“I ended up in 1945,” said Karpov.
“And after that? You got into trouble there, didn’t you, and you used a nuke.”
Karpov pursed his lips. “What of it?”
“Then where did the ship go? To 1908, that’s where. Don’t you see? Shifts to this time in the 1940s are linked in some odd way to 1908. It’s as if that year is a kind of magnet. Everything falls through to 1908, but we’ve never gone back any farther than that, not in all the many shifts we’ve tried. It’s always somewhere in the 1940s, and then back to 1908, just like the stairway at Ilanskiy. Well, I think I know why—the Tunguska event. That’s what set all this time business in motion. I think that was the blow that first shattered the meridian. We’ve got residue from that explosion right here aboard ship, in Rod-25, and we both know what it causes when we mix it with a nuclear reaction. And when I sent Troyak and the Marines to try and destroy that railway inn, who finds something odd in the taiga when their airship gets blown off course and ends up on the Stony Tunguska? Orlov! See how all of this is wound up together?”
Karpov nodded. He was beginning to see Fedorov’s point now, as he had thought about all this for many hours himself. “You know,” he began, “I once contemplated simply going down those stairs and finding Volkov—killing him there in 1908. Then again I also contemplated going up the stairway and killing him in 2021, before he ever discovers it. Then I changed my mind, and decided it would be so much better to fight him here—kill him here, and then live with that. You see, I have no intention of ever leaving this world—not to go back to the future. If I never see our time again that will suit me just fine”
Fedorov nodded. “Then you should realize that if I don’t take action to prevent it, everything here could be… compromised. I can’t say I know what might happen, but I can certainly feel it. Don’t you? Can’t you sense impending doom in all of this? All I know is what Kamenski once told me. Time is tidy. She likes things neat, a zero sum game when it comes to changes and variations in the meridians. She will find a way to punish those who challenge her order, and those who have cut through the loom of fate where she’s been weaving.”
“How very colorful. Well, she had every reason to get rid of me when we faced that last paradox, and look now—I am redoubled!”
“At the moment,” said Fedorov, feeling more than thinking in expressing that. “Hitler once did a jig in Paris. Berlin burned five years later. Have you considered what your situation would be now if one of those missiles had struck us?”
“Certainly, but none did. Our defenses were simply too good—I was simply too good, and if this Mother Time you speak of so fancifully wants to pick a fight with me, she’ll regret it. That said… what is it you propose?”
There was always a crack in Karpov’s brave outer face, and Fedorov perceived one here. He understands what I’m saying, he thought. But what should we do?
“Admiral,” he began, “unless you want to see our situation here fatally compromised, you had better heed what I’m telling you now. Here is what I have in mind.”
Chapter 29
“Ilanskiy,” said Fedorov. “That’s the key to this whole situation. We both know that. From there we have absolute power to effect changes in the timeline.”
“I have absolute power, not you, Fedorov. I control Ilanskiy. All you could think of doing there was sending in Troyak and his Marines to blow the place to hell. Well, I remedied that. It’s been rebuilt from the original plans, and I had the advantage of taking some very accurate measurements… in 1908. Yes, I was there myself, Fedorov. There are things I haven’t told you.”
“You went down those stairs?”
“Not exactly. But you realize I spent a good long while in 1908 before you showed up with your submarine.” Karpov lied now, leading Fedorov to think that he went to Ilanskiy after the ship took him back to 1908 to have his argument with Admiral Togo. He did not want to get into the strange shift he made aboard Tunguska, or how he consequently flew to Ilanskiy at that time.
“So what would you do if you could utilize that stairway again? How do you propose that we can somehow shore up the reality of this world? Yes, I understand your logic. Orlov doesn’t jump ship, you never go back after him, and you never meet Sergei Kirov. Volkov never goes after you. Stalin survives, and this world looks entirely different. Russia is not divided, and we get a situation that looks very much like the world we came from. Well isn’t that what you might wish for? Isn’t that what you’ve been striving to re-create all along as you defended your precious history?”
“It’s too broken now,” said Fedorov with a shrug. “I realize I can never restore things as they once were.”
“But you believe time can do this? You think it will rearrange all the pieces on the board and this little chess game will look quite different come the 1st of October, with Stalin crowned King again? That should suit you fine, because the position would be much like the one we left behind in Severomorsk. Then again, you might just get your wish and save your history by doing nothing here. Let the impossibility of this meridian stand, and leave it all up to time to fix things. If you are correct, them this meridian, as you call it, leads time nowhere. There is no foundation for it at all. Yes, I understand the threat quite well. It’s just that I can’t see how time could do anything on such a grand scale to alter this world like that—eliminate it, annihilate it, start everything new. That is what would have to happen here—complete and utter annihilation. That’s not very tidy, Fedorov. Do you really foresee something like that?”
“Hasn’t it already happened once?” said Fedorov. “Where is Stalin? The world we came from, that entire history, is completely gone. If that isn’t annihilation, then what is?”
“Not completely gone,” said Karpov. “Remember your analogy of the cracked mirror. Yes, in places we will look at this history and it will be impossibly wrong. Yet in others, it remains remarkably consistent. The Allies are launching their Operation Torch even as we speak.”
“It’s drastically different this time.”
“And yet they called it Torch, just as they did in the old history. That may seem like an inconsequential detail, but there are thousands of things like that which remain consistent.”
“But the longer this goes on,” said Fedorov, “the more distorted the history gets. Take the fighting on the Volga. That will look nothing at all like the old battle of Stalingrad. I tell you, it’s a line that diverges from the original, and the farther it goes, the wider that divergence becomes. Soon the world will be so completely changed, and that I cannot see any way this ship would have ever been built, and that is a real paradox. Is it not? How could this world exist, it the ship that caused it to come into being was never built? No, this time line leads to an impossible dead end. Time must deal with that—unless we do something first. We can possibly sustain it a little longer, if I go warn Kirov of his fate like I did before. That at least buys us some time, until the next paradox crops up.”
“The next Paradox? There’s more?”
“Oh, there’s more alright—you made certain of that when you ended up in 1908.”
“That was happenstance. I had no intention of ever going there when I took the Red Banner Fleet out in 2021. It was that damn volcano—”
“And that damn little nuke you threw at the Americans in 1945.”
“They deserved everything they got.”
“That isn’t my point!” Fedorov could not help just a little anger in his tone. “Suppose I warn Kirov and buy us some time. We were supposed to shift forward to 2021 soon, which sets that entire series of events in motion.”
“None of that has to ever happen,” said Karpov. “For example, knowing what I know now, I could easily avoid the Demon Volcano. You see. Free will, Fedorov. This isn’t all fated to reoccur. What happens is entirely up to me.”
“You misunderstand me. I’m saying that if it doesn’t reoccur, then nothing you did in 1908 will have happened. You don’t duel with A
dmiral Togo, Japan never invades Siberian territory in 1908, nor do I have any reason to go after you with Rod-25 aboard Kazan—so you don’t shift forward to 1938 as you did here. Understand? Your existence in your present position becomes unsustainable. You face Paradox again—did you enjoy it that last time?”
“Alright. I see your point. Saving Kirov just buys us a little time. We then have more hurtles to jump, and if we don’t? If I do nothing to try and resolve these problems, what then? You can’t believe this will all just end, come to a stop, vanish. It seems preposterous to even contemplate such an outcome.”
Fedorov thought, his eyes suddenly alight with realization. “No,” he began. “It won’t just end—it will loop! That’s what’s happening here now. This is the middle of a time loop. It’s the second time the ship has arrived in the past. The history is repeating, only it’s very distorted now. Time didn’t end, it just looped back on itself.”
“Interesting,” said Karpov, also thinking now. “Then you believe this is what will happen again? July 28th of 1941 is long gone. How could it start all over again?”
“Because in the course of these events Kirov shifted to a time prior to that first coming. That’s what set up the first paradox, and now we’re facing another. If I take no action, this time line becomes impossible in just three days, unless Sergei Kirov survives. Then it at least has some rational underpinning for a little while longer—perhaps long enough for us to deal with what comes next. But in three days, if I don’t act, Sergei Kirov’s existence here has no foundation. He shouldn’t be alive, because I will not have warned him of his fate. That becomes an insoluble problem for time, and its only solution is to loop the history back on itself, play the game again, and see if it can reach an alternative solution.”
“And if it fails to do so, what then? Checkmate?”
“No… Stalemate, a game where neither side can win. The old time line cannot be restored, the new one can have no basis for existence, and so round and round it goes—forever.”
“That may be our fate, Fedorov. This may be inevitable. What gets you so hot to do anything here? You yourself admit that saving Kirov is just a temporary measure. Is that what you have in mind? You haven’t even said anything about your plan.”
“Ilanskiy,” said Fedorov. “Yes. If I go there, and retrace my steps down those stairs, I believe I will return to 1908.”
“What makes you so certain of that?”
“I’m not sure, but I think there is a kind of connection with each traveler on those stairs to a given time. I went down once, and returned precisely to the point in time I had just left.”
“I did the same,” said Karpov, “only I was going up, and I saw what was happening in 2021 when the missiles started to fly.”
“So you retreated, just as I did, and you ended up exactly where you started. Who can say why? Yet it happens that way. So I think I would end up the same place if I went down those stairs again—1908—and on a very special day that year. I saw the burning light of the Tunguska event. I saw it happen, Karpov. And I sat down to breakfast with Sergei Kirov that morning, if only for a very brief moment. He was calling himself by an alias at that time—Mironov.”
“Then you think you would meet him there again?” Now Karpov leaned forward, his voice a near hush, and he was suddenly very interested. His flippant manner had evaporated, and the edge of bravado was gone.
“You think you would find Kirov there as before?”
“Yes.”
“And what would you do?”
Fedorov waited a moment. “If I told him about Stalin, revealed the date of his death by assassination, then he might act just as we know he has. He might kill Stalin again, and then we build one strong pillar of iron beneath the world we’re sitting on here.”
“Yes…” said Karpov, thinking it through now. “But what about Volkov? He’s the one who builds the Orenburg Federation. If what you said earlier is true, and we do nothing, then there is no reason for Volkov to even exist in this time line. He should vanish, or meet some other untimely end if time gets its way, and that would be a well deserved fate for him.”
“I’m not certain about Volkov, but remember, each person that walks that stairway gets somewhere, unerringly, and they are linked to a very specific time. For some, there is no effect at all. Troyak told me he followed my footprints down those stairs but nothing happened to him at all. He just met Zykov at the bottom and they continued their search for me.”
“Interesting,” said Karpov. “Volkov came down and said he met NKVD there at the inn. Then he went down a second time to reach 1908. I wonder, Fedorov. What day was that? Might his younger self be fated to come down this year, just as before? I must tell you that I sent Tyrenkov up once to see what we could discover about Volkov. We saw him, right there, getting off the train with his men in 2021. So what if he appears here in 1942 on the same day he did before he went to 1908? That would mean the version of himself here is facing paradox, just as we all were. Can there be two versions of Volkov here, just as I survive in this world with my brother self?”
“Hard to say,” said Fedorov. “Everything I once believed told me that things, people, could not co-locate. That’s why I think our ship vanished before Paradox Hour, to make way for the imperative of this ship’s arrival.”
“Yes,” said Karpov. “Time certainly shuffled the deck there, didn’t she? Someone slipped an extra Ace into the cards.” He smiled. “And we end up with you here, yet remembering everything that happened, a strong King in the deck, while everyone else on the ship is still in the fog of unknowing.”
That wasn’t true, Fedorov knew, but he said nothing about the fact that Orlov was also a Jack of Fate now, knowing all the things he lived through in the first coming of the ship. He got back to the question at hand.
“Then again….” Fedorov eyed Karpov, as if looking to gauge his mood. “There is another alternative, the opposite side of the coin. I could also see that Kirov never survives.” He let that stand there for a moment, again, watching Karpov closely.
The Admiral’s eyes narrowed, for this was something he had also considered. “You are suggesting we eliminate Sergei Kirov? Then we get Stalin back.”
“More than likely.”
“Why would we want that?”
“Because it’s what happened, at least in the history we know. And considering how this war is going, I have real doubts as to whether we can prevail in Russia. The Germans have linked up with Volkov’s troops, and now everything south of the Don is cut off. Those troops will have to live off the land, and there will be no reinforcements, supplies or equipment replacements.”
“Yes,” said Karpov darkly. “Volkov is already starting to shift divisions back to the Siberian front. He’s beefed up his position on the Ob River line, and started construction on five new airships. To make matters worse. We lost Angara last week. The reports are hazy, buy my Tyrenkov says he had information that the Germans have an airship program underway now as well. There was a raid north of Kansk, but the enemy ship slipped away before we could get stronger units up there to see about it.”
“Can you hold along the Ob?”
“For the moment. I sent a lot of manpower west to the Soviets—five Shock Armies. We’re raising more divisions, but the ranks are thinner now, and the factory relocation program is still underway. Production is starting to gain some momentum, but we’ve a long way to go. The Germans already have new tanks, much stronger than in the old history, or so I’m told.”
“Everything is accelerated in terms of weapons development,” said Fedorov. “I would not be surprised to see the Germans deploying rocket weaponry by mid 1943, and perhaps even jet fighters. This war is far from over, and we could still lose it.”
“Hence your suggestion concerning Sergei Kirov.”
“Correct.”
“How could we be certain that would restore the balance?”
“Stalin,” said Fedorov. “He was the strong hand on the
back of the commissars necks. It was Stalin’s utter brutality that held the Soviet Union together as we knew it.”
“No argument there, Fedorov, but if he came back into this history, what would things look like here?” Karpov gave him a searching look.
“It’s likely that Kolchak would have been killed long ago, and all of Siberia and the far east would be Soviet controlled.”
“Which puts me out of a job,” said Karpov. “I’m not sure I like that. It hasn’t been easy to get where I am today.”
“Of course, but that is a likely outcome. As for Volkov, he was able to knock off Denikin and seize control of the White movement, but then he would be up against Stalin. In spite of Volkov’s edge in knowing the future course of the history, I might bet on the Man of Steel in that matchup. Suppose Stalin defeats him, treats Volkov like any of the other rivals he faced, and eliminates him?”
“That would solve our problem with the Orenburg Federation.”
“Perhaps. Stalin was a massive force in the history. Bringing him back will certainly change things, but it is impossible to predict everything from this vantage point. We’d only be guessing.”
“Yet this Mother Time you speak of might like such a change. She’d get her boyfriend Stalin back, and he might clean up a good deal of the mess we’ve created for her.”
“Right,” said Fedorov. “But with Stalin come the purges, assassinations, the gulags and slave labor camps. These were all the things that Sergei Kirov saw when he went up those stairs at Ilanskiy. His single act in killing Stalin was perhaps the bravest thing ever done in the 20th Century. But this is the result.” Fedorov extended a hand to the unseen world beyond the bulkheads of the ship.
“And what happens to us—you, me, the ship and crew?”
“I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I think we would phase shift.”
“What is that?”
“Remember how the ship pulsed in time on the earlier missions? We moved in and out of 1942, particularly when we were in the Pacific. Remember the cruiser Tone sailing right through us during one of those shifts?”
Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24) Page 25