won’t bother you again, sir,” a policeman said. He turned to Barthold. “You! Climb back in that Flipper and get out of the Present. The next time we see you, we shoot!”
Barthold knew when he was beaten. Very humbly, he said, “I’ll gladly go, officers. But my Flipper needs repairs. It doesn’t have a time clock.”
“You should have thought about that before signing the waiver,” the policeman said. “Get moving!”
“Please!” Barthold said.
“No,” Barthold answered.
No mercy. And Barthold knew that, in his double’s place, he would have said exactly the same thing.
He climbed into the Flipper and closed the door. Numbly he contemplated his choices, if they could be called that.
New York, 1912, with its maddening reminders of his own time and with Bully Jack Barthold? Or Memphis, 1869, with Ben Bartholder awaiting his third visit? Or Konigsberg, 1676, with the grinning, vacant face of Hans Baerthaler for company, and the Black Death? Or London, 1595, with Tom Barthal’s cutthroat friends searching the streets for him? Or Maiden’s Castle, 662, with an angry Connor Lough mac Bairthre waiting to even the score?
It really didn’t matter. This time, he thought, let the place pick me.
He closed his eyes and blindly stabbed a button.
HOLDOUT
THE CREW of a spaceship must be friends. They must live harmoniously in order to achieve the split-second interaction that becomes necessary from time to time. In space, one mistake is usually enough.
It is axiomatic that even the best ships have their accidents; the mediocre ones don’t survive.
Knowing this, it can be understood how Captain Sven felt when, four hours before blastoff, he was told that radioman Forbes would not serve with the new replacement.
Forbes hadn’t met the new replacement yet, and didn’t want to. Hearing about him was enough. There was nothing personal in this, Forbes explained. His refusal was on purely racial grounds.
“Are you sure of this?” Captain Sven asked, when his chief engineer came to the bridge with the news.
“Absolutely certain, sir,” said engineer Hao. He was a small, flat-faced, yellow-skinned man from Canton. “We tried to handle it ourselves. But Forbes wouldn’t budge.”
Captain Sven sat down heavily in his padded chair. He was deeply shocked. He had considered racial hatred a thing of the remote past. He was as astonished at a real-life example of it as he would have been to encounter a dodo, a moa, or a mosquito.
“Racialism in this day and age!” Sven said. “Really, it’s too preposterous. It’s like telling me they’re burning heretics in the village square, or threatening warfare with cobalt bombs.”
“There wasn’t a hint of it earlier,” said Hao. “It came as a complete surprise.”
“You’re the oldest man on the ship,” Sven said. “Have you tried reasoning him out of this attitude?”
“I’ve talked to him for hours,” Hao said. “I pointed out that for centuries we Chinese hated the Japanese, and vice versa. If we could overcome our antipathy for the sake of the Great Cooperation, why couldn’t he?”
“Did it do any good?”
“Not a bit. He said it just wasn’t the same thing.”
Sven bit off the end of a cigar with a vicious gesture, lighted it, and puffed for a moment. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll have anything like this on my ship. I’ll get another radioman!”