how long he had been gone—shucks, it might be the middle of next week! The chap did look vaguely familiar, although all he could see was his
back. Who was it? Should he speak to him, cause him to turn around? He felt vaguely reluctant to do so until he knew who it was. He rationalized the feeling by telling himself that it was desirable to know with whom he was dealing before he attempted anything as outlandish as persuading this man to go through the Gate.
The man at the desk continued typing, paused to snuff out a cigarette by laying it in an ash tray, then stamping it with a paper weight.
Bob Wilson knew that gesture.
Chills trickled down his back. “If he lights his next one,” he whispered to himself, “the way I think he is going to—”
The man at the desk took out another cigarette, tamped it on one end, turned it and tamped the other, straightened and crimped the paper on one end carefully against his left thumbnail and placed that end in his mouth.
Wilson felt the blood beating in his neck. Sitting there with his back to him was himself, Bob Wilson!
He felt that he was going ~.to faint. He closed his eyes and steadied himself on a chair back. “I knew it,” he thought, “the whole thing is absurd. I’m crazy. I know I’m crazy. Some sort of split personality. I shouldn’t have worked so hard.”
The sound of typing continued.
He pulled himself together, and reconsidered the matter. Diktor had warned him that he was due for a shock, a shock that could not be explained ahead of time, because it could not be believed. “All right— suppose I’m not crazy. If time travel can happen at all, there is no reason why I can’t come back and see myself doing something I did in the past. If I’m sane, that is what I’m doing.
“And if I am crazy, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what I do!
“And furthermore,” he added to himself, “if I’m crazy, maybe I can stay crazy and go back through the Gate! No, that does not make sense. Neither does anything else—the hell with it!”
He crept forward softly and peered over the shoulder of his double. “Duration is an attribute of the consciousness,” he read, “and not of the plenum.”
“That tears it,” he thought, “right back where I started, and watching myself write my thesis.”
A I ~ IV.JOE.fl I It. I saii, I~E.II’M
The typing continued. “It has no Ding an Sich. Therefore—” A key stuck, and others piled up on top of it. His double at the desk swore and reached out a hand to straighten the keys.
“Don’t bother with it,” Wilson said on sudden impulse. “It’s a lot of utter hogwash anyhow.”
The other Bob Wilson sat up with a jerk, then looked slowly around. An expression of surprise gave way to annoyance. “What the devil are you doing in my room?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer he got up, went quickly to the door and examined the lock. “How did you get in?”
“This,” thought Wilson, “is going to be difficult.”
“Through that,” Wilson answered, pointing to the Time Gate. His double looked where he had pointed, did a double take, then advanced cautiously and started to touch it.
“Don’t!” yelled Wilson.
The other checked himself. “Why not?” he demanded.
Just why he must not permit his other self to touch the Gate was not clear to Wilson, but he had had an unmistakable feeling of impending disaster when he saw it about to happen. He temporized by saying, “I’ll explain. But let’s have a drink.” A drink was a good idea in any case. There had never been a time when he needed one more than he did right now. Quite automatically he went to his usual cache of liquor in the wardrobe and took out the bottle he expected to find there.
“Hey!” protested the other. “What are you doing there? That’s my liquor.”
“Your liquor—” Hell’s bells! It was his liquor. No, it wasn’t; it was— their liquor. Oh, the devil! It was much too mixed up to try to explain. “Sorry. You don’t mind if I have a drink, do you?”