Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

by Robert Sheckley

  Barthold let the insult pass and went to the saloon.

  It was early evening, but the gaslights were already blazing. Someone was strumming a banjo, and the long mahogany bar was crowded.

  “Where could I find Ben Bartholder?” Barthold asked a bartender.

  “Ovah theah,” the bartender said, “with the other Yankee drummers.”

  Barthold walked over to a long table at one end of the saloon. It was crowded with flashily dressed men and painted women. The men were obviously Northern salesmen, loud, self-confident, and demanding. The women were Southerners. But that was their business, Barthold decided.

  As soon as he reached the table, he spotted his man. There was no mistaking Ben Bartholder.

  He looked exactly like Everett Barthold.

  And that was the vital characteristic Barthold was looking for.

  “Mr. Bartholder,” he said, “might I have a word with you in private?”

  “Why not?” said Ben Bartholder.

  Barthold led the way to a vacant table. His relative sat opposite him, staring intently.

  “Sir,” said Ben, “there is an uncanny resemblance between us.”

  “Indeed there is,” replied Barthold. “It’s part of the reason I’m here.”

  “And the other part?”

  “I’ll come to that presently. Would you care for a drink?”

  Barthold ordered, noticing that Ben kept his right hand in his lap, out of sight. He wondered if that hand held a derringer. Northerners had to be wary in these Reconstructionist days.

  After the drinks were served, Barthold said, “I’ll come directly to the point. Would you be interested in acquiring a rather large fortune?”

  “What man wouldn’t?”

  “Even if it involved a long and arduous journey?”

  “I’ve come all the way from Chicago,” Ben said. “I’ll go farther.”

  “And if it comes to breaking a few laws?”

  “You’ll find Ben Bartholder ready for anything, sir, if there’s some profit to it. But who are you and what is your proposition?”

  “Not here,” Barthold said. “Is there some place where we can be assured of privacy?”

  “My hotel room.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Both men stood up. Barthold glanced at Ben’s right hand and gasped.

  Benjamin Bartholder had no right hand.

  “Lost it at Vicksburg,” explained Ben, seeing Barthold’s shocked stare. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take on any man in the world with one hand and a stump—and lick him!”

  “I’m sure of it,” Barthold said a little wildly. “I admire your spirit, sir. Wait here a moment. I—I’ll be right back.”

  Barthold hurried out of the saloon’s swinging doors and went directly to his Flipper. A pity, he thought, setting the controls. Benjamin Bartholder would have been perfect.

  But a maimed man wouldn’t fit into his plan.

  The next jump was to Prussia, 1676. With a hypnoed knowledge of German and clothes of suitable shape and hue, he walked the deserted streets of Konigsberg, looking for Hans Baerthaler.

  It was midday, but the streets were strangely, eerily deserted. Barthold walked and finally encountered a monk.

  “Baerthaler?” mused the monk. “Oh, you mean old Otto the tailor! He lives now in Ravensburg, good sir.”

  “That must be the father,” Barthold said. “I seek Hans Baerthaler, the son.”

  “Hans ... of course!” The monk nodded vigorously, then gave Barthold a quizzical look. “But are you sure that’s the man you want?”

  “Quite sure,” Barthold said. “Could you direct me to him?”

  “You can find him at the cathedral,” said the monk. “Come, I’m going there myself.”

  Barthold followed the monk, wondering if his information could be wrong. The Baerthaler he sought wasn’t a priest. He was a mercenary soldier who had fought all over Europe. His type would never be found at a cathedral—unless, Barthold thought with a shudder, Baerthaler had unreportedly acquired religion.

  Fervently he prayed that this wasn’t so. It would ruin everything.

  “Here we are, sir,” the monk said, stopping in front of a noble, soaring structure. “And there is Hans Baerthaler.”

  Barthold looked. He saw a man sitting on the cathedral steps, a man dressed all in rags. In front of him was a shapeless old hat and within the hat were two copper coins and a crust of bread.

  “A beggar,” Barthold grunted disgustedly. Still, perhaps ...

  He looked closer and noticed the blank, vacuous expression in the beggar’s eyes, the slack jaw, the twisted, leering lips.

  “A great pity,” the monk said. “Hans Baerthaler received a head wound fighting against the Swedes at Fehrbellin and never recovered his senses. A terrible pity.”

  Barthold nodded, looking around at the empty cathedral square, the deserted streets.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Why, sir, surely you must know! Everyone has fled Konigsberg except me and him. It is the Black Plague!”

  With a shudder, Barthold turned and raced back through the empty streets, to his Flipper, his antibiotics, and to any other year but this one.

  With a heavy heart and a sense of impending failure, Barthold journeyed again down the years, to London, 1595. At Little Boar Taverne near Great Hertford Cross, he made inquiry of one Thomas Barthal.

  “And what would ye be wanting Barthal for?” asked the publican, in English so barbarous that Barthold could barely make it out.

  “I have business with him,” said Barthold in his hypnoed Old English.

  “Have you indeed?” The publican glanced up and down at Barthold’s ruffed finery. “Have you really now?”

  The tavern was a low, noisome place, lighted only by two guttering tallow candles. Its customers, who now gathered around Barthold and pressed close to him, looked like the lowest riffraff. They surrounded him, still gripping their pewter mugs, and Barthold detected, among their rags, the flash of keener metal.

  “A nark, eh?”

  “What in hell’s a nark doing in here?”

  “Daft, perhaps.”

  “Past a doubt, to come alone.”

  “And asking us to give um poor Tom Barthal!”

  “We’ll give um something, lads!”

  “Ay, let’s give um!”

  The publican watched, grinning, as the ragged crowd advanced on Barthold, their pewter mugs held like maces. They backed him past the leaded windows, against the wall. And only then did Barthold fully realize the danger he faced in this unruly pack of vagabonds.

  “I’m no nark!” he cried.

  “The hell you say!” The mob pressed forward and a heavy mug crashed against the oak wall near his head.

  With a sudden inspiration, Barthold swept off his great plumed hat. “Look at me!”

  They stopped, gazing at him open-mouthed.

  “The perfect image of Tom Barthal!” one gasped.

  “But Tom never said he had a brother,” another pointed out.

  “We were twins,” Barthold said rapidly, “separated at birth. I was raised in Normandy, Aquitaine, and Cornwall. I found out only last month that I had a twin brother. And I’m here to meet him.”

  It was a perfectly creditable story for sixteenth-century England and the resemblance could not be gainsaid. Barthold was brought to a table and a mug of ale set before him.

  “You’ve come late, lad,” an ancient one-eyed beggar told him. “A fine worker he was and a clever one at prigging a prancer—”

  Barthold recognized the old term for horse thief.

  “—but they took him at Aylesbury, and tried him with the hookers and the freshwater marines, and found him guilty, worse luck.”

  “What’s his fine?” Barthold asked.

  “A severe one,” said a stocky rogue. “They’re hanging him today at Shrew’s Marker!”

  Barthold sat very still for a moment. Then he asked, “Does my b
rother really look like me?”

  “The spitting image!” exclaimed the publican. “It’s uncanny, man, and a thing to behold. Same looks, same height, same weight—everything the same!”

  The others nodded their agreement. And Barthold, so close to success, decided to risk all. He had to have Tom Barthal!

  “Now listen close to me, lads,” he said. “You have no love for the narks or the London law, do you? Well, I’m a rich man in France, a very rich man. Would you like to come there with me and live like barons? Aye, take it easy—I knew you would. Well, we can do it, boys. But we have to bring my brother, too.”

  “But how?” asked a sturdy tinker. “They’re hanging him this day!”

  “Aren’t you men?” demanded Barthold. “Aren’t you armed? Wouldn’t you dare strike out for fortune and a life of ease?”

  They shouted their assent.

  Barthold said, “I thought you’d be keen. You can. All you have to do is follow my instructions.”

  Only a small crowd had gathered at Shrew’s Marker, for it was a small and insignificant hanging. Still, it afforded some amusement and the people cheered lustily as the horse-drawn prisoner’s wagon rumbled over the cobbled streets and drew to a halt in front of the gibbet.

  “There’s Tom,” murmured the tinker, at the edge of the crowd. “See him there?”

  “I think so,” Barthold said. “Let’s move in.”

  He and his fifteen men pushed their way through the crowd, circling the gibbet. The hangman had already mounted the platform, had gazed over the crowd through the eye-slits in his black mask, and was now testing his rope. Two constables led Tom Barthal up the steps, positioned him, reached for the rope ...

  “Are you ready?” the publican asked Barthold. “Hey! Are you ready?”

  Barthold was staring, open-mouthed, at the man on the platform. The family resemblance was unmistakable. Tom Barthal looked exactly like him—except for one thing.

  Barthal’s cheeks and forehead were deeply pitted with smallpox scars.

  “Now’s the moment for the rush,” the publican said. “Are you ready, sir? Sir? Hey!”

  He whirled and saw a plumed hat duck out of sight into an alley.

  He started to give chase, but stopped abruptly. From the gibbet he heard a hiss, a stifled scream, a sodden thud. When he turned again, the plumed hat was out of sight.

  Everett Barthold returned to his Flipper, deeply depressed. A disfigured man would not fit his plan.

  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 Castle. Hiding the Flipper in a thicket, he emerged wearing a simple clothing of coarse linen. He took the road toward Maiden Castle, 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 Cornish-man 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 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 busine
ss.”

  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.”