“How could anyone forget that nightmare.”
“Well, if we take any action in 1908, we must also act on this end of things. This ship still has Rod-25.”
“I’ve told Dobrynin to remove it from the maintenance cycle and store it.”
“Yes, but that order can be rescinded.”
“You’re suggesting we use Rod-25 and attempt another time displacement?”
“We must put the ship in play at the very same moment I go down those steps. Then all the cards are in time’s hand, and she can shuffle the deck and deal.”
Karpov shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”
“What you mean to say is that you don’t like casting your fate to the wind like that, and putting yourself at the mercy of time.”
“I stared her down once before,” said Karpov, his tone heavy with determination.
“Yes, you may have, but no man ever escapes her final judgment. You are here for a while, Karpov, but not forever. Time is the fire in which we all burn—no exceptions.”
Karpov rubbed his chin, his eyes shifting about. He never liked to consider his own mortality. He had worked out ideas like this, thinking how he could eliminate Volkov with the stairway at Ilanskiy, but always decided against it. He told himself that he wanted to settle that affair man to man, and defeat Volkov here. He told himself that this was the world he built, and he was determined to Lord over it to the end of his days. Now he was looking at the prospect of losing everything—giving it all back to Stalin. He was once reduced to mere flotsam in the ocean until that Japanese fisherman pulled him out. Now he could lose everything he fought and strived for if Fedorov did this thing.
“And if you do this, and we choose life for Sergie Kirov? Then what?”
“I’m not sure how, but I think if I begin this task, and secure the rise of Sergei Kirov in place of Stalin, then time might find a way to account for Volkov here. She’d have to. I’ll be the culprit again if I do this. Who knows, perhaps I will not even survive the attempt. Time might find a way to get rid of me, and end my feckless tampering. As it stands, the 30th of September was the day I decided to act last time, and so we have only three days to work this out. I can choose to act, or not act. I can choose Stalin or Kirov. It’s all on me again.”
Chapter 30
“Not exactly,” said Karpov, folding his arms. His meat was long cold, but the wine was still good, and he took a long sip. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Fedorov. I decide what happens here, not you. My word is final, but let’s consider it from a practical standpoint first. How would you carry out this mission.”
Fedorov thought for a moment. “I take a KA-40 inland over Siberia, and rendezvous with one of your airships. I board that, and then it’s off to Ilanskiy. Easy enough.”
“Suppose you did this—repeated your warning to Kirov. How can you be sure he would ever act on it, or go so far as to kill Stalin?”
“Because I could explain all that to him, reinforce how important it would be. He was already pre-disposed to act that way. I think a little nudge in the right direction would do the job. If I do this, I have at least given Time some justification for the continuance of these Altered States, at least for a while.”
“Alright, and suppose we leave the matter of Volkov to time. What about the situation we’re facing here? I’m invading Sakhalin Island because the Japanese are sitting on a good chunk of Siberian territory, and all that happened long ago, after my sortie with the ship to 1908. How does time deal with that?”
“One step at a time,” said Fedorov. “First we save Kirov, then we work out how to deal with the paradoxes you set up with your shift to 1908.”
“We already know that Sergei Kirov fails to defeat Volkov or unite Russia. He didn’t fix it, so let’s consider the other side of the coin—you don’t warn Kirov, and he dies. Are you saying Stalin would correct all this? Would he take back the territory we lost in 1908, and do so before this war begins?”
“You’re asking me things I cannot answer.”
“But is that what you would want? Here I am trying to undo all the damage that happened from my ill fated sortie to 1908 and do exactly that. Don’t you want to get the train back on the tracks, Fedorov?”
“I don’t think that’s possible now.”
“Ah, you don’t think it’s actually off the tracks, but only diverted to another rail line.”
“Yes,” said Fedorov, “and it’s heading for a cliff. The Japanese are going to be more of an adversary than you think. They’ll fight you tooth and nail, even in defeat. They’ll force you to expend every last missile you have, and each time you confront them, you get weaker and weaker. Face it, Karpov. It will take the Americans to truly defeat them. You may take Sakhalin after a long slog here, but Vladivostok is quite another matter, and don’t think you’ll ever invade Japan successfully. That is what it would take to force their capitulation.”
“You’re forgetting I have three nuclear warheads aboard this ship. All it took was two in the old history. The Americans chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could choose Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka.”
“Chaos,” said Fedorov. “If you use those weapons we have no way of knowing what might happen. Time is so fragile now that it could shatter completely. You talked about that Japanese cruiser reaping the whirlwind. That’s what we would be facing.”
“Doom and gloom, Fedorov. All this talk of time shattering is mere speculation. You said yourself that you can’t really say what might happen, no matter whether we act or not. However, I do like one thing you said here. I like this time loop business.”
Fedorov widened his eyes. “What?”
“Yes, and don’t look so surprised. If that were to happen, how might it play out?”
“What do you mean?”
“How would the loop start again this time?”
“Well… I suppose the ship would have to move again, to a time before it first arrived. We all would.”
“Might we prevent that?”
“We might, but don’t underestimate time. If I’m correct, and this is the only choice time has, then it will find a way. Many of our shifts were involuntary.”
“In that case, what you said a moment ago would not be true.” Karpov smiled.
“What are you talking about?”
“I would survive. I wouldn’t die, would I? Perhaps you would survive as well. We would all just start things over, only just a little wiser—just as you did, remembering everything that came before. Don’t you see. This is what has already happened! If this loop repeats, then it happens again… and I live forever….”
Fedorov just stared at him, unable to believe he could be so selfish. “You mean you would let this time loop occur simply to sustain your own personal life indefinitely? My God, Karpov. You can’t be serious.”
“Now don’t get all huffy on me. I was only speculating. Yet you must admit, that this endless time loop might not be so bad, as long as we survive each time. A man could drink a lot of good wine—forever. He could eat well, have the finest women on this earth, over, and over, again and again.”
“Yes, you might see it as your nice private heaven,” said Fedorov “always in the know, satisfying every appetite, while the world spins through the loop, oblivious. Well, let me tell you that some very strange things could happen in that event. Your little heaven could start disintegrating before your very eyes. I’ve seen this. And beyond that, nothing would ever resolve. Your life would never reach a point of fulfillment. You would loop through these years, the struggle to win, but that final victory would never be grasped. If you ask me, that’s a nice private hell… over and over again.”
“Oh, you never know, Fedorov. Give me enough time, and I’ll find a way to win.” Karpov smiled, then set his wine down, considering the situation further.
“There is still the second alternative,” he said. “We could help time along and just kill Kirov where he sits there in 1908. If we go with the honey, and spare K
irov, then he might kill Stalin to justify this world. But then we’d still have all the other unresolved paradoxes to deal with. Furthermore, even if you do warn Kirov, there’s no guarantee he’d follow through as before and kill Stalin. You see? There is no certainty to that alternative. Too many things remain outside our direct control.”
“I see your point,” said Fedorov.
“On the other hand, if we go with the vinegar to catch our flies, we just make sure of things, and do Stalin’s work for him a little early by killing Kirov in 1908. Then Stalin survives by default. The history rolls forward from that point. He takes power, probably unites all Russia, gulags and all. That solves our problem with the Japanese, and he’ll probably get rid of Volkov for us in the bargain. As sad as it seems, Stalin could simply be our best move here. Could you do it, Fedorov? Do you really think you could go down those stairs and kill Sergei Kirov if I were to make that decision?”
“Decisiveness is often the art of timely cruelty,” said Fedorov. He was quoting the French dramatist Henry Becque when he said that, but still wondering whether he could master that art. That was what Sergie Kirov had mustered the courage to do when he went into that dank prison cell in Baku with a revolver and fired the shot that changed all history. Could he do that—and to Kirov himself?
What about the alternative? What if he simply repeated what he had already done once before in warning Kirov of his fated death by assassination. That would suit his temperament quite well, but he swallowed hard to think that he would be the man who made the same mistake twice to write this history. If he did that, and it was enough to justify the continuance of this time line, could they solve all the other paradoxes, and then find a way to win this war? If he chose the honey instead of vinegar, he knew that he was abandoning, forever, any hope of returning the history to its old course. Yet to do so, to kill Kirov and return Stalin to the meridian as Master of the Soviet Union, would cause wrenching, all consuming change here. He had no idea how that would all play out, but he had experienced some inkling of it on a smaller scale. It frightened him to even think on it.
“Timely cruelty,” said Karpov. “Yes, I like that, but I wonder if you have that in you, Fedorov. If you are correct, and we do nothing, then you say this time line is doomed to wither and die, or to simply loop about in circles forever. How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because I’ve seen how it happens—the withering—on the ship when we faced the last paradox. Men went missing. The ship itself seemed like it was having difficulty remaining stable. Even the structure began to warp and change. We phased and my boots got stuck in the deck, right there on the bridge. We had one man who was found half embedded in the deck of the galley—Lenkov. His torso was visible, but below that deck, there was no sign of the rest of him—until the Marines found his legs in a locker on the helo deck. Things were happening all over the ship like that. Then men started to go missing. Orlov disappeared, and others too.”
“He disappeared?”
“Yes… and I think I ended up vanishing as well. Time must have picked me up like a chess piece, and dropped me here, on this ship. Who knows why? I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. Perhaps it’s because I was fated to make this choice—to figure all this out.”
“So we either make our choice in this matter here, and carry it out, or do nothing and possibly suffer these strange effects you describe?”
“Not just us—everyone—everything. If we do nothing, and this meridian has no basis for continued existence, then it will begin to disintegrate. That’s what I think was beginning aboard the ship, but it would happen everywhere. Who knows how long it would take, the slow withering of this reality. And in that instance, it matters little whether we win or lose this war. Things fall apart, and that’s what could happen here.”
Karpov took a deep breath. Was this possible? It seemed utter lunacy, but Fedorov seemed so deathly serious. He had sorted through the consequences of their actions here many times, and he was often correct with his theories. But this? The whole world on the chopping block of time?
He considered the choice before them now. His inclination was to simply do nothing, and see what would happen, yet there was a part of him that had been tempted to take decisive action at Ilanskiy, and for a very long time. He had never quite mustered the courage to do so, and always found excuses to justify his timidity. Now, here was Fedorov, brave hearted Fedorov, ready to take on all Fate and Time.
Timely cruelty… Could he do this thing?
“If I send you,” he began, feeling like a man who was edging out to a precipice, “then you will not go alone. I will come with you.”
“You? And leave the ship? Who will coordinate the shift here? We need someone who knows the history of all we’ve done. If the ship reappears in some other time, it will take a well educated head, and a steady hand on the tiller to judge what to do—could you do that, Karpov? Could you do what is right for a change, instead of only acting to further your own interests? You wonder if I have that ounce of cruelty in me, as I wonder whether you would have an ounce of reason—or compassion, if it was needed.”
“Touché, Fedorov. Let me correct myself. I will go with you, but it will be my brother that makes this journey in my place. He’ll be on Tunguska when you get inland, and I’ll speak with him via encrypted radio to explain what we are going to attempt to do. As for timely cruelty, I have my doubts about your ability to follow through. But my brother will have no such scruples. Yes, timely cruelty will come easily for him. All in a day’s work.”
“I see… Then you’ve decided. You want me to kill Sergei Kirov, or at the very least to refrain from warning him as I did. You want me to leave him to Stalin.”
“You should want the same. It’s the only decision that brings us towards a solution here. It bends the history back as it was, gets the train back on the right track again. Unfortunately, Stalin will be back in charge, but I’ll find a way to deal with him later.”
“What? You? Deal with Stalin?”
“Believe me, Fedorov, that will not be as difficult as you might think. In fact, I think it would be much easier than trying to sort out all these impossible paradoxes. Yes. I said so earlier, and now I’m inclined to feel this is our only clear choice. Sergei Kirov has to die. He’s a maverick, an aberration, and because of the power he wields, history is all bent out of shape. I’m betting that one trip down those steps does us a world of good here. I’m betting we come out of our shift, find Volkov and his damn Orenburg Federation gone, Stalin back in charge, and the Germans on their way to certain defeat in Russia. There’s no other way, Fedorov. This is what we have to do, and I’ll send my brother self along with you to make sure it gets done correctly.”
“There’s only one problem,” said Fedorov. “Remember what I said. We never quite know where a person ends up when he uses that staircase. In some instances, it is like Old Faithful, and I’ve already stated that I think it will take me right back to the same time—June 30, 1908. But will it send your brother there as well?”
“I see your point…. We’ll just have to handcuff the two of you together. Where you go, my brother goes. Would it work?”
“I have no way of knowing,” said Fedorov.
“Well, is there any reason I could not shift back to that date?”
“That depends. You could not go to a time when you already existed in 1908. When did you first arrive there?”
“Let me see…” Karpov tried to remember, but even that was difficult. He did not want to think back on it, back through the pain of Armageddon, back to that time when he betrayed Volsky’s trust, and led the ship and crew like Satan leading his fallen angels in a war against heaven. Yes, he had fired his nuke. That’s when it happened…. He felt stunned at first, light headed. Then his numbed brain began to work again, and his senses began to assemble the clues in his mind—the light, the changing color of the sky, the eerie luminescence of the sea, and the hushed silence of the enveloping fog. He knew wha
t had happened. They had shifted again.
“Yes… We ran across an old clipper ship, and they were sending us Morse Code. I had Nikolin signal that we had lost our ship’s chronometer, and asked for a current reading of the date and time. It was 10 July, 1908.”
“My God,” said Fedorov. That is just ten days after I arrived there.”
“Then if my brother goes with you, and you both arrive June 30, he has at least ten days to get the job done—correct?”
“I suppose so, said Fedorov, wishing he had never come to Karpov with this. He had thought he would be off to shore up Sergei Kirov’s life here, a man he admired greatly, in spite of the fact that he gave this ship to Karpov, betraying the trust of Admiral Volsky. Now he was going to murder him….
Part XI
Second Thoughts
“Is it wise to move along the path, hoping for what may never come, or to go back and change your course for the likely?”
― Jasmin Morin
Chapter 31
Karpov was pacing, as he often did when something was bothering him. Now he was having second thoughts about Fedorov’s operation, and wondering what could possibly happen if he let it be.
He tells me he must act, he thought, or this world has no basis to exist. He says it will wither away, warp, fracture, but God only knows how. In that instance, my little steel reign here comes to an eventual end. If he warns Kirov, that only buys us a little more time before the next paradox raises its ugly head. If he kills Kirov, then things should look much different for me here as well, particularly if we are correct and we get Stalin back.
I’m supposed to put that damnable control rod back in the system and run the procedure at the precise moment Fedorov goes down those steps with my brother self. Everything must be in play, he tells me. Time must have all the cards in her greedy hands before she shuffles the deck. But what kind of hand will I be dealt this time? I worked damn hard to get where I am. Now all this will simply vanish, fall apart, or I’ll end up playing second fiddle to Stalin. He’ll be much more difficult to deal with than Sergei Kirov, in spite of my boast to Fedorov on that score. What am I doing here?
Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24) Page 26