Diktor shook his head. "Had you, now? Think a moment. When you got back into your own time and your own place you found your earlier self there, didn't you?"
"Mmmm―yes."
"He―your earlier self―had not yet been through the Gate, had he?"
"No. I―"
"How could you have been through the Gate, unless you persuaded him to go through the Gate?"
Bob Wilson's head was beginning to whirl. He was beginning to wonder who did what to whom and who got paid. "But that's impossible! You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something."
"Well, didn't you? You were there."
"No, I didn't―no. well, maybe I did, but it didn't feel like it."
"Why should you expect it to? It was something totally new to your experience."
"But. but―" Wilson took a deep breath and got control of himself. Then he reached back into his academic philosophical concepts and produced the notion he had been struggling to express. "It denies all reasonable theories of causation. You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular. I went through because I came back from going through to persuade myself to go through. That's silly."