Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  “Indeed…”

  “Do you take that with a grain of salt or are you inclined to believe such a statement?”

  This was the heart of it, and Turing could see that Tovey was obviously leading him to the front door on something here, so he leapt ahead and rang the bell.

  “Admiral, as impossible as it may sound, I must tell you that I am willing to take this Russian Admiral at his word. Because I have already worked out the only possible explanation for all of this, and I think you are about to confirm my own judgment on the matter.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes sir. You see, for any of this to be true, the photographs, the reports, the testimony of these Russian officers, one fact, and one fact only must also be true, and that is that these men, and their ship, have come from another time—a future time. It’s the only way this Russian Admiral could claim he met with you in 1942. Yes?”

  Tovey smiled. “You have it exactly,” and he seemed very relieved, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Now then… As to this ship I was invited to tour, that was the icing on this little cake we’ve had in the oven. You will be amazed at what I tell you next. I was shown things on that ship that boggle the mind. I understand that you have designed some unusual equipment here to aid in your decryption effort.”

  “Yes, we’ve developed what you might call an analog computer of sorts. That is, in fact, what the German Enigma machine is. I’ve spent some time thinking in that direction.”

  “Your Universal Turing Machine?” Tovey smiled.

  “You know about it?”

  “I read your paper on it shortly after we met. Very interesting work, Mister Turing. Well now… and I mean no disrespect here, but it seems the Russians have taken your work to heart. I was shown devices on that ship that make all our computing machines look ridiculous. They use electronic machines to control every aspect of their operations—navigation, radars, fire control for their weapons, communications—all of it. While I cannot say I am up to speed on all our latest technologies, I knew enough to realize I was seeing things that were entirely beyond our present capabilities, things that would take us decades to develop on our own. Well, these Russians told me flat out they had come from the year 2021, a statement any man alive today would dismiss as pure malarkey. Stating the impossible, is one thing. I suppose any man capable of telling a straight faced lie could do so, and I’ve heard more than my fair share of tall tales over the years. But seeing these devices, these incredible machines they have on that ship, well, it was very convincing. In fact, assuming this ship had come from some unseen future was the only thing that made sense.”

  “I can only imagine,” said Turing. “Perhaps you might arrange a little tour of that ship for me as well. I would be most interested to see what you are describing here.”

  “I have no doubt. It was all quite a revelation—truly life changing. Ever since that ship turned up off Cape Farewell I have been haunted by the feeling that I knew what it was, and now these men have confirmed that was so. Do you recall what you said to me at our last meeting, that one of the envelopes in that box revealed who the culprits were behind those photos and reports?”

  “Envelope nine,” said Turing quietly.

  “Yes, well these men confirmed that as well. It was you and I, Turing. We were the ones who gathered that material together and stowed it away, and it was all very hush hush. These men lived through those years, and everything in that box is a testament to that fact. The only question they had for me was how we possibly came by that material, here, in 1940, and well before any of those events happened.”

  “That is certainly something quite frightening when I think about it,” said Turing. “It is a real anomaly of the first order.”

  “The Russians thought the same thing.”

  “And I suppose they immediately wondered how that material could be in our possession, sir.”

  “They did indeed. Have you given that any thought?”

  “A good deal of thought,” said Turing. “This may sound odd, but I have a favorite watch. Why, it’s right here in my pocket, but a month or so ago it vanished. Of course I simply thought I had misplaced it, and looked everywhere as one might, but it was nowhere to be found. Then, as I was shuffling through that box to select the photographs you asked me to deliver, there it was.”

  “Your watch?”

  “Precisely!”

  “In that box? Are you sure you didn’t leave it there by chance?”

  “I’m quite certain that was not the case. It was like a missing tooth, and quite gone, until that very day when you were last here. Yet how could it have hopped out of my pocket and into that box—a box sealed off with thick masking tape, and buried under so much dust that it looked like it had sat there undisturbed for… well, for decades?”

  “Quite strange,” said Tovey.

  “Eerily so! An anomaly. That’s what I have come to call it. I’m a very meticulous man, Admiral. Some say I can be a bit absent minded at times, but they have no idea what is actually going on inside this noggin of mine. When I set my mind to solving a problem, it becomes all consuming for me. So you will please believe me when I say that I was able to work out the very last day when I could recall having possession of this watch, as I remember using the stop-watch feature to time the revolutions on my bicycle and plot out the mean time between incidents of gear failure—the chain tends to slip after a good ride, and that was the day I rode into town to do a bit of shopping. I even found the receipt from the store, and so the date is quite certain.”

  “I see,” said Tovey, not exactly following what Turing was leading up to here.

  “Yes, I worked it all out, then noted the date on the receipt. The 12th of June, sir. That was the day my watch went missing, and I cannot recall laying eyes on it again until I found it by complete chance in that file box.”

  “The 12th of June?” Tovey found himself searching his recollection for anything significant that he could hang on that date, but it was all a blur. Thankfully Turing had more clarity.

  “Yes, sir. That was the very day in June when we first receive the reports from HX-49 regarding that ship.” Turing raised his eyebrows, waiting for a reaction to register on the Admiral’s face.

  “You mean to say you believe the appearance of that ship had something to do with… Forgive me, Mister Turing, but I’m not quite sure I follow you.”

  “I’m not certain of it, Admiral, but facts are stubborn things. Isn’t that what the American statesman John Adams asserted? Yes, stubborn things indeed. All I know now is that my watch vanished the very same day that ship appeared, and it ended up in that box—the box named for that very ship—the Geronimo file.”

  Now Tovey nodded, suddenly intrigued by Turing’s deduction.

  “Very astute reasoning,” he said. Might it be mere happenstance?”

  “Possibly, but the coincidence is somewhat unnerving.”

  “And what do you conclude from this?”

  “A possible answer as to how that box can now exist here—in 1940, and contain evidence of things that have not yet transpired.”

  “Things that might never transpire,” Tovey put in. “The Russians were of that mind. Those photographs clearly depicted our relationship as adversarial, and the Russian Admiral confirmed that. The report you gave me of a meeting on Las Palomas Island was supposedly arranged to work out a truce. Yet now, with their appearance here in our time, they believe that none of those events will occur.”

  “Quite amazing,” said Turing. “Well I find it very odd that my watch should turn up in that box… as if I had put it there myself and forgotten about it, but I assure you, that is not the case, at least not in this year. In fact, I’ve rummaged about in that archive many times, and I have never stumbled across this file box before. That in itself proves nothing, but I am beginning to suspect that box turned up on that very same day, dust, cobwebs, and all.”

  “What? On June 12th?”

  Turing no
dded in the affirmative.

  “Well that would be quite a little mystery, wouldn’t it? Yet I suppose no more astounding than what we have already learned. But why, Turing? Why would your watch suddenly go missing like that?”

  “It’s really quite simple, Admiral. Assuming the material in that box does indeed come from a future time, then I must assume that everything I found their did so as well.” He gave Tovey a knowing look.

  “You mean your watch as well?”

  “Exactly. It is already apparent that I was instrumental in gathering all that material, so I can only suppose that I must have deliberately placed my watch in that box. Assuming that, this is my theory. That box, and everything in it, is a remnant from that future time, the time this Russian Admiral claimed he lived through. When that ship appeared here, it must have dragged that remnant along in its wake. Don’t ask me how or why this is so, but it is what I have come to deduce. Time was making a little delivery, and all was in order except one item—my watch. You see, nothing in that box existed here at the moment it might have appeared—except my watch! That item could not come to this time from the future as it already existed here, and that would be quite a little paradox. And so, to resolve the matter, one of the variables had to be cancelled out. My watch goes missing in the here and now, and then mysteriously turns up in that box!” Turing smiled, folding his arms with a satisfied look on his face, as if he had just completed a perfectly sound mathematical proof.

  “Rather astounding,” said Tovey. “Well… Not to dispute your theory, Turing, but the Russians suggested something else.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. The Russian Admiral seemed to rely a great deal on his young Captain to try and sort things out. The man seemed very sharp. The two of you should meet one day. That aside, this man Fedorov suggested that the only possible explanation as to how those photographs could exist would be if they were brought here by someone.”

  “Brought here? By who?”

  “Therein lies the rub,” said Tovey. “The Russian Admiral hinted they knew of other men who had traveled in time. He called them dark angels, and said there are dangerous men at large in this world—possibly from the future. We shall have to keep a sharp watch, and possibly put your machines to work on that little mystery. Yes?”

  Turing nodded gravely. “Even so, Admiral, my theory still remains viable. No one could bring an object from the future if it already existed here. That would be very inconvenient. How could the second watch be accounted for? Something would have to happen to one watch or another. The watch from the future would have to be left behind, or in this case I think Time found a more elegant solution—the watch that existed here was simply moved.”

  “Most alarming, Mister Turing. All of this gives me the shivers, and the worst of it is this…. If these men have come from the future, then they have knowledge that can be decisive to the outcome of this war. They must know how it all turned out, and of course I asked this question. The answer I received was equally disturbing. They told me that events they have observed here are out of order. Things are happening that never occurred in the history they know—my flagship being a perfect example. I was told it never existed in the world these men came from, and that was the least of it. They said their homeland was not divided in civil war as it remains today. It was one unified Soviet state.”

  “Remarkable,” said Turing.

  “Sadly, these men have come to believe that it was their earlier intervention, the events documented in that box, that may have been responsible for these changes.”

  “Is that why they have come here, sir? To set matters right?”

  “No, Mister Turing, they told me they tried to re-set the table, but the china is so badly broken that it came to no avail. In fact, they told me their movement in time was unintentional, quite by accident—something to do with a mishap in their ship’s propulsion system.”

  “Amazing,” Turing was riveted by all of this. “Yet they seem to have bounced about a good deal, sir. The Geronimo file documents their movement from 1941 through 1942, and now they are here. Did you ask about that?”

  “There were a thousand questions in my mind,” said Tovey, “Each one crowded out the last, and there was too little time for answers. I did press gently on the matter of the outcome of this war, and though they seemed reluctant to disclose information on that, I was given to hope that things might take a turn for the better.”

  “Possibly,” said Turing. “They may hope as much, even as we do. But it could be that they now realize what I have already concluded.”

  “And what is that?”

  “If what you say is true, and events here have been altered because of this ship, then they may not really know how things resolve.”

  Tovey nodded. “They did say something to that effect. The Russian Admiral told me he had already seen one possible outcome of all this, and it was rather bleak and foreboding. He said this war would not be the last, and that was a rather difficult thing to hear. Then he said the only way we will know how it all turns out is to live it all through, one day at a time.”

  “I see….” Turing seemed very thoughtful now. “Well Admiral, we seem to be marked men, you and I. Our initials and fingerprints are all over that box, and just as you say you have been haunted by the feeling you knew all of this, I have felt the very same way. It could be that more than my pocket watch was shuffled about when that ship appeared here on the 12th of June. Our lives seem to have been changed as well. How very strange it feels. One fine morning you simply wake up a different man, with memories in your head you take to be dreams and mere imagination—but they are not dreams. No. They are real, as all of this is real—that box, that ship, Geronimo. Things have changed, Admiral. You feel it, I feel it and know it to be so. It isn’t just our own fate I speak of now. The whole world is caught up in the maelstrom, and you and I, well we are standing right in the eye of the storm.”

  Part IX

  Fimbulwinter

  “When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks;

  When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand;

  When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?”

  —William Shakespeare: Richard III, 2.3

  Chapter 25

  Kirov was out to sea, cruising in the Denmark Strait after setting up the Ice Watch with an Oko panel radar team at Hornsrandir, the northernmost cape of Iceland in the Westfjord region. Fedorov coordinated the mission, seeing to security and the movement of adequate supplies to the outpost. The Americans will have a similar outpost here in the future, he thought as he finished up and returned to the ship on the KA-40. Yet the moment he was back aboard Kirov his mind returned to the impossible news he had received. Troyak had succeeded! His Marines got through to Ilanskiy and demolished that back stairway—but how? How was that possible given what Kamenski had told him?

  He recalled his words from their earlier conversation, the discussion that was so daunting that it had prompted Admiral Volsky to take a sip from his vodka flask.

  “Don’t hold your breath, Mister Fedorov,” Kamenski had said quietly, as he took another long slow drag on his pipe.

  “Sir?”

  “Well… If your Sergeant Troyak destroys that railway inn in 1940, then how in the world did you go down those steps in 1942, to eventually end up here and get the idea for this little mission? For that matter, how did Volkov go down those stairs in 2021?”

  But he did it! Kamenski was wrong. Troyak had reported mission accomplished. To put it more bluntly, he radioed that he had blown that stairway to hell. That sent Fedorov off to the bridge to check their present situation and see if there was any unusual news on the airwaves. Were things still the same? Out here on the sea, isolated in the ice fog of the Denmark Strait, they would have seen nothing if it changed.

  The first thing he checked on were the two British cruisers Admiral Tovey had assigned to this watch, placing them directly under Admiral Volsky’s command. He soon learned that
they were still there, Sheffield and Southampton, on what they believed were forward radar picket duties. Shiny Sheff, as the Sheffield was called, had been one of the first British ships fitted with the Type 79Y early warning radar, effective out to about 50 kilometers.

  The two cruisers were still there, right on station as Kirov’s own radar had them. So nothing must have changed, thought Fedorov. Nikolin also confirmed that news of the Orenburg Federation was again on the wires, with renewed fighting reported at the Siberian city of Omsk. Apparently the “Omsk Accord” as it had been called earlier, had fallen apart. So if Orenburg remained, and the civil war continued, then Volkov must have taken his trip down those stairs. Sergei Kirov’s name was also prominent in the news items that continued to follow the treaty now being signed with England.

  Fedorov now wondered if he had been wrong about the importance of those stairs. What had happened? How could the history here remain inviolate? Were the changes so subtle that they had not yet been noticed? He could not help but think that Troyak’s mission had created some great contradiction, and was again dogged by the feeling that it would be his fault if it did. Kamenski’s voice returned again.

  “Yes, the edge of paradox is a very dangerous precipice to hike along. We must be very careful here. I cannot say how that problem might resolve itself, Mister Fedorov, but something tells me that time would find a way. Yes. Mother Time does not wish to have her skirts ruffled any more than necessary. She would find a way.”

  Time must have found a way, thought Fedorov. But how? If Sergei Kirov was still safely alive and in power in the Soviet Union, then he must have used that stairway as before, and in 1942. If Ivan Volkov was alive now then he must have also used it safely in 2021.