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The only trouble, of course, was that whether the image bore his face or not, it wasn’t him, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why anyone would want to play such a practical joke. This had to be connected somehow with Loveless, not at all a pleasant thought. He began to read the article, a sensational account of a bank holdup in Omaha, and another anomaly struck him. Merchants Territorial Bank? But Nebraska was a state, had been for over a decade. And even though he wasn’t as familiar with Nebraska as with some of the other western states, he didn’t recall ever seeing this institution, or hearing of it. Voices sounded outside. He laid the paper face down on the bar and turned his head aside as a loud and unruly group pushed through the swinging doors of the saloon. He'd leave a coin for his drink, he thought, and get out of here as soon as the door was clear. To his dismay, however, he heard his name. "Gordon! Where the hell you been?" A burly bearded man with bad teeth and bloodshot eyes clamped a hand on his shoulder and swung him around. "West’s been looking all over for you! You're gonna get your ass whupped, for sure." A titter of laughter ran around the group, now seated at one of the large round tables in the corner. One of them called out, "That may not be all he does with your ass!" provoking another round of sniggers. Artie shook off the man's hand and swept a cold glance over the laughing faces at the table. But he was anxious to find Jim, and whatever this bunch was playing at, they apparently knew Jim–and recognized himself too. It might be another trap, but they didn't look like Loveless's typical goons, just a crowd of rowdies in from the trail. * * * He’d been following Jim, hanging back a discreet couple of hundred feet, when Loveless sprang his trap. He didn't see what happened to Jim, but the ground fell from beneath his boots and he landed heavily on his side in the dark, a long way down. He was never sure afterward whether he had lost consciousness or not. He had no specific memory of blacking out, but there was a vague sense of the passage of time, the kind of disorientation that one feels when coming out of a brightly lit interior space to find that it was later than one had thought, that the sun had set and the sky was dark. In any case, by the time he regained his feet and his wits and struck a match to look around, the mechanism must have closed, because he could see nothing above him except the dim shadows of a rock ceiling. Rock surrounded him, in fact–rough-hewn vertical walls about fifteen feet apart, and a damp rock floor that curved away left-handed into an invisible distance. The air was much colder than the surface temperature had been. A mine tunnel? But there weren't any mines around here, never had been. And mine shafts were never this wide–this was large enough to be a railway tunnel, though he could see no indication that track had ever been laid here. He glanced cautiously around him, wondering what might be lurking beyond the tiny flickering match flame. "Jim?" he called. No answer. He tried a different tack. "Dr. Loveless?" Only echoes replied. He obviously couldn't get out the way he'd come in, and nothing he could see before the match burned down to his fingertips suggested any other means of egress. The only difference between turning one way or the other was that there seemed to be a very slight uphill slope in one direction, suggesting that it might lead upward to the entrance of this mine, or tunnel, or whatever it was. So he walked up the slope in the profound dark. He walked slowly, hugging the right-hand wall. He had more matches, but the air was stale and musty, and he had no idea how far he would need to go. He'd feel his way along the corridor until he came to an intersection, he thought, or a chamber, or a door, or–something. Then he would light another match and reassess his options. He resolutely put away any thought that he was trapped. He felt as though he'd been walking forever, though, with only the echo of his own footsteps to keep him company, when he finally came to an obstruction. With other senses alternately dulled by the dark and heightened by the occasional odd sound, he had lost any notion of how long he'd been in the tunnel. The floor, though not smooth, had been relatively easy to traverse, but with no warning, he tripped over a rock, and fell heavily onto a pile of them. There had been a cave-in, he discovered, when with fumbling cold fingers he struck another match. The air seemed fresher here, and the match flame bent away to one side–not flickering, but clearly sensing a draft. He assessed the rockpile–a small mountain of dirt and boulders that reached higher than he could see–and decided it was safe to try climbing. He didn't really have much choice, as he couldn't determine whether the tunnel resumed its course beyond the cave-in. Climbing without a light was much more difficult than walking along a nearly level stone corridor without one. Only one match remained by the time he reached the top. He'd light a match, set it as high above him as he could reach, and climb up to it, over and over. But now the flow of frigid air was strong enough for him to feel it without needing the confirmation of the match flame, and the dark seemed not quite so profound as before. He heaved himself up one last time, thrust his arm up to locate another handhold, and found himself in the open, head and torso above ground, feet still balanced precariously on the crumbling edge of his last perch. His now out flung hands rested on the cold ground at waist level. There was still almost no light, but there was also no longer the subliminal sense of being confined. Air moved past him, the faint sounds of an ordinary night murmured and whispered around him, and through the tangled branches of the trees just visible overhead, he could see fuzzy points of starlight shining through a high, thin haze. He scrambled up the rest of the way, and sat, breathing heavily, against what felt incongruously like the side of a wooden building. The light of his last match confirmed that impression–a rough shack, the sort of structure often found near mines, with its door half open. Inside was dusty and heavily layered with mouse droppings, but otherwise empty and unoccupied. He stepped wearily up into the building, sat with his back against one wall, and went to sleep. He had no idea where he was, or what had happened to Jim, or what Loveless might have in mind for his next little surprise–he was under no illusion that he'd managed to get himself out of the tunnel on his own; if Loveless had put him there, Loveless had meant him to find this way out–but the endless walking, the strenuous climb, and the penetrating cold had sapped his energy to the point where he knew he had to sleep before attempting anything else. He woke, cold, stiff and thirsty, as dawn drowned the last of the stars above his refuge. The wind was blowing more briskly, swaying the tops of a hillside of white pines with a soughing sound. Away in the distance he saw a thread of silver. It could be a mighty river, seen from afar, or a much closer mere stream, but it was water. Not only was it refreshment, with the possibility of finding some wild foodstuffs, but with water came civilization. Even if it was only a creek, he could follow it downstream, and he'd surely come to someone's homestead, if not a village or town. Most disconcerting at this point were the discrepancies between this place, wherever it was, and his starting point. He'd been following Jim through the back streets of St. Louis in the last of the summer, on the day before the full moon. He'd emerged from the tunnel into a night so bereft of anything but starlight that it could only have been the night of the new moon, and on a chilly mountainside. He might easily have walked long enough for nightfall to have come on, but not for the hundreds of miles it would have taken to reach the nearest mountain, and he most certainly had not walked for half a lunar month. He paused, thinking back to the previous night’s stars. Had it simply been so late that the moon had already set? No, he had clearly seen the Little Dipper almost directly above, even through the haze, which meant that the light of the full moon should have been plainly visible. He put the paradox aside for the moment; it wasn’t something he could resolve immediately and other needs more urgently required his attention. He brushed himself off, and stumbled and slipped down the hillside toward that shining thread of water. Nothing grew amongst the close packed pines, but as the slope grew less steep, the pines gave way to maple, walnut, hickory and other hardwoods, and the long picked-over remains of blackberries and gooseberries. Poison ivy, too, he saw, skirting it carefully. The water turned out to be a fast-flowing stream about ten feet across, and through the dense foliage on the other side, he could make out a group of buildings. Exactly what they were he couldn’t say for sure–farmstead, village or perhaps a mill–but civilization it surely was. Following the water downstream, he found a narrow footbridge–just two logs with boards nailed on top–and crossed over to a definite wagon trail. He followed it back to what turned out to be a large cabin with a cluster of log outbuildings. Beside one of them, a rickety-looking pen held an enormous sow and her piglets. She rumbled menacingly when she saw him, and he stepped back quickly; not wanting to test whether the pen would hold her. Chickens scratched in the dusty yard, but no one answered his hail or his knock on the door. When he peered through a window, he saw only a minimal homesteader's interior: table, benches, soot-blackened hearth. He wasn't hungry enough to break into anyone's home for food, and it seemed likely that if he followed the trail on down the hill, he'd find somewhere he could purchase a meal–not to mention finding out where he was and how 15 days, at the very least, could have been ticked off the calendar without him noticing. It was a longer walk than he anticipated, and before he could do more than order a whiskey in the little saloon, he saw the newspaper. This wasn't quite a town he had come to–more like one of the watering places that might develop into a village, and perhaps one day a city. There was this single saloon, a general store, a farrier's shed, and a straggly row of houses. The stream widened out here into a shallow rocky ford where horses and wagons could cross easily, and from the mass of muddy hoofprints and wheel tracks on either side, it was frequently used. There were all the signs of traffic with larger towns downstream, and larger towns there obviously were: the newspaper had certainly not been printed in this tiny hamlet. "Where is West?" he demanded of the man seated nearest him. "I'm looking for him." "He's right here," said a voice behind Artie, a voice at once familiar and at the same time totally strange to him. He swivelled around to find that Jim had come silently through a curtained doorway at his back. "You're looking for me," Jim said, in that same flat, dangerous tone. "Interesting. I thought you'd be running away as fast as you could go, and here you are looking for me." What the hell kind of game was he playing, Artie wondered. "I was following you," he said slowly, deciding it would be best to stick to something resembling the truth. "Some kind of trap door dumped me down into a mine shaft. I hit my head, and I might have been knocked out for a while–I’m not sure. But I managed to get out, and then I started looking for you." Jim looked him over with something between incredulity and contempt. "I woulda thought you could come up with a better yarn than that," he observed. "Mine shaft? There aren't any mines around here." "There's the Old Hundred," one of the men at the table remarked. "It's been closed up fer years, though. Worked out." The others nodded, and one put in, "Didn't no one want to work it, anyhow. Men'd go up in there and never come back. The owner finally blasted shut the entry." Jim's expression had lost its immobile coldness. "That right?" he asked. "Why didn't anyone tell me about it?" There was a strained awkward silence at the table. "Didn't know you'd be innersted," one man finally said. "Maybe so, maybe not." Jim’s whole manner was at once more closed off than Artie was used to, and more casual, a pronounced Western twang in his voice, and far less military posture than normal. For someone who didn't enjoy playing a part, it was a remarkable performance. Artie was seeing, he thought, the man Jim might have been if he'd been born in the west instead of in a relatively civilized farming community in Illinois–or if he had stayed there instead of attending West Point, with its emphasis on gentlemanly culture. "I came down the mountain from an old mine shack," Artie said. "Like the kind of place they used to store picks and equipment. Hadn't been used in a long time, though." He was babbling, trying to communicate with this stranger in his friend's body, praying for any sign of recognition, however subtle. Jim turned back to him. "You'd have been better off to keep going," he said, with that cold note back in his voice. "Now you're back, though, you can make yourself useful." He jerked his head at the doorway. "I'm hungry." When Artie hesitated, unsure what was being demanded of him, Jim grabbed his arm, shoved him through the opening, and emphasized his intention with a kick to Artie's backside that sent him flying onto his face on the rough wooden floor. A roar of laughter erupted from the other room. Jim West, he thought grimly, if you didn't have a damn good reason for that, you're going to regret it very much. Jim sauntered in as Artie picked himself up. "What the hell are you up to?" Artie hissed at him. "And how did you get here?" He would have added, "And where are we, anyway?" but before he could get the words out of his mouth, Jim shoved him again. This time he staggered back against the iron cook stove on the back wall of the room, hot enough to elicit a squawk of surprised pain from him. He danced sideways to avoid further contact with it, and Jim rushed him again, slamming him into the corner. His head hit something behind him, and his vision swam. "What am I up to?" Jim snarled at him. He planted his big hand in Artie's shirtfront and hauled him back upright. "What the fuck were you thinking of, taking off like that?" He shook Artie hard. "Don't deny it! I tracked you halfway to Anniston. You hi-falutin’ yellow-bellied double-crosser!” He held Artie away from him, looking him over from head to toe. “Look at you! All dandied up like you was goin’ to a wedding!” He thrust his face into Artie’s again. “You listen, and listen good. If I'd told the others where you were headed, you'd be dead already, and if you can't come up with something believable in about ten seconds, I'll kill you myself!" This was getting far too peculiar. Jim didn't use that kind of language, if nothing else. And Artie was convinced he wasn't pretending any of the rest of it. Another of Loveless's tricks? Jim had proven that he couldn't be hypnotized, but on more than one occasion in the past, Loveless had administered some concoction that made one or both of them believe they were different people. Time for drastic measures here. "James!" he said intensely. "It's Artie! Your partner, for God's sake!" Jim's face went from anger to a complete and chilling lack of expression. "I told you not to ever call me that," he grated. "You don't remember things so good, do you? Maybe you need another lesson." He shook Artie like a rag doll, with astonishing strength. Artie had seen that strength exerted against other people, but had never felt it himself. Jim's willingness to turn it on him jolted him badly. "All right," he stammered, wanting only to reduce the level of hostility now. "I won't call you that any more." "Too late," Jim said softly. He thrust Artie into a squatting position, holding him there with no apparent effort even as Artie scrabbled to get away. With one hand twisted in the front of Artie's shirt, he used the other to loosen his belt buckle. He might have been a schoolmaster, Artie thought wildly, pulling off his belt to beat a recalcitrant youngster. The situation had gone beyond unnerving to terrifyingly inexplicable. This wasn't Jim, this man with Jim's face and Jim's voice. Or if it was, he'd been so changed by Loveless that he was no longer himself. What Artie needed to do, he realized far too late, was not to convince Jim of who he was, but to get the hell out of there. And it was far too late, he saw. Jim wasn't taking off his belt. He was undoing the buttons of his trousers. He shook Artie again, almost casually, as one might punish a dog. He was laughing softly, a sneering laugh, the more awful because it was still Jim's laugh, but twisted and vile. Jim had his buttons loose. He was reaching into his drawers. "No!" Artie croaked, hitting Jim's hand with all his force. He might as well not have bothered. He lashed out with one boot, trying to knock Jim off balance, or trip him up. It was like hitting a piece of stone statuary. Jim let him go long enough to backhand him across the mouth, and then hooked his fingers around one ear in an exquisitely painful grip. "Try that again and I'll cut your throat," he said pleasantly. He had Artie so off-balance that even had Artie been willing to risk his ear, there wasn't much he could have done. He was hunkered down on his haunches in the vee of the corner, Jim's legs shoved between his knees, Jim's crotch practically in his face. And now Jim was easing out his cock, already swollen. It rose and lengthened, as Artie watched in disbelief. "You know what to do," Jim said softly. "Do it good, and I may not kill you." Artie raised his eyes to Jim's face, and found no one there at all. Not the man he'd fallen in love with, certainly. Not the man for whom he would have performed this act with all the joy and pleasure in the world. He didn't know this man, but he opened his mouth and allowed the cock to be pushed in, and used the skills he'd learned in a hundred brothels and back streets to bring this stranger to climax. He dimly heard Jim's voice calling the men into the room, but kept his eyes tightly shut. Jim made no sound when he came. Not even a slight tremor gave him away. The only warning Artie had was that the cock swelled even more in his throat, and then he was choking on the flood of semen. He couldn't help but struggle in spite of Jim's still painful grip on his ear, but the fingers went away suddenly, and a heavy hand shoved his forehead back. His head hit the wall smartly, and he lost his balance and fell sideways on the floor. He could feel Jim's seed trickling from the corner of his mouth. When he opened his eyes, a ring of silent white-eyed men stood around them, and Jim was tucking himself neatly back into his pants. "He's mine," he said to the men, with no more expression than if he'd been speaking of something inanimate. No one answered, and Jim pushed through them and strutted back into the other room. Artie sat, shocked and stunned, against the wall, until one of the men said, "He told you to fix something to eat, didn't he?" It was only a reminder, though, Artie realized, not a threat. These men seemed as much Jim's captives as he was himself. He managed to get to his knees, and then to his feet. "I don't know where anything is kept," he said hoarsely. He'd had to swallow first, knowing the sound was perfectly audible to the others, and that they knew what he was swallowing. "Whaddya mean, you don't know–" one of the men began, but another one stopped him with a sharp gesture. "He got banged on the head," he said, not unkindly. "He don't know where he is yet. Jes' give him time." When Artie continued to looked around in confusion, he showed Artie the larder, and the root bin full of potatoes, turnips and onions. A collection of smoke-blackened pots already sat on the stove or hung from hooks on the wall. "I’m Tom, right?" the man said to him, with careful enunciation, as though Artie was a particularly slow child. “You know me now, dontcha?” "Right," Artie said dully. "Tom." He couldn't bear kindness just now. "I'll make a stew." "And biscuits," Tom said firmly. "You always make biscuits." That got Artie's attention. "What do you mean, 'always'?" he asked carefully. "Do you know me?" He remembered even as he asked the question that they had already addressed him by name. Tom chuckled. "You sure enough did get cracked on the head, din't you?" he asked. "Course I know you. You're Gordon. You're the gov'mint man." He laughed again, less pleasantly this time. "Or you was." "Tell me," Artie urged him. "I really don't remember anything." Tom gave him a quizzical eye, but shrugged. "That right, huh? Well, can't hurt to refresh your mem'ry." He paused, and then went on, "You was s'posed to be arresting us, see? But you decided you wanted in. You told West you could get him into any bank he wanted, no matter how good they had it locked up." "I did . . . what?" Artie asked in complete disbelief. Tom nodded. "Sure enough. One bank after another, got us into their vault. We was making money hand over fist." The pleasure left his face, though, and his features twisted. "But then you got nervy, or something, I guess. The next two places we hit, you said you couldn't get’em unlocked . Swore they had something new. West said he believed you. So we just started holding em' up in broad daylight. But now, see, they know what we look like. So we hafta move. We're on the run, 'cause the sheriff in Anniston’s got posters all over creation with our pitchers on 'em, and in the newspaper too. When you didn't show up for two days, West said you'd double-crossed him." He stepped closer to Artie, all civility leaving his face. "Is that what you did, Gordon? I didn't take you for a double-crosser." Artie shook his head. "I fell into a mine shaft," he insisted, truthfully for once. "I don't know how long it took me to get out–it was dark, and I stayed in the shack until dawn. And then I came straight here." Tom's bald recitation had so stunned him that he couldn't have made anything up if he'd had to. Jim West, a bank robber? And had been for quite a while, apparently. Nothing in their previous contact with Loveless had prepared Artie for something like this. Had he been drugged, completely unaware of the passage of time, for an extended period? Long enough for Loveless to establish Jim somehow as a criminal? Had he then been dumped back into the mine shaft, where he would think only a few moments had passed? And who had been posing as himself during that time, doing so good a job at being Artemus Gordon that these people really seemed to think that man was him? Tom was nodding, apparently mollified. "That's right," he said. "You did. Maybe you're not a double-crosser then." "Have you know West very long?" Artie asked. Perhaps he could tell roughly how long this had been going on. "Sure," Tom said easily. "He's my nephew. Known him all his life." He turned toward the doorway, leaving Artie in pole-axed stupefaction in the middle of the room. "Best get busy on that dinner," he said. "Jimmy gits ornery when he's hungry." Too overwhelmed with conflicting information to make any sense of it, Artie mechanically chopped onions, peeled potatoes and carrots, and beat together flour, salt, lard, soda and water for the biscuits. The only meat he could find was a smoked haunch of venison hanging outside the back door. He hacked off one end and set it to soaking in a pot of simmering water. His hands had been astonishingly steady to this point, but now, with nothing more to do until the meat softened, his numbed mind began to assert itself again, and he looked down at the knife in his hand as though he'd never seen either knife or hands before. With a flash of semi-hysterical humor, he wondered whether he'd fallen down a hole like the one in that odd book, Alice in Wonderland. But of course, Alice's adventures had been a dream. This was real, or at least, he thought it was. His throat was sore, and his jaw ached. Bile surged into his mouth. Oh yes, this was real. He couldn't find anything to roll out the biscuit dough or to cut it into rounds, so he settled for dropping it by spoonfuls into the boiling stew. If they didn't like that, they could kill him. Life seemed particularly unattractive at the moment in any case. He became aware of a presence at his back, and turned. Jim–no, West–stood in the doorway. "Smells good," he said casually. "Make some coffee too. You make good coffee." Artie jerked his head in silent assent, wanting only that this awful caricature of his friend and partner should go away. Instead, West came across the room to stand in front of him. "Tom says you don't remember anything," he said. "Is that so?" Artie nodded again, listening more carefully than he had done before. West's voice was raspy compared to Jim's pleasant tone, the enunciation sloppy, the vowel sounds more broad. Did that mean he truly was another person, some hideous imitation of Jim concocted by Loveless? Or was he actually Jim, but horribly twisted and changed by Loveless? Or . . . Artie put the thought down firmly, but it crept stubbornly back. Could there possibly be some other–his mind faltered, finding no words for the half-formed and utterly preposterous notion of a parallel reality where everything familiar to him existed in an opposite and negative corollary to that of his world. God, no. Alice in Wonderland was fiction, Lewis Carroll an imaginative writer of children's fantasy. Nothing like that could really happen. But the more he rejected the notion, the more probability it assumed. Nothing else solved all the paradoxes he’d observed. "Where did you go to school?" he asked suddenly, wanting to know just how far the resemblance to his Jim extended. He realized even as he did so that it was quite possibly a more personal question than this version of Jim West would allow. But West only shrugged. "Infant school in Illinois," he said. "Didn't have no more than that." He squinted up at Artie. "Don't need no more than that." The statement could have been cocksure, but it was said with the same unassuming self-confidence that Jim would have shown. They were more alike than he wanted them to be. "No, I guess you don't," Artie said with shaking lips. He turned away and looked around vaguely for the coffeepot and coffee. "Coffee's on the shelf," West said unexpectedly. "The pot's out on the bar." There was a moment's silence and then he added, "You really don't remember anything, then? You aren't just foolin?’" "I don't remember anything," Artie said woodenly. It was true, of course. He went out into the saloon, keeping his eyes averted from the other men, and retrieved the coffeepot from the end of the bar, along with a stack of half-empty mugs. When he returned to the kitchen, West had gone, in that eerie way he had of silently appearing and disappearing. They loaded up and cleared out after the meal, leaving behind all but the most essential personal possessions. At Tom's direction, Artie packed a camp kitchen in a blanket–stewpot, coffeepot and frying pan, and enough battered enamel plates and mugs to serve them all, knotting it tightly into a bundle that Tom secured to the back of a rangy pack horse. Another bundle held the tin of coffee, a sack of dried beans and another of hominy, the least rotten of the root vegetables, the remainder of the venison, and a side of bacon that had been hanging in the larder. It didn't seem like much with which to prepare meals for seven men, but the others seemed to take it for granted. Artie wondered whether his counterpart had been the official cook as well as the inspiration for vault-breaking. Oh, and the fearless leader's bed toy, evidently. The others had taken that for granted as well. West had given no further indication of his intentions in that area, but he shared nothing with anyone, it appeared. Even Tom, his uncle, maintained the same respectful distance as the other men. They rode up the narrow track toward the cabin Artie had seen, but before reaching it, broke away into what was little more than a footpath, concealed by the heavy brush that grew along that part of the trail. The path wound away and up into the steep hills, taking them farther and farther from where Artie had come out of the mine shaft. He realized he had never asked where they were, whether the little collection of buildings had a name. But he recalled hearing the name "Anniston." Anniston had a sheriff. It was probably also the source of the newspaper. He was sure he could find Anniston again. At the moment, his best option seemed to be following orders and staying alive. The evening was comfortable, the surroundings peaceful, and the horse he'd been assigned had an easy, rocking gait. He gradually relaxed his alert watchfulness and began to pay more attention to the quiet conversations going on around him. To his surprise, one of them seemed to focus on West's sweetheart, and it was quite obvious that the sweetheart was female. "Nancy’s gonna be sore as all get out," said one of the men, laughing softly. "West hasn't been home more 'n twice in six months, and here we are ridin' off into the night again." Artie had assumed that Jim's treatment of him indicated a preference for men, and that the others' casual acceptance meant sodomy was carried on openly in their presence. Now he wondered whether West's action was merely a symbol of dominance, of the victor's power over the vanquished. And being who he was, it was beyond him not to wonder how the other Artemus had felt about that. Had he merely submitted? Or had he formed some twisted attraction to West, some bizarre addiction to this man's body that kept him as close to West as Artie yearned to be to Jim? That seemed an uncomfortably likely possibility. If there was another Artemus, of course. If this was not just some nightmarish deception cooked up by Loveless to make Artie think he’d been transported to some other time and place. Nightmarish in either case, Artie thought grimly. But this was too detailed to be a staged affair. These men weren’t actors. They were genuine, too comfortable in themselves to be putting on a show for him. He’d spent enough years on the stage to know when someone was playing a role. If there was deception here, they were all deceived, and the mechanics of mesmerizing such a large group and investing each man with a unique set of personal memories were beyond even the resources of Miguelito Loveless. They were beyond his imagination, too, Artie thought. Loveless’s tricks were inspired by a huge intelligence, but they were dominated and limited by his desire to show off, to prove how much more clever he was than they. Stumbling onto a parallel reality and taking advantage of it was perfectly in line with his previous stunts. Manufacturing the appearance of such a place was not. Artie came back to himself to find that the conversation had flowed on around him. "If'n I had a girl like that," said the man just behind the first speaker, "I'd give up bank robbin,’ sure I would. Find me a job somewheres and save up to buy a piece of land." The first man choked back a guffaw, with a nervous look toward the head of the line where West rode. "You couldn't hold a girl like Nancy to no piece of land," he whispered back. "She's a rover, is Nance. I reckon she's about to the end of her patience with West, though. She's likely to rove on somewheres else before we're back." "Will it be safe for us to go back there?" Artie asked. He'd avoided conversation with the others as much as possible to this point, but that seemed like a reasonable question. "Sure," the man said promptly. "We'll hit a few banks around Denver, most likely, and when they think we've settled in there, we'll go back home. Hafta give the sheriff a while afore we go back, though, so folk'll think he's done run us off fer good." Artie considered that statement for a while and decided it meant the sheriff was somehow in collusion with West's gang. He wasn't happy to know he couldn't turn to the law for help, but he was at least relieved to find it out before making the attempt. They made camp at full dark, laying bedrolls around a minimal fire. Artie wondered whether West would demand his presence, but West ignored him. Tom seemed to have been delegated to tell him what to do–he prodded Artie to put some of the corn to soak in a pot of water, and mentioned that while they probably wouldn't take time for a regular breakfast in the morning, Artie would be expected to make coffee. Artie slept fitfully; the cold night air, the hard ground and the other men's snoring made it difficult to drop off into restful sleep. He was awake when a hand on his face made him start violently. "Be quiet," said a whisper in his ear, the voice unmistakable. "Get up." He managed to get to his feet and out of the circle of sleeping men without stepping on anyone, following the faint noise of West's movements ahead of him. The man was like a wraith, he thought, but then, recalling the meaty flesh in his mouth, revised the simile to "a demon." They walked in near total darkness–West must have eyes like a cat. He barely avoided falling over the man, realizing at the last second that West had stopped and was facing him. "Get it out," West said in a more normal, though still quiet, voice. When Artie hesitated, he said impatiently, "You know what to do." "What?" Artie asked stupidly, not sure whether it was West's cock or his own that he was supposed to get out, or whether it might be something else altogether. There was a small sigh in the darkness. "If I didn't know you well enough to tell when you're lying to me, Gordon, I'd slit your throat right now. I have a feeling you're going to be more trouble than you're worth in the long run. Damned if I know why I didn't just leave you behind. You couldn't of told nobody nothing, anyhow." He poked the front of Artie's trousers. "Get it out, you stupid prick. Get it out and get it hard." In numb silence, Artie undid his buttons and eased out his cock. Getting himself hard was another matter. Besides all the other impediments to arousal, his uncertainty as to what West intended would have been enough by itself to tame an erection. "Don't take all night over it," West said sarcastically. "Or I might decide not to wait until you've had your fun." Well, Artie thought, that seemed to eliminate most of his uncertainty. West was most likely going to fuck him. He wondered what West could possibly have for lubrication. Taking another man dry could be as uncomfortable for the taker as for the taken. There was lard in the food bundle–but then the purpose in his pleasuring himself became clear. West meant to use his seed to ease the way. Artie had done that before. It wasn't the best lubrication, especially when you hadn't been on the receiving end in more than a year. But it didn't look as though he was going to have much choice in the matter. He had acquiesced to this, he knew, when he rode out with them, when he slept through the night instead of trying to escape. He had acquiesced to it when he submitted to the fellatio–and in his mind, he knew he had submitted, regardless of it having been essentially forced on him. He pulled at himself, looking inside for some imagery he could use to bring this off. Jim's face, Jim's ass in the skin-tight trousers he affected, Jim's bare chest . . . but he clamped down hard on his rising erection. He would not bring Jim into this caricature of intimacy. He thought of a woman he had known who liked sex as rough as he cared to give it to her, and took out his fear and his worry for Jim and his growing concern that he'd never get back on her remembered face and body, shooting his seed into his cupped hand with an explosive grunt. West chuckled softly. "You're always quick on the draw," he remarked. "Get me ready now, and get your pants down." Artie complied, closing off his conscious mind to what would come next. To his surprise, though, West wasn't rough or hasty with him. The penetration hurt, as he'd known it would, but that was mostly because he hadn't done this in so long. West didn't ram into him; he went slowly, giving Artie a moment to adjust after each thrust, and when they were fully joined, he leaned forward, resting his face for a moment on Artie's bowed back. Then, pushing Artie farther forward so he was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, he fucked Artie with a measured, controlled and absolutely emotionless rhythm. As before, he made no sound whatever. One moment his cock pressed into Artie in a motion no different from any of the previous strokes, and the next, it swelled enormously and West was holding Artie hard against his pelvis. The cock throbbed strongly inside him, rasping across his prostate, and to his mortification, he felt himself growing hard again. Hot fluid jetted into him for an impossibly long time, and he set his teeth against the tender skin of his cheek and forced himself to breathe evenly. West's hand left his leg and fastened on his cock, inspecting it. "Want to go again, do you?" West breathed into his ear. "Do yourself again." West was still half-hard, enough for his presence in Artie's ass to add a very effective internal stimulation to the frantic stroking of Artie's hand. This time, Artie couldn't hold back the scenario his unfaithful mind supplied. It was Jim who had taken him, Jim's cock still inside him, Jim's mouth his to take when he finished and turned around. The climax was more powerful than the first, sending him to his knees in the soft forest duff. He felt West slip away from him, but the man's aura was so overpowering that when Artie managed to get to his feet and turn around, he was shocked to find himself alone. Ten days later, they had fallen into a pattern. West ignored him during the day, except for conversation necessary to the routine activities of the trail. But in the early morning, he came for Artie. Not every day. One morning, dawn brought a sodden driving rainfall, keeping them all under tarps and rain capes. On another, the horses woke them early, agitated with some unseen animal presence. By the time they had been quieted, the men were anxious for coffee, bacon and biscuits, and Artie's day was well under way. But on all the other mornings, West woke him with that same whispery touch against his cheek. He wondered a bit at West's circumspection. West had been perfectly happy to take Artie's mouth in front of his gang. But this was pleasure for West, he thought. The other had been a symbol of dominance. West didn't want his men to witness a display of his need–or its fulfillment. The realization was a small flash of insight into West's relationship with the other Gordon, not that it was much help in getting Artie out of here and back where he belonged. As they rode, he listened and asked questions, and slowly began to form a general picture of this place. If this was some drug-induced hallucination, it was a detailed and consistent one, he had to admit. The money was different, the political landscape skewed. Much of the southwest that he knew was still part of Mexico here. The country's capital was in Williamsburg, Virginia, as it had originally been in Artie's own universe. The War Between the States seemed not to have taken place, nor did he see any of the reasons for it. There were colored soldiers amongst the white ones near a frontier fort, and as many black faces as white in some of the small towns. Indian and Chinese, too, with no particular notice taken of them. His initial estimate of this place had been as a negative mirror of his own, but he had to revise that notion if slavery had never existed here, nor even the other more subtle kinds of racial narrow-mindedness. On the other hand, the countryside seemed . . . he couldn't put a name to his feelings about it. Poor, seedy, unthrifty. Cabins and outbuildings were sloppily constructed–half falling down sometimes. The people looked furtive, the animals thin and unhealthy. He hadn't seen the sun in a week, he realized one day; a thin gray haze hung over the world like a dirty curtain shutting out the light. When he commented on that to one of the others, the man gave him an odd look. "Maybe you been out in the sun too long," the man said pointedly. They rode into Farrell, a small mining community south of Denver in two's and three's, Artie with West and his uncle. West sent Tom and Artie, the oldest and best dressed of the gang, respectively, into the local miners' bank to open an account, and to have a look at the vault. Artie had been dreading this, having no idea what kind of special knowledge he was expected to have. But the lock was obviously amenable to explosives, if not to being opened manually, and West seemed content with his report. Artie had been pondering the ethics of his actions, and had come to the conclusion that he had little choice but to do what West told him until he found an opportunity to escape. What passed for "law" in the west–and in much of the rest of the country, it sounded like–was swift, most often fatal, vigilante action. Elected and appointed sheriffs there were, but they seemed to be on the side of the outlaws as often as not, from what Artie was able to pick up. He might have risked turning himself in had he thought that would get him anything but summary justice from the end of a six-shooter. The vault lock, when they visited the bank in the middle of the night, turned out to be surprisingly easy to open, needing neither dynamite nor esoteric knowledge. The tumblers clicked loudly and made a palpable thunk when he approached each number of the combination, and there was so much tolerance in the mechanism that even had the sequence of numbers varied by two or three digits on either side of the proper ones, he would still have been able to open it. Inside the vault, there were stacks and piles of coin and bills–and gold. Artie hadn't thought this area produced much gold, but there it was in nuggets, in sacks of gold grains, and in heavy refined bars. The men stood looking at it in stupefied amazement, until West told them brusquely to get busy and load it up. Artie was suddenly much more popular than he'd been before, and when they rode out of town in the early hours of the morning, having locked up behind themselves, more than one man clapped him on the back with new-found approval. They hadn't been able to carry half the gold with them, in fact, not having expected anything that heavy, but even so, each man had enough to make him wealthy. West beckoned him forward to the head of the line, and said casually, "You did good, Gordon. Guess that knock on the head didn't addle your brains too bad." Curious, Artie asked him whether that bank's lock was typical of the ones they had seen before. West nodded. "Most places, yeah. But there's a new type that you couldn't open, remember?" He glanced over at Artie. "No? Never mind. We probably won't come across it again anyway. Only place we ever saw one was around where that Loveless fellow stays." "Dr. Loveless?" Artie asked, astonished. "He's here?" He realized as the words came out of his mouth that there was no reason for there not to be another Loveless, just as there were alternate versions of himself and Jim. But perhaps this Loveless was a different one. "He's a . . . little man?" Artie asked. "A scientist? He tried to kill you and me?" "Little, sure," West said. "Didn't never try to kill anybody, though, not as I know. He's kind of a tinkerer, they say. Likes to build things. I heard he come up with a new kind of lock that nobody could open, but I didn't believe it until you tried. Only way we could get anything out of that place was to hold it up." "Why didn't you just go somewhere else?" Artie asked, though he thought he probably knew the answer. Sure enough, West gave him a cold stare. "When I go after something, no half-pint jackass is gonna stop me, even if he does have a seven-foot sidekick with a Frenchie name." Tom, who was riding behind West, sniggered coarsely. "Now he don't have his helper no more, he won't be much trouble to us." "What happened to Voltaire?" Artie asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. "Shot him," West said unemotionally. He might have been speaking of killing a rat or a snake. Artie shivered, thinking of West's hands on him, his big cock thrusting inside, his inhuman strength. He realized that his attitude toward West had softened in the last hours, eased by the open approval and by West's greater willingness to talk to him. He reminded himself one more time that this man was not Jim. Which brought to mind again the even more horrible prospect of where exactly was the Artemus Gordon of this country? Had their own Dr. Loveless managed to spirit him into Jim's world? What he might say or do to Jim was a constant murmuring anxiety in the back of Artie’s mind. Gordon would certainly expect Jim to engage in sexual relations with him. My God! Artie thought for the dozenth time. Loveless could hardly have devised a better way to break up the partnership. The Gordon of this place might be cunning enough to keep his head down and his mouth shut until he figured out what had happened. He was Artemus Gordon, after all, Artie thought grimly. But sooner or later his relationship with his own James West would surely come out–in discussion, if not in some overt physical approach. There was some emotional bond between the two of them, he was sure of that, and this country's Gordon obviously wasn't used to suppressing his attraction to West, as Artie was. By the time Artie got back, he'd be lucky if Jim would ever speak to him again, much less agree to work with him. If he got back, of course. He was certain he could locate the old mine shack again, and the hole leading down into the tunnel, but where had he fallen into it to begin with? He'd been dazed enough from the fall that he hadn't thought to mark the location. Even if he hadn't been somewhat disoriented, it might not have occurred to him to take any particular notice of the place. He'd been focused on finding the mine entry, sure that he must come out not far from where he'd fallen in. He was so deep in his dark thoughts that he missed what West was saying to him. "What?" he asked stupidly, hearing his name spoken sharply. "I said," West repeated sarcastically, "how did you know the giant's name? I thought you'd forgotten everything." "Not–everything," Artie said cautiously. "I can recall bits and pieces. I remember Loveless's and Voltaire's names, but that's about all. I don't remember much about them." West was still looking at him with suspicion. "You remembered he was a little runt." Artie shrugged dismissively. "And I remembered that Voltaire was a giant." He stared West down. "I remembered you." West guffawed. "You did, that's right!" He kneed his horse closer to Artie's. "Hard to forget me, huh?" Artie said, with no inflection whatever, "Hard to forget a giant." West blinked at him, and Artie wondered whether he was evaluating the statement at its face value, or had heard the possible sexual innuendo. West's face hardened for a moment, but then, surprisingly, he looked down, his thick lashes sweeping over the brilliant eyes. He said nothing, but when he glanced up again, there was an odd indefinable pleasure in his face. A second later, it was gone, and West was pushing his mount ahead to take the point position again. More disturbed at this apparent delicacy than with any of the casual callousness West had shown up to now, Artie let the others ride on past him until he took up his usual place at the end of the line. There had been genuine feeling in West's face, and Artie didn't want to see it or know about it. The cruelty, the arrogance–they served to remind him how different this man was from Jim. To see an expression he might have found on Jim's face was more than his flayed emotions could handle. Even worse, it prompted the disturbing question of what he might have done if he’d found a different West here, a man more like Jim, but with his own sexual inclinations. Would he have chosen to stay? Would he have abandoned his own Jim and clung to a more palatable version of him? Was it the specific Jim of his own world that Artie desired, or would some other one do as well, if he returned Artie’s feelings? He was afraid to examine the possibilities too closely, and thanked Providence one more time that West was as different from Jim as he was. They rode another twenty miles to the north and west before striking the second bank vault. It was as flimsily protected as the first, and took as little time to penetrate, but yielded only a small stack of bills and coins. There was a substantial amount of negotiable paper, but West shook his head when the men suggested taking it. “Too much trouble to change,” he said. “Too much risk, and you never get the face value.” He was correct, of course, but Artie could see the disappointment in everyone’s faces at the minimal haul. He was also distinctly uncomfortable with the sharp look he’d gotten from the officer who had opened an account for him and given him a look at the vault. He suspected his face had become too well-known, even hundreds of miles away from the gang’s primary area, and that the next bank he entered might become a trap for him. When they were well away from the town, settled in a remote arroyo for the rest of the night, he brought up his concern–and his solution for it–to West. “I think I ought to disguise myself before I go into a bank again,” he suggested. “If I could get my hands on some ladies’ face powders, I could make myself look different every time. I’m afraid someone has figured out that wherever I show up, the bank gets broken into.” West considered it. “Can you make yourself look different enough just puttin’ stuff on your face?” he asked, clearly not much impressed with the idea. “Ah’d lahk to open mahself up a bank account with this here gold dust mah daddy left me,” Artie drawled, without hesitation. “And ah’ve got more where thayet came from.” West laughed delightedly. “I never knew you could do that! Hey, boys, come here and listen to this!” He was like a child with a new toy, Artie thought, after demonstrating a variety of accents, facial expressions and poses. He made himself into an old tramp, a mincing Eastern greenhorn, an exaggerated Mexican with a huge imaginary sombrero, and a lisping Chinee. West guffawed at each new characterization, as though he’d never seen anything like it before. Artie had to declare himself out of ideas before he was allowed to stop. After that, no one objected when he made occasional forays into general stores and emporiums. He couldn’t find theatrical makeup–no grease paint or the intensely colored stick rouge and pots of eye color he was accustomed to. But he’d always been able to make good use of what came to hand, depending as much on expression, posture and subtle variations of his voice as on actual disguises, to make people think they had seen someone other than himself. Even safely disguised each time, an undercurrent of unease and anxiety continued to build in him. He felt increasingly out of place, as though he ought to be watching over his shoulder for danger. At first he wondered whether his favor with West was causing resentment among the other gang members, but he could find no difference in their treatment of him. They appeared to be completely unperturbed about his continued apparent lapses of memory, or his frequent need to have explained what was obvious to them. In different circumstances, he might have been fascinated with the dynamics of this country’s culture. It seemed to have few of the extremes he’d grown up with. Even the weather was different. He learned with judicious questions that the calendar stood in late October now, which meant–counting the still inexplicable loss of those fifteen days–that he had been here for approximately ten weeks. But the temperatures remained close to what they had been when he first arrived. When he asked when snow was expected, he found that several of the men had never seen it, and that it was uncommon in this part of the country. The constant overcast moderated the swing in seasonal temperatures, he thought. He’d become accustomed to the clouds finally, though he still badly missed the sun. The colorless skies seemed almost metaphoric for the lassitude, the lack of vitality, that permeated everything. It wasn’t just the locks that were shoddily constructed: the banks themselves seemed thrown together with no consideration for aesthetics and not much for structural design. Dust lay thick on store shelving, the goods were of inferior quality, people’s clothing was nondescript and fit poorly. And no one seemed to notice, much less to care. His few cautious questions about the rest of the world didn’t provide much information, though he did learn, to his surprise, that the concept of war seemed nearly unknown. The men spoke of “barbarians in the East” who conquered their neighbors, but without the conviction of certain knowledge, much as a lazy schoolboy might speak vaguely of Mongols and Huns. The American Revolution had never taken place here, and Queen Victoria reigned over the New World as well as of much of the old. Artie’s questions about standing armies drew blank stares, as though no one had ever contemplated the notion of a professional military force. It was hard not to conclude that the general lassitude discouraged war as much as it did more benign activities. He asked once why none of them, save West, carried a firearm during the infrequent robberies, and got astonished looks in reply. “Why, someone might get shot!” Tom said, as disapproving as if Artie had uttered some blasphemy. “You wouldn’t want no one to get hurt.” “Is that why no one has taken a shot at us?” Artie persisted. “We’re stealing their property! You’d think someone would be upset about it.” “If they ain’t smart enough to keep us from taking it, then they deserve to lose it,” West put in. “They know that.” “It’s like a game, then?” Artie asked. “Our wits against theirs? If I’d worked hard to earn my fortune, and someone stole it from me, I wouldn’t think that was mere sport.” An uncomfortable silence greeted that declaration. West’s face forbade additional comment, and Artie dropped the subject. Whatever the eccentricities of this place, life went on and society functioned, even if with lackluster enterprise. It wasn’t up to him to rearrange their priorities. Still, the feeling persisted that some balance was slowly tilting. On the surface, events continued much as they had for weeks. They would break into a bank vault, vanish into the mountains, lie low for a couple of days, and then cautiously proceed toward another town. On rare occasions, they stayed in a rooming house or a stagecoach waystation, enjoying the luxury of beds and hot baths, but West kept them moving almost constantly, and toward unpredictable points of the compass, never hitting two towns in the same direction. He employed other ruses as well. Sometimes they would ride into town singly, sometimes in twos and threes. Sometimes they broke into two groups in the morning, and met at some pre-arranged point that evening–West leading one group, with Artie always included in it, and his uncle leading the other. They changed horses regularly, whenever West found a good animal for sale, or could barter one of their current mounts for another. Much to Artie’s relief, West abandoned the holdups as too risky. If Artie couldn’t open a vault, they simply bypassed that bank and tried another. They never took cheques or negotiable paper, only bills, coin and gold. West was beginning to pass up even the bills, fearing–he told Artie privately–that some identifying mark might be placed on them. Gold dust, nuggets and coins were his preference. Whenever their saddlebags grew so heavy that they couldn’t carry more, Artie would be sent into Denver in his best businessman’s disguise to deposit the money or gold in the largest bank in the city. West kept a detailed account of each man’s share, and they seemed surprisingly trustful of his figures. One evening, as they sat around the fire before a rickety sheepherder’s lean-to, West said abruptly, “It’s time we headed back. Getting risky to stay in one area so long.” A palpable tension seemed to flow out of the group, and Artie realized that they had all been on edge. Tom said, “It’s got to where any stranger gits a real close look. Time we went home.” West glanced around the ring of faces. “We all agreed, then? Gordon?” Artie nodded firmly, but then asked doubtfully, “Back where we started, you mean? Near that place where I fell into the mine shaft?” “Hatcher’s Creek,” Tom said. “Funny how you remember some things and not others.” It could have been said with suspicion, but by now Artie had made them rich, and no one was inclined to question his occasional little oddities. He just shrugged. “Aggravating, that’s what it is.” The group fell quiet again, but he felt West’s eyes on him, and when he glanced up, West jerked his head toward the dark outside. Artie stood, mumbled something about taking a piss, and picked his way through the others. He relieved himself, as he’d said he would, but then, seeing no sign of West, walked slowly around to where the horses were tethered, finding their warm sleepy bulk a comfort. West was clearly a good judge of horses, but they weren’t a passion for him, as they had been for Jim. For some perverse reason, the horses brought Artie closer to Jim, as though he could reach out through whatever vastness of time and space separated them and hear Jim’s voice murmuring softly to his mount as he brushed him and combed his mane. He stood with his head bowed against the withers of his own horse, waiting for West to make his presence known. The sound of his voice at Artie’s back was no surprise, but the words definitely were. “What you done with my Gordon?” “Huh?” was all Artie could get out, and he hoped it sounded convincingly stupid. He’d been lulled into carelessness, he thought furiously. Somehow he’d given himself away, and he didn’t even know what had tipped West off. “What on earth are you talking about?” “Take off your shirt,” West told him, with that same flat dangerous voice as in the beginning, and Artie knew, with despair in his heart, what had betrayed him. The other Gordon must not have a tattoo. He’d known West was watching him one evening recently, as he relaxed gratefully into the steaming water of a very welcome bath. But he’d assumed West was eyeing some other part of his anatomy, and it had occurred to him suddenly that his other self might not be circumcised. But the prickle of fear had seemed unjustified. All the encounters with West had been in the dark, and West had never paid much attention to the details of his anatomy in any case.. He’d never given a thought to the tattoo. “We–we’re twins,” he said hurriedly, fumbling for something, anything, that might put off this new danger. “He got tired of running. He said I should take his place, if I wanted to make a lot of money.” “Twins!” West said incredulously. He gave a sarcastic snort. “Well, that’s one I ain’t heard before. If that’s really so, how about you tell me how you got here, and he got gone?” “He used to write to me, “Artie said, making it up as he went along. “He sent a telegram to where I was living, said to meet him if I was interested . But I got lost trying to find him, and my horse stumbled and threw me. When I tried to get up, the ground just fell out from under me, and I woke up at the bottom of that mine. I told you the truth about that.” He paused, scrambling furiously for something that sounded plausible. “I don’t know where he went. I figured that when I didn’t show up where he said to meet him, he just took off.” Inspired, he added, “Maybe it was him you were tracking after all.” In the flicker of light from the fire, Artie watched West digest that, and thanked all the gods he knew that he had embroidered on the truth as little as possible. “It does explain some things,” West said finally, obviously not fully convinced, but with less doubt in his voice than Artie had feared.. “How you knew some things and not others. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. Every time I started to wonder about you, you’d do something so like him that I couldn’t see how you could be someone else.” “He told me a lot about– “ Artie hesitated, as though unwilling to divulge how much he had known. “About the banks, you know. He told me how he got the locks open.” “He tell you how it was with us?” West asked, a not unexpected question. “You and him, you mean?” Artie asked shortly. “Yes, he told me that too.” There was a long silence, and then, to Artie’s surprise and great discomfiture, West said awkwardly, “I was pretty rough on you at first.” Artie looked away, at a total loss for what to say. He did not want this James West’s regard, yet he could not say anything that might prompt further distrust. “He said you weren’t a–a fancy fellow,” he said finally, hoping “fancy” had something of the same flavor here as in his own place. “No kissing or soft solder.” Too late, he realized that “soft solder,” as a slang term for endearments, might itself not be known here, but West nodded his head as though satisfied. “He woulda liked that,” West said. “He woulda liked kissing. But that mush–I told him to keep that for the ladies.” He touched Artie’s arm. “Where’d you get the tattoo?” “It was a dare,” Artie said carefully. “He bet me I wouldn’t do it, and I did. Cost him ten dollars.” West threw his head back and laughed. “I like that! Served him right. A man hadn’t ought to bet with his brother.” He laughed again. “I think I like you better’n him, if it comes to that. What’s your name? Your census name, I mean?” “Cen–“ Artie started to ask what he meant, and then realized it must be a reference to his Christian name, another of those odd differences between this place and his own. “Oh, uh, my name’s . . . Arthur. But I don’t use it. Gordon’s enough for me.” West nodded. “Just as well. That’s how the others know you.” He eyed Artie for a moment without speaking, and then went on, “Best you don’t say anything about this, right?” Artie nodded, and moved as though to walk back to the fire. But West gripped his arm hard. “We aren’t finished here. Where’s your brother now? You heard from him?” Artie said impatiently, “No, I told you I don’t know where he is. What we planned was that he’d go back to San Francisco and take my place there. We used to switch around like that a lot when we lived back East. Nobody ever knew.” West laughed softly. “That’s a regular funny show, that is.” But his face turned serious and he stepped closer to Artie, pushing him back against the bunched horses. “We’re still not finished. What did you think I called you out here for?” “You wanted to fuck me, I expect,” Artie said steadily. “Isn’t that usually what you want?” “I was gonna kill you,” West said, without inflection, all his old menace back in full force. “If you didn’t have some good explanation for who you were, I was gonna fuck you, and then I was gonna kill you. You’d never have seen it coming.” Artie stared him down. “Do it then,” he grated. “I’m tired of playing games with you.” He was, indeed, weary of it all. He had little hope of ever getting back to his own country, little hope of seeing Jim again. He felt drained, spiritless. To his amazement, though, West blinked, and then backed away a step. “Come out here,” he said. “Out of the light.” He turned his back on Artie and walked down the slope to the edge of the creek where the horses had watered, and along its bank for several steps. Artie followed carefully in the dim light, wondering what he was up to now. Like his own Jim, West could flit from one persona to another in half a heartbeat–jocular one moment, deadly the next. West pushed aside the low-hanging branches of a willow and beckoned Artie closer to him. Under the tree, there was almost no light at all. “You haven’t sucked me since that first day,” West said. Artie could hear his hands at his buttons. “I can still see your face. You didn’t know what the hell was coming, did you?” “No.” He took Artie’s wrists, finding them unerringly in what seemed like pitch black darkness to Artie. His hands like manacles, he forced Artie to his knees. “Do it,” he said. Artie couldn’t see his cock, but the scent of the man was strong and near. The cock bumped his mouth, and he opened his lips automatically. “You like to kiss?” West asked him, almost inaudibly. “Tell me, you like to kiss?” “Yes,” Artie breathed. “I do.” “Kiss that then. Show me how you kiss.” Jim, forgive me, Artie said to himself, though he prayed Jim would never know what he wanted absolution for. He gave West what he had wanted to give Jim all the years they had been together, and had never dared to offer. He teased the moist head between his lips, drew it into a long wet slurp, pressed kisses all around the slit. His heart breaking, he used every trick he knew to enhance and draw out West’s pleasure, pulling back every time the man began to breathe heavily, and noting with grim satisfaction that West was unable to hold back his reaction to the stimulation this time, as he had always done before. Artie sucked the cock deep into his throat, and heard a whimper from West. Once more, and again, he drew back and sucked it strongly in, and West uttered a choking groan and ejaculated so forcefully into him that Artie almost gagged. He leaned back and released the softening cock, and West sank to the ground beside him. When West had his breathing under control, he said, “Tell your brother he don’t need to come back. You’re better’n he ever was.” Artie flinched away from him. “Are you through with me?” he asked, hearing the ice in his voice and not bothering to disguise it. To his surprise, there was a soft chuckle in the dark. “That’s what I like. You’re a man. Your brother woulda been hanging all over me wanting to know if he done it good. Yeah, go turn in. Tell Tom I said to douse the fire. We don’t need it for the heat, and you can see it for miles on this hilltop. Go on, now.” Artie relayed the instructions, yanked his saddle and bedroll away from the light, and lay down with his back to the others. Talk had already been subdued when he returned, and it fell silent now. The men knew something had happened between him and West. He didn’t know whether their restraint came from sympathy or contempt, and he didn’t care. The sharp grief of loss pierced him, and he lay silent long into the night, pushing away the persistent images of the train, and Jim, and their life together. Even without the intimacy he longed for, Jim’s presence had been a gift–the brother he’d never had, the family he’d turned his back on years ago. He could suppress his desire for Jim’s body most of the time, basking instead in the generosity of spirit that Jim bestowed so freely on him. To his disgust, he felt his eyes fill and overflow. He sat up, meaning to pull out his pocket handkerchief, and in the otherwise dead silence of the night, heard a sound that should not have been there. A muted whisper, the faint scuffle of someone’s boot. One swift glance around the dim clearing showed six blanketed mounds–everyone but he and West lay where they had been sitting earlier. He flung himself up, yelling incoherently, and the night exploded into shouts and gunfire. The horses shrilled in terror, and from farther down the hill he heard the wild neighing of their attackers’ horses. Shadowy forms thrashed and grappled with each other in the faint light. It was almost impossible to tell friend from foe, and after being knocked down twice, he caught up a brand from the embers of the fire and laid about him with it, hitting anything that moved, his only motive to keep from being struck himself. For a few moments, he managed to keep a clear area around him, but just as he began to work his way toward the horses, something cracked him on the skull. His vision swam, and before he could clear his head, something else hit his shoulder very hard and he went down, striking his head again and sinking, like a drowning man going under, into unconsciousness. “Gordon . . . “ The voice begged him to wake up, though the only word it uttered was his name. “Gordon,” it said again, blurred and full of pain. He opened his eyes, blinking uncertainly. The sun was up, diffused as usual by the high haze. Silence surrounded him. He turned his head, ignoring the wave of nausea the movement produced. He was sprawled in the now cold and scattered ashes from the fire. A dead horse lay just beyond him, Tom’s mount. “Gordon,” came the almost inaudible plea again. He pushed himself up unsteadily, ignoring the pounding in his head and the bile in his stomach. Beyond the horse lay West, bare-headed and blood-soaked. Artie lurched over and knelt next to him. “Were you shot?” he asked, his voice hoarse and shaky. West lay on his side with one hand against his stomach. His legs were drawn up, and blood ran slowly between his fingers. Artie pulled his hand away, and blood flowed heavily away from West’s body from the hole in his abdomen. “Oh my god,” Artie breathed. There was no help for this, nothing besides competent trained medical intervention, not to be had for fifty miles, if it was that close. He dropped to the ground and gathered West into his arms. “Gordon . . . “ The voice was weaker now. “I’m right here, West. Right here. I’ll stay with you.” He was babbling, saying anything to fill the silence. “Tom?” “I don’t know. I don’t see him. His horse is dead, but I don’t see him anywhere.” Artie glanced around. “McGregor is dead. Chester too. I don’t see any of the others.” “Wentworth,” West said, or something that sounded like that. With great effort, he added, “Boun’y hunter.” Artie took another and more detailed look around their campsite. “Our saddlebags are gone,” he said. “They were after the gold and the money, not us.” “Right,” West breathed. “Knew they were. . . following us. Didn’t think they’d got . . . so close.” His breathing was stertorous, his skin cold. “Jim,” Artie said helplessly, unable to separate his Jim and this Jim West in his mind. “Oh, god, Jim, I can’t do anything for you.” West opened his eyes and looked up at him. “Jimmy,” he whispered. “Y’always wanted t’call me Jimmy. Useta hate it so much. Tha’s why I was so mean to you. S’okay, I don’ hate it any more.” His speech was becoming more slurred. “Jimmy,” Artie said, with tears running down his face. “Jimmy, I can’t help you. I can’t stop the bleeding.” “I know. Jus’ hold on to me.” He pulled West closer, feeling the life ebbing out of him. The likeness to Jim was more pronounced than ever, and all the times he’d held Jim and thought he was dying crashed down on him at once. This man had been arrogant, cruel and brutal, yet in some essential way, he was the same James West that Artie loved. And he was dying. Artie was going to lose them both–West on this bleak wind-swept hill, and Jim far, far away where Artie might never find the way back to him. West looked up at him with eyes going dull. “I don’ mind if you kiss me,” he whispered, and Artie, shaking violently, bent and kissed the cold lips. A last sigh touched his mouth, and he was holding a corpse. He sat there cradling the dead James West in his arms until the sound of footsteps penetrated the haze in his mind, and he looked up to find Timothy, the youngest of the gang members, standing over him, knowing the grief and tears must show on his face, and uncaring. “Is he dead?” Tim asked. He had a long bullet graze down the side of his face, and he looked bruised and shaky. “Yes.” “You all right? Artie let his burden slip out of his arms. “I’m all right. Something hit my head and knocked me out, that’s all.” He rolled over to hands and knees, and with Timothy’s help, got to his feet. “We need to bury them.” “Don’t have nothing to dig with,” Timothy said heavily. “And it’s mostly rock here anyway. Not enough dirt to dig a proper grave.” “We’ll make rock cairns for them then,” Artie said doggedly. He wasn’t sure why it mattered. He was free to leave, free to go back to Hatcher’s Creek and look for the mine shaft, free to go home if he could figure out how. Burying a man who had turned his life upside down was an unjustifiable risk, a waste of time. The bounty hunter and his people might come back to make sure they’d left no witnesses behind. Wild animals might attack them; Artie had seen many more here than in his own country. They were on foot now, with no food, no water but what they might find along the way, and in Artie’s case, at least, no sense at all of where they were. No blankets against the night’s cold, no guns unless they found one that someone had dropped, no spare ammunition. It was unconscionable to take time to bury the dead, but he did it anyway. Timothy muttered a non-stop litany about the labor, the expenditure of time, the likelihood of scavengers being attracted by the odor, and anything else that came to mind, but he stayed with Artie and helped him finish. McGregor, Chester and West lay in the clearing, close by. Tom’s body was down the hill by the creek, and stiff with rigor mortis by the time they located it. Robbins, the oldest of them and a hard, taciturn man, was nowhere to be found, and nor was his horse. Timothy and Artie looked at each other, the inescapable conclusion hardly needing to be voiced. He had betrayed them. “He wasn’t never really one of us,” Timothy said finally. “He said he and Tom used to ride together, like they was friends, but Tom said he didn’t hardly know him.” After a moment’s pause, he added a bit defensively, “West said he was good with the horses.” Artie nodded. “Doesn’t matter much now. He’s gone.” He thought of something, though, and said with grim humor, “If it’s any comfort to you, they couldn’t have gotten much in the way of loot from us. Only what we took from that last bank. Most of what we had is in the bank in Denver, and they can’t get to that. I’m the only one who can withdraw that gold..” “He could break in,” Timothy said. “He used to watch you real close when you was gettin’ the locks open. I noticed that, but I didn’t really think nothin’ about it.” “Not that bank,” Artie said with satisfaction. “It’s got one of Dr. Loveless’s fancy new locks. Only the account holder can get that money and gold. You’re going to be a very rich man, Timothy.” Surprising him, Timothy said, “Chester had a woman and a little boy. We oughta give them part of it. And you oughta get more than half, ‘cause you did most of the work to get it.” “I don’t want any,” Artie said, but reconsidered. With money, he would have the freedom to move about without attracting suspicion, to dress appropriately, to buy a really good horse. Money would help him get home. “Well, just enough to get me back home,” he amended. “You can have the rest. I’ll trust you to see that Chester’s family gets a share.” Timothy nodded slowly. “I’ll do that. I think Tom had a sister too. If’n I can find her, I’ll give her some.” They carried West to the top of the hill, overlooking the stream, and piled the last of the rocks around his body. I ought to say something, Artie thought, struggling with his feelings. But what he ought to say escaped him entirely. He could hardly eulogize a bank robber and a murderer. The Christian forms of benediction were unfamiliar to him, and probably to Timothy as well. Kaddish was inappropriate. It was impossible, in fact. They needed to move on and quickly. In the end, Timothy said it for him. “You cared about him, didn’t you?” he asked awkwardly. “I know he warn’t very nice to you, but I’m sorry he’s gone.” “Yes,” Artie said, his voice choking. “He wasn’t a good man, but I cared about him.” It wasn’t much of a goodbye, but it was all he had in him to give. They stood for a moment longer, looking down at the mound of rock, and then Timothy sighed and turned away. “Best we get moving,” he said. “It’s late enough as it is.” They spent one chilled, sleepless night in the open, too weary to go on even if there had been sufficient moonlight for it, and one night in the shelter of a rough lean-to they built of cedar branches. They found water, but nothing to eat. As dark fell on the third night, Artie felt as though he could hardly go on. Timothy too seemed despondent and listless. They sank down against an outcrop of rock that drained what little heat was left in their bodies, and Artie wondered whether they might just freeze to death right there. He tried to think of what Jim would do in such circumstances. Jim wouldn’t just give up. He’d think of something; he always thought of something to save them–and then Timothy grabbed his arm, and he sat up and looked where Timothy was pointing. A yellow light flickered down the slope from them, perhaps half a mile away.“Is it a campfire, you think?” Artie whispered. “Naw. Lamp, or maybe a candle. Most likely a lantern. I been watchin’ it fer a couple of minutes and it ain’t got no bigger nor smaller, nor moved, either. It’s a lamp in someone’s winder.” They pushed themselves up with renewed vigor and moved carefully down the hill toward the light. As they came closer, the trees thinned out and the barely discernible track they had been following earlier turned into a definite path. A cabin stood before them suddenly, looming up out of the darkness, and a dog began to bark with fierce and unmistakable intent. They both jumped in alarm, but after a moment, it became obvious that the dog was inside the building. “Someone out there?” came a man’s voice. “Sing out, or I’ll turn Tug loose on ya.” “We’re lost!” Artie called, before Timothy could reply. “Our horses ran away and we’ve been walking for days!” Wouldn’t hurt to elicit as much sympathy as possible, even if it did make them sound like a couple of greenhorn simpletons. A door opened, revealing a rectangle of yellow light and a dog straining against a rope. He growled with evident menace as Artie and Timothy walked cautiously forward. “What’s yer names?” demanded the voice. “I’m–my name is Arthur,” Artie called back. “And my friend here is Knox.” He had never heard Timothy’s last name, but “Knox” sounded respectable enough. “Come in where I can see you,” the voice ordered, and they came obediently closer. The dog still growled suspiciously, but he was sitting now, no longer flinging himself at them. “Jes’ stay there now,” they heard, and the man finally revealed himself in the doorway. With the light at his back, all they could see was an outline, but he was obviously tall and well-built. A rifle swung carelessly from his right arm, and Artie had no doubt that he could aim and fire it in a second if he wished. “What you doing out here in the middle of the night?” he wanted to know. “There ain’t no road around here–where was you going?” “We were lost,” Artie said again quickly, before Timothy could volunteer anything. He didn’t know how willing Timothy might be to play the stupid city feller. “I’m from Denver, and Mr. Knox is my guide. I went off to explore on my own and got myself lost. Knox found me, but before we could start back, a mountain lion scared off our horses. We’ve been trying to walk back to civilization ever since.” “Hmph!” the man said, clearly unimpressed with Artie. “Come on in, then. You must be hungry.” He jerked at the dog’s rope. “Git in here, Tug. They ain’t no good t’ eat.” He fed them corn pone with drippings from the pan, and greens mixed with bits of smoked pork, and whiskey from a jug. Artie thought he might never have enough of it, but eventually he was full. Full and a bit tipsy, but not enough that he couldn’t guard his tongue. “We’re beholden to you, sir,” he said, before Timothy might open his mouth and jeopardize their new identities. “I have no money with me to show my appreciation, but I shall certainly see that you are suitably rewarded for your generosity as soon as we return to civilization.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Timothy’s open mouth and blank expression, and then a slow, amused smirk. Their host was less impressed. “I don’t have no need of your money. Me and Tug here look after ourselves. You’ll do me a favor by jest goin’ on home and stayin’ there. The woods ain’t no place fer a fancy feller in a city suit.” Artie hadn’t heard that phrase–“city suit”–in this place, where no one seemed to dress up much. He had already noticed the neat workmanship of the cabin, and some indefinable presence in their host. He mulled over his thoughts for a moment before answering. Could it possibly be . . . Could other people have made the trip between worlds? “Why, I thought I looked positively . . . presidential,” he said slowly. The other man froze, and then very deliberately looked Artie full in the face, something else that no one did here. Artie had become so used to people’s eyes sliding away from his face that it was difficult to hold the man’s gaze at first. But he did, long enough for the other to look away, and to nod as if satisfied. “My name’s Wilson,” he said. “How’d you get here?” “Fell into a mine shaft,” Artie told him, leaving out a lot of detail. “When I found my way out, here I was.” Wilson nodded. “The Old Hundred, up Anniston way? That was a regular corridor for a while, but the owner blasted it shut. I didn’t think there was any way to get through any more.” “I don’t think there is any way to get back now,” Artie said. “But what do you mean, a ‘corridor?’ Are you saying that people knowingly went back and forth?” “Sure they did. I did, more’n once. There’s gold here in places that are mined out there, and things you c’n buy there that you can’t find here.” He eyed Artie consideringly. “I decided to stay here, though. Healthier for me, if you know what I mean.” Artie nodded, smiling a little. “I can guess.” He paused, and then asked, “Do you know another way back? I do want to go home.” Wilson didn’t answer for a moment, but then he shrugged. “No, I don’t. But I know who might. He ain’t never owned up to it, far as I know, but I believe he found another way to get through.” “What is his name?” Artie asked, almost shaking with anticipation. “And where would I find him?” To Artie’s amazement, Wilson answered, “His name is Loveless. Michael, or maybe Miguel Loveless, I don’t know which it is for sure. He lives up beyond Shuff Springs, about seventy miles from here–not hard to find. He’s a little tiny runt of a feller, but you prob’ly know by now that they don’t pay no attention to that here.” Timothy had been listening to the conversation without much evidence of interest, but now he asked, “Whaddya mean, here? And there? There where?” “Another country,” Artie said smoothly. “It’s a lot like here, but different in some ways.” There was a long silence, and in it he could feel Wilson’s tense stillness. But Timothy shrugged, and they both relaxed. “I’m happy where I am,” Timothy said. “No travellin’ for me, no sir.” “This is a better place,” Wilson said shortly. “You wouldn’t like it over there.” He looked at Artie pointedly, but in fact, Artie had no desire to argue with him. Despite the fact that he badly wanted to find the way back, he couldn’t have said his own world was any better than this one–except for having a live Jim West in it. Wilson bedded them down in front of the fire for the night, sharing a rough bunk with the dog himself. In the morning, while Timothy was loading provisions in a pack, Artie said softly to Wilson, “I meant what I said about repaying you for your help. Will you be here for a while? I have to make a trip to Denver, but I’ll be coming back this way to find Dr. Loveless. I’d be pleased to show my appreciation.” Wilson shook his head. “Keep your gold, Mr. Gordon,” and to Artie’s astonished expression, he added, “I know who you are. I may not be what you’d call sociable, but I ain’t stupid neither. There are posters up with your face on ‘em, and Wentworth’s people were through here the other day looking for the West gang. I didn’t know you was anywhere around here, but he seemed to think he’d got on your trail.” Artie nodded grimly. “He pretty much wiped them out. Just Timothy and me, that’s all that’s left.” Wilson gave him a long look. “Wasn’t you part of the gang? You said ‘wiped them out.’” “My–the other one of me–he was.” Artie glanced at Wilson, wondering whether he understood the duplication of people in the two universes. “Didn’t you ever come across another man here with your same face and name?” Wilson shook his head. “Is it really true then? There’s one of us in each place? Another feller I know who used to go back and forth, he said there was. Said he’d met his twin brother in the other country–‘cept he didn’t have no twin brother.” He paused, obviously thinking. “It was the other one of you then, that was in West’s gang? Then how’d you get in with them?” “I don’t know for sure, but I think my counterpart changed places with me,” Artie said, again leaving out a lot of detail. “I found myself here, with West and his people. They assumed I was him, and I thought it was best to play along until I figured out how to get back.” Wilson shook his head and chuckled disbelievingly. “What a spot to be in,” he said. “Glad it was you and not me.” Timothy came around the side of the cabin, with a makeshift pack on his back and one for Artie to carry. “You ready to go?” he asked. “We need to get on down the trail to where we can buy us some horses and supplies. I don’t plan on walking all the way home.” Artie hefted the pack over his shoulder, testing the weight, and decided Timothy was right. He wouldn’t much like having to carry this any farther than necessary. “We’re on foot until Denver in any case,” he reminded Timothy. “Hope you know how to get there.” Timothy nodded with a wolfish grin. “Yes sir, I know exactly how to get there.” They took their leave of Wilson, Artie with a firm grasp of his hand, and his best wishes for Wilson’s well-being, and Timothy with a short nod and shorter thanks. “You didn’t like him much,” Artie observed after they were well down the trail from the cabin. Timothy was silent for a long moment, and then said, “I knew about people goin’ into the Old Hundred and never comin’ back out. Lost my daddy that way. I don’t trust no one who comes and goes like he said he did.” He glanced at Artie. “You ain’t one of them, are you?” “No,” Artie said, with a little snort. “I just came. I never went.” “You came from that other place, then? That what you mean?” “Yes,” Artie admitted. “I fell into the mine there, and came out of it here. And someone who looks and sounds just like me went there, I’m afraid.” “Our Gordon.” “Yep.” There didn’t seem to be much more to say. He was surprised at the boy’s perception, but then, none of West’s people had been unintelligent, just uneducated. “That’s why you said you lost your memory, ‘cause you really didn’t know nuthin’ about us?” “Right.” Artie really didn’t want to pursue this discussion. “But you knew West.” It wasn’t a question. “I knew his–another one, in the other place.” He was extremely reluctant to provide more detail. All they needed was people actively trying to go from one country to the other. Timothy might be uninterested, but he could talk, and others might be more adventurous. “Did West know you weren’t . . weren’t who you seemed to be?” Timothy persisted. “He suspected, but he didn’t figure it out for sure until the night Wentworth’s people hit us.” They were silent for a moment, and then Timothy asked a bit diffidently, “Were you like our Gordon that way too–likin’ men, I mean?” Artie nodded. “Would have been a shock for me if I hadn’t been, wouldn’t it?” Timothy snickered in agreement. “Good thing.” There was a longer silence, and then he asked, “Was you like that with the other West, then?” He understood Timothy’s curiosity, but the question brought back so much of his past that he almost couldn’t answer. After a minute, he said tightly, “No. Not with him.” He could feel Timothy’s eyes on him, but mercifully, there were no more questions. They came to a section of trail that required attention to their footing, and conversation died away altogether. Once they were back into more settled territory, they hitched a ride on a supply wagon in return for spelling the driver at the reins. They walked for another long day, and finally, coming to a railroad spur line from Denver to an outlying community, swung up to the caboose of a train stopped for water, and rode in style for the last hundred miles. Artie presented himself as an out-of-work conductor from some obscure Eastern line, and regaled the engineer and fireman with mostly-true stories of his and Jim’s adventures on their train. Timothy, who had never even ridden a train before, but who alone had some idea that Artie might not be making it all up, sat in rapt, wide-eyed astonishment. The bank in Denver yielded its gold–Artie hesitated to call it their gold, considering its provenance–and with its division settled to his and Timothy’s satisfaction, he found a barber, a haberdashery, a livery, and a hotel with restaurant and bar, in that order. He still felt off-balance and out of place, but not a great deal more than in any other situation where he had been in disguise. That’s what this was, he thought, a vast and ongoing undercover mission. He’d told the barber to leave the beginnings of a mustache and beard, knowing those would do more to change the shape of his face than any artificial means he could use, and he’d left his hair long as well. The clothes he had chosen, though unusually fancy for this place, were poorly cut and even more shoddily constructed. He watched people’s eyes widen momentarily in surprise when they saw him, and then slide away quickly. He would be remembered, but not for anything that was likely to be associated with the other Gordon. He looked around him in the hotel room, and realized that this was the first time he had been entirely by himself, accountable to no one else, since arriving in this world. He should have felt enormous relief, but his primary emotion was a great sadness, a solitary grief that threatened almost to overwhelm him. West’s presence, so intense when the man was alive, still hung about him. He thought that if he turned his head quickly enough, he might find West just slipping through the door. He had to restrain himself from doing it. The crotch seam of his new trousers rubbed against his groin every time he moved, like ghostly fingers, and when he decided to forego dinner, there was no reason not to lie down on the bed and put his own shaking hand there. He didn’t want this world’s James West in his life, but his treasonous mind, so quick, when he had been with West, to supply erotic images of Jim, now threw up one memory after another of Jim’s dark counterpart. The first time Artie had offered lard for lubrication, for example. He particularly disliked having to bring himself off while West watched. Of all the things West had made him do, it was the only one that prompted a severe internal rejection. Pleasuring himself was something he had brought to a fine art, and its performance was for himself alone–himself and a conjured-up Jim. To be forced to bring himself to climax in front of West, day after day, was so unpleasant that it began to be physically difficult. He began saving the grease from their morning sidemeat, skimming out the bits of pork with a filter he cut from an empty flour sack, and the next time that West called him away from the others in the early dawn, he said to him calmly, “I’ve brought something to ease your way. Better than what we’ve been doing.” Predictably, West demanded, “What’s wrong with what we’ve been doing?” Artie hesitated, not wanting to reveal more than necessary, but finally said honestly, “It’s getting harder for me to do it. You must have noticed.” There was silence, and then a shrug, sensed more than seen. “We can try it.” Artie pushed his own trousers down, and then undid West’s buttons and slipped his hand inside. West was half-hard, and the cock swelled in Artie’s slicked hand into its full turgid length. He had never seen Jim aroused, but he couldn’t hold back the thought that it was Jim he was stroking, Jim he was preparing, and with a gasp, he felt himself growing hard. West was obviously pleased with the sensation, and made Artie caress him far longer than usual, while Artie, almost shaking with need, clenched his left hand into a fist to keep it away from himself. West shoved him around and plunged into him, taking him in one long hard stroke and spending himself almost immediately, and Artie spasmed with sensation and climaxed as well. West’s hand came around and stroked him gently, spreading his seed along the entire aching length, something West had not ever done before, and it was so like what he thought Jim might have done for him that Artie nearly wept. He lay dry-eyed on the bed now, shaking from the intense climax that the memory had produced, and angry with his inability to control his thoughts. If he couldn’t get a better handle on himself–his mind snorted ironically at the too-apt metaphor–he would never be able to manage what he found if he was able to return home. Jim, distant and aloof? Jim paired with another agent? Anger and accusations . . . no, Jim wasn’t cruel. He would be polite, but the special relationship they had shared would be gone. The other Gordon’s presence would have seen to that, no matter how civil Jim might be. He had wondered more than once how Gordon would react to finding himself in Artie’s world. If Loveless were responsible, the introduction would no doubt be in as public a manner as possible, something that would embarrass Jim and make the pair of them look like bumbling idiots. Something–and Artie turned cold with the thought–something that would make Gordon’s desire for Jim obvious to everyone. Suppose Gordon were to allude to his and West’s relationship in public . . . he shuddered, but then caught himself before his emotions spun out of control. Gordon wouldn’t do that. Gordon had to be capable of as much discretion and even duplicity as Artie himself. He would keep his mouth shut until he figured out what was going on. Perhaps he and Jim had worked out how to get him back where he belonged. They might already be on their way . . . and he clamped down hard on another surge of useless emotion. The most likely scenario was that Gordon would either be assumed to be a creation of Dr. Loveless, and a fraud, or that he truly was Artie, gone mad somehow. In either case, their partnership, as it had been, was over. He rolled over and flattened the already inadequate pillow into the mattress, and lay for a moment with his head in his arms. He couldn’t bear to go out among people for any activity that might tire him enough to sleep. Sex was a greater trouble than a solace at the moment. Drink seemed the only answer, though it had been many years since he had routinely resorted to whiskey to soothe jangled nerves. He lay for a few moments longer, and then, giving in to the inevitable, put on his trousers and vest and went down to the bar to purchase a bottle. The next day, bleary with lack of sleep and too much alcohol, he saddled his new horse at the livery and turned it toward the mountains where Dr. Loveless was supposedly to be found. The horse was larger and far more spirited than anything he had ridden before, and he knew his choice of mount had overtones of Jim’s preferences–or West’s–far more than his own. It gave him some dark perverse pleasure to force his will on the headstrong animal, though he truly didn’t have the skill for it, and the horse knew it. But after an hour’s hard riding, it had tired enough to be more tractable, and they went on through the hazy sunlight toward a mail waystation Artie had been told he would find. One definite advantage of this world over Artie’s own was the mail. The postal system here reminded him of what he had seen in trips to England: reliable, inexpensive and available in even the most far-flung hamlets. In consequence of that, there was a sprawling network of waystations for the mail carriers, complete with good food and comfortable beds, and stabling for their own and any visitors’ horses. He had meant to eat, to feed and water his horse, and to go on, but he was half-asleep already, and sitting in front of the room’s large fireplace, he fell into exhausted slumber. Dream images flickered through his over-wrought mind: West’s handsome face laughing at some silliness of Timothy and Chester, the two youngest of the gang, his usual wariness evaporating for the moment so that he looked more like Jim than ever. West looking up to see Artie watching him, and his face going still with whatever he saw in Artie’s expression. West calling him away from the fire that night, his intention obvious, and Artie’s sole act of rebellion. “No,” he’d said softly. “Not this time.” He didn’t know whether West would make an example of him again in front of the others, or simply haul him out into the darkness and take what he wanted. He didn’t care. His emotions were at such a low point that he almost didn’t care whether West pulled out his gun and shot him on the spot. West did none of those. He stepped close enough that the others couldn’t hear his words, and said, “You can leave any time, you know. You can walk away right now. I won’t stop you.” He paused to let the words sink in. They were out in the middle of nowhere, as far as Artie was concerned. West knew perfectly well that Artie could not just walk away. “If you want to stay, you do what I tell you, just like the others. Right?” It was not a threat, but a statement of fact. West watched his face long enough to see grudging acceptance sink in, and then pointed out to the darkness. Artie stumbled ahead of him, numb with his anger at himself, his resentment of the circumstances, and, for the moment, anyway, his loathing of West. And again, West turned his expectations upside down. He caught Artie’s arm and turned him around, once they were well away from the others, and began to undo Artie’s trouser buttons himself, something he had never done before at all. “Stand still,” he whispered, just as though they were two lovers meeting in the dark. He brought Artie’s soft cock out of its hiding place, and spitting in his hand, began to stroke it, whispering, “I know what you like. This is what you like, ain’t it? Does it feel like I was sucking it?” His hand tightened, and the whispered words went on, describing acts that he would never fulfill, and Artie ejaculated helplessly, caught like an insect on a pin. “Here, now! Stop that!” The outraged voice penetrated his dream, and he woke to find his own hand caressing his erect cock as it poked forcefully against the front of his trousers. “You jist saddle up and git yerself outa here!” It was the proprietor of the mail station, hanging over him like some righteous judgmental deity, and Artie, scarlet with humiliation, grabbed up his coat and fled the room. He realized after he was already on the trail that he hadn’t paid for his meal or drink. Evidently the proprietor hadn’t been as interested in his money as in getting Artie off his premises. He bypassed the next mail station and spent one sleepless night sitting against a tree, hypersensitive to the sounds around him. His horse had an easy time of it the next day, as Artie could barely stay in the saddle. But toward evening, he began to see cabins along the trail, and in another five miles, the rough track widened into a proper road, and he was riding into Shuff Springs. The town had what it was pleased to call a hotel, but Artie wanted to find Loveless as quickly as possible. He asked in the saloon whether anyone knew how to find Dr. Loveless. Blank faces all around, and Artie’s hopes plummeted. “The little fellow,” he added. “The one who tinkers with mechanical things. I heard he lived around here.” “Oh!” said one man in the corner. “He ain’t no doctor!” There was general laughter, but from the variously helpful directions for finding Loveless, Artie thought he was supposed to follow the road along the stream, pass the end of the narrow-gauge railroad that led up to where timber was being cut, and turn down into the valley beyond, “‘bout a mile or two,” said one grizzled fellow who seemed to have a better hand on where Loveless lived than the others did. “He’s got hisself a big fancy cabin down there. That tall feller who used to live with him built it with his own hands, he did.” “He makes machines for the timber company,” added another man. “Fixed’em up a steam thingamajig where they could haul out twice as much as they did with horses.” That sounded like Loveless, all right. Artie thanked the men, retrieved his horse, and rode into the forest in the direction they had indicated. He found the narrow-gauge railroad tracks, but no valley appeared within the “mile or two” that the man in the saloon had specified, and he realized that he wasn’t sure whether the distance applied to the interval between the railroad and the valley, or to the depth of the valley itself. He pulled up his horse in the decreasing light, uncertain whether he should continue on or go back to town and try again in the morning. There was a sudden rustle in the underbrush, his horse reared violently, and his last sight was of the canopy of tree branches overhead as he crashed down onto the trail, thinking “God damn it, not again!”. A face appeared in his wavering vision–a bright-eyed high-cheekboned face that he knew all too well. He had somehow managed to get himself into Loveless’s hands again. Where was Jim? What had happened this time? He couldn’t remember what they had been doing, what mission they’d been on–oh! Yes. Jim had been following Loveless, and he’d been following Jim, to watch out for anyone else who might be following Jim, and then— And then— And then he had found himself in the tunnel, and West had found him . . . but West was dead and the gang broken up and Artie was all alone . . The whirling thoughts were too much for him and he turned his head and retched uncontrollably. “All right, all right,” said a soothing voice. “You’ll be all right in a little bit. You had a pretty good knock on the head–you’re bound to be riled up in your vitals too.” The voice was as familiar as the face had been, and yet different somehow. This time he managed to get his eyes completely open, and there was Loveless sitting next to the bed in which he lay, looking concerned, sympathetic and entirely sincere, so unlike the smirking malevolence of Artie’s Dr. Loveless that he would have known the difference even in his own world.. “Loveless?” he croaked, and the man nodded. “That I am, though how you know me, I’m not sure.” “I know–“ Artie began, but what was he to say? Your other self? That wasn’t entirely true, nor fair, for this Loveless was a different man, no more an alter-ego of the other one than Jim was of West. “I know another man who looks like you,” he amended, and saw the slow careful shift of expression in Loveless’s face. “Where did you happen to meet him?” Loveless asked. “In the other world,” Artie said simply, and then, with an entirely helpless rush of words, “I want to go back there. I heard that you know a way.” There it was–he’d laid himself open. He had thought to be more circumspect, to get to know this man before he made some subtle reference to the other place, but the words were out of his mouth now, and he’d have to live with them. “My–my family is there,” he said. “I didn’t want to be here. I want to go home.” Loveless looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly. “You’re talking nonsense.” Artie grabbed his arm. “They say you’re a good man,” he said intensely. “Your counterpart trapped me in a mine tunnel, and the only way out led here. I can’t get back that way. Please tell me how to get back. I don’t believe you’re like him. Tell me how to go home.” He was begging, beseeching, hearing words from his mouth and a tone in his voice that he would never have thought he could utter. Home. Home was Jim. Jim was family. The desire for his former life and for Jim, that he had had to bury and suppress for months, rose up with such force that his voice shook. “Dr. Loveless, I know you have another way to go back and forth. Please tell me. I must go home.” The little man stared hard at him for a moment, and then his face rearranged itself into the sardonic expression Artie associated with the other Loveless. “Doctor? he asked. “Is that what he calls himself?” Surprised at the tone of voice, Artie said. “I don’t know what he’s a doctor of, but yes, that’s the title he uses.” “Hmph! He’s no doctor. He doesn’t have the education that I do, and I wouldn’t presume to call myself doctor.” Loveless jumped down from the stool he’d been perched on and paced beside the bed, back and forth, back and forth. Artie tried to sit up, but pain shot through his head the instant he lifted it, and Loveless stopped his pacing and pressed him back. “Don’t try to get up. You’re concussed. Just lie there and let me think.” He took two or three more turns up and down the length of the bed, and then swung around to Artie. “You say he trapped you here. What do you mean?” “There’s an old mine tunnel up in Wyoming,” Artie said. “My partner and I were following him in St. Louis, and I fell through a trap door and was knocked out. When I woke up, I was in that mine tunnel, and it led to . . . “ He waved his hand in the vague direction of the world around him. “To here, wherever the hell this is.” “Why would he do that?” Loveless asked sharply. “Why were you following him?” Artie was more alert now, and considered his answer before just blurting it out. “He accused the government of the United States of cheating his family out of a large part of what is now California,” he said finally. “Unfortunately, he broke some laws in his effort to regain that land. My partner and I are Secret Service agents, and we were assigned to stop him.” Loveless shook his head, with a weary resigned expression. “His family was indeed cheated out of land, but not by the United States government. It was the Queen of England who did it. She awarded the land to some naval officer who found a new island in the Pacific Ocean and named it Victoria to flatter her.” “Here, you mean,” Artie said, a little confused. “In this world.” “Yes, here. He tried everything under the sun to get his land back, even offered to buy it, but Admiral Aubrey wouldn’t give it up.” Loveless chuckled, a humorless sound. “He was fit to be tied, ready to resort to violence, in fact. When I found my way here, and we ran into each other and figured out what must have happened, he suggested we change places. He said he’d be happy with land in the other world if he couldn’t get it here.” “He didn’t know much about how things work over there,” Artie said dryly, and Loveless nodded. “I liked it better here,” he went on. “And I didn’t think he could do much damage there, not with the way people would look at him. No one would take him seriously, and the laws there are much better enforced, as you obviously know.” “I’m afraid he has done considerable damage,” Artie said slowly. “Not killed anyone, so far as I know, but he has kidnaped several scientists to steal their work, and he’s a wizard with electrical gadgets himself. My partner and I have been in his clutches more than once, and we’ve been lucky to get away with our sanity, not to mention our lives.” Loveless gave him a dark somber look. “I didn’t realize what I was unleashing on my world,” he said. “Though you’re better equipped to deal with him than they are here.” “True,” Artie admitted. “His latest trick was to switch my counterpart with me. My partner and I have been a real thorn in his side, and I’m sure he hoped that the switch would be the end of our working together. He didn’t think I’d be able to find my way back, and what he obviously knew of my counterpart . . . well, he knew my partner wouldn’t have been willing to work with him, even if everyone else had thought he was me.” “And just who are the two of you, if you don’t mind my asking,” Loveless inquired. “You know my name, but I have no idea who you are.” “My name is Artemus Gordon,” Artie said steadily, knowing what West had done to this man’s friend. “My partner is Jim West.” Loveless jerked once, and then went very still. “He killed Voltaire,” he said finally, bleakly. “He murdered the only man who ever treated me like just another human being.” “Not Jim,” Artie corrected him. “The James West of this world. Jim is not a murderer.” Loveless looked at him with all expression gone from his face. “I’ll have to think about this,” he said. “I’ll see that you’re taken care of.” He walked away before Artie could respond, through a small door sized for his height, and Artie, looking around, realized that nothing in the room was meant for ordinary humans. The ceiling over this part of the room was immensely high, and over the other half was low enough to be comfortable for Loveless. The bed on which he lay was easily wide enough for two people of usual proportions, and though he couldn’t see its foot, he was sure it had been long enough for Voltaire. Adjacent to it, so that their pillows almost touched, was a child-sized bed with a brightly colored quilt. He lifted his head as much as he dared and look down. Sure enough, an oversized version of the same quilt lay over his bed. What had he and Voltaire been to each other, Artie wondered. It was only an aimless flash of curiosity, though. Whatever their relationship, no matter how bizarre it might seem to others, Voltaire had been Loveless’s friend. Artie knew better than most how valuable a deep, loving friendship could be even if it were nothing more than that. With Loveless absent, and nothing else to keep him alert, he dozed. A young woman–not another Antoinette, thank God–came in with food and a cool beverage, and when he said that he needed to relieve himself, she smiled and went away silently, to be replaced with a manservant. He helped Artie up, took care of the necessaries with an easy, comfortable manner, and settled him back into the bed. Artie slept, a long profound, dreamless sleep, almost the first completely undisturbed sleep he’d had since coming to this world. No James West, no erotic images, no fears of being trapped here, never to see Jim again. When he woke, his head still hurt, but it was merely an ache, not the sharp pain of earlier, and he was able to sit up slowly and look around. Loveless sat across the room from him, in the low-ceiling section, at a miniature desk. He was writing furiously, sheets of paper stacked up next to him. It was the scratching of his pen, Artie thought, that had wakened him. Loveless laid down the pen when Artie sat up, and sat there looking at him with the same blank face as before. “Will you help me go back?” Artie asked him. He knew he should thank Loveless for the assistance he had already rendered, but he could think of nothing else but going home. He had come so far, and he was now so close, that it filled his mind with barely contained hope and anticipation. “Will you ever try to come back here?” Loveless asked in return. Artie shook his head sharply. “Never. I know this is a better place in some ways than my own country, but–“ He hesitated, and then said it. “The one I love is there, and I don’t want anything else but to go back, and to stay there.” “Jim West,” Loveless said, still expressionless, and Artie, not terribly surprised, nodded. “I’m not sure how you know that, but yes.” “You called his name when you were unconscious. You kept crying out, ‘Jim!’ It was quite piteous.” Something in his voice sounded so like the Dr. Loveless of Artie’s world that he started, and looked closely at the little man. No, he was the same Loveless who had walked away from Artie’s bedside the previous night, grieving for Voltaire. His face was far more relaxed than his counterpart’s, his shoulders less hunched, his whole manner less suffused with tension. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel some of the same bitterness that dominated the other Loveless’s personality. “I’m very sorry that Voltaire was murdered,” Artie said softly. “I would feel the same if my friend were taken from me like that.” Loveless let out his breath in a long exhalation, and got up from his seat. “I know you didn’t do it,” he said. “Your counterpart didn’t even do it. But the man he was associated with did shoot Voltaire, and it’s hard for me to look at you and not see James West.” He held up his hand as Artie began to protest. “Yes, I know you didn’t choose to be here.” “What I wanted to say,” Artie told him gently, “is that it’s hard for me to look at you and not see the man who put me here. Can’t we look beyond them both and just deal with each other?” Loveless said humorlessly, “At least James West is dead, or so I hear. If I show you how to return, you’ll still have to deal with my counterpart.” “I’ll have Jim by my side,” Artie said, with a confidence he didn’t feel, and then regretted saying it at all when he saw the flash of pain on Loveless’s face. “I’m sorry,” he added helplessly. Loveless studied him for a moment, but then the anger went out of him and he climbed up to sit on his own bed. “I haven’t slept here since Voltaire was killed,” he said, looking around. “I suppose I should either close up the room altogether, or have it rebuilt.” Artie shivered. “I don’t know what I would do if Jim was killed,” he said. “What if he doesn’t want you back?” Loveless asked, with more perception than Artie would have expected. “Does he know what you feel for him?” “No. And he may well not be anxious to see me again. But I have to find out.” He glanced over at Loveless. “Even if he doesn’t want to work with me again, he has the right to know what happened.” “Is there a Voltaire there too?” Loveless asked. Artie had been afraid he would want to know that. “Yes. He didn’t come from here, then?” Loveless shook his head. “I didn’t meet my Voltaire until after I arrived here. But my counterpart knew of him. It’s no surprise that he sought out the other one there. It’s something I might have done myself, a slap in society’s face. You think I’m a freak–just look at my friend here. And if you don’t like us, he’ll be happy to take you apart.” There was that flash of world-weary bitterness again. And he still didn’t know whether Loveless was going to show him the way back. “I’m glad you found your way here,” he said. “This is a better place for you.” Loveless glanced sideways at him. “Even if it meant that my counterpart ended up in your world?” Artie spread his hands. “He’s not the only bad man in my world. We’ll manage.” Loveless hopped down from the bed. “Do you feel up to traveling? It’s not far from here, but you’ll have to ride. The path isn’t wide enough for a wagon or carriage.” Artie breathed out silently. “Yes.” And after a long inward breath, “Yes,” again. “I can’t leave right away,” Loveless said. “I have to meet with some men from the timber company. But this afternoon, if you wish.” Artie nodded. “I would be very grateful.” “Let us have some breakfast, then,” Loveless said, and went off to arrange it. Artie stood carefully, decided he wasn’t going to fall down immediately, and walked around the room looking at the pictures on the walls and the lovely objets d’art on tables and shelves. It was a fascinating room, each item proportioned to fit the space in which it was displayed. Voltaire’s side had oversized, boldly colored water colors and pastels in the style called “Impressionism,” while the walls of Loveless’s side were nearly obscured with precisely detailed little drawings and lithographs of machinery. The furniture on Voltaire’s side was appropriately oversized, as were the ceramics and porcelain on the tables. There was even a huge crystal ashtray and an umbrella stand that came up to Artie’s waist. The ceiling was too low on Loveless’s side for him to examine anything in detail, but he could see that it was appointed similarly to Voltaire’s. Only the style of the accoutrements was different–somewhat more fussy and traditional, compared to the bold, casual lines of Voltaire’s belongings. He could understand why Loveless didn’t sleep here any more. A room that spoke so strongly of Jim would be intolerable if Jim were gone. Loveless returned with the manservant of the day before, who carried a tray. He set it on a high round table in the center of the room, but Loveless, glancing at the oversized armchairs and then at Artie, said, “Bring in a folding table and some ordinary chairs, John.” Watching this, Artie began to have some sense of the constant adjustments Loveless must have to make to live in the regular world. Somehow, his counterpart had never brought that thought to light, and Artie thought it was because Dr. Loveless made the world conform to him. He didn’t seem any happier for it, though. They ate in silence until all but the coffee was consumed, and the plates had been taken away, and then Artie cleared his throat. “Do you think you know what this place is?” he asked. “I’ve thought about it until my head hurt, and I can’t figure out how there could be two earths, and two of all of us.” “Not just two,” Loveless said, “though I’ve found no absolute proof of any others. It just stands to reason that if there are two, there must be more.” He hopped down from his chair and went over to the little desk, coming back with several sheets of blank paper. “Do you know what ley lines are?” he asked. Artie shook his head. “Never heard the term,” he said. “Do they have something to do with going back and forth?” “I believe so. And you wouldn’t have heard of them unless you’d heard it here. The other world seems not to have discovered them yet. But there’s a lot of talk about them here.” He drew a rough outline of the United States as it was in Artie’s world, and then traced in a network of lighter lines running mostly north and south. “No one knows exactly what they are,” he said. “I think they are lines of magnetic force, but I haven’t yet been able to measure anything definitive.” He took up another sheet of paper and drew the outline of the American colonies of this world, somewhat smaller than the land mass of the states, and again added a tracery of lighter lines. “This is a very rough sketch,” he said. “I’m not trying to show them all, or even to mark them very accurately. I just want you to see something.” He went back to his desk and returned with two large tacks, and laying the two drawings one atop the other on the table, pressed a tack down through a point which in the United States would have been in Wyoming. Artie began to see what he was about, and when Loveless pressed the other tack into a point in Colorado, he nodded. “That’s the one near here,” he said. “Where the ley lines intersect in the two worlds, you can pass back and forth. Is that it?” “Very good!” Loveless beamed at him. “There don’t appear to be many accessible places, thank heaven. Perhaps some of them are inside mountains, or under water. These are the only two I know of at the moment, and the one in Wyoming is blocked up now. The mine owner blew it up after his son disappeared into it one day and never returned.” “Ah. I knew it had been blasted shut, but I didn’t know why.” “Good thing, too,” Loveless said shortly. “Too many people had found it. There was far too much traffic.” Artie said, “A man named Wilson told me how to find you. He was one of the people who used to go back and forth in the Wyoming tunnel.” Loveless nodded. “I know him. He’s harmless. But not everyone was. Some of our countrymen would have taken advantage of people here. Now I’m the only one who knows how to go between the worlds, and I’ve had my doubts about revealing it to you.” “I don’t ever want to come back,” Artie assured him again. “Blindfold me, if you want. I’ll be happy not to know exactly where it is.” “I might, if I could,” Loveless said. “But the ride isn’t easy. You’ll need to have your eyes open to do it safely.” He glanced at a little watch on a fob. “I must meet the gentlemen from the timber company. I have to discourage them from cutting in the area of the portal. I’ve given them every warning it’s safe to give, but these people just aren’t superstitious enough.” He sighed and eased himself down from the chair. “I’ve had your clothing laundered, and John will show you the bath. If you can be ready in an hour or so, I’ll take you there.” It took somewhat more than an hour, and Loveless seemed abstracted and remote when he returned. “Were you successful with the timber company?” Artie asked. “Forgive me, it’s none of my business, but you look concerned.” “I beg your pardon? Oh–yes, I’m afraid so. I can’t be certain, but I believe one of the company’s principals is from the other world. I suspect he may intend to transport the timber through the portal. He would fetch a much higher price for it there than here, where timber cutting has not been so widespread.” “Do you think he knew you suspected him?” “No, but all the same, I may be forced to take some action. I brought up every possible objection–some true and some frankly invented for the occasion. The Indians have always shunned the place, people get sick when they go there, running a rail line into the area is simply not possible because of the ruggedness of the terrain . . . Nothing made any difference to one of the men. You could see the others beginning to nod their heads and agree with me, but Rudolf just talked over me and said they had already made up their minds.” “You said ‘take some action,’” Artie prompted, but Loveless just smiled and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Gordon,” he said, “but it’s best if you just go on home. Let me deal with my problems here.” There was an odd undertone to his voice, that Artie couldn’t put his finger on. He’s going to do something that I won’t like, he said to himself. It was the first time he’d seen any strong resemblance between this Loveless and the other one, a secretive expression that boded ill for someone. But Loveless’s mood seemed to change abruptly, and he smiled brightly at Artie. “Can you permit me a few more moments?” he asked. “I’ll be taking a trip later today, and I must give John and Martina some instructions.” “Certainly.” Artie watched as Loveless gathered up the sheaf of papers on which he had been writing when Artie woke. He added to them a ribbon-bound file that he extracted from a locked cupboard, and stood on tiptoe to place the whole stack on the high round table. His actions were ordinary enough, though the pile of instructions seemed unusually high for someone who was merely taking a business trip. But he was humming softly to himself, and Artie’s uneasiness grew. As though reading his mind, Loveless said, “That large file is the patent application for one of my machines. I had planned to post it off today, but John is perfectly capable of handling that.” He cocked his head on one side, and then unlocked a drawer in his desk and drew out a small jewelry case. He set that next to the stack of paper, and drew a deep breath. “I believe I am ready to leave, Mr. Gordon.” “So am I,” Artie said with heartfelt feeling. “Is it a long ride?” “No, but it is a rugged one. We found your horse, and you may certainly ride him if you wish, but I think he is too excitable for this terrain. If you are willing, one of my own stable would be a better choice.” Artie nodded. “You know best.” The horse that he selected, after consultation with John, was a quiet little mare that reminded him strongly of the last horse he’d had in his own world, good-natured but perfectly capable of riding like the furies if that was demanded of her. Mounted on her back, he could feel the strings of his former life pulling him back to it, a deep nervous anticipation of what he would find, and at the same time such exultation as he had seldom felt before. This was really happening. In a few hours he would be back in his own place and time. Whatever the circumstances were with Jim and with his own employment, he would at least be free to find them out and act on them. He swung the heavily laden saddlebags into place, and reluctantly accepted the coat that John pressed into his hands. “It will be winter in the other country,” Loveless told him. “You aren’t dressed for it. Take the coat, for heaven’s sake. No, I don’t want payment. I’ll get John another one. Come, we must be going.” There was food, matches and tinder in the saddlebags, as well as a genuine Colt revolver, and extra ammunition. It was the only Colt six-shooter that Artie had seen here, far superior in construction and accuracy than the local weapons. He protested again, with the same lack of success. “You don’t know what you’ll find on the other side,” Loveless told him. “It isn’t as undisturbed and remote as here, but there are still wild animals. If I had a decent rifle, I’d insist you take that. The Colt is the best I can do.” He was energized in the same half-manic way as his counterpart–smiling secretively one moment, almost garrulous the next. John seemed troubled by his intention of guiding Artie by himself, but he brushed off the man’s protests with a laugh. “As many times as I have been to the caves,” he said, “I could find them blindfolded. Stop your carrying-on now, and shake my hand like a good man.” He called Martina over to him, and pressed her for a kiss, almost as though he was saying goodbye to them. But neither of them seemed to think that was unusual behavior, and Artie stifled his worries. Life in the Loveless household could never have been mundane. Caves, Loveless had said. The portal between the worlds was in a cave. That must be why few people knew of it. He thought of the timber company moving logs from one world to the other and shivered. It could not be done with stealth and secrecy; many more people would learn of the door, and the potential for men of one world to exploit the other would increase exponentially. Was there something the Secret Service could do to put a stop to it? He snorted softly to himself. He didn’t think there was any more corruption in his department than in any other division of the government, but that was plenty to insure that people would take advantage of such a find. No, continued secrecy was the best course. “Did you come across these caves by accident?” he asked, as they rode away from Loveless’s compound. “Or did someone tell you about them?” “Neither, Mr. Gordon. I made a point of looking for intersection points between the universes. This is the only one I was able to actually reach. I located my headquarters here precisely because it was near the portal.” “Does the other Loveless know about it?” Artie had to ask. “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. In fact, I’ve seen no indication that he’s ever come back here at all.” He laughed a little sourly. “He seems to prefer your world, regardless of any interference from you and your partner.” Artie let that pass; he could hardly deny it. “You don’t use the passage yourself?” “Not recently. Voltaire and I went back and forth occasionally in the early days, bringing back scientific equipment and tools that weren’t available here, but I haven’t gone through in at least five years. I had no desire to visit there, when everything important to me was here.” He meant Voltaire, Artie thought, and wondered again what their relationship had been. “I feel almost guilty at my own good fortune,” he said slowly, “when you’ve lost someone so close to you.” “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Loveless said lightly. “I shall be quite all right.” There was that peculiar tone in his voice again, a jauntiness that seemed inappropriate for the gravity of the situation, and that caused Artie to give him a sharp glance. What he saw reassured him, though. Loveless smiled at him very sweetly, and asked, “Are you worried about me, Mr. Gordon? You needn’t be. I’ve made excellent preparations for any contingency.” His face was serene and his eyes calm, and Artie told himself that he was imagining things. In any case, the trail turned sharply up a steep hillside, and he had to pay attention to his horse’s footing. Conversation died away. They stopped about half way up the slope to let the horses rest and drink thirstily from the water that John had sent. Loveless finally asked about his counterpart, a question that Artie had expected to hear much sooner. He began to tell Loveless about some of the other man’s fantastic exploits, but Loveless stopped him abruptly. “He is not a good man,” he said, sounding irritated. “I don’t like what you’re telling me.” Nevertheless, he pressed Artie for what details Artie could remember about some of the scientific endeavors, nodding his head in approval when Artie was able to describe things accurately. He seemed bemused with Antoinette; what did the other Loveless need her for if he had Voltaire? “I think she was his way of proving he was as attractive as any other man,” Artie said carefully. Loveless snorted. “I’m happy that I don’t have to prove anything,” he said, leaving Artie to wonder all over again whether that had been because he had Voltaire and didn’t want anyone else, or if it was simply a reflection of the greater tolerance of this place. Loveless asked him several more times about his counterpart, but Artie couldn’t tell him anything that didn’t cause his face to cloud over. He would listen for a few moments, and then raise his hand and shake his head. They rode on in silence for almost another hour, treading carefully along a sharp ridge line and then descending into an old forest, thickly overgrown with vines and ferns. “This is the land that the timber company wants to cut,” Loveless told him. “Look at these trees–some of them must be hundreds of years old. It’s long since cut down in the other world, of course. Cut down and plowed up for farms.” “Farms here?” Artie asked in surprise. “I don’t remember there being much farming in this part of Colorado.” Loveless shook his head. “The two worlds don’t exactly line up,” he said. “There’s a shift of about ten degrees of longitude and about two weeks in time. You’ll come out right on the Nebraska-Kansas line.” “That explains something that has bothered me from the first day,” Artie said thoughtfully. “I knew about half a lunar month had passed from the day I fell through the trap door to the day I woke up in the mine. I could tell from the stars, and I’ve never been able to figure it out. All I could think of was that Dr. Loveless must have kept me somewhere in the interval, and had me sedated so I wouldn’t know the time had passed. But I could never figure out why he would have done that.” “Don’t call him Doctor!” Loveless said with a flash of his earlier irritation. “He hasn’t earned the title.” Artie smiled to himself and didn’t reply. They were approaching an area of particularly dense growth, and Loveless repeatedly checked his compass, looking back and forth between a distant, barely visible mountain peak, and a tree with an orange slash of paint on its trunk. “I haven’t been here during this season,” he said absently. “It’s much more overgrown than I’ve seen before. But this is the right spot, I’m sure of it.” He let Artie lift him down from his horse, and pushed through the vines. “Ah! But there have been entirely too many other people here. I’ve never seen this much evidence of use before.” Artie had been noticing hoofprints, broken branches, bits of trash, and other signs of recent human activity along the trail for quite a while, but hadn’t said anything. Inside the curtain of vines, there was much more–a fire ring, empty bottles, cigar butts, the odor of stale urine. “What are you going to do to stop it?” he asked Loveless. “Block it up,” Loveless said bluntly. “Voltaire and I planned for this possibility a long time ago. We placed explosives to bring down the cave’s ceiling and walls.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a device reminiscent of some that Artie had seen the other Loveless use. “When I press this button,” he said, indicating a large round depressed spot, “the charges will go off. You won’t be able to come back then, even if you want to.” “I don’t want to,” Artie said emphatically. “And much as I dislike seeing things blown up, I think you’ve made the correct decision.” He smiled grimly. “Your timber company friends aren’t going to be very happy. You don’t think they’ll suspect you, do you?” Loveless just shrugged. “I don’t really care whether they suspect me or not. They won’t be able to do anything to me–I’ve seen to that.” Artie looked at him sharply, but he had turned away, looking into the depths of the cavern. “Would you bring the horses in, Gordon?” he asked, over his shoulder. “I am very tired.” That answered another question Artie had had, but had not wanted to ask. He had wondered how long a walk they would have after reaching the caves. The pain in his head, though not sharp enough to be worrisome, had increased nonetheless to a dull pounding ache. Riding, even at a walk, was already bad enough. Having to generate enough energy to put one foot in front of the other was increasingly unattractive. Once remounted, Loveless lit a match, and then a candle mounted in a sconce on the wall. “At least they had the decency to keep the caves supplied,” he said over his shoulder. “I brought some candles, just in case, but it appears that we won’t need them.” He clucked to his horse and rode on ahead of Artie to light the next candle, saying, as Artie caught up to him,. “When Voltaire and I used the tunnel, one of us would go ahead and light the next candle while the other blew out the last one. That way we didn’t use them up. It feels odd to leave them burning.” He chuckled softly and added, “Guess it doesn’t matter this time.” It was an odd remark, but Artie couldn’t think of any comment to make, and so he remained silent. Loveless would be coming back through the passage by himself, so of course he had to leave the candles lit. They rode along a surprisingly wide and level corridor, Loveless muttering constantly about the changes he found. “You could almost drive a wagon through here now,” he said. “Voltaire placed the explosives in crevices high in the walls, and I’m very glad he did. I thought at the time that he was being overly cautious, but he convinced me that others might find them and remove them. He was more prescient than I.” He began to tell Artie of Voltaire, speaking with obvious love of their time together. Voltaire had built the house, Voltaire had assisted him in everything he did, Voltaire had been his greatest friend and protector. At times, he strayed into the present tense, almost as though Voltaire were still alive. “Voltaire understands me. Other people like to say that they do, but only Voltaire really knows what it’s like to be this different.” Artie finally asked what he wanted to know. “Were–are you lovers?” The question, which would have been unbearably intrusive in a different context, seemed a reasonable one now. “No,” Loveless said, with what sounded like disappointment. “He might have liked that, I think, but he already had to make so many adjustments to be with me that I couldn’t ask for more.” He gave Artie a swift glance in the flickering shadows. “True intimate relations would not have been possible, of course. Not–I mean . . . “ ”Yes, I know what you mean,” Artie said gently, relieved that Loveless seemed to be back in the current moment, not reliving some remembered past with Voltaire. “Is it much farther?” “About a hundred yards. Have you noticed that the path is sloping upwards now?” At Artie’s nod and murmur of agreement, he added, “It comes out into a deep ravine. Night must have fallen already, or we’d be able to see the opening.” “Have we already gone through the, um–portal yet, then?” Artie asked. “I wondered whether I might feel something . . . “ “I believe that we are already in the other world,” Loveless said, “but I’ve never been able to determine exactly where the transition point is. Yes, one would expect to feel something, especially considering the shift in geographical location and time, but I couldn’t detect it. Even the horses never seem to have noticed anything.” He took a deep breath. “I believe you can find your own way now, Mr. Gordon. The tunnel continues straight ahead and there is a hand lantern in your saddlebag to light the path.” “Are you turning back here, then?” Artie asked him, as he rummaged through the saddlebag and brought out the lantern. “Yes, I must see to the explosives.“ Curious, Artie asked, “Are they placed along the entire length of the passage?” He was only making conversation, strangely reluctant to leave Loveless alone in this suddenly spooky place. It raised the hair on the back of his neck to think that he had been riding through what was essentially an enormous bomb, just waiting to be set off. “Ah . . . yes,” Loveless said absently, as though his mind were already somewhere else.” I can detonate them from–“ He broke off, clearly not having intended to say so much. Looking into his face, pale even in the yellow candle light, Artie had a terrible premonition. “What are you going to do?” he whispered. “Oh, no. No, don’t–“ Loveless brought out the detonation device he’d shown Artie earlier, his small forefinger poised over the button. As Artie sat frozen, trying to think of something that would stop him, he said, “Light your lantern, Mr. Gordon. Light it now, or I’ll press the button and blow us both up.” With shaking fingers, Artie fumbled for a match and lit the stub of a candle in the lantern. “You don’t have to die,” he pleaded. “You have many good years of life left to you. Please don’t give them up. Voltaire wouldn’t have wanted that.” To his surprise, Loveless chuckled. “Yes, you’re quite right. I expect he’ll give me old Harry about this. But you’re wrong about the many good years, Mr. Gordon. I’ve had nothing good since I lost Voltaire.” He looked down at the detonator, and then before Artie could move, or say anything to stop him, he pressed the button, firmly and with a smile on his face. “Go, Gordon! Gallop as fast as you can. The dynamite will detonate in ten seconds, but that’s time enough for you to get out. Go!” When Artie made a convulsive move toward him, he whipped his horse’s head around and away from Artie’s reach. “Go!” he shrieked. “Run! Get out! I won’t have you dead too! Go!” There was no choice. Artie could run, or he could be trapped and killed as well. He spurred his horse and ran, terribly aware of the loss of precious seconds, and desperately sad with Loveless’s decision. He was counting down the seconds in his mind, and he knew he was not going to make it. His horse had to be spurred continuously, reluctant to throw herself headlong into the near darkness, and he thanked the gods for taking Loveless up on his offer of a different mount. His own horse would have balked and fought him, and he wouldn’t have had the strength to control it. As it was, he was still twenty yards short of the mouth of the cave at the moment his time ran out. He raked the horse’s flanks again, praying that Loveless had been mistaken about the number of seconds, or had perhaps lied about them, to induce Artie to flee. But just as the lantern illuminated trees and undergrowth ahead, the whole world rumbled, and he twisted around to see Loveless outlined against a halo of flame. He kicked his horse into the open, the bowels of the earth roared, and his horse flew like a rocket over the uneven ground. Behind him, rocks and dirt spewed from the mouth of the cavern. Dust and pebbles rained down on them like hail, and the horse reared, threw him off, and disappeared into the night. He lay on the unsteady ground thinking in cold fury that every horse he had ever ridden had managed to throw him eventually, and that he was alone again in the middle of god knew where, without provisions and without even company this time. Snowflakes drifted down through the bare branches overhead, and, dammit, he had rolled up the heavy coat and secured it behind his saddle, thinking he would put it on when he needed it. At least he hadn’t banged his head on something this time. Getting knocked unconscious and waking up somewhere else was beginning to be an unwelcome habit. And although it wasn’t much help to him at the moment, he thanked every deity he’d ever heard of that his gold was safe in a broad leather money belt around his waist, and not in the saddlebag. He hauled himself wearily to his feet, refusing to think about anything but his immediate needs. Loveless lurked in the back of his mind, but he would grieve later. For now, he had to keep himself alive. Images flickered through his mind, however, as he climbed diagonally up the wall of the ravine, tripping over small rocks and smacking his face against unseen tree branches. Loveless looking around his and Voltaire’s shared room, saying he hadn’t slept in there since Voltaire’s death. Loveless asking Martina for a kiss, and John for a handshake, as he left them for the last time. He’d been saying goodbye after all, and Artie had somehow known it, but hadn’t imagined the enormity of what it meant. Loveless saying, “He would have liked that, I think,” when Artie asked if he and Voltaire had been lovers. The thought of those two bound together both by mutual liking and by the differences they shared, but unable to make that last step into intimacy, grieved him beyond words, and brought a sense of shame that he’d never really felt before, regardless of any past mischief and roguery. He wasn’t in any way personally responsible for Voltaire’s death, yet that Other, the man who was not, and yet was, himself, had probably condoned it, and had at the very least followed and supported the man who committed the act. He fought a host of dark, unaccustomed thoughts throughout that long climb, and clambered over the top in the early light of dawn to find an expanse of rolling land already covered by snow, and perfectly blank of any kind of landmark, dwelling or track. The only thing that caught his eye as he looked around was the gray light of the rising sun, and so he walked east. * * * He didn't know whether it was safe to telegraph Jim or not. He could assume that his other self had been placed somehow in Jim's proximity. Whether he was still there was another question, but in any case, Artie couldn't guess what kind of repercussions there might have been. Or, rather, he could indeed speculate on them, and none of the possibilities bore thinking about. No, better to locate Jim on his own. He ignored the voice in his head that said he might not be able to find Jim without assistance, and followed his instincts to the rail yard where he'd last seen the train. In the fierce temperatures of a western winter, only days after Christmas, that in itself was a feat. He had found shelter with a farmer who discovered him staggering through a growing blizzard, following the fence line he had finally encountered, and praying he’d find a house or barn at the end of it. If the man's horse hadn't heard him and nickered nervously, he'd have died that night. When the storm blew itself out, he helped with the chores until the farmer's next trip to town. There he filled in for a barkeep who hadn't been seen again after the snow, until he earned enough for a ticket to St. Louis, sleeping at night on the floor behind the bar. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by revealing his gold, and in any case, the village’s one tiny bank couldn’t have had much cash to trade. He found himself shaking as the train pulled into the station, his urgent desire to see Jim again warring strongly with his fear of what he would find. But the Wanderer was gone. He stood in the frigid wind staring with the most piercing disappointment at the siding, now empty and snow-drifted, where he'd left the train. The stationmaster told him doubtfully that he thought the train had long since returned to Washington. He'd have to look up his records, he said. Artie could come back later when he'd had a chance to check. Pale with shock and distress, Artie turned to the door. He was shivering violently, even in the warmth of the stationmaster's potbellied stove. Except for a bun and a cup of coffee he'd purchased on the train, he hadn't eaten since he left Kansas City, and with no proper winter clothing, he'd been half-sick ever since his exposure to the storm. It was ironic that he carried a king’s ransom in gold, and yet had as little ready cash as if he were the impoverished drifter the farmer had taken him for. Now that he was in St. Louis, he could find a bank, deposit the gold, and buy what he needed, but until now he hadn’t dared reveal what he carried. And finding Jim was still his first priority. He had known Jim was unlikely to be here. There was no reason to expect him to be here. He would have been teamed with someone else by now, surely. And yet, Artie had been sure Jim was in St. Louis. The disappointment of not finding him was more of a physical shock than his body was prepared to absorb. "You got someplace to stay?" the stationmaster asked unexpectedly. "You look like you lost your best friend." "I'll be all right," Artie said shortly. He could do without pity. The stationmaster nodded and turned back to his stack of manifests and movement notices, too occupied with his own problems to worry much about anyone else’s. Outside, the wind blew even more fiercely than before, whistling eerily between the lines of stopped trains, scouring the open areas, and piling the snow into head high drifts across the yard. A man in the uniform of a Baltimore and Ohio engineer staggered against the blast, one gloved hand holding his hat, the other shoved deep into his jacket. He glanced up to gauge his progress toward the building, and to his astonishment, Artie saw Matthew Conroy, their regular engineer when the Wanderer was in B&O trackage. "Conroy!" he bellowed into the wind, and left the meager shelter of the building to try to intercept the man. The wind caught him, carried him for three or four lurching steps toward Conroy, and then knocked him flat. He pushed himself up on hands and knees to see Conroy pass beyond him, unmindful of his presence, head down into the gale. When he tried to inhale for another shout, the ice crystals in the air burned his throat and lungs so unbearably that he could hardly breathe, much less call out. But on his knees, he saw what had been hidden before--the wheels of an engine on the siding where the Wanderer was usually shunted, the siding that had been empty half an hour earlier. He managed to get to his feet again and staggered into the dubious shelter between two stock cars. From there he could see the engine clearly. But to his intense disappointment, it was not the Wanderer, just an anonymous black engine whose short train of cars was now moving away slowly backwards, pulled by a yard tender. Artie glanced at them without much interest–and looked again, hardly believing his eyes. There was their rolling stable, its barred windows unmistakable, and beyond it the familiar outline of the parlor car. Even in the swirling snow, he could see a yellow light in one window. He began running, staggering through the deepening snow. If he could only keep the two cars in sight, he thought, he would be able to catch up with them eventually. The tender curved away at the nearest switch and the cars moved farther and farther from him in the almost blinding curtain of snow. Just as he thought he could not possibly take another step, their motion slowed and stopped. A man jumped down from the shelter of the door on the stable car, shoved the switch over to its other position, and hurried up the line to the tender as swiftly as the wind and snow allowed, wholly unaware of Artie’s presence. The cars slowly backed onto the side track, and the parlor car stopped almost next to where Artie was standing. There were muffled voices from the snow, men disconnecting the engine and setting the brakes on the two now solitary cars, but he had eyes only for that light in the parlor window. His hands and feet were so numb that he could barely climb the steps or hold onto the rail to pull himself up. He tried to disengage the alarm before opening the door, but his fumbling fingers couldn't turn the knobs properly, and he finally gave up the attempt. Let it go off; Jim would come that much sooner. He remembered with vague concern that it had sometimes been booby-trapped, but the intense cold left no room for sophisticated intellectual activity. He was focused on finding Jim and getting warm, and not much else. To his surprise, the door opened easily--no noise, no explosions. He stumbled into the hot interior, trying only to stay on his feet until he could call to Jim. He had a vague idea that it might be good to identify himself before Jim shot him as an intruder. Something hurtled into him; he had a fuzzy impression of a dark body, and then he was on the floor looking up into Jim's face–a face ludicrous with shock and disbelief. "Artie? My god, Artie?" Jim hauled him upright, leaned him against the compartment wall, and brushed the snow out of his hair, gazing at him with the most intense scrutiny, and calling his name. "Artie? Artie? It is you, isn't it? My god, it is!" And then to Artie's amazement, Jim flung his arms around him and hugged him fiercely. "I knew he wasn't you! No one believed me, but I knew he wasn't you." Startled at the emotion in his voice, Artie hugged him back, holding on as much for support as anything else. Jim released him finally, stepped back a pace, and seemed to notice Artie's half-frozen condition for the first time. "Look at you, you're white with frost. Come in here where it's warm." He hustled Artie ahead of him, keeping a strong grip on Artie's arm. "You've got no coat on! Why are you out in this weather without a heavy coat?" He steered Artie to the sofa. "Sit down here, I'll get blankets. And some brandy." He knelt to ease Artie's thin boots off his feet. "You're next thing to frostbitten! Some warm water for your feet too, then." Artie leaned back on the sofa and allowed himself to be ministered to. He couldn't think of anything more pleasant in the world than to drift here in Jim's presence, warmed and buoyed up by the glass of brandy in his trembling hands, the layers of blankets over his legs and chest, and the truly painful tingling in his feet from the tub of hot water. The stresses of the last months had not disappeared, but they receded enough to be only vague memories. Jim was still fussing about like a nursemaid, asking whether he wanted coffee, something to eat, a nightcap for his head, a quilt over his shoulders. "Please," Artie rasped in not much more than a whisper, and when Jim leaned close, he said, "Please just sit down here. I don't need anything else. Just sit here." Jim set down the hot water bottle he was carrying. "Are you warmer now?" he asked. He hesitated, and then burrowed under the mound of blankets to where Artie was still shivering, and held him close against his warm chest. "I can hardly believe it's really you." "I'm still cold, but it's better," Artie said, his teeth chattering. "I'm beginning to think I may live." He could feel the rumble of Jim's laughter against his side, and Jim’s warm hands on his back, and he relaxed into the embrace, letting his head rest on Jim’s shoulder. Jim’s arms tightened around him, whether to protect him or to keep him from moving away he didn’t know. He didn’t care. Jim’s muscular strength surrounded him, both comfort and assurance, and he abandoned, finally, the tense watchfulness that had possessed him for months. For long moments, he merely existed, shuddering now and then as some last bit of tension drained away, and dimly aware of Jim’s soft murmuring in his ear. “All right, that’s all right . . . you’ll be warm soon . . . “ But this was too pleasant, this tender intimacy, too addictive. He couldn’t allow himself to absorb it too fully, because it would pass. Jim would move away. He would restore the space that men preserved against each other, and leave Artie bereft of his physical presence. Better to inflict that scalpel cut himself, while he was able to bear it, before this heat and flesh became not just pleasant but necessary. “I’m getting too hot,” he said, which was close to being the truth. He was still shivering, but only at intervals now. His face was unbearably warm, and the mound of blankets suddenly felt close and heavy on him. He pushed it away, and sat up out of Jim’s arms. Looking around at his home with the most profound relief, he took a deep breath and swallowed. “Tell me what’s been happening. Tell me right from the beginning.” Jim was watching him closely. He slid his hand across Artie’s shoulder, rested it there for a moment. Artie lifted an eyebrow. As though reassured, Jim moved the hand and eased away fractionally. “I was following Voltaire,” he said, and his hand came back to Artie’s shoulder. “I couldn’t hear you, but I knew you were behind me. All of a sudden, Voltaire clapped his hand to his chest, and staggered, and then he just fell down flat on the cobbles. I couldn’t figure out what was happening.” He glanced at Artie. “I didn’t know whether it was a ruse to draw me out of hiding or there really was something wrong with him. While I was trying to decide what to do, a carriage pulled up out of a side street and Dr. Loveless jumped out of it. He ran over to Voltaire, and then he started jumping up and down and screeching that Voltaire was dead. I figured that was a good opportunity to grab him, but when I ran across the street, two other men came flying out of the coach and grabbed me.” “Was Voltaire really dead?” Artie asked, wondering whether a death in one universe automatically meant the end of existence for that person’s counterpart in the other one. But no, West had died, and Jim still lived. Still, he thought, it might explain a great many sudden, mysterious deaths that occurred every year. Jim nodded. “Far as I know, he was. There was a lot of carrying on and hullabaloo– Loveless accusing me of doing something to Voltaire and me yelling that I hadn’t gone near him, and the other two fellows trying to hold on to me and drive the carriage at the same time. Just about the time I got myself free, someone pushed a wad of cotton in my face, and everything went dark.” “Chloroform,” Artie said, nodding. “I woke up here in the train,” Jim continued, “with you–“ He stopped. “I thought it was you, you understand.” Artie nodded again. “Oh yes, I do understand.” “Well– “ Jim continued, “you . . . I mean–this man who looked just like you was shaking me and telling me to hurry and wake up, we had to get out of here before someone found us, just frantic to make me wake up and leave, but it was the craziest thing, Artie, because when I got my wits about me again, I saw that I was right here in my own bed.” He pushed himself away from Artie and stood up. “I need a drink. You want a refill on that brandy?” “No, I’m quite warm now,” Artie assured him. If he drank anything else on his empty stomach, he’d never stay awake long enough to hear the whole story. Parts of it were going to be very difficult to hear, but he had to find out exactly what had happened. Falling into a drunken stupor would only put off the moment of reckoning. Jim came back with a tumbler of whiskey, after much clinking of glasses and bottles, and settled himself next to Artie again. “What happened then?” Artie asked him resignedly. Might as well get this over with. “Colonel Richmond came in,” Jim said unexpectedly, “and you–I mean . . . “ ”Just call him Gordon,” Artie told him. “I’ll know you aren’t speaking of me.” Jim gave him a doubtful look. “Doesn’t seem right to use your name, but I don’t know what else to say. And everyone else thought he was you. Everyone called him Gordon.” He pounded his fist against his knee suddenly. “It made me so angry, Artie. I couldn’t understand how they could think he was you, but no one would listen to me.” “How did you know?” Artie asked, curious. It touched him that Jim had protested so vehemently. “I looked into his eyes,” Jim said simply, “and you weren’t there.” He was watching Artie’s face steadily as he said the words. Artie shuddered and looked away, unable to bear such trust. A man with Artie’s face, body, voice–with Artie’s own essence–must have made advances to Jim, and the relationship Artie had prized for so many years was apparently still unsullied. He didn’t know how to acknowledge that kind of gift. Jim’s hand came back to rest on his shoulder. “I knew he wasn’t you, Artie. No matter what anyone else claimed, I knew.” “Thank you,” Artie whispered. “I–thank you.” The hand squeezed his shoulder and slid away, as though such a touch were routine. And it had been, once, but Artie had not thought to find that place ever again. “Well, anyway. Richmond came through the door wanting to know what was going on, and Gordon hauled off and punched him. Knocked the living daylights out of him. I still thought Gordon was you, and I jumped up the best I could with my head still spinning, and demanded to know why he’d done that. He grabbed my arm and tried to drag me across Richmond’s body on the floor, still hollering that we had to get out. I swear, Artie, it was a three ring circus in there, everyone screeching at everyone else.” “He didn’t kill Richmond, did he?” Artie asked in shock. He had assumed that Gordon would behave inexplicably, but he’d never expected that level of violence. “No,” Jim assured him, “but it was out of character for you, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you light into someone that way, not with that kind of . . . “ He paused. “I’m not sure. Rage, maybe. I’ve seen you shoot people. But it wasn’t personal. It was just what you had to do. When Gordon hit Colonel Richmond, it was like–like seeing a whole different person in your body. I thought I’d gone to sleep and woken up in some other world. That’s how crazy it was.” Artie looked at him sharply, wondering whether Jim had ever read Alice. But no, that kind of children’s fiction wasn’t what he read for entertainment or for edification. His remark had come out of the unquestioned strangeness of the situation, perspicacious though it was. “What happened then?” he asked. “I shook Gordon off and went back to see if Colonel Richmond was all right. He was getting himself up off the floor, indignant as hell that you’d– “ He stopped again. “I mean that the person he thought was you had hit him.” “That’s all right,” Artie told him again. “Believe me, I do understand about the confusion.” Jim gave him an odd look, but went on, “Richmond told me to get you calmed down before we had the night watchman in here, and I sat you down in a chair and told you to shut up for a minute.” He shot a sideways chagrined look at Artie. “Sorry. Gordon, I mean. I had begun to think Dr. Loveless had the real you locked up somewhere and had saddled me with a ringer, but my head was still muzzy and Richmond was still yelling at both of us, and I just wanted quiet in here for a minute so I could figure out what was going on.” Artie nodded, perfectly able to visualize the scene. Colonel Richmond was not a man to take lightly being knocked down by anyone, much less a subordinate. He’d have been roaring at Jim on one side, and Gordon had probably still been expostulating on the other. Artie could envision Jim pulling out his revolver and putting a bullet through the ceiling to get their attention. “You didn’t shoot anyone, did you?” he asked resignedly. Jim laughed aloud. “Now I know for sure that you’re my Artie,” he said. His hand, which had been lying against the back of the sofa, came up briefly to Artie’s neck and smoothed the long strands of hair, far longer now than Artie had ever allowed it to grow in the past. He paused, and then added softly. “I don’t need these other things to tell me who you are, you know that, don’t you? But they confirm what I already knew, the moment I looked into your face.” Artie said “Yes,” in a shaken whisper. It warmed him that Jim knew him so well, and it disturbed him to think Jim’s knowledge of him might have uncovered things Artie thought well hidden. But Jim was going on. “I finally got out of Richmond that he was here on other business, and had just dropped in to visit. When no one answered his knock at the door, and he heard some kind of scuffling going on inside, he came in, thinking we might be in trouble.” Jim took a swallow of the whiskey, and set the glass on the side table. “While Richmond and I were talking, Gordon was looking back and forth between us, and all of a sudden, he burst out at me, ‘You should have told me you knew this man,’ or something like that, and of course that set Richmond off again. Had someone hit Gordon on the head? What the hell was wrong with him?” Jim took another quick swallow, and went on, “I said yes, we’d been in Dr. Loveless’s clutches, and that he might have done something to your memory, because you didn’t seem to recognize the train.” He sighed. “That was a mistake, because Richmond swore you’d have to be checked out by a doctor. I should have just said you’d gotten banged on the head in a fight, and you’d be fine after a good night’s sleep. Then I would have had you to myself for a lot longer, and I might have figured out what was going on without everyone else putting their oar in.” His face changed suddenly. “Darn. I keep saying ‘you.’ I mean Gordon, of course.” “That’s all right. I know what you mean.” Artie contemplated his next question, decided he had no choice, and asked it. “Did you figure it out, then? Do you think you know what happened?” Jim shook his head. “I never made any sense of what Gordon tried to tell me. I knew he wasn’t just a madman, like Richmond’s doctor said he was. He had to be some creation of Dr. Loveless, but– “ He broke off and said unhappily, “It was such crazy talk. He kept saying we had to go back to the others, that they wouldn’t know what to do without me, they’d try a break-in and they’d get caught for sure, because I wasn’t there to tell them what to do.” Jim eyed Artie, but seeing no reaction, went on, “He seemed to think I was the leader of some kind of gang. He talked about breaking into bank vaults. And holding up banks, too. He claimed he’d been a government agent, but he’d never heard of the Secret Service. He said–I know this sounds crazy, Artie, but he insisted that he’d been sent to find my gang and arrest me.” Artie asked carefully, “What did he say happened when he found you?” This was getting closer to the truth than Artie wanted to go, but he had to know what Gordon had said and done. There was a long silence. Then, “Artie, you’re going to think I’m making this up, but I’m not. And it’s no reflection on you, you must know that. He was somebody else, some poor man who’d been changed somehow to look like you. I can’t guess what Dr. Loveless must have done to him, but he wasn’t you.” Artie said rigidly, “Just tell me.” “He said he . . . fell in love with me. He said he joined the gang so he could be with me. He thought I’d lost my senses somehow, because I didn’t know all that.” Jim swallowed, but went doggedly on, “He kept begging me to get him out of there. The madhouse, I mean.” At Artie’s sharp intake of breath, he said, “Dr. Moeller, this German fellow that Colonel Richmond called in–he said Gordon was deranged. He committed him to an asylum where they had some new kind of treatment for crazy people. It was more like a big city house than an insane asylum, but there were locks on all the doors, and a high fence all around.” “Is he still there?” Artie asked, fearing to hear the answer. He could not bring himself to see this other version of himself, and he knew that he would have to not only see the man but do what he could to help him live in this world. The thought of someone who looked just like himself taking up bank robbing was not exactly reassuring. Jim was shaking his head. “He–he died. He came down with something, some kind of wasting disease, maybe, and he died in just a couple of hours. No one ever figured out what it was. I thought it was probably caused by whatever Loveless did to him.” There was a strange unhappy finality in his voice. Artie wondered with astonishment whether Jim could possibly be grieving for Gordon. He felt the most unreasonable stab of jealousy–irrational not only because Gordon was dead and therefore no threat to himself, but also because he himself had grieved over the loss of the other James West. It was hardly fair to have done that and still resent Gordon’s presence in Jim’s life. “When did this happen?” he asked, as calmly as possible. Jim considered. “About a month ago. Richmond called me back to Washington when you–dammit, I mean when Gordon was committed into the madhouse, but I wouldn’t go. I told him I had to stay here and figure out what had happened to you. He called me all kinds of names, but finally, he just took the train back and told me to take as long as I needed.” “So how did the train come to be back here?” Artie asked. Jim said unhappily, “I didn’t know what to do, Artie. I couldn’t bear to be teamed with someone else, and I couldn’t convince anyone that Gordon wasn’t you. After he died, everyone tried to tell me that I ought to–to just get over it and go on.” His hand had strayed to the back of Artie’s neck again, though he seemed to be unaware of it. “I took this town apart looking for Loveless, and never found another sign of him. It looks like he made this one trip out of California just to find us and perpetrate this . . . this whatever it was. I had to make a decision about what to do next, and finally I sent the Service a telegram saying I’d continue working, but that I wanted to work alone for now. I didn’t think they would go along with that, but they sent back that the train was available if I wanted to keep using it, and that I could work on my own until they had someone trained to pair with me.” “And the Wanderer got back just today?” Artie asked, a little confused. Their car looked exactly as he remembered it, and Jim seemed comfortably settled, not just moving back into a train that would certainly have been stripped of all personal possessions. Jim shook his head. “It’s been back for a couple of days. Not the Wanderer, though. We’ve got another engine temporarily, until they can juggle the schedules and assign that one to us again. They had our cars parked on another siding, because this one was in use, but they needed that siding for a longer string of cars, so they cleared this one and moved us back here where we were before.” “I saw that this one was empty when I first got here,” Artie told him. “I thought you were gone.” He inhaled deeply, trying to keep his voice steady. “I had no reason to think you or the train would still be here at all. I just didn’t know where else to look.” “Why didn’t you telegraph the Service?” Jim asked, watching him. “Because I had no idea what had been going on here! I was sure that Loveless would have arranged for the other . . . ah, the other version of me to turn up here, to find you and play havoc with our partnership, but I didn’t know exactly what might have happened. I didn’t know whether anyone would believe the telegram was coming from me. The real me, I mean.” Jim nodded, but said slowly and with a hard edge in his voice, “You knew you’d been replaced by an imposter.” “I didn’t know for sure,” Artie said heavily. “But it seemed likely.” He put his hand up when Jim opened his mouth. “Give me just a moment to sort this out, and I’ll tell you everything I know.” Jim didn’t demand to know what needed sorting, for which Artie was grateful. His intuitive mind would see the holes in Artie’s story quickly enough. “I was following you,” Artie began, “watching you follow Voltaire . . . “ He told Jim almost all of it, leaving out only the intimacy between himself and West. Jim became very still, listening to Artie’s description of West, shifting away from Artie to sit with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. When Artie recounted the bounty hunters’ attack and West’s death, he nodded. “That’s why you wanted to know when Gordon died,” he said. “Yes. There was some sort of connection between them, I think.” He realized, as the sudden silence lengthened, what kind of connection Jim must be thinking of. “I don’t mean . . . “ he began awkwardly. “I know what you mean,” Jim said, and then, to Artie’s great surprise, added, “I’ve felt something like that with you, like knowing exactly where you were, or recognizing you even when I didn’t know what disguise you were using.” “Each of us knowing when the other was in trouble,” Artie added, because that had happened often enough for them to have spoken of it before. “Yes.” Jim was silent for a moment, as if digesting all this. Then he said, “But there are still a lot of unanswered questions, Artie. Besides the one we’ll probably never figure out–how Loveless could make such exact copies of us that everyone but you and I would think they were the real thing.” He turned to look Artie squarely in the face. “One reason everyone thought Gordon was crazy is that he seemed to be living in a– “ Jim hesitated, clearly uncertain how to explain his thought. “Almost like another country. Like ours, but different. He didn’t know about the war, Artie.” Artie smiled slightly, knowing what Jim’s reaction to that would have been. “Did he tell you the sun was too bright, and the money was wrong?” he asked. Jim’s mouth fell open. “How could you know that?” he demanded. “Because that’s where I was,” Artie said simply. “The other place that Gordon came from. I can’t explain it, not in terms that would make any real sense, but there is another–another reality, if you will. Like this, but different. I wasn’t just in another part of this country. It was like a—a parallel world, with people and geography almost exactly like ours. Dr. Loveless stumbled onto it, and discovered his counterpart.” “And they were in cahoots with each other?” Jim demanded, clearly appalled at the notion. “No, our Dr. Loveless is the one from the other reality. They changed places.” Jim nodded. “The people from that place are opposites of us in character, is that what you’re saying?” Before Artie could reply, he added, “But why would the Loveless from this world go to that one, if he was the good counterpart and it’s as evil a place as it sounds?” Artie sighed. “It isn’t just good versus evil. That’s what I thought at first, too, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. Little people, like Michael Loveless–that was his name when he was born here–they aren’t treated like freaks, Jim. Or huge people like Voltaire. Nobody pays any attention to differences like that. Skin color, or where you came from, or even outright deformities. It doesn’t make any difference to how you’re treated. It’s a better place than this one in that way.” “So he went there to escape the derision and trouble he found here . . . “ Jim said slowly. “And the evil Miguelito Loveless, whose violent nature was as out of place there as his physical differences are here, came to our world, where his intelligence might get him the power he wanted, even if he never found personal acceptance.” Jim voiced the obvious conclusion. “And then he decided that if he could make one of us go there, and cause the other one to come here, it might break up our partnership with no further cost to himself.” He shook his head in apparent admiration. “That’s diabolical.” He sounded more impressed with Loveless’ ingenuity than upset about the personal costs. “It was fatal,” Artie said rather tartly. “To some of us, at least.” Jim nodded, his earlier gravity returning. “It was a machiavellian scheme, certainly.” He inhaled heavily. “This is pretty hard to swallow, but it does answer all the strange things about Gordon, not just things like the money, but how he knew who I was, and yet didn’t recognize Colonel Richmond.” He was quiet for a moment, and then reminded Artie, “You didn’t tell me how you got back.” “I found the other Loveless,” Artie said. “I knew how to get back to that mine tunnel again, but I didn’t know exactly where I had fallen into it. When I found the Loveless in that place, he showed me another portal between the two worlds and helped me return.” Jim nodded. “I’m grateful for that.” He was quiet again for a moment, and then asked, “He didn’t want to come back with you, then? I would have thought he’d be upset to know what his counterpart had done here.” “He was disturbed, certainly,” Artie said, still skating around the facts. “But I don’t think he wanted to meet our Loveless again. I don’t believe he wanted to know first hand what his other self was capable of. He would ask me things about him, and then stop me after I’d begun to tell him.” “He didn’t want to hear that he could be evil,” Jim said astutely. “That’s a lot for any man to know about himself.” “Does it trouble you to know your counterpart was a bank robber?” Artie asked him. “No more than it bothered you, I suspect,” Jim said, surprising Artie all over again with his insight. “I wish he hadn’t been a criminal, but I’ve done all those things at one time or another. Not robbing banks, I mean, but lying and stealing and even killing people, in the course of doing my job. I justify it, just as you do, but I can’t stand before the Creator with a clean conscience. That other West was just more open about it.” “The other Gordon broke his sworn oath to his country,” Artie said slowly. To Artie’s amazement, Jim shrugged and smiled. “He did it for love,” he said. Artie had no idea whatever how to reply to that statement. They sat in an awkward silence for a long moment, but finally Jim stirred and put his arm over the back of the sofa again. “I want to tell you what happened when Gordon died,” he said. He tweaked Artie’s collar straight, an absent sort of gesture, as though he’d put his hand there as a matter of course and had just happened to notice the collar’s rumpled state. Artie shivered, unable to bear his touch and just as unable to lean away from it. “I had a message from the doctor that he’d been taken ill suddenly,” Jim said. He looked out over the length of the car as though he were seeing another room, his voice deeper than usual. “I’d been there to see him almost every day up to that point, and he hadn’t seemed ill, just–just terribly distressed.” “That was kind of you,” Artie got out, his mouth dry. “To visit him so often.” It was illogical, crazy, for him to be thanking Jim, as though he himself had been the object of Jim’s compassion, yet it was gratitude he felt. Because he knew what Gordon had been going through, how trapped he’d felt in that place, how galling it had been for him to know he was perfectly sane and to be treated as though he was mad. Even worse, he must have known pretty quickly that Jim was not his own West, and that he might never see West again, never touch him, never be fucked by him again. “He was my only link to you,” Jim was saying, and Artie forced his attention back to the present. “Sometimes it was hard to be with him, because– “ He stopped abruptly. “Because– “ ”Because he thought you were his James West,” Artie said it for him. This was the part of it he had dreaded, but it had to be talked over, gotten past, or they’d never be able to work together again. Jim nodded. “It was worse for him than for me. At first, he kept asking why I wouldn’t get him out of there, and why . . . “ He took a deep breath, but went on steadily. “Why I didn’t want him any more.” Artie couldn’t reply to that, and after a moment, Jim continued, “Later, he seemed . . . defeated. Deflated. He made several attempts to escape, and when they didn’t work, it was as though he just fell in on himself, all the life and spirit gone out of him.” Artie said something that he’d been thinking for the last few moments. “I don’t understand why he didn’t figure out what had happened to him. It didn’t take me long to realize I must be in some analog of our world. I would have thought he would tell you what he’d deduced, and the two of you would try to find the way back.” Jim asked gently, “Would his West have accepted such an idea? I don’t think so, from what you’ve told me of him. And you were more or less free, don’t forget. You had the opportunity to look around and see the differences, and try to make some sense of them. He was locked up, with limited access to the outside world and to other people. I don’t think he would have expected me to believe him even if he thought he had figured it out.” Artie sighed. “You’re right. The other James West would have thought he was crazy. West was as intelligent as you–hell, he was you, just a–a different you. But he didn’t have much education, and I don’t think he had seen much of the world. He would have dismissed Gordon’s claims, and Gordon knew it.” He sighed again, finding real compassion for his counterpart for the first time. After a moment, Jim went on, “When I heard he was ill, I wasn’t surprised, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad it was. I came straight away when I was notified, and the doctor was right. He surely was at death’s door. White as paper, clutching his belly and groaning– “ He stopped when Artie sat up straight. “That means something to you.” “West died of a gunshot wound in his belly,” Artie told him, wondering wildly whether such a coincidence was possible. “Did he!” Jim exclaimed. But then he nodded and said soberly, “I suppose it’s not the strangest thing we’ve ever seen, but it does come close, no question.” His fingers were at the back of Artie’s neck now, not stroking, just touching the skin gently, as though such a gesture was perfectly natural for them. “Did he just . . . stop breathing?” Artie asked, having some problems with his own breathing. “What exactly happened?” “He just went more and more pale,” Jim said, his voice dropping the words into the silence between them. “Like he was bleeding to death, in fact, though I didn’t think of that at the time. The doctor came in and looked at him a couple of times, but he didn’t have any idea what to do, and it seemed to make Gordon worse when he tried to examine him. So I told him not to come back. We could all tell what was going to happen.” “Gordon knew he was dying,” Artie said hoarsely, sure of it. “Yes.” The word hung starkly between them for a long moment. Jim inhaled deeply, and sighed. “I was sitting by his bed, trying to reassure him he’d be all right, even though we both knew I was lying.” His voice became very quiet, and Artie held his breath. “He begged me to hold him.” A pause, then, “I moved over to sit on the bed, and–and lifted him up, and he was so cold, Artie, like ice in my arms.” Another deep breath. “He called me Jimmy. ‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘won’t you kiss me just once? Just one time before I’m gone?’” Jim swallowed and looked hard at Artie. “I couldn’t refuse that. How could I? So—I kissed him. On the lips. And then he died.” He swallowed again, and said roughly. “I buried him in the graveyard at Beth Asher.” “Did he tell you he was a Jew?” Artie asked, startled. He’d heard no discussion of any kind of religious belief during his time in the other place. “No,” Jim admitted. “But I knew that you were. It just seemed like the right thing to do.” “Thank you,” Artie said, greatly moved. “I wish there was some way we could return him to his own country, but it isn’t possible. The place I came through is gone now. It’s–under a landslide.” Some day he would tell Jim more about the landslide. He couldn’t bring himself to do it now. “Just as well,” Jim said unexpectedly. “I don’t want to be tempted to go there, and I sure don’t want anyone else to find himself there accidentally.” They were quiet again for a moment. Then Artie said, “I couldn’t bury West. The ground was too hard. But we made rock cairns for all of them–Timothy and I. He was the only one who survived the attack besides me.” “They thought you were their Gordon,” Jim said. Artie had been waiting for him to say that, and it had taken him long enough, in fact. “Yes. West knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it until just before he died.” Artie stopped, but Jim didn’t say anything, so he went on, “He saw the tattoo.” Jim nodded. “Gordon had a bullet graze across his arm right where your tattoo is,” he said. “If there had ever been a tattoo there, you couldn’t have told it. He swore he’d never had one, but everyone thought he was crazy by then, so they didn’t pay any attention.” Artie thought sourly that when he saw Colonel Richmond next, there were going to be some hard words between them, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up. Jim looked him squarely in the face. “You said West suspected something, but he wasn’t sure.” Artie just nodded, waiting for the inevitable. West should hardly have needed to see the tattoo to know that Artie wasn’t his own Gordon. He wasn’t prepared for Jim’s question, though. “He thought you were his Gordon at first, is that right?” Artie didn’t answer–the question was obviously rhetorical. Jim’s face hardened. “What did he do to you?” Taken aback, because what he had expected was, ‘What did you have to do to convince him you were you?’Artie exhaled sharply in anger and despair. Why do you want to know that? he thought furiously. You don’t need to know details! “You don’t have any right to ask that.” The words were more an expression of his profound distress than of his true feelings about the events. If he and Jim had been lovers already, he could have told the truth and trusted to Jim’s anger on his behalf. But to have to tell his women-loving partner what he had done with West . . . the same No that had punctuated all his feelings about this time resounded again in his mind. He took a deep breath and risked a look at Jim’s face. What he saw was incredulous shock. “No right! I’m your partner, Artie!” Jim had him by the arm, gripping his biceps almost painfully. “I’m supposed to watch your back. Keep the bad guys away, just like you do for me. But this time the bad guy was wearing my face!” His reaction was so far from what Artie had expected that he hardly knew how to respond. Trust Jim, he thought wearily, to assume he’d been wholly innocent, that he’d been taken advantage of. That he’d been . . . what? Raped? “He didn’t force me to do anything,” Artie rasped, torn between his need to be truthful with his partner and his great unwillingness to discuss the subject at all. Jim would hear the lie in his voice. Whether he chose to challenge the lie would determine their future. Jim regarded him for a moment, and then, with a deep breath, let him go and said, “All right, Artie.” He moved away from Artie to the end of the sofa, his face closed off. “If that’s the way you want it.” Artie saw in despair that he was going to accept the lie. Accept it–and reject the friendship. Jim thought he wanted honesty equal to his own, and Artie longed to give it to him, but Jim didn’t know what he was asking. Artie had met men before who thought they were tolerant of deviants. But they never really were, not when they heard the details. Jim wouldn’t be either, not someone as strongly attracted to women as he was. He flung the blankets aside, stepped out of the now cold water, and stood there swaying, moisture pooling around his feet, trying to think of some explanation that would satisfy Jim—something close enough to the truth to sound convincing, but not enough of the truth to sever their relationship forever. “He asked me to kiss him at the end, too,” he said. “He said the same thing as Gordon. ‘Just this once.’” He looked defiantly at Jim, who had also stood and was leaning against the mantel. “And I did. It was a dying man’s request.” Jim nodded. “Yes.” His eyes were almost black. They held Artie motionless, hardly breathing. “You’ll have to explain it to me, Artie. I don’t understand. Please help me understand.” “What?” His head was spinning. What did Jim mean? What was there to understand? “What don’t you understand?” he asked, lightheaded and unsteady from the extremes of the day, the lack of food, the brandy, the intense discussion. “What don’t you understand?” he asked again. Jim leaned forward and kissed him sweetly, full on the lips, his hand resting hot against Artie’s neck. “This,” he said, a bit breathless. Artie came back to himself with a crash. No. Everything in him had been working toward restoring their former relationship. This he could not comprehend. Pity, even disgust, he’d anticipated, and to the best of his ability, he had faced it and dealt with it. This innocent seductiveness, this amour naif, was so far outside his expectations that he couldn’t begin to make sense of it. It wasn’t Jim. Not his style, not his personality, not his manner. He wanted his partner back, not some travesty of an imitation, as bad in its own way as the other West had been. If there had ever been any indication on Jim’s part of an interest in men, or even just in Artie, he could have accepted it–hesitantly, perhaps, until he was certain of Jim’s desire, but with some hope for its sincerity. But not this wholly unexpected adolescent floundering. “There’s nothing to understand,” he grated out. “Either you want it. Or you don’t.” He put three feet between them before speaking again. “I’m about to fall asleep on my feet. Do I still have a bedroom here?” Jim nodded. “Of course,” he said quietly. “All your things are here. They didn’t touch anything.” Artie gave him a jerk of the head that was supposed to indicate assent, and then, because he was angry at the universe, at both the Loveless’s, at himself and at Jim, at everything and everyone who had made such havoc of his life, he shot back, “Don’t let me catch you creeping into my bed in the middle of the night!” Jim flinched but didn’t reply, and Artie staggered down the corridor to his compartment, finding it just as Jim had said. His brushes and hand mirror lay on the built-in dresser, his books stood just as he had left them on the shelf over his bunk. The door of the armoire was slightly open, and inside he could see his suits and shirts, and the black dress boots he’d worn the day before all this began. He yanked off his clothing, all of it, wanting nothing of that other place to touch him again, and lay on the bunk, too exhausted to dig out a nightshirt and put it on. He could still feel Jim’s mouth on his own, could still see the downswept lashes, thick and dark as a girl’s. He could taste Jim, the faint echo of the whiskey he’d been drinking and the scent of his skin that was all his own. God damn you! he thought wildly. Why are you doing this to me? His whole mind had focused on returning to the world he had known, finding his partner, going on as before, and now he saw that nothing was going to be as before. He’d been criminally irresponsible to think their lives wouldn’t change. Loveless had won, because Jim had no idea what he was doing, and it didn’t matter whether Artie had accepted his fumbling offer or turned him down, they could never again work together as they had done. His bare skin began to shiver, and he pushed aside the blanket and got himself under it and the sheet. Deep inside he was still cold, but the heavy quilt was in the top of the armoire and he was too exhausted to get back up. He huddled under the sheet and blanket until sleep overcame the cold and the pain and the cramping of his gut, and carried him away to dream fitfully about the other West, about the man who could be as feral and cruel as any wild animal, and at the same time as gentle in sexual heat as a women.. He woke with a start, hard and almost shaking with need, West’s hand on him so clear in his mind that he could feel it. He would have brought himself to release if for no other reason than to be able to go back to sleep. But before he could move, he saw, in the pale moonlight that filled the little room, that Jim was sitting in the chair beside the bed, with the quilt over his lap and legs. His eyes had drifted shut, but Artie’s jerk of astonishment woke him, and he regarded Artie gravely. “What are you doing here?” Artie demanded, but softly. Something in the quality of the light, or perhaps it was something in Jim’s face, kept the earlier anger out of his voice. “You said I mustn’t creep into your bed,” Jim said, equally softly. He shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.” Artie closed his eyes in defeat. I should have known, should have known ran like a mantra through his mind. When had the Jim West of any universe not gone full gallop after what he wanted? He pulled back the blanket, shuddering all over at the flow of frigid air across his bare skin. He heard Jim stand, heard the rustle of clothing, and opened his eyes to see that Jim had stripped down to drawers, vest and stockings. Jim glanced at what he could see of Artie, half hidden by the covers, and then he smiled slightly and pulled everything off, dropping it into the pile of clothing that Artie had left on the floor. He shook the quilt over Artie, and slid in, cool and hot all at once, setting Artie’s nerves on fire. His legs were hot against Artie’s still cold ones, his belly cool against the blaze in Artie’s gut. His organ was soft; Artie could feel its heavy weight against his groin, shaming him for his desperate base lust. It was all he could do to hold himself still, to wait, not to seize Jim and touch everything he could reach, touch it with mouth and hands and anything else Jim would allow. Jim lifted over him, and stared down at him in the faint pale light. “What did he do to you, Artie?” he asked again, softly but no less intensely than before. “Tell me what he did.” Shaking, Artie said, “He told me to suck him.” Jim’s face didn’t change. “He fucked me. He didn’t force me.” West hadn’t needed to use force, but Artie still didn’t know how to acknowledge that. “He didn’t kiss you.” “Only that once.” “Then I shall,” Jim whispered, and bent to Artie’s mouth. Artie had found long ago that most of the men like himself didn’t enjoy kissing. He’d often wondered why a man would put his mouth on another man’s prick, but not on his lips, and the men who sought other men only for an occasional thrill were the worst of them in that regard. Even in his most intense fantasies of sex with Jim, he hadn’t expected that consummate lover of women to want his kisses. But again, as so often before, Jim surprised him, knocked all his assumptions into stuffing. “Do you like to kiss, Artie?” Jim murmured against his mouth in an eerie echo of his counterpart’s question. “Yes,” Artie breathed, barely able to speak at all. Their mouths fit perfectly together, he found, Jim as soft as any woman he had known, and as demanding as West had ever been. He moved against Artie as they kissed, with little ecstatic murmurs. Artie could feel him growing hard, and with a groan he couldn’t hold back, he seized Jim’s ass in both hands, his fingers splayed over that whole hot expanse of flesh. Jim gasped, his tongue stabbed far into Artie’s open mouth, his cock stabbed almost painfully against Artie’s belly, and he shuddered into a violent climax. His emission flooded between them, hot and slick, and Artie shoved him hard onto his side, pressed one leg between his, and drove to his own completion, his cock caught perfectly in the crease of Jim’s groin. Silence. No sound save Artie’s still raspy breathing. No movement except for Jim’s fingers, gently stroking his scalp. Jim seemed to be mildly obsessed with his hair, Artie thought, in a dazed glow of amusement. He thought he could get used to that. Then Jim inhaled and let the breath out in a long sigh. There wasn’t enough light now to see his face, and Artie’s euphoria fled away. “Jim?” he said, his voice cracking. Jim pushed himself up and clambered over Artie. “Stay there,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” Bewildered, Artie did as he was told. A glow from the compartment door told him that Jim must have lit the lamp in the galley. A moment later, he was back with the big tin kettle in one hand and a flaring kitchen match in the other, along with a teacup that he put down on the bedside table. He set the kettle on the floor by the washstand, lit the hanging lamp, and turned it low enough to leave shadows in the corners. Artie watched his muscles working as he moved, beheld the taper of his waist, the slant of his neck, all the places he had touched now, where his hands had been, and his mouth, and where it seemed they would probably never be again. The continuing silence unnerved him, yet he was unwilling to break it himself. Until Jim said the words, until he made the break between them final, Artie could pretend that he might not. Jim poured hot water into the basin, added a splash of cold from the pitcher, and brought Artie’s moistened facecloth back to the bed. Artie thought he would hand him the cloth, but Jim pressed his hand down and very gently cleaned Artie himself. “Not too hot, is it?” he asked, his face, now that Artie could see it, shuttered and neutral. Artie shook his head, unable to speak. Jim finished with him, covered his damp skin with sheet and blanket, and swiftly cleaned himself. He picked up the quilt from where it had slid onto the floor, but instead of putting it back on the bed, he wrapped it around himself and sat back down in the chair. No, Artie thought in numb consternation, though he’d known this moment was coming, that it was inevitable. To his horror, he felt moisture welling up in his eyes. Even in this light, Jim couldn’t fail to see it. Pity from Jim he would not have, nor was he going to blubber like a jilted girl. He sat up abruptly and swung his legs off the bed. “Artie–” Jim began, but Artie cut him off. “Nightshirt.” He maneuvered around Jim and the chair in the small space, yanked open the top drawer of his bureau, and retrieved what he wanted, surreptitiously swiping at his eyes with the soft flannel fabric. By the time he had the nightshirt on and was back in the bed, he had himself under control again. Shut down, closed up tight inside himself, but under control. “I don’t know what to say,” Jim began again. Artie’s stomach clenched violently and he put up his hand to stop the flow of words. Next would be I don’t know what came over me, or something similar, and he couldn’t bear to hear it. “You don’t have to say anything,” he rasped. “I’ll never presume on what happened tonight. You don’t need to worry that I’ll start pawing you.” Jim looked thoroughly disconcerted. “I don’t think you understand wh– “ Artie interrupted him again, unwilling to hear apologies or excuses or justifications. “Please, can we just let it go? I’ve promised not to make advances–won’t you believe that and let us try to get back to some kind of normality here? It’s going to be hard enough as— ” “Artie!” When he had Artie’s startled attention, Jim went on more softly, “You and Gordon were different in many ways, but there was one thing you shared. Sometimes, my dearest Artie, you talk too much!” My dearest Artie . . . That could be an endearment, or it could be sarcasm. Jim didn’t use endearments, but he wasn’t much given to sarcasm either. With emotions see-sawing wildly between hope and despair, Artie shut his mouth. Jim leaned forward and took his hand, holding it loosely in both of his own. “Listen to me,” he said softly. “You say he—West, that other me—you say he didn’t force you into anything. But there had to be some kind of coercion. You can’t think I wouldn’t have known that.” Artie didn’t know whether to shake his head or nod. He settled for a tighter clasp of Jim’s hands. Jim smiled slightly and went on, “I know that Gordon loved him desperately. But I also know he must have been a violent, cruel, arrogant man, all the worst there is in me.” “Not you–“ Artie interposed, but Jim shook his head firmly. “One of the things General Grant taught me, that I’ll always be grateful for, was to examine myself. To be as objective about myself as I would be about anyone else. I don’t let those qualities rule my life, Artie, but I know they’re there. And from the things Gordon said, they were what ruled West’s life. So I know you probably had little choice about— “ He broke off. “About intimacy with him. Even if he never physically forced anything on you, you had to make him believe you were his Gordon, and there was only one way to do that, wasn’t there?” His quiet voice was matter-of-fact, but the words brought back that first encounter with West, and Artie flung Jim’s hands away from him. “I don’t need pity!” “I’m not offering it,” Jim said steadily. “I’m as guilty as he. How could I be such a boor as to offer pity when I’ve just done essentially the same thing to you?” Artie stared open-mouthed at him, completely flummoxed with this unexpected line of reasoning. He shut his mouth, swallowed, and managed to come up with “Huh?” “I didn’t exactly ask whether you wanted relations with me,” Jim said. “I just went after what I wanted. Perhaps I wasn’t as aggressive as he was–I hope I wasn’t, but all the same, I can see how you might have thought you had to—to give in, do what I wanted . . . ” He trailed off as though he’d lost the thread of his argument. Artie shook his head, uncertain whether to laugh hysterically or be deeply insulted. “Do you really suppose,” he demanded, “that I’d have let you do that if I wasn’t willing? I ought to knock you across the room!” “Oh,” Jim said, sounding rattled. “Well, I guess that settles it. Settles something.” He banged one fist on his knee. “Hell, Artie, can’t you just tell me straight out if this–if you–if . . . “ Artie propped an elbow under his head and watched a Jim West he didn’t often see, at a loss for words, stammering–good God, Artie thought, he was actually blushing! He couldn’t keep the grin off his face very long though, and Jim saw it. “You’re smirking at me, Artemus,” he said dangerously. “You’re so demure, James, my boy,” Artie shot right back. “So coy, so flustered, so maidenly-- “ The quilt flew in one direction and the chair in another, and his not-so-maidenly lover was looming over him with a thunderous expression. “Artie,” he growled, “you’re asking for it.” “Yes?” Artie murmured, giving Jim the most innocent smile he could conjure up, and Jim snorted and shoved the covers back. “These damn bunks are too small,” he complained. Artie obligingly moved over against the wall, but it was clear they would have to make some alterations to the sleeping arrangements. Jim flung an arm across the pillow and pulled Artie down to lie on his shoulder. “Just let me hold you,” he said beseechingly. “I almost can’t believe you’re really back.” He turned Artie’s face to his, brushing his fingers over Artie’s cheek. “I couldn’t believe you were dead, not you. I went to the cemetery, to his grave, because it seemed as though I was closer to you. But one day I realized I was thinking it was you who was dead– “ He broke off and squeezed Artie with almost painful force. “I never went back. I couldn’t let myself think of you that way. I had to believe I would find you.” “It must have been harder for you,” Artie acknowledged. “At least I had some idea what had happened. I knew I had to be in some completely different world, and that if someone had brought me there, I might be able to figure out a way back. All you could do was wait and hope.” “I did a lot more than that!” Jim said savagely. But the energy drained out of him as suddenly as it had manifested, and he slumped against Artie. “But nothing made any difference. Nothing helped. Nobody knew anything.” Artie nodded. “Loveless planned well. The only thing he didn’t take into consideration was that I might come across his counterpart and learn another way back.” Jim shivered, and pressed closer to him. “If not for his help, you might be there still, and I’d still be walking through life like one of the undead. Loveless didn’t mean for you to ever come back, you know that, don’t you?” He raised up a bit, looking down at Artie, though Artie couldn’t see his face in the gloom. “Artie? What are we going to do if one of us is hurt, or–killed? It was bad enough before. This time . . . I didn’t know whether I could go on.” “It was harder because you didn’t know what had happened to me,” Artie pointed out. “But I understand what you’re saying. And I don’t know, Jim. When I held West as he was dying, I thought I had lost you both. He was gone, and I didn’t know whether I could find my way back to you. And I didn’t know . . . “ He paused, not sure how to phrase the next part. “I didn’t know whether, even if I did get back, you’d still want to work with me. I didn’t know what he might have said or done, whether you’d think he was actually me–“ Jim hugged him with satisfying force. “Don’t be ridiculous, Artie. No one in the world could be you so well that I wouldn’t know. Not even someone who looked and sounded just like you.” But then he shuddered again, and his voice grew harsh. “But when he died, when I held his body in my arms, it was like I was holding you. I might have believed, with my head, that he was another person, but my heart told me it was you who was dead.” His voice was shaking, and Artie turned into his arms and pulled his head down into a fierce kiss. “I know,” he murmured against Jim’s mouth. “I know.” When they could breathe again, and talk, he told Jim about the last hours of West’s life, about his own claim to be the other Gordon’s twin, and how West had shown him the first real personal approval in all their time together. “He fell in love with you,” Jim said slowly, and then with a wide smile that Artie could feel against his forehead, “Of course, he did. How could he not love you?” “You didn’t love me,” Artie said, with a lame attempt at teasing. To his amusement, Jim instantly protested, “I did! Certainly I loved you.” There was a brief silence, and then Jim rolled him over and lifted above him again. “But like this?” he whispered. “I didn’t know–didn’t know I could, Artie. I didn’t know we could do this and still be ourselves, the same men we’d always been. It never occurred to me even to think of it. It wasn’t until I realized what Gordon and his West had been to each other, and I saw that he was still–still you, that I began to have thoughts of what we could have been together.” Confused, Artie began, “But you didn’t know about the other universe . . . “ ”No, I thought Loveless must have duplicated us both somehow, and given the duplicates new memories. Or something.” He could feel Jim shrug against him. “I don’t really know. None of it made any sense. The whole idea sounded crazy, but we’ve seen him do other things that no one thought possible. All I knew was that Gordon was as like to you as twins could be, and that he was in love with someone enough like me that he thought I was that man.” He fell silent, and Artie thought with a flood of astonished pleasure that Jim had indeed figured out much of the truth. He just hadn’t had sufficient information to follow it to its conclusion. The existence of a parallel world was certainly not something Artie would have suspected if he hadn’t been faced with the reality of it. And there are possibly more worlds than just these two, he thought, with a shiver. What kinds of places could they be? He didn’t want to even think about them. “Penny for them,” Jim said, with that undertone of dry amusement that Artie loved and had missed so badly in West. “I’m thinking of you,” he said honestly, and Jim moved against him in obvious invitation. “Thinking of that?” “Satyr,” Artie murmured. Jim chuckled softly and settled back on the bunk next to Artie. He slid his hand under the nightshirt, and smoothed it down Artie’s chest, a tickling tantalizing journey that left quivering chest hairs and goose-pimpled skin in its wake. West’s hands had been the only part of him that reminded Artie wholly of Jim. Large, muscular and callused, they could be ferocious or tender, and West had known, even if unconsciously, how to use them to arouse Artie. Jim obviously did as well. He paused at Artie’s navel, teasing the swirl of hair and dipping momentarily into the indentation, and then, with his face intent and serious, moved down to cup Artie’s balls. Artie inhaled sharply. He could feel the testes quiver. Blood filled his prick, lifting it away and making him shudder all over. The air in his stateroom was still icy, but his skin felt so hot that he wanted to throw the blanket off and shove his needy cock into– He shivered again, knowing exactly where he wanted to put it. His right hand, caught under Jim’s side, curved around almost of its own volition to stroke the soft skin of Jim’s ass. It was not something he would ask for. If he had no more with Jim than he’d ever had with West, that would be more than he’d ever thought possible. Jim’s thumb and forefinger slid around the base of his cock and stripped upward, and he ceased thinking at all. The broad curve of Jim’s thumb stroked across the sensitive underside of the head, every striation a separate burst of sensation. He felt himself beginning to tremble. Jim laughed softly and slid his hand down Artie’s thigh. “Not yet,” he murmured. “Don’t want to spoil the fun.” Artie shivered again, and restrained himself from asking for explanation. Anything Jim wanted to do was fine, just fine. He was so sensitized that he could feel the hair on the backs of his legs as it rasped against the sheet. He’d never felt this aware of his body, not even with the first man he’d had. Nothing had ever been like this. If Jim wanted to drive all memory of West from his mind, he was well on the way to doing so. “Let me touch you,” Artie whispered roughly. “Let me see you.” He wanted to supplant every image of West with one of Jim, every touch, every scent, every reminder. “Yes,” Jim breathed, lying back and pushing the blanket away. “Please . . . “ He reached for Artie’s hand and guided it to his swollen cock. The flickering light and long shadows hid all detail, but touch was enough for Artie’s immediate need. The thick shaft throbbed under his fingers; he could feel a heavy pulse in the vein, and little involuntary jerks as he smoothed his palm over the oozing head. “God, Artie!” Jim said, ragged-voiced. He shoved Artie’s hand away and rolled up on his elbow. “Artie? Would you . . . “ He pulled in a long shuddering breath. “You said he–he made you suck him. Would you do that for me? “ Artie could feel him quiver all over. “Would you put your mouth on me, Artie? God, I can feel your mouth–“ He fell back with a long groan as Artie bent double and took the prick deep into his throat. Jim tasted of all the things Artie associated with him: the musk of physical arousal, of course, and a healthy young man’s sweat, the warm dark tang of old leather, and in the folds and creases of his skin, the ever-present aroma of horse. He was a feast of sensory delights, and Artie a starving man, kept from what his heart desired for far too long. He’d begun, greedily, with the glistening head, but he could sense how close Jim was to spending himself. He wanted to draw this out, both for Jim’s pleasure and his own. He shifted around to a more comfortable position, and followed the heavy vein down the underside of the shaft. The cock jerked and quivered with every swipe of his rasping tongue, as though imbued with its own separate life. He licked the base of the shaft, gnawed gently at the web of skin there, and turned his head to nuzzle the wrinkled balls in their nest of curls. All the while, Jim trembled under him with a constant inarticulate murmuring, his responsiveness so profound a difference from West’s unnerving silences that Artie’s heart sang with joy and relief. He licked an idle exploratory path around the balls, eliciting a breathless laugh from Jim, and considerable squirming. He was teasing now, letting the cock bob against his ear or brush his cheek, rejoicing in the freedom to tease, and to draw out this exquisite pleasure. “Please,” Jim whispered. Artie stopped teasing instantly, and lifted up to meet Jim’s bright eyes. “Yes,” he murmured, and hollowed his mouth around the head. It jerked against his tongue, and Jim groaned softly. Artie lapped at the sensitive underside, suckling gently, until Jim’s gasping breath told him how close he was to completion. He let the cock slide far into the back of his throat, and Jim went rigid, cried out his name, and flooded into him. Artie’s cock twitched violently at the sound, and at the sensation of hot come spurting heavily into his mouth, and for a moment he thought he was going to climax himself. He fell back with his head on Jim’s knees, and they lay there together, Jim breathing heavily, and Artie thrumming with what he wanted, and couldn’t bring himself to ask for. Jim finally spoke softly. “You really like to do that, don’t you?” he asked. “You weren’t doing it just because I wanted you to.” Artie pushed himself up, stripped off the nightshirt, and slid around to lie next to Jim. “I’ve wanted to do that for as long as I can remember.” His cock nestled against Jim’s belly, quivering with each inhalation and exhalation. He wasn’t going to hold on much longer, and he still couldn’t say the words he wanted to say. “I’m sorry I was so slow to catch on,” Jim said, with real regret in his voice. His hand came up to stroke Artie’s flank slowly. Artie trembled, partly from the temperature in the room, and partly from the sensation of Jim’s hand on his flesh. As though reading his mind, Jim said, “Tell me what you want.” Artie laughed shakily, and said, “Anything. Anything at all.” It was mostly true, of course. There was nothing he would turn down. But he damned himself for a coward. There seemed little likelihood of Jim changing his mind now. Yet intercourse was so irrevocable a step into another kind of life that rejection was still possible, and he couldn’t bear to hear the words. “Tell me,” Jim insisted, and Artie remembered his determination to know what his other self had done. This kind of openness was not what Artie was accustomed to in intimate relations, but he should have known, he thought, that Jim would demand total honesty. He would ask for no less than he gave. His mouth dry, Artie said, “I want–I want to–“ and he found that he couldn’t use the word he had so casually said before. “I want to be in you,” he whispered. Jim’s mouth came down hard on his, possessing him in spite of what they were about to do, and Artie knew that he was going to be in thrall to this James West far more than he’d been to the other one. It was a prospect both wonderful and terrifying. “We need something . . . “ he began, and Jim reached over to the cup he’d brought back from the kitchen “Will this do?” he asked, opening his hand. On his palm, Artie saw the white gleam of lard. He realized in shock that Jim had intended this all along. “Oh, yes, that will do very well,” he said, laughing with more confidence this time. And then, softly, “Turn on your side. It’ll be most comfortable for you like that.” Jim took his hand and transferred the lard to it, and then slowly turned his back to Artie–a gesture of absolute trust in the world in which they lived. Artie kissed the back of his neck and down his spine to the soft indentations in his ass. “Pull up this leg a little,” he whispered. Jim complied, and he slipped his hand between the muscular thighs to caress the balls and the tender perineum. His cock jolted in anticipation. Don’t worry, he told it, we’ll get there. To Jim, he said, “You can’t imagine how many times I’ve wanted to do this,” and demonstrated what he meant by heartily squeezing one cheek. “Usually when you were wearing that blue suit.” “I’ll wear it more often, then,” Jim said with a chuckle. “And anything else that tempts you to put your hands on me.” Artie squeezed again, and let one finger slide down to the hole. He didn’t attempt penetration–the lard was in his other hand, and he only wanted to let Jim become accustomed to the sensation. Jim breathed in momentarily, but then relaxed and pressed back against him. Artie continued to knead and caress the area until Jim said dryly, “If you don’t get down to business pretty soon, I’m liable to fall asleep on you.” “Yout don’t want to do that–you’d miss the good part,” Artie said, trying for lightness, but hearing the tension in his voice. Jim twisted around, pulled his head close and kissed him again. “Don’t hold back,” he said intensely. “I want to know what you felt.” One horrible possibility occurred to Artie. “Don’t do this to make amends for him!” In such a swift move that Artie never saw it coming, Jim flipped over and pinned him to the mattress. “Artemus Gordon, you ought to know me better than that! When have I ever been guilty over something I didn’t do, didn’t know about, and couldn’t have prevented?” In the near dark, Artie couldn’t see his face well enough to be sure of its expression. Before he could respond, Jim bent and took his mouth again. “C'mon, Artie,” he murmured. “Don’t you know I just can’t stand it that you’ve done something I haven’t?” He settled onto the bed with his back to Artie again, pressing his ass against Artie’s groin. “Don’t be so stiff-necked now. You’re spoiling all the fun.” Artie reflected in a somewhat befuddled glow that being stiff-necked was getting him kissed a lot more than he was used to, but he had to admit that Jim was right. He’d certainly never before been this tentative with a naked man in his bed.. “All right,” he whispered. He transferred a dollop of the lard to his finger and probed gently into the puckered opening. Jim’s breath hitched for just an instant, and then he relaxed and allowed the finger to slip inside. He was hot and tight, and every bit as eager as Artie could have wished. “More!” he said, and pushed back fiercely against the intruder. So Artie gave him more. Another finger, more lubrication, deeper, until Jim shivered violently and murmured, “My God, Artie!” Artie kissed his neck again, and withdrew, and with shaking fingers coated himself liberally with the lard. He placed himself and pressed in as slowly as he could. Jim tensed, and he stopped, but Jim insisted, “Go on!” and the passage opened for him. When he reached that sensitive place inside, feeling its soft mass against his prick, Jim’s arm broke out in gooseflesh under Artie’s hand. He inhaled sharply, and Artie felt him move to take his own cock in his hand. By slow advances, they came together, and now Jim’s head was flung back against Artie’s shoulder. APlease!@ he said, in a strangled voice, and Artie began to move in him, short hard strokes that began as stabbing pleasure, but that transmuted suddenly and without any warning at all into something other than desire. Sexual lust was still present, certainly, and all the love and tenderness he felt for Jim, but mingled with those was such anger that he hardly knew who he was for a moment. AGod damn it!@ he swore under his breath, and then more loudly, AGod damn him!@ He didn’t know whether he meant Loveless or West, or both. There was no logic in the feeling, just an incoherent fury. His climax rose fast and hard, and flung him down to lie drained and trembling against Jim=s back. He stammered something inarticulate, some kind of apology, but nothing he could say seemed adequate. There was a long silence, and then Jim disentangled them and pulled Artie’s arm away from his face. “Artie,” he said gently, “no one would blame you for being angry over what happened to you. Least of all I.” “I wouldn’t have taken it out on you,” Artie said wearily. “I wouldn’t have hurt you.” Jim grinned down at him. “Hurt me? Not that I noticed.” He guilded Artie’s hand down to his groin, slick with his seed. “I think I had a better time than you did.” “You must be sore,” Artie protested. “A little,” was all Jim would admit to. “I’m just as glad I don’t have to ride anywhere tomorrow. But not enough that I don’t want to do it again, I promise you.” When Artie didn’t reply immediately, he bent down and kissed him lightly. “Are you afraid you’ll . . . lose control again?” Artie thought about that. The pent-up anger he’d apparently been nursing had indeed faded. West was a memory, someone from his past, no more. Loveless was there still, but in spite of the months of misery for them both, they had defeated him in the end. “No,” he said, a little surprised at how certain he was. “No, I’m not.” “Good.” Jim yawned and slid down to lie with his head on Artie’s shoulder. “I’m wiped out.” “I know I hurt you,” Artie said, unwilling to let himself off the hook that easily. “Is it that easy to just–just forget it?” Jim sighed and pushed up on an elbow. “Artie? Do you love me?” Surprised, Artie said, “Of course!” “If I ever holler at you when I’m really mad at someone else, will you stop loving me?” “No . . . but I didn’t just yell at you. I– “ ”Christ, Artie, will it make you feel better if I haul off and pop you one on the jaw?” He couldn’t help it–he had to laugh at that. “I don’t know. Probably.” Jim heaved another big sigh and lay back down. “In the morning, then. Not now.” He fumbled around on the floor by the bed. “Where’s that quilt? It’s freezing in here.” He pulled it up and together they shook it out over them. Artie thought about getting up, cleaning them both, and changing the sheets, and decided that the usual standards just didn’t apply this time. In spite of the chill in the air, he was finally warm. He was home. He was loved. He flung an arm across Jim’s solid chest and let himself drift into the night. In the morning, he woke to find Jim already up, the scent of coffee in the air, and the telegraph sounder clicking. He assumed that Jim had sent a message to Washington informing them of his return, and was receiving a reply. He wasn’t terribly interested–Washington could wait until he had bathed, dressed and drunk his coffee. But when he finally emerged from the bedroom, Jim still sat in front of the telegraph, with a sober expression on his face. “What is it?” Artie asked, alarmed. “Read this.” Jim handed over the piece of paper on which he’d decoded the message.
MIGUELITO LOVELESS FOUND DEAD--CAUSE OF DEATH UNKNOWN–DETERMINE CAUSE IF POSSIBLE–SEARCH ESTATE–PLEASE ADVISE DEPARTURE “Do you think . . . “ Jim asked slowly. “That he died when the other Loveless blew up the cave? But that was weeks ago.” Jim shrugged. “This doesn’t say when he died.” He set down the paper. “I sent Colonel Richmond a message that I urgently needed to meet with him. When this came in, I thought it was him replying to me. What do you think? Should we just go on out there? Or insist on talking to someone in Washington first?” “If they recall us to Washington,” Artie said slowly. “we’ll have people all over the train, asking questions, wanting details . . . “ They looked at each other in perfect comprehension and agreement. “No,” Jim said. He shook his head. “No. I can’t handle that. Not right now.” “You could rescue me from Dr. Loveless,” Artie suggested, with sudden inspiration, and when Jim looked up, a smile spreading across his face, he went on, “You could find me in one of those dungeons where he used to keep us, where I’d have been living on crumbs and rainwater, and fighting off huge rats. The Service would be forever grateful, I’m sure.” “No embarrassing questions about where you’d been,” Jim said, still smiling broadly. “And we’d have at least three days all to ourselves on the way. I like that idea very much.” “I’d have to stay out of sight so the crew didn’t know I was on board.” Jim stood up and slowly advanced on him. “I think I know just how to arrange that.” “Oh, no, not until I’ve had my coffee!” “I’ll bring you coffee in bed,” Jim offered with a suggestive leer. He took Artie’s hands and looked Artie over, head to toe. “I dreamed that you had come back to me,” he said slowly, “but in my dream, I woke up and realized your return itself had been a dream. It woke me up for real. But there you were, lying right next to me, and I thought my heart would break with happiness.” Artie freed his hands and began to undo his weskit buttons. “Bring me the coffee in bed,” he said thickly. Jim smiled sweetly and turned away toward the kitchen, and Artie realized what he had noticed subconsciously when he first entered the room. Jim was wearing the blue suit. He began to whistle softly, and dropping garments behind him as he went, returned to his bed. |