"I'm convinced it's actually happened a few times already," the other
asserted. "Though of course it's not generally known. Fortunately,
we've never worked out the principle on this plane." He paused to
drink, then set down his glass. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and
he nodded in the direction of the transdimensional registration unit.
"Just how does it work, Doctor? I've always wondered where my own
experiments went wrong."
For a moment Horning hesitated, then shrugged. "See for yourself."
Kneeling, he unsnapped the unit's back plate and exposed the circuits.
"The registration dials are set with my own world as zero. You pick
up others in the scanning scope as you go, within the limits of the
projector drive. After that, it's just a problem of reintegration."
Beside him, the man who was his coexisting self craned. "So that's it!
I never dreamed it could be so simple."
"I used a light-loop to help break through the barrier," Horning
explained, sketching out a hasty diagram. "It helps to increase the
power output--"
"Of course." The other was down on the floor now, probing into the
unit's workings. "I've developed all the component elements at one
time or another, but when it came to combining them properly, I always
managed to miss out."
* * * * *
Horning rose and drained his glass. "Well, you know now," he observed.
"For my part, I'm ready to start work on some other project, now that
I've gotten to this world."
"I was afraid you'd say that," the other Doctor Raymond X. Horning
remarked. Straightening, he snapped shut the back panel of the
transdirectional registration unit. "But ... it's not easy."
"What do you mean?"
Horning's counterpart got up. "I mean you can't stay in this world.
You're going to have to leave again."
"To leave--!" Horning turned sharply.
"Yes." Beneath the blandness of the other's manner, a new note rang,
grim and unyielding. "As I pointed out, interdimensional transit's a
logical impossibility. There's no way of integrating two identical
personalities, two selves of the same man, into a highly organized
society such as this one."
"And for a reason like that you'd try to force me out--?" Horning took
an angry step forward.
But his counterpart jumped back, out of the way. His hand darted to his
pocket, whipping out the snub-nosed pistol.
Horning came to an abrupt halt.
The blandness was gone from the other's face now. The deep-set eyes
were cold, the sardonic lines set.
He said: "There's another reason, Doctor. I like my life; I like my
wife. And I'm afraid the temptation to relieve me of both might prove
too great for you."
"You're being absurd," Horning snapped. "Not to mention insulting."
"Am I?" His counterpart smiled thinly. "I doubt that, my friend. You
see, we're one, really. Though we live on separate planes, we both feel
the same drives, the same tensions, the same impulses."
"You're talking nonsense!"
"No nonsense, Doctor." The pistol in his counterpart's hand was very
steady. "Given the proper pressure, a strong enough motive, I know that
even I could kill. In your situation, I'd certainly feel justified in
murdering you. So I have no intention of giving you the chance to make
me your victim."
"So--?" snapped Horning.
"So, you're going to leave now," his coexisting self answered bluntly.
"You can be thankful I'll even let you go alive." He gestured with the
pistol. "Strap on your unit. And be assured I'd have no hesitancy about
shooting you if I have to."
Horning clenched his fists, caught up in a churning sea of fury. "So
help me--!"
The gun centered on his belly. "I'll give you till I count ten," his
counterpart clipped tightly.
Horning bit down hard. Pivoting, he hoisted the transdimensional
registration unit from the floor and strapped it into position.
"In case you have any foolish ideas of coming back, let me warn you
that I intend to set up a force barrier around this place," the man
with his face observed with grim malice. "If you try to breach it, I'll
kill you on sight."
Wordless, still seething, Horning switched the projector drive to
reverse.
The room grew shadowy about him. His counterpart faded.
Horning pressed the disintegrator button.
* * * * *
Of a sudden, room and counterpart were gone. Once more Horning stood
alone in the vastness of the shining silver plain. His head throbbed
dully; he felt incredibly tired and drained.
For a moment he almost considered going back to his own world ... back
to Myrtle.
But nightmare memories of the empty, bitter life they'd led rose up
to steel him, all hatred, conflict, tension ... so different from the
happiness of the other days, the days with Margaret.
Margaret.... He touched her picture, still safe in his pocket.
There were other worlds--an infinity of them. Somewhere, sometime, he'd
find the one world he sought.
Again, he turned the transdimensional registration unit's dials.
Light flashed on the scanning scope's screen. Stiff-fingered, Horning
focussed.
Here the scene was one of bleak desolations, painted in a hundred
drab shades of grey. A murky sky pressed down on sullen hills, thick
underfoot with powdery, ash-dry dust. Seared shafts that might once
have been trees thrust up here and there like skeletal fingers. In the
foreground rose the crumbling corner of a ruined building, base buried
deep in rubble.
A man crouched there--ragged, bone-gaunt, grey as the shattered walls
at his back. He clutched a club in one claw-like hand, and the strain
of utter panic, despair, stood out in every taut, harsh-drawn line.
Before the man, hemming him in, ranged a dozen great, six-legged,
wolfish beasts of a fearsome genus Horning had never seen before.
Snarling, slavering, they crowded in closer and closer, huge fangs
bared.
With a chill of horror, Horning flipped the magnifier across the
scanning scope's screen.
The beleagured man's face leaped up at him, sharp and clear.
"No--!" Horning choked. "No!"
For the other's fear-blanched face was his face, too ... the face of
another coexisting self, doomed to live and die in this grey, desolate
world.
Even as Horning cried out, one of the great wolf-things sprang.
The man jerked back and lashed out with his club. The beast fell short,
battered down.
But in the same instant, another of the creatures lunged, from the
other side. Its hideous, slashing fangs closed on the man's club arm.
The impact bore the man to his knees. Before he could recover, a third
of the wolf-things was at his throat. Blood gushed, a sharp scarlet
accent in a world of grey.
Horning squeezed his eyes tight shut in a frenzied effort to shut out
the horror. Spasmodically, he spun the transdimensional registration
unit's dials.
Again there was a flicker of light. Hands still atremble, Horning
focussed on it.
A new world came alive before him.
* * * * *
This time, the scene was laid in what appeared to be a cheap cafe. A
throng of loungers lined the bar set against the far wall. But their
shabby clothes were of a cut and material unknown to Horning. The
grimed, poorly-executed murals struck a note of jangling discord, as if
even the arts here were keyed to a different plane.
In the foreground, a man gone flabby with fat slumped on his arms at a
table, a bottle half full of greenish liquor before him.
A sudden commotion stirred at the far end of the room. The loungers
milled and drew back.
Four men in sack-like purple uniforms pushed through the crowd with
cold arrogance. Their features had an oriental cast, and they carried
drawn swords of strange design.
The first of the quartet came abreast the table in the foreground.
Stepping aside, he gestured contemptuously towards the man slumped
there.
The other three troopers swaggered up and jerked the man bodily from
his chair.
For the first time, Horning saw the sodden man's face.
Again, as in the other worlds, it was his own.
Now, the fat man shook his head blearily, as if trying to blink the
haze of drink from his eyes.
The leader of the four uniformed men slapped him savagely, first on one
side of the face and then the other.
Horning's coexisting self sagged to his knees.
The leader of the men in purple kicked him in the stomach.
Horning's counterpart vomited.
The men in purple laughed and threw their prisoner down at full length
on the floor with all their might. Then, catching him by the feet, they
dragged him bodily out of both drinking house and range of the scanning
scope's screen.
Shuddering, Horning stared off across the shining silver plain. Of a
sudden he had no heart for searching through other worlds; knew that he
would not have till time had dimmed the memory of this day.
It left him no choice but to go back to his own plane ... back to
Myrtle.
And if she'd found his note.... He shook his head in wry dismay.
But he had no other course left open. Carefully, he turned the
transdimensional registration unit's calibrated dials back to zero ...
manipulated the controls.
The light-loop's tubes blazed and pulsated on the scanner screen, so
bright they obscured everything beyond. The frame materialized before
him, rising like a shimmering, translucent gateway amid the empty
vastness of the silver plain.
* * * * *
Heavy-footed, heavy-hearted, Horning stepped through it, back to the
basement laboratory that lay in his own world.
And there was Myrtle. Head thrust forward, one thick arm belligerently
akimbo, she stood by the desk, reading Horning's note.
Horning stopped short.
Myrtle's glance flicked to him. Her eyes, black and beady, drew to
fury-glinting, fat-rimmed slits.
Horning stumbled from the ramp, fumbling at the transit unit's harness.
But Myrtle was upon him in three walloping strides--clutching his
shirt-front, shoving her face close to his. An aura of cheap perfume,
stale face powder, clothes that could have done with more frequent
laundering, washed over Horning in unpleasant waves.
"You--!"
She spat the word with such venom that her face shook.
Horning tried to speak, but no words came.
"Leave me, will you--!"
"Myrtle--"
She struck him across the mouth.
Horning's head reeled. He tried to twist free.
But Myrtle's hand was still locked in his shirt-front. Savagely, she
jerked him back and hit him again.
Horning staggered. His shirt ripped. Margaret's portrait fluttered from
his pocket to the floor.
Myrtle went rigid. Eyes dilating, she stared at the fallen picture.
Horning tore loose her hand and scooped the photo from the floor.
Teeth bared, nostrils flaring, Myrtle closed in upon him. "So that's
it!" she cried shrilly.
"What--?"
"So you thought you'd go back to her, that's what! You figured you'd
find her in another world--"
A chill ran up and down Horning's spine. He tucked the picture back in
his pocket. "Myrtle, you don't know what you're saying--"
"Oh, don't I?" His wife laughed wildly. Grey hair fell across her
forehead in snarled disarray. "Maybe I know more than you think,
Doctor Raymond X. Horning! I've read those things you wrote--all that
craziness about the other worlds. But I didn't know _why_ you wanted to
go there till now."
Horning fumbled with the transdimensional registration unit's straps.
Unslinging the bulky case, he lowered it to the floor. He dared not
trust himself to speak.
But Myrtle closed in upon him, clawing at him. "Admit it!" she
shrieked. "Go ahead! Tell me to my face you'd rather have that--that
slut than me--"
Horning wheeled. His hands shook. "Myrtle, I've taken every word from
you that I intend to," he said tightly. "Get out of my laboratory! Now!
This instant!" Myrtle's nails raked at his eyes.
* * * * *
Before he could recover from fending off the blow, she had snatched
Margaret's picture from his pocket.
"I'll show you!" she cried, shrill and strident. "I'll let you see what
I think of her, the dirty little tramp!"
She spat full in the face of the picture.
Horning hit her.
She lurched back two tottering steps, tripped, and sprawled on the
floor.
Horning strode to her, jerked Margaret's photo from her hand, and wiped
it clean.
He said: "I'm through. Whether you like it or not, I'm filing for
divorce tomorrow."
His wife dragged herself up to a sitting position, her face a mask of
hate and cunning.
"Go ahead," she goaded. "Go _right_ ahead, Doctor Raymond X. Horning."
Her voice rose, took on new and even more bitter overtones of malice.
"But ... just don't blame anyone but yourself for whatever happens to
your precious apparatus."
Heaving herself to her feet, she stomped out of the laboratory and off
up the basement stairs.
Fists clenched, Horning watched her go. Then, wearily, he crossed to
his ancient desk and dropped down in the chair.
As always, Myrtle had won. The first time he left the house she'd be
at work here--breaking down the door, smashing his equipment and his
dreams.
And as for Margaret.... He smoothed her picture. But the features
blurred and his eyes began to burn, till at last he pushed the
photograph back in his pocket and slumped forward on his arms.
How long he lay there he never knew. Later, sometimes, he thought
perhaps he'd slept.
Then, dimly, he became conscious of a sound ... a humming, persistent
vibrance that grew steadily louder. It dawned on him that he'd
forgotten to turn off the light-loop's master switch.
He got up and started towards the control panel.
In the same instant, he glimpsed a shadowy figure, framed in the
door-like scaffolding of tubes and metal that formed the gateway to the
shining silver plain that lay like a shimmering no-man's land between
the parallel worlds.
Horning came up short, staring.
The figure outlined in the light-loop grew sharper. A man lurched
through the frame, into the room. His face was Horning's face, and he
staggered under the weight of a transdimensional registration unit,
plus a great, bulging, cumbersome bundle slung across his shoulder.
Horning started forward.
His visitor said, "Hold it!" sharply and brought a snub-barreled,
too-familiar pistol into view.
Horning stopped in his tracks.
"You mean--it's you--?"
The man from beyond the barrier laughed and spilled the bulky bundle
off his shoulder, down onto the floor. "Of course, Doctor! I thought
I'd return your visit." He prodded the bundle with his toe. "I even
brought you a present."
"But ... I thought you said you'd never developed a successful transit
unit...."
"I hadn't, till you came along and showed me how. As I told you, I'd
worked out the components. Once I had a chance to look over your unit,
integrating them was no job at all."
"But why...?"
* * * * *
The man with Horning's face laughed again. "That comes later, my
friend. After you've admired the present I brought you."
Horning eyed the bundle. Limp and bulky, it was nearly six feet long
and wrapped loosely in a covering of some greenish plastic.
"Go ahead. Look it over," his visitor invited, gesturing with the gun.
"It's all yours."
New uneasiness crept through Horning. Slowly, he came forward and,
kneeling, started to untie the cords that held the bundle closed.
"You're too slow," the man said. "Here. Let me do it."
He tugged at one corner of the covering. The plastic tore away.
Feminine hair came into view. A head lolled over, exposed.
Horning found himself staring down into a nightmarish, waxen face. A
thin breath bubbled the lips. He leaped back, choking.
"Myrtle--!"
"Correct," his counterpart chuckled. "Or perhaps I should say--_my_
Myrtle."
"_Your_ Myrtle--?" A convulsive tremor shook Horning. "But I
thought...."
"You thought I had a charming wife who held a fortune in her own name,"
the other retorted coolly. "The part about the fortune was true. As
for the rest"--he shrugged--"well, you can see that I, too, married a
wasp-tongued shrew named Myrtle--the coexisting counterpart of your own
trouble."
With an effort, Horning stilled his trembling. "Then why lie to me?" he
demanded in sudden, flaring anger. "What possible reason--"
"I was afraid to let you know. And ... I needed time to work out a
plan." The sardonic lines about his alter ego's mouth etched deeper.
"I've taken care of that detail now."
Horning drew back another step. "I don't think I care to hear about
it," he clipped tightly.
"Oh, but you must!" his counterpart retorted. "You see, you're vital
to it."
"I don't care for that, either."
The other's deep-set eyes glinted. "Not even if it would enable you to
get rid of your own wife in perfect safety?"
"No."
"It's a wonderful plan. So simple...."
Horning cut him off with a short, decisive gesture. "I don't want to
hear it."
The man with Horning's face took one fast step forward. His head seemed
to draw down between his shoulders. "And I say you're going to hear it,
whether you want to or not!" he snapped harshly. He swung the gun in a
threatening arc. "I don't intend to have gone through all of this for
nothing."
* * * * *
Horning hooked his thumbs in his belt and met the other's cold eyes
with all the bravado he could muster. He said nothing.
"I merely propose that we switch wives," his counterpart clipped.
"Switch wives--!" Shock startled the words from Horning.
"Could anything be simpler? Here are two women, completely identical.
Both are stupid, both termagants in their own right. So, each falls
asleep tonight in her own world. In the morning, she wakes up in
another."
Horning twisted at his belt. Narrow-eyed, frowning, he stared at his
visitor. "But why--?"
The man's thin lips parted in a mirthless grin. "How would you feel
if, stupid and knowing nothing of transdimensional transit, you were
suddenly to awaken in a completely strange world? What would be your
chances of making a successful adjustment?"
"I ... I don't know...."
"Adjustment to environment is the key to integration of personality.
When anyone loses touch with his world, the background he knows as
reality, he can no longer adjust." Horning's counterpart paused. His
voice dropped a note. "Every plane has facilities to take care of such
unfortunates."
The skin along the back of Horning's neck prickled. "You mean ...
Myrtle would go mad?" he whispered hoarsely.
"That's what the psychiatrists would say, at least."
A new tremor shook Horning. Unsteadily, he made his way to the chair by
the desk and slumped into it.
His other self chuckled. "It's beautiful, isn't it? All you need to
do is call the authorities in the morning. They'll take Myrtle to the
nearest mental hospital for observation--and that's the last you'll
ever see of her."
Horning's collar was all at once too tight. His palms grew wet with icy
sweat.
His coexisting self leaned back against the light-loop's control
panel. The pistol hung loose at his side.
"We have an undetectable anesthetic in my world," he observed. "A few
drops of it on a handkerchief, pressed over your Myrtle's face tonight,
will make her sleep as soundly as my wife is sleeping over there." He
nodded to the still figure on the floor.
Horning scrubbed the sweat from his hands against his pant-legs.
Shivering, he ran his fingers through his hair.
"You'll be free to follow your research, wherever it leads you," his
counterpart murmured dreamily. "For me, I'll have my Myrtle's fortune
to console me." He laughed softly. "What could be simpler, or sweeter?"
Horning slumped deeper into the chair. He rubbed at his cheek; squeezed
his eyes tight shut and then opened them again. The skin across his
forehead seemed to draw tighter and tighter, like a band of steel,
till it was all he could do to keep from screaming aloud. He twisted,
shifted, slid down further.
His counterpart stretched. The dreamy look left the deep-set eyes.
"We're dawdling too long. It's time we got started." He straightened.
"Come on."
"No," said Horning.
The man from across the barrier between the parallel worlds half
turned, head tilted, brows suddenly knitting. "What--?"
"I said no," Horning answered through dry lips. "I'm not going to do
it."
* * * * *
The other's lean face went blank, incredulous. He came a step towards
Horning. "Do you know what you're saying, man? Would you actually pass
up a chance like this to rid yourself of that harridan you married?"
Horning shifted in his seat. He dodged the other's eyes, not speaking.
"But why? Why won't you? You'll never have another chance like this."
"I don't know why," said Horning. "Or ... maybe I do...." His voice
trailed off.
The other took a stand directly before him--feet spread apart, face
cold and rocky. "Don't give me that! We're really one--remember? I know
how you feel. You want to do it!"
The fury in the man's voice struck an answering spark in Horning. He
came up from the chair. "I want to--but I'm not going to! Now get out!
And take her"--he gestured towards the other's unconscious wife--"with
you!"
His counterpart seemed to grow suddenly taller. "When I'm ready to go,
I'll tell you!"
"You'll go now!"
"No!"
Horning started forward.
The other whipped up his gun. "I've come too far to quit now," he
clipped tightly. "If you're too much of a fool or a coward to go
along, then that's your bad luck. I'll handle things a different way."
His lips twisted. "Back up against the wall!"
For the fraction of a second, Horning hesitated. But the gun in his
alter ego's hand stayed steady.
Horning backed away.
"Maybe this way is better, after all," his counterpart said. "Maybe I
should have planned it like this from the start."
New lines of strain slashed his lean, sardonic face. The deep-set eyes
took on a light almost of madness.
Then--lightning fast; without warning--he pivoted. The pistol in his
hand made flat, clicking sounds. There was no report, no muzzle flare.
Three times he fired--straight at the limp form of his bound, drugged
wife.
Dust leaped from the plastic wrapper as the slugs smashed home. The
woman's body jerked convulsively.
Horning gave a hoarse cry and leaped forward.
His counterpart jumped aside. He hit Horning hard on the back of the
neck with the pistol.
Horning slammed to the floor. The room rocked about him.