It almost nauseated Wilson to hear his earlier self catering to the demands of that clinging female. Why didn't he just hang up on her? The contrast with Arma—there was a dish!—was acute; it made him more determined than ever to go ahead with the plan, despite the warning of the latest arrival.
After hanging up the phone his earlier self faced him, pointedly ignoring the presence of the third copy. "Very well, Joe," he announced. "I'm ready to go if you are."
"Fine!" Wilson agreed with relief. "Just step through. That's all there is to it."
"No, you don't!" Number Three barred the way.
Wilson started to argue, but his erratic comrade was ahead of him. "Listen, you! You come butting in here like you think I was a bum. If you don't like it, go jump in the lake—and I'm just the kind of a guy who can do it! You and who else?"
They started trading punches almost at once. Wilson stepped in warily, looking for an opening that would enable him to put the slug on Number Three with one decisive blow.
He should have watched his drunken ally as well. A wild swing from that quarter glanced off his already damaged features and caused him excruciating pain. His upper lip, cut, puffy and tender from his other encounter, took the blow and became an area of pure agony. He flinched and jumped back.
A sound cut through his fog of pain, a dull smack! He forced his eyes to track and saw the feet of a man disappear through the Gate. Number Three was still standing by the Gate. "Now you've done it!" he said bitterly to Wilson, and nursed the knuckles of his left hand.
The obviously unfair allegation reached Wilson at just the wrong moment. His face still felt like an experiment in sadism. "Me?" he said angrily. "You knocked him through. I never laid a finger on him."
"Yes, but it's your fault. If you hadn't interfered, I wouldn't have had to do it."
‘Me interfere? Why, you bald faced hypocrite—you butted in and tried to queer the pitch. Which reminds me—you owe me some explanations and I damn well mean to have ‘em. What's the idea of—"
But his opposite number cut in on him. "Stow it," he said gloomily. "It's too late now. He's gone through."
"Too late for what?" Wilson wanted to know.
"Too late to put a stop to this chain of events."
"Why should we?"
"Because," Number Three said bitterly, "Diktor has played me—I mean has played you... us—for a dope, for a couple of dopes. Look, he told you that he was going to set you up as a big shot over there"—he indicated the Gate—"didn't he?"
"Yes," Wilson admitted.
"Well, that's a lot of malarkey. All he means to do is to get us so incredibly tangled up in this Time Gate thing that we'll never get straightened out again."
Wilson felt a sudden doubt nibbling at his mind. It could be true. Certainly there had not been much sense to what had happened so far. After all, why should Diktor want his help, want it bad enough to offer to split with him, even-steven, what was obviously a cushy spot? "How do you know?" he demanded.
"Why go into it?" the other answered wearily. "Why don't you just take my word for it?"
"Why should I?"
His companion turned a look of complete exasperation on him. "If you can't take my word, whose word can you take?"
The inescapable logic of the question simply annoyed Wilson. He resented this interloping duplicate of himself anyhow; to be asked to follow his lead blindly irked him. "I'm from Missouri," he said. "I'll see for myself." He moved toward the Gate.
"Where are you going?"
"Through! I'm going to look up Diktor and have it out with him."
"Don't!" the other said. "Maybe we can break the chain even now." Wilson felt and looked stubborn. The other sighed. "Go ahead," he surrendered. "It's your funeral. I wash my hands of you."
Wilson paused as he was about to step through the Gate. "It is, eh? H-m-m-m—how can it be my funeral unless it's your funeral, too?"
The other man looked blank, then an expression of apprehension raced over his face. That was the last Wilson saw of him as he stepped through.
The Hall of the Gate was empty of other occupants when Bob Wilson came through on the other side. He looked for his hat, but did not find it, then stepped around back of the raised platform, seeking the exit he remembered. He nearly bumped into Diktor.
"Ah, there you are!" the older man greeted him. "Fine! Fine! Now there is just one more little thing to take care of, then we will be all squared away. I must say I am pleased with you, Bob, very pleased indeed."
"Oh, you are, are you?" Bob faced him truculently. "Well, it's too bad I can't say the same about you! I'm not a damn bit pleased. What was the idea of shoving me into that... that daisy chain without warning me? What's the meaning of all this nonsense? Why didn't you warn me?"
"Easy, easy," said the older man, "don't get excited. Tell the truth now—if I had told you that you were going back to meet yourself face to face, would you have believed me? Come now, ‘fess up."
Wilson admitted that he would not have believed it.
"Well, then," Diktor continued with a shrug, "there was no point in me telling you, was there? If I had told you, you would not have believed me, which is another way of saying that you would have believed false data. Is it not better to be in ignorance than to believe falsely?"
"I suppose so, but—"
"Wait! I did not intentionally deceive you. I did not deceive you at all. But had I told you the full truth, you would have been deceived because you would have rejected the truth. It was better for you to learn the truth with your own eyes. Otherwise—"
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Wilson cut in. "You're getting me all tangled up. I'm willing t'o let bygones be bygones, if you'll come clean with me. Why did you send me back at all?"
"‘Let bygones be bygones,'" Diktor repeated. "Ah, if we only could! But we can't. That's why I sent you back—in order that you might come through the Gate in the first place."
"Huh? Wait a minute—I already had come through the Gate."
Diktor shook his head. "Had you, now? Think a moment. When you got back into your own time and your own place you found your earlier self there, didn't you?"
"Mmmm—yes."
He--your earlier self—had not yet been through the Gate, had he?" No.— "How could you have been through the Gate, unless you persuaded him to go through the Gate?"
Bob Wilson's head was beginning to whirl. He was beginning to wonder who did what to whom and who got paid. "But that's impossible! You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something."
"Well, didn't you? You were there."
"No, I didn't—no... well, maybe I did, but it didn't feel like it."