“I don’t understand,” said Tovey. “You say you can leave us now and safely reach your own time in the future again, but no future can arise from these events?”
“Correct. Not until this intervention by Kirov comes to some resolution. As to my future, and yours Miss Fairchild, as you came from the same Meridian I did, think of it all like a sand castle built well up near the high tide line on a beach. That ship appeared here once before, and those file boxes in your archives are the tracks on the beach it left as it passed, down near the encroaching waves. Now the tide is coming in. A new Heisenberg Wave is being generated by this second coming, and it is wiping those tracks clean. As it moves forward, it rewrites all this history, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour to the days and years and decades yet to come.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” said Tovey, “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time…”
“Yes,” said Dorland. “It is doing so with this agonizing, creeping slowness now, with every tick of that clock. But if this resolves, then that Heisenberg Wave really gets moving. It becomes a tsunami, and cascades forward in an instant to change everything at once. It will wipe that future I’m returning to away as well. Who knows… I might never develop my theory of time travel, or build the Meridian project that allows me to be here with you at this moment. Everything is at stake now, not just a future that might arise from this time, but all our tomorrows. Understand?”
“So,” said Elena, “if this world survives in its present altered state, then our future must be sacrificed. And if we do find some way to resolve the damage caused by the coming of this ship, then it is Admiral Tovey’s world—this meridian, that is sacrificed. It seems we cannot prevent catastrophic change no matter what we do. At least it will happen slowly, second by second, as you say.”
“At the moment, that seems to be the case.” Yet Dorland had a warning in his eyes. “The Heisenberg Wave from 1908 has struck Paradox, and split in two. This is that overlapping time of great disturbance where the two waves interfere with each other behind the Paradox—Chaos Time. Eventually they will reform into one forward moving wave, and the outcome of events taking place now, particularly those involving Prime Movers, will determine the work of that new, unified wave. Yes, it may be moving with that creeping slowness now, for the ship is still here, as you and your ship are still here, Miss Fairchild. But that may not always be the case—this slow progression of change. Things could slip, and very suddenly, like an earthquake.”
“How so?” asked Elena, the fear in her eyes obvious.
“The persistence of this altered state is very tentative. It arose because of events that occurred in 1908, but events that led to that intervention have their origins here, in the 1940s—but not on this meridian. All that evidence discovered in those file boxes dated to 1942… Well, none of that is likely to happen now, at least not on this altered meridian, which figures to become the new Prime Meridian if these events progress. Who knows how this retelling of that time will play out? In fact, I would think the viability of those reports you filed is in jeopardy now. They should not be able to persist when events here reach the time they purport to describe. They began with the first coming of the ship, but now those events are being revised, re-written, and that process may soon alter or eliminate a key event or lever.”
“What would that do?” asked Elena.
“What would it do? It would produce sudden, catastrophic change, that’s what it would do. The ship went south after it first appeared here, yet this time it has turned north. That has already avoided the initial point of divergence that began to alter the history, and so events arising from that intervention are now in jeopardy—this whole altered state is very fragile, completely exposed to the possibility of a radical transformation.”
Tovey scratched his head. “You mean to say things in this world could change? I might wake up tomorrow and find myself on another ship—not this one, which you claim was never supposed to have been built?”
“That’s about the size of it. You see, it isn’t simply those future times that are in jeopardy. During Chaos Time anything could happen. We could be laboring here to effect a favorable outcome, and then all of a sudden…”
“We could wake up and find Herr Hitler has already won the damn war,” said Tovey.
Paul nodded his head, accepting the Admiral’s example as a real possibility. “I’ll give you a more concrete example. You tell me Sergei Kirov now rules over the Soviet State. Well it is certain that a chain of events preceded his rise to power, and they started with the coming of that ship, and its movement into the Atlantic. That isn’t happening this time. And now, moment by moment that chain of causality is being weathered and rusted away. Should that process reach some key event, it’s like a link breaking, and you get an obvious result. Understand?”
“You mean that the events that led to Kirov’s survival and subsequent rise to power are now being re-written,” said Elena. “But hasn’t that chain already been fatally compromised? The ship isn’t heading into the Atlantic. That first point of divergence, as you call it, has changed.”
“True,” said Dorland, “but if the Push Point lies elsewhere, say in 1942, then the Heisenberg Wave has not yet reached it, so things stand as they are until that happens.”
Now I see the problem,” said Elena. “Captain Fedorov told me how that happened. In fact, he claimed he was directly responsible, a careless whisper, as he described it, just like one of your Push Points. If the history that led him to that moment changes…”
“Exactly,” said Dorland. “Then that moment loses its foundation in the line of causality. Think about it. Sergei Kirov is standing on quicksand now, and if he goes, then everything he did and built in this world goes with him. He’s a Prime Mover by every definition of the term. And the thing about these changes is that no one knows anything has happened—except Primes protected in a safe nexus. Oh, they might have inklings and inner whispers that something isn’t what it should be. People get these hunches, intuitions, intimations of something that they cannot quite clarify in their minds.”
“Damn if that isn’t the case with me,” said Tovey. “I’ve had these dogging recollections of the events depicted in those file boxes, yet the memories are never really clear. It’s as if I was right on the cusp of seeing it all, but then it slips away.”
“Precisely,” said Dorland. “You have already suffered through one of these great changes, Admiral Tovey. I call them radical transformations, but timequake might be a bit more colorful. Your part in the chain of causality that led to these altered states was probably not fully formed when it happened, which is why you struggle to remember. Well, what I am telling you now is that we could get another change like this, all of the sudden, and the outcome is completely unpredictable.”
“Damn,” said Tovey. “We could set the table for six and then find twelve at the door. We could sit here making all these plans only to have them undermined by one of these bloody timequakes.”
“You have it exactly,” said Dorland with a frown.
Chapter 35
“But what if we could do what you have suggested?” said Elena. “What if we could prevent that ship from ever coming back—eliminate first cause in the chain of all these events?”
“That would be quite difficult.”
“Yes, but you appeared here, and that would seem impossible. The very difficult should be much easier to accomplish. Why not use your time machine, or whatever it is, to simply get to the days before Kirov departs Severomorsk and prevent it from leaving harbor?””
“I would love to lend a hand in that, but I cannot.”
“Why?” Elena folded her arms.
“Because I cannot travel to a time when I already exist. I’m already there, and doing something else on July 28th when that ship vanished. Trying to visit a time when I already exist would cause a Paradox that I would not survive. Understand?”
> “Karpov did,” said Elena.
“That was an anomaly, a mistake, an aberration. It arose only because of the dual Heisenberg Waves created when the wave from 1908 encountered the Paradox. I could explain it all again, but trust me, this is a very rare and unusual occurrence. No. If Kirov is ever prevented from arriving here, only men living in the days and hours before its departure could effect that outcome. And, as they have no way of knowing what is going to happen…”
He thought for a moment. “There is one possibility… The Admiral’s remark about that other John Tovey dropping him a line put my mind on it. It was something I tried during my Bismarck intervention. When we deemed it too perilous to physically go back to try and alter events, we tried something else first.”
“What was that?”
“We sent information—right to the Admiralty using a clever ploy. I dug up a lexicon of code handles used by undercover operatives in WWII, and I used one to sign off on a radio transmission we beamed to 1941, right over London so the Admiralty could pick it up.” He smiled, quite pleased with his trick.
“I was trying to persuade you to get up steam and get moving, Admiral Tovey. So we sent a message through to alert you Bismarck was on the move, but it didn’t work. Lütjens was apparently a free radical, and he made a decision that changed things again. There’s nothing ever certain in all of this. It isn’t always cause and effect. We learned that the hard way, and so I decided I had to intervene personally, as this Lieutenant Commander Wellings, and get aboard Rodney to get a firmer hand on the tiller.”
“Information…” Elena had a strange look on her face now. “Yes! That was what we received. Information! Someone else tried your little trick, Mister Dorland. Someone from the future, or so we came to believe.”
Now she related the story she had once told Gordon, of how the Watch had received radio transmissions, signals in the long, lonesome nights at sea. They were predictions at first, designed to establish the credibility of the sender.
“We learned of the 9-11 event before it happened, and we were sent closing tickers on the stock market for a future day that panned out exactly as the signal predicted.”
“I see…” Paul was suddenly very interested in this. “What else came through?”
“A warning,” said Elena, her eyes flashing with realization. “Yes! It was a warning from the future—beware a ship, beware Kirov. That was what we were established for, to stand a watch for the coming of that ship in any time after this one. You started all this, Admiral Tovey—the Watch.”
“So I’m told,” said Tovey. “And yes, I read my own hand on that in those file boxes. The Watch…”
“Well those signals were trying to warn us about that ship,” said Elena. “Don’t you see? We received them before Kirov left for those live fire exercises. Someone was trying to do what you just suggested. They were trying to send a warning through to the Watch!”
“My, my,” said Tovey. “This is getting darker and darker with each passing moment. I recall you revealing all this during that meeting with Captain Fedorov before we ran the Straits of Gibraltar. Yet so much was going on that I’ve had no time to bother with messages from the future. Day to day signals traffic has kept me quite busy.”
“I understand,” said Elena. “But Professor Dorland here should know all of this. Those messages had to be coming from the future, because the predictions they made all happened. Only someone from the future could have known that. Then we just get this one final message, the warning. Why couldn’t they be more specific? They could have spelled everything out, chapter and verse.”
“Unless they were desperate in that hour,” said Paul in a solemn tone. “Remember what I said about the danger all of this poses to that future—to all possible futures—and how things can change. If they sent such a message, then they were opening the time continuum to do so. That means they were in a safe nexus, but if it was artificially created, as we create a nexus with our own Arch facility, then it depends on the viability of that technology. If that future time was suddenly threatened, they could have just gasped out that one last warning before the danger overcame them. I’m going back to my future shortly, and believe me, it will be no picnic there. We were right at the edge of the Third World War! I have no idea how much longer we may be able to operate.”
“Seeing this one first hand,” said Tovey, “I can only imagine that the next one would be a desperate affair indeed.”
“Believe me, I’m not looking forward to that future,” said Paul, “but it’s the only place where I can take any meaningful action—by getting to some moment in the past where I can find a Push Point, or a lever on these events, and attempt an intervention. Yet, as I’ve tried to explain in more than one way, my future is on very shaky ground.”
“Well,” said Elena. “Trying to stop this by preventing first cause sounds like the only real solution, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, but I can’t use my technology to do anything in that hour.”
“You can’t go there, nor anyone from your team.”
“Nor can you go there with your ship, assuming that box might be able to move you forward again.”
“So this is why you thought we might be able to send information through instead?”
“That was my thought,” said Dorland. “If we could get a warning through—perhaps to men or woman of your group—the Watch as you call it—then they might take action.”
“Sounds logical,” said Elena. “The Watch has already received such a warning, as I’ve explained. It was just not clear enough to us to act on the threat. Whatever we send, it needs to be clear and specific… But how might we do this?”
“I might be able to help in that,” said Paul. “After all, I managed to send a message through to 1941. Any ideas on what I could try?”
“An order,” said Tovey. “I assume there’s a Royal Navy in that time, Professor Dorland?”
“Yes, I can’t say that Britannia rules the waves as they have in earlier generations, but there is a small, and fairly professional Royal Navy.”
“Then perhaps we could send an order through to the navy. All they would have to do is try and prevent this accident—the first cause that sent the Russian ship here. Yes?”
“I suppose that could help,” said Dorland. “If nothing more, it might stop this time loop and allow things to resolve.”
“What would happen?” asked Elena. “Assuming we did that, and the Royal Navy was able to somehow prevent that accident. What would happen to the Russian ship if it were still here?”
The Professor inclined his head, thinking. “An interesting question. I might discuss this with Maeve when I get back—she’s our head of Outcomes and Consequences—a very good mind for things like this. You might ask your own resident puzzle solver, Admiral. Why not pose the question to Alan Turing? For my part, I am thinking that the elimination of first cause would be very significant. You see, that accident is a perfect example of how a Push Point works, just happenstance, yet it had catastrophic consequences. We could try this, in fact I think we must. Yet my own attempt to sink the Bismarck this way failed. I suppose it all comes down to what the people on the receiving end do when they get our message. That isn’t easy to control. It would be so much better if we could intervene more directly—personally, as I did aboard Rodney, yet no one from our team could go.”
“But what about men from this era?” asked Elena. “They don’t exist in 2021. They could go there with no ill effects. Correct?”
“I suppose so, but who to send?”
“We have some very good people for little cloak and dagger missions like that,” said Tovey.
“Then the next question arises,” said Dorland. “How would we get them there? I can return to my own time, only because my people have a quantum link to my pattern signature here to move me back where I belong.”
“I know a way,” said Elena. “We’ve been discussing it all along—these time rifts. We know they exist, o
pening portals to the past. But I know of one that goes both ways—Ilanskiy.”
Tovey raised an eyebrow, for he had heard about all of that in an earlier meeting. Miss Fairchild related the story to Dorland, telling him everything she had learned from the Russian Captain Fedorov.
“Another rift,” said Dorland. “And this one seems very stable. Where is this place?”
“Siberia,” said Elena. “A small hamlet east of Kansk.”
“Is that friendly territory? Could we send these men Tovey suggests there?”
Elena looked at Tovey now, wondering.
“Technically Siberia is a Free and independent state,” said the Admiral, “though it seems they now have ties to Soviet Russia. At least they are now openly at war with Volkov’s Orenburg Federation. It’s said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I suppose they might be considered fledgling allies in our cause, yet Britain has no formal accord signed with the Siberians.”
“And don’t forget the Doppelganger,” said Dorland. “This man Karpov… From all I have heard about him, he does not seem all that cooperative.”
“Captain Fedorov and Admiral Volsky seemed to think he was very dangerous,” said Tovey.
“Does he know about this rift at Ilanskiy?”
“Quite possibly,” said Tovey. “In fact, Sergei Kirov must also know about it. Fedorov told me he certainly used that stairway, because it connected these years to his own time, 1908. The Captain believed Kirov used those stairs to come here, and the world he saw was so unpalatable that he decided to do something about it.”
“Stalin!” said Dorland. “So now I finally see the connection between the coming of the ship and the death of Stalin. What a devious pathway it took, and remember the example I gave earlier. It may not be all that difficult to disrupt that chain of events. Why, with an open time rift like that, someone could even do it unintentionally. These rifts are dangerous. I can see why operatives in the future were trying to secure them, and what these keys may be all about.”
Nemesis Page 30