SAM, THIS IS YOU
By MURRAY LEINSTER
Illustrated by MEL HUNTER
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionMay 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You are not supposed to believe this story, and if you ask Sam Yoderabout it, he is apt to say that it's all a lie. But Sam is a bitsensitive about it. He does not want the question of privacy to beraised again—especially in Rosie's hearing. And there are othermatters. But it's all perfectly respectable and straightforward.
It could have happened to anybody—well, almost anybody. Anybody, say,who was a telephone lineman for the Batesville and RappahannockTelephone Company, and who happened to be engaged to Rosie, and who hadbeen told admiringly by Rosie that a man as smart as he was ought tomake something wonderful of himself. And, of course, anybody who'd takenthat seriously and had been puttering around on a device to make privateconversations on a party-line telephone possible, and almost had thetrick.
It began about six o'clock on July second, when Sam was up a telephonepole near Bridge's Run. He was hunting for the place where that partyline had gone dead. He'd hooked in his lineman's phone and he couldn'traise Central, so he was just going to start looking for the break whenhis phone rang back, though the line had checked dead.
Startled, he put the receiver to his ear. "Hello. Who's this?"
"Sam, this is you," a voice replied.
"Huh?" said Sam. "What's that?"
"This is you," the voice on the wire repeated. "You, Sam Yoder. Don'tyou recognize your own voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from thetwelfth of July. Don't hang up!"
Sam hadn't even thought of hanging up. He was annoyed. He was up atelephone pole, trying to do some work, resting in his safety belt andwith his climbing irons safely fixed in the wood. Naturally, he thoughtsomebody was trying to joke with him, and when a man is working is notime for jokes.
"I'm not hanging up," said Sam dourly, "but you'd better!"
The voice was familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. If it talkeda little more, he undoubtedly would. He knew it just about as well as heknew his own, and it was irritating not to be able to call this joker byname.
The voice said, "Sam, it's the second of July where you are, and you'reup a pole by Bridge's Run. The line's dead in two places, else Icouldn't talk to you. Lucky, ain't it?"
"Whoever you are," Sam said formidably, "it ain't going to be lucky foryou if you ever need telephone service and you've kept wasting my time.I'm busy!"
"But I'm you!" insisted the voice persuasively. "And you're me! We'reboth the same Sam Yoder, only where I am, it's July twelfth. Where youare, it's July second. You've heard of time-traveling. Well, this istime-talking. You're talking to yourself—that's me—and I'm talking tomyself—that's you—and it looks like we've got a mighty good chance toget rich."
Then something came into Sam's memory and every