Notions: Unlimited

by Robert Sheckley

  In the Flipper, Barthold thought long and seriously. Things were going badly, very badly indeed. He had searched through time, all the way to medieval London, and had found no Barthold he could use. Now he was nearing the thousand-year limit.

  He could go no further—

  Not legally.

  But legality was a matter of proof. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—turn back now.

  There had to be a usable Barthold somewhere in time!

  He unlocked the small brown suitcase and took from it a small, heavy machine. He had paid several thousand dollars for it, back in Present Time. Now it was worth a lot more to him.

  He set the machine carefully and plugged it into the time clock.

  He was now free to go anywhere in time—back to primordial origins, if he wished. The time clock would not register.

  He reset the controls, feeling suddenly very lonely. It was a frightening thing to plunge over the thousand-year brink. For a single instant, Barthold considered giving up the entire dubious venture, returning to the security of his own time, his own wife, his own job.

  But, steeling himself, he jabbed the send-off button.

  He emerged in England, 662, near the ancient stronghold of Maiden Casde. Hiding the Flipper in a thicket, he emerged wearing a simple clothing of coarse linen. He took the road toward Maiden Casde, which he could see in the far distance, upon a rise of land.

  A group of soldiers passed him, drawing a cart. Within the cart, Barthold glimpsed the yellow glow of Baltic amber, red-glazed pottery from Gaul, and even Italian-looking candelabra. Loot, no doubt, Barthold thought, from the sack of some town. He wanted to question the soldiers, but they glared at him fiercely and he was glad to slink by unquestioned.

  Next he passed two men, stripped to the waist, chanting in Latin. The man behind was lashing the man in front with a cruel, many-stranded leather whip. And presently they changed positions, with barely the loss of a stroke.

  “I beg your pardon, sirs—”

  But they wouldn’t even look at him.

  Barthold continued walking, mopping perspiration from his forehead. After a while, he overtook a cloaked man with a harp slung over one shoulder and a sword over the other.

  “Sir,” said Barthold, “might you know where I’d find a kinsman of mine, who has journeyed here from Iona? His name is Connor Lough mac Bairthre.”

  “I do,” the man stated.

  “Where?” asked Barthold.

  “Standing before you,” said the man. Immediately, he stepped back, clearing his sword from its scabbard and slinging his harp to the grass.

  Fascinated, Barthold stared at Bairthre. He saw, beneath the long page-boy hair, an exact and unmistakable likeness of himself.

  At last he had found his man!

  But his man was acting most uncooperative. Advancing slowly, sword held ready for cut or slash, Bairthre commanded, “Vanish, demon, or I’ll carve you like a capon.”

  “I’m no demon!” Barthold cried. “I’m a kinsman of yours!”

  “You lie,” Bairthre declared firmly. “I’m a wandering man, true, and a long time away from home. But still I remember every member of my family. You’re not one of them. So you must be a demon, taking my face for the purposes of enchantment.”

  “Wait!” Barthold begged as Bairthre’s forearm tensed for the stroke. “Have you ever given a thought to the future?”

  “The future?”

  “Yes, the future! Centuries from now!”

  “I’ve heard of that strange time, though I’m one who lives for today,” Bairthre said, slowly lowering his sword. “We had a stranger in Iona once, called himself a Cornishman when he was sober and a Life photographer when he was drunk. Walked around clicking a toy box at things and muttering to himself. Fill him up with mead and he’d tell you all about times to come.”

  “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 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 he 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 it 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 exacdy!”

  “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...”

  There was consternation at the offices of the Inter-Temporal Insurance Corporation, and confusion, and dismay, and a swift telephoning of underwriters, when two Everett Bartholds walked in, with identical nervous little smiles.

  “First case of its kind in fifteen years,” said Mr. Gryns. “Oh, Lord! You will submit, of course, to a full examination?”

  “Of course,” said Barthold.

  “Of course,” said Barthold.

  The doctors poked and probed them. They found differences, which they carefully listed with long Latin terms. But all the differences were within the normal variation range for temporal identicals and no amount of juggling on paper could change that. So the company psychiatrists took over.

  Both men responded to all questions with careful slowness. Bairthre kept his wits about him and his nerve intact. Using his hypnoed knowledge of Barthold, he answered the questions slowly but well, exactly as did Barthold.

  Inter-Temporal engineers checked the time clock in the Flipper. They dismantled it and put it back together again. They examined the controls, set for Present, 1912, 1869, 1676, and 1595. 662 had also been punched—illegally—but the time clock showed that it had not been activated. Barthold explained that he had hit the control accidentally and thought it best to leave it alone.

  It was suspicious, but not actionable.

  A lot of power had been used, the engineers pointed out. But the time clock showed stops only to 1595. They brought the time clock back to the lab for further investigation.

  The engineers then went over the interior of the Flipper inch by inch, but could find nothing incriminating. Barthold had taken the precaution of throwing the brown suitcase and its contents into the English Channel before leaving the year 662.

  Mr. Gryns offered a settlement, which the two Bartholds turned down. He offered two more, which were refused. And, finally, he admitted defeat.

  The last conference was held in Gryns’s office. The two Bartholds sat on either side of Gryns’s desk, looking slightly bored with the entire business. Gryns looked like a man whose neat and predictable world has been irrevocably upset.

  “I just can’t understand it,” he said. “In the years you traveled in, sirs, the odds against a time flaw are something like a million to one!”

  “I guess we’re that one,” said Barthold, and Bairthre nodded.

  “But somehow it just doesn’t seem—well, what’s done is done. Have you gentlemen decided the question of your coexistence?”

  Barthold handed Gryns the paper that Bairthre had signed in 662. “He is going to leave, immediately upon receipt of his compensation.”

  “Is this satisfactory to you, sir?” Gryns asked Bairthre.

  “Sure,” said Bairthre. “I don’t like it here anyhow.”

  “Sir?”

  “I mean,” Bairthre said hastily, “what I mean is, I’ve always wanted to get away, you know, secret desire, live in some quiet spot, nature, simple people, all that...”

  “I see,” Mr. Gryns said dubiously. “And do you feel that way, sir?” he asked, turning to Barthold.

  “Certainly,” Barthold asserted. “I have the same secret desires he has. But one of us has to stay—sense of duty, you know—and I’ve agreed to remain.”

  “I see,” Gryns said. But his tone made it clear that he didn’t see at all. “Hah. Well. Your checks are being processed now, gentlemen. A purely mechanical procedure. They can be picked up tomorrow morning—always assuming that no proofs of fraud are presented to us before then.”

  The atmosphere was suddenly icy. The two Bartholds said goodbye to Mr. Gryns and left very quickly.

  They rode the elevator down in silence. Outside the building, Bairthre said, “Sorry about that slip about not liking it here.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Huh?”

  Barthold seized Bairthre by the arm and dragged him into an automatic heli, taking care not to choose the first empty one he saw.

  He punched for Westchester, then looked back to see if they were being followed. When he was certain they were not, he checked the interior of the heli for camera or recording devices. At last he turne
d to speak to Bairthre.

  “You utter damned fool.’ That boner could have cost us a fortune!”

  “I’ve been doing the best I can,” Bairthre said sullenly. “What’s wrong now? Oh, you mean they suspect.”

  “That’s what’s wrong! Gryns is undoubtedly having us followed. If they can find anything—anything at all to upset our claim—it could mean the Prison Planetoid.”

  “We’ll have to watch our steps,” said Bairthre soberly.

  “I’m glad you realize it,” Barthold said.

  They dined quietly in a Westchester restaurant and had several drinks. This put them in a better frame of mind. They were feeling almost happy when they returned to Barthold’s house and sent the heli back to the city.

  “We’ll sit and play cards tonight,” said Barthold, “and talk, and drink coffee, and behave as though we both were Barthold. In the morning, I’ll go collect our checks.”

  “Good enough,” Bairthre agreed. “I’ll be glad to get back. I don’t see how you can stand it with iron and stone all around you. Ireland, man! A king in Ireland, that’s what I’ll be!”

  “Don’t talk about it now.” Barthold opened the door and they entered.

  “Good evening, dear,” Mavis said, looking at a point exactly midway between them.

  “I thought you said you knew me,” Barthold commented sourly.

  “Of course I do, darling,” Mavis said, turning to him with a bright smile. “I just didn’t want to insult poor Mr. Bairthre.”

  “Thank you, kind lady,’ said Bairthre. “Perhaps I’ll sing you another song of ancient Ireland later.”

  “That would be lovely, I’m sure,” Mavis said. “A man telephoned you, dear. He’ll call later. Honey, I’ve been looking at ads for scart fur. The Polar Martian Scart is a bit more expensive than plain Canal Martian Scart, but—”

  “A man called?” Barthold asked. “Who?”

  “He didn’t say. Anyhow, it wears much better and the fur has that iridescent sheen that only—”

  “Mavis! What did he want?”

  “It was something about that double indemnity claim,” she said. “But that’s all settled, isn’t it?”

  “It is not settled until I have the check in my hand,” Barthold told her. “Now tell me exactly what he said.”