Part 2

"I had to do it," the director said over the body. "It was well enough to frame you for Baker's crimes due to your suspicious knowledge of him, but I didn't know you were going to fail to protest, that you were going to go along with the lie. I couldn't stand another man living to take the honor for being Baker. There can be no living Baker but _me_."

XII

The tall man rolled over on the floor and sat up. "Then you admit that you are Baker? No, never mind firing again. I am wearing meteor armor under my clothes. It's sufficient to stop a gun blast."

"You are a clever devil," the director snarled.

"A man has to be clever to be Baker."

"You are NOT Baker!" the director shrieked. "I am!"

"Are you?" the tall man said superciliously. "Think why you came here. You've been working too hard, Director. You received too many stories about Baker. You began envying him his freedom of movement. Soon you began thinking you _were_ Baker. Your analyst sent you to me, to make you see through this legend of Baker. It was to my advantage to do so."

The director wavered. "If I'm not Baker, who is?"

"I told you," the tall man said, drawing a gun and shooting the director in the head. "I am."

He smiled down at the body. "You weren't wearing armor, were you?"

* * * * *

Street reversed the dial on his gun and shot the director a second time. Quickly, he stirred from his paralysis.

"Sorry I had to do that, Director," Street said, "but I could see you were about to strangle me with naked hands. The important thing was to fix the idea firmly in your mind that I was Baker. If you thought I was, you would have to realize that you couldn't be."

"I do," the director said miserably as he climbed to his feet and dusted off his breeches. "But if I'm not Baker and you're not Baker, who is Baker?"

"Director, just as telling your stories and hearing my answers to them cured you of believing you were Baker, the events of this story are designed to make someone remember the true identity of Baker--that very person who now believes in a different personality of his own."

"Who is this person who is really Baker?" the director asked.

"_The person who is now reading this story_," Street said.

XIII

"I'm afraid it won't do, Mr. Street," the editor of _Man's True Space_ said across his desk. "It's fiction. There can be only one Baker and tens of thousands would read the story in my magazine."

"You are missing the point, Mr. Trent," Street said. "There is only one manuscript and it is in your hands. _You_ are Baker."

"No," Trent said. "No."

"Yes," Street said relentlessly. "Just as the director realized that _he_ was not Baker, you must realize _you_ are."

Trent lay back in his swivel, gasping. "All right, all right, I admit it. I am Baker."

"But you aren't really, Mr. Trent," Street said calmly. "I know you thought at one time you were Baker and then repressed the idea. But I knew at some future time the delusion might return and you would begin claiming to be Baker once more. As you said, there can only be one Baker. _I_ am Baker."

"You lie," Trent snarled. "I know the truth now. I am Baker, and there _can_ only be one."

The editor jerked the gun up from his desk drawer. The shots crashed at the same instant. Trent ran the letter spindle through his chest as he fell across the desk. Street settled back into his chair comfortably, death in his lungs from the gas bullet that had exploded against his armor.

XIV

The director of Extraterrestrial Investigations opened the closet door and stepped into the office. "The fools," Baker said to himself.

He had no doubt that _he_ was the true, the original Baker. He remembered clearly that he had stepped out of the left cabinet of Gentle's transmatter, the one which he had first entered. (He did remember that, didn't he? Yes! Doubting himself was the first stride down the road these two had taken.) His act to shock "Street" into realizing they were _both_ Baker had been elaborate, but "Street" had gone schizoid.

He was no copy, but there were copies of Baker, dozens of them, all helping the downtrodden aliens from terrestrial exploitation and making fortunes for themselves. There were fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, short ones, all kinds of Bakers, thanks to the refinement of Gentle's distortion factors in matter-duplicating to an exact science, a desired result, not an accident like the duplication itself. Unfortunately, in a few, physical distortion meant mental disorientation. These no longer had to merely pretend to be other people than Baker.

It was too bad about them--and about all the other Bakers who had died. He really had died in all those ways on all those worlds in all those bodies, despite "Street's" clever excuses. Still it wasn't a bad life--helping the helpless and himself to all they could get.

Yes, Baker decided, dying was a good way to make a living.