voice call out: ‘Larsen, you idiot, what do you think you’re doing?’
It was Bayliss, leaning out of his bathroom window. Larsen stumbled, found his balance and waved Bayliss back angrily. Bayliss merely shook his head and leaned farther out, drying his neck with a towel.
Larsen retraced his steps, signalling to Bayliss to keep quiet. He was crossing the space between the garage wall and the near corner of Bayliss’s chalet when out of the side of his eye he noticed a dark-suited figure standing with its back to him a few yards from the garage door.
The double had moved! Larsen stopped, Bayliss forgotten, and watched the double warily. He was poised on the balls of his feet, as Larsen had been only a minute or so earlier, elbows up, hands waving defensively. His eyes were hidden, but he appeared to be looking at the front door of Larsen’s chalet.
Automatically, Larsen’s eyes also moved to the doorway.
The original blue-suited figure still stood there, staring out into the sunlight.
There was not one double now, but two.
For a moment Larsen stared helplessly at the two figures, standing on either side of the apron like half- animated dummies in a waxworks tableau.
The figure with its back to him swung on one heel and began to stalk rapidly towards him. He gazed sightlessly at Larsen, the sunlight exposing his face. With a jolt of horror Larsen recognized for the first time the perfect similarity of the double — the same plump cheeks, the same mole by the right nostril, the white upper lip with the same small razor cut where the moustache had been shaved away. Above all he recognized the man’s state of shock, the nervous lips, the tension around the neck and facial muscles, the utter exhaustion just below the surface of the mask.
His voice strangled, Larsen turned and bolted.
He stopped running about two hundred yards out in the desert beyond the edge of the apron. Gasping for breath, he dropped to one knee behind a narrow sandstone outcropping and looked back at the chalets. The second double was making his way around the garage, climbing through the tangle of old wire. The other was crossing the space between the chalets. Oblivious of them both, Bayliss was struggling with the bathroom window, forcing it back so that he could see out into the desert.
Trying to steady himself, Larsen wiped his face on his jacket sleeve. So Bayliss had been right, although he had never anticipated that more than one image could be seen during any single attack. But in fact Larsen had spawned two in close succession, each at a critical phase during the last five minutes. Wondering whether to wait for the images to fade, Larsen remembered the revolver, in the letterbox. However irrational, it seemed his only hope. With it he would be able to test the ultimate validity of the doubles.
The outcropping ran diagonally to the edge of the apron. Crouching forwards, he scurried along it, pausing at intervals to follow the scene. The two doubles were still holding their positions, though Bayliss had closed his window and disappeared.
Larsen reached the edge of the apron, which was built on a shallow table about a foot off the desert floor, and moved along its rim to where an old fifty-gallon drum gave him a vantage point. To reach the revolver he decided to go round the far side of Bayliss’s chalet, where he would find his own doorway unguarded except for the double watching by the garage.
He was about to step forward when something made him look over his shoulder.
Running straight towards him along the outcropping, head down, hands almost touching the ground, was an enormous ratlike creature. Every ten or fifteen yards it paused for a moment, and looked out at the chalets, and Larsen caught a glimpse of its face, insane and terrified, another replica of his own.
‘Larsen! Larsen!’
Bayliss stood by the chalet, waving out at the desert.
Larsen glanced back at the phantom hurtling towards him, now only thirty feet away, then jumped up and lurched helplessly across to Bayliss.
Bayliss caught him firmly with his hands. ‘Larsen, what’s the matter with you? Are you having an attack?’
Larsen gestured at the figures around him. ‘Stop them, Bayliss, for God’s sake,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t get away from them.’
Bayliss shook him roughly. ‘You can see more than one? Where are they? Show me.’
Larsen pointed at the two figures hovering luminously near the chalet, then waved limply in the direction of the desert. ‘By the garage, and over there along the wall. There’s another hiding along that ridge.’
Bayliss seized him by the arm. ‘Come on, man, you’ve got to face up to them, it’s no use running.’ He tried to drag Larsen towards the garage, but Larsen slipped down on to the concrete.
‘I can’t, Bayliss, believe me. There’s a gun in my letterbox. Get it for me. It’s the only way.’
Bayliss hesitated, looking down at Larsen. ‘All right. Try to hold on.’
Larsen pointed to the far corner of Bayliss’s chalet. ‘I’ll wait over there for you.’
As Bayliss ran off he hobbled towards the corner. Halfway there he tripped across the remains of a ladder lying on the ground and twisted his right ankle between two of the rungs.
Clasping his foot, he sat down just as Bayliss appeared between the chalets, the revolver in his hand. He looked around for Larsen, who cleared his throat to call him.
Before he could open his mouth he saw the double who had followed him along the ridge leap up from behind the drum and stumble up to Bayliss across the concrete floor. He was dishevelled and exhausted, jacket almost off his shoulders, the tie knot under one ear. The image was still pursuing him, dogging his footsteps like an obsessed shadow.
Larsen tried to call to Bayliss again, but something he saw choked the voice in his throat.
Bayliss was looking at his double.
Larsen stood up, feeling a sudden premonition of terror. He tried to wave to Bayliss, but the latter was watching the double intently as it pointed to the figures near by, nodding to it in apparent agreement.
‘Bayliss!’
The shot drowned his cry. Bayliss had fired somewhere between the garages, and the echo of the shot bounded among the chalets. The double was still beside him, pointing in all directions. Bayliss raised the revolver and fired again. The sound slammed across the concrete, making Larsen feel stunned and sick.
Now Bayliss too was seeing simultaneous images, not of himself but of Larsen, on whom his mind had been focusing for the past weeks. A repetition of Larsen stumbling over to him and pointing at the phantoms was being repeated in Bayliss’s mind, at the exact moment when he had returned with the revolver and was searching for a target.
Larsen started to crawl away, trying to reach the corner. A third shot roared through the air, the flash reflected in the bathroom window.
He had almost reached the corner when he heard Bayliss shout. Leaning one hand against the wall, he looked back.
Mouth open, Bayliss was staring wildly at him, the revolver clenched like a bomb in his hand. Beside him the bluesuited figure stood quietly, straightening its tie. At last Bayliss had realized he could see two images of Larsen, one beside him, the other twenty feet away against the chalet.
But how was he to know which was the real Larsen?
Staring at Larsen, he seemed unable to decide.
Then the double by his shoulder raised one arm and pointed at Larsen, towards the corner wall to which he himself had pointed a minute earlier.
Larsen tried to shout, then hurled himself at the wall and pulled himself along it. Behind him Bayliss’s feet came thudding across the concrete.
He heard only the first of the three shots.
Chronopolis
