Paradox Hour

by John Schettler

  “Director who? Kamenski…” Volsky lowered his heavy brows, thinking deeply. Fedorov was watching him very closely, waiting, then he spoke, with hasty urgency.

  “We met him in Vladivostok, sir, after we returned from the Pacific. Inspector General Kapustin brought him in on his investigation, and he came to your office at Naval Headquarters, at Fokino. He had photographs, Admiral. Remember? Photographs of the ship as it was moving through the Straits of Gibraltar. We asked him to come with us when we boarded Kazan, on that mission to try and stop Karpov in 1908! He’s been with us ever since. My god, I spent hours and hours with the man in his cabin, right across from your quarters, Admiral. Don’t you remember? You told me to ask him about the gophers—in his garden!” He realized that last bit might make him sound like a fool, but it had quite the opposite effect on Volsky.

  “Gophers?” His eyes seemed to catch fire, brightening with newfound awareness. Now he looked around, from Samsonov, to Rodenko, and then to Nikolin and the sonar station, where Velichko sat beneath his head set, oblivious.

  “Kamenski,” he said haltingly. “Yes… Director Kamenski. The Gophers in the Devil’s Garden. That man had a knack for colorful metaphors. I’ve twiddled with that one in my mind for months.”

  “Then you remember?” Fedorov beamed, a feeling of great relief sweeping over him. He gave Nikolin a nod, smiling. “You remember sir—Tasarov? Chief Dobrynin and Rod-25…?” He waited, almost breathlessly.

  “Tasarov, Tasarov,” said Volsky. “Yes… Lieutenant Alexei Tasarov.” He looked at Nikolin now. “What have you two been up to, Mister Nikolin? Sending more riddles over the ships messaging system? Don’t think I don’t know about it.”

  “That’s it, sir!” said Nikolin. “That’s how I remembered. I was just telling Mister Fedorov about it, and he remembers too, but no one else, Admiral. No one on the ship knows anything about him—not even Doctor Zolkin. I went down there first thing, but the Doctor says he never heard of him. What’s happening? Where is he?” Nikolin seemed at the edge of tears, and Volsky raised a hand, father-like, as if to calm him and offer comfort.”

  Now the Admiral looked to Fedorov, a grave expression on his face. “Any others?” he said, thinking first of the crew. The instant Fedorov had said that about the gophers in the garden, it was as if a bell had rung in Volsky’s mind. That single thread of memory had rippled with fire, the energy leaping through one synapse after another in his tired brain, and the soft glow of recollection rekindled as it went. Places in his mind that had been stilled, as though misted over with that same heavy fog that now surrounded the ship, were now suddenly awake again, remembering… remembering…

  “Director Kamenski is missing? You are certain of this?”

  “I’ve been to his quarters, sir. No one is there, and the room itself looks as though it was never used! The Ship’s Purser has no record of any visitor quartered there, and no recollection of the man either. And by god, I nearly forgot he was here myself, until a phrase he used came to mind—slippery fish. He always said that about the way the ship seemed to move in time. Then it all came back!”

  “And Tasarov? He is missing as well?”

  “Nikolin put me on to that,” said Fedorov. “You know those two are inseparable. I think that attachment, a long, deep attachment of friendship, was simply too strong a bond between them to be easily forgotten. Nikolin came to me just now in the officer’s dining hall. He said he felt like he had lost his brother, but could not explain the sadness he was experiencing. Then he remembered, though no one else remembered Tasarov. Their friendship was simply too strong to be easily broken.”

  That was the only way Fedorov could explain it, a bond of friendship that was so strong that not even time and fate could break it. For some unfathomable reason, Tasarov had vanished, just like Kamenski. Nikolin had felt that loss on some level, that terrible emptiness, a god shaped hole in his soul. And just as those colorful phrases the Director had used jogged loose memory in the minds of Fedorov and Volsky, Tasarov’s message ID had struck Nikolin through with the light of recollection, and he suddenly knew what he had lost.

  “Dear lord, Fedorov. What is happening here? Is this what you have warned of? Are we facing this paradox hour you keep talking about.”

  “Something has changed, sir. Can you feel it? First it was physical—things in the ship suffered actual physical damage. The ship was pulsing, unstable in time. We could all feel it, and god knows Lenkov got the worst of that. Then we just made an uncontrolled shift in time. Who knows why? Yet here we are… somewhere… and the effects we have uncovered extend beyond the damage to bulkheads, deck plates and hatches. Something has changed. Men are missing—so profoundly missing that no one was even remembering they were ever here. Do you remember Chief Dobrynin now?”

  “Yes,” said Volsky, a vacant look in his eyes. “We needed the Chief to listen to those time displacements, when we used Rod-25. Chief Dobrynin—Yuri Dobrynin! He is a friend of mine as well, Fedorov. I have shared many a good cigar with that man, and Zolkin will come to his senses as soon as I get down there and rattle the Vodka cabinet. The three of us had a nip or two in Zolkin’s office from time to time. He’ll remember.”

  “I remember Tasarov now!” It was the deep voice of Viktor Samsonov. “Yes, sir. How could I forget? He was complaining to me for days—about that strange sound he claimed to hear.”

  Now Fedorov looked to Rodenko, who had drifted into the conversation, a puzzled expression on his face. “What about you, Rodenko?” asked Fedorov. “Can you remember Tasarov now?”

  Something about Samsonov’s comment concerning that strange noise had shaken the teacups in Rodenko’s cabinet. He blinked, looking a bit bewildered, then spoke. “The sound… Yes sir. Tasarov. He said he was hearing something, and I had him trying to work it like a possible contact. Yes! I remember now. Lieutenant Tasarov!”

  “Dobrynin was hearing that same sound as well,” said Fedorov quickly. “Now both men turn up missing, and they were also nearly wiped from our memory, as if they never even existed, just like the men on that list Doctor Zolkin gave to the Inspector General. But they do exist—in our minds.” He pointed a stiff finger to his head, where the black Ushanka cap he always wore was tilted at an odd angle. “We can remember them now, just like Kamenski told me.”

  “Kamenski? What did he tell you, Fedorov?” asked Volsky.

  “That he could remember many versions of the history we were living through. He said his books changed, from day to day, right before his eyes, but not his head.” He pointed again. “He could remember events that everyone else had no recollection of at all—events that history itself denied, as if they had never even happened. Do you recall those discussions, Admiral? Remember? Your Chief of Staff at Fokino knew nothing of Pearl Harbor—because our stupid intervention here changed the American entry date in the war. It was ‘Remember the Mississippi,’ not ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’”

  “Who can forget that?” said Volsky.

  “Some on this ship may have,” said Fedorov. “Just like we very nearly forgot about Tasarov and the others—my god—might there be more men missing? I was talking with Gagarin in the workshops, and he seemed very troubled, thinking he had a short shift, with a man missing. It was as if his old habits were at odds with the reality around him. I think he was struggling to remember something, just as I was, and Nikolin. Just as you did Admiral.”

  “Who else?” said Volsky. “Might there be other men missing? What if none of us remembers? We’ll have to find a way to go over the entire crew with a fine toothed comb and count our heads.”

  “Orlov would be the man for that,” said Fedorov, fingering the pocket compass the Chief had given him, suddenly remembering the man.

  “Orlov?

  Now Fedorov gave the Admiral another cautious look. “Gennadi Orlov,” he said. “The Chief. He’s the one who found that thing I threw over the side—the Devil’s Teardrop…”

  “He reached for the dangli
ng intercom handset again, grasping it and raising it to speak. “Chief Orlov, please respond immediately. This is Captain Fedorov.”

  They waited, each man looking from one to the other, wondering, held in suspense, as if they were waiting at the edge of infinity itself. They had all climbed to this place together, and the rope of their recollection and memory was still dangling over that precipice, as they waited for the last man to come up.

  But he never came. Fedorov repeated the call, but it went unanswered, his voice echoing plaintively through the ship, hollow, forlorn, lost. Orlov was gone.

  Chapter 36

  They stood in a circle around the Admiral in his chair, instinctively closing ranks, as if to guard against some icy wind that might sweep over the bridge and take another man—then another. Any man who ever joined the military, on land or sea, knew there would come moments when they would sit and stare at those empty chairs, the memory of lost comrades, fellow soldiers and sailors, still bright and glowing in their mind. But the men who made those memories would be gone, and that was sometimes an agony worse than a missing arm or leg. Those lost limbs sometimes still tingled with a strange sensation, phantoms, ghostly remnants of the life that was once there. Now they all felt that same prickling recollection of the men who were no longer there—Tasarov, Dobrynin, Kamenski, Orlov…

  How many others were gone, forgotten, swept away on the tides of this sea of time, their memories hidden by the thick fog still enfolding the ship? They stood there in that circle, Volsky, Fedorov, Rodenko, Nikolin, Samsonov, five who knew, contemplating those empty chairs.

  “Why, Fedorov?” said Volsky, reaching for understanding. “Is it that these men failed to survive our recent displacement? Are they out of phase, stuck somewhere else? Are we going to find them in a storage locker somewhere, like Lenkov’s legs?”

  “No sir,” Fedorov said emphatically. “I know that Dobrynin was here after that shift—right in sick bay. I called on the Doctor to check on him myself when I was walking the ship to see about shift damage. Orlov was here too! I remember he came onto the bridge, complaining as he often does, and he handed me this!” Fedorov showed Volsky the pocket compass, its needle still wildly erratic.”

  “Yes,” said Volsky. “I remember that… we all remember that. Correct? Rodenko?”

  “He went over to have some coffee, sir,” said Rodenko. “Then he went into the operations room, but I was just in there, and there’s no sign of him. Not even his coffee mug.”

  “So they were here after the shift we just made,” said Fedorov. “But I think Tasarov went missing during the shift. I clearly remember someone saying Velichko had the best ears in the fleet. No offense to Mister Velichko, but we all used to say that about only one man—Lieutenant Alexi Tasarov. Am I correct? It struck me as odd at the moment, but there was too much to worry about just then. After that I walked the ship, and I could see the men were somewhat confused and disoriented. One even reported he thought someone was missing on a work shift, but I took no real notice of that. Yet I know Dobrynin was in sick bay, so he must have vanished some time after that.”

  He gave them all a wide eyed look. “That means this may not be over yet. These effects could continue.”

  “Not over? You mean others could go missing—just disappear?”

  “Like Dobrynin, Orlov, Kamenski…” Fedorov had made his point clearly enough. “Yes, I think Kamenski may have survived the initial displacement as well, but then he vanished too. We’ve clearly entered some altered state here, and like ice freezing, it doesn’t always happen at once. It takes…. Time…”

  The thought that others might soon feel that cold freezing hand of time on the back of their neck gave each man there a shiver. Volsky lowered his voice, seeing other junior members of the bridge crew looking their way now.

  “Why these men, and not us?” The Admiral had a scattered look on his face.

  The anguish of the question clawed at Fedorov, though he had no real answer. All he could think of were the words Kamenski had spoken to him in their last meeting… Now you question the choices Death makes… Why do leaves fall in autumn, Fedorov? Who decides which ones go first?

  “Consequences,” he said, unknowingly echoing the very same word Orlov had spoken to Karpov when Sergeant Troyak first burst through the bridge hatch when the Captain had tried to take the ship. That all seemed so very long ago now, another memory, another reality.

  “If these men are taken from us, then we may have done something that affected their personal lines of fate. Then again, maybe that thing Orlov found had something to do with all of this. Dobrynin spent a good deal of time around it during his examination of the object. Even my brief handling of the object caused that strange event with my hand, and Orlov, god rest his soul, he was carrying the damn thing around in his pocket!”

  “But Tasarov? Kamenski? They had nothing to do with that thing,” Volsky protested, inwardly grieving for the missing, like a father who had lost his children.

  “It is only one possible explanation,” said Fedorov. “Maybe it had nothing to do with these disappearances. Perhaps it was us—the ship and crew—all of us, as I said earlier. We could simply be fated now, fated to face the consequences of the world we have created in the future with our actions in the past. I don’t have all the answers. Right now everything is spinning like a mad top. We’re somewhere, but we don’t know where. It isn’t just these three men that have gone missing. From Admiral Tovey’s perspective, we’ve all gone missing—right along with the ship itself.” Then something occurred to him, that had stood as one of those stubborn unanswered questions in his mind for so long. “Just like Alan Turing’s watch,” he said.

  “What is this you say?” said Volsky.

  “You remember how Turing claimed his favorite watch went missing, only to reappear in those file boxes containing evidence of our earlier time displacements? They appeared at the same time we arrived here, in June of 1940, but time had a problem with that. You and I both know that everything in those files was created in the future, mostly in 1942 from the dates on the material. Everything in those boxes then moved to 1940—including the watch. Apparently Turing must have had the watch with him while he was working on those files in 1942. Who knows, perhaps it slipped and fell into one of those file boxes. When they moved here, strangely following in our wake, there would have been a problem. Unlike the files, that watch was already here. It existed in June of 1940, and so how could it travel back inside one of those file boxes? It was a paradox, and look at the way time handled it. Turing’s watch went missing. It simply vanished, until it turned up later in that file box. We vanished the same way, the ship, all of us, because we face the same paradox.”

  “Yet we thought we would have until July, Fedorov. We first shifted on July 28th, during those damn live fire exercises. You are saying this is not so? This paradox business has already happened?”

  “Perhaps. It may have merely been the ship’s instability in time that provoked this latest shift. In that case, perhaps Time is just taking advantage of that to sort things out.”

  Then this is the result?” said Volsky. “Lenkov? That warped deck over there where your boots are still stuck? Men missing?” He shook his head. “I know you cannot know any of this for certain, Fedorov. Forgive me if you hear any blame in my tone. I mean none. If these are the consequences of our actions here, we may never know why some are missing, while we still remain. A pity we don’t have Kamenski to weigh in on this.”

  Now Fedorov remembered what he had found on that nightstand. He reached into his pocket, feeling the key, his mind returning to that piece of this shattered puzzle.

  “Kamenski left something behind,” he said, drawing out the key. “I found it on the nightstand, just sitting by the lamp.”

  “That is one of those mysterious keys, is it not?” asked Volsky. “If I understand correctly, one was responsible for moving the Argos Fire—displacing it in time, just like Rod-25. Yes?”

  �
��Not exactly, Admiral. I asked Miss Fairchild about this, and she believed it was the box that moved the ship. The key merely activated it. In fact, she said she believed there was a fragment from the Tunguska Event in a hidden compartment of that box. I do not know how she would come to that conclusion, but apparently British intelligence knew about the odd effects surrounding Tunguska, and we both know what Orlov found there…”

  “Only too well,” said Volsky. “But I don’t like this, Fedorov. That thing might be part and parcel with what we are dealing with now. What if you turn up missing next, just like Kamenski?”

  “I don’t think the key caused his disappearance,” said Fedorov. “It was placed on the nightstand, as if he had deliberately left it there to be found. If Kamenski just vanished, and the key was all that remained behind, why wouldn’t I have found it in some haphazard place, perhaps on the floor, or chair where he often liked to sit and do his reading. No. I think he meant to leave it behind, and meant for us to find it if that is so. Fairchild seemed to think these keys were very important sir. In fact she claimed to be their keeper, on a mission to recover any known key they could find. That was what this rendezvous with Rodney was for, but when I last spoke with Director Kamenski, he told me Fairchild was mistaken. She was not the keeper of those keys—Kamenski said he was!”

  “What? You mean he knew about these keys all along?”

  “Yes sir, he said he had been a Keyholder for over thirty years. Apparently the KGB found this that long ago, and he’s had it in his possession ever since.”

  “Remember what I said earlier, Fedorov. There’s more to that man than we know. But I don’t suppose that key will unlock the dilemma we now find ourselves in. We still don’t know our position, in space or time. What are we going to do about this situation?”