One man heedless and headstrong, the other compassionate and overly cautious, yet daring in many ways. It was Fedorov’s plan that safely rescued Orlov, and also his plan that put my bottom in this seat again and pulled Kirov out of 1908. We may have just arrived there aboard Kazan in the nick of time. Another hour and Karpov would have destroyed most of Togo’s fleet. Who knows what the world would have looked like then?
He looked at Fedorov, seeing a distant look in his eyes, as if he was considering something, his mind grappling with a problem of some kind.
“Your thoughts, Mister Fedorov?”
“Sir? Oh, I was just thinking about our chances… of moving in time again before 1941.”
“You are still worried what will happen come late July next year?”
“I am sir, in spite of what Director Kamenski has said. He believes this to be an altered reality, separate from the line of causality we left in 1908. That may be true, but it could also simply be the same world, only one badly fractured by what happened that year.”
“But what did happen of any great consequence, Fedorov? We do not know this yet. Yes, Karpov sunk several old ships in Admiral Togo’s fleet, but then we spirited the ship away and no one was the wiser.”
“Yet that had a significant effect, sir. I spent two hours from my last leave with Nikolin listening to radio traffic. That incident re-ignited the Russo-Japanese conflict. Japan repudiated the Portsmouth treaty, and almost immediately occupied all of Sakhalin Island. We could not get all the details, but there was a news item about Urajio, and that was the Japanese name for Vladivostok. Japan now controls that city, sir, and it is not any exaggeration to think that may also be the result of the incident in 1908.”
“That certainly would have changed the history in the Pacific.”
“Yes sir, and I have learned one other thing. Josef Stalin died as a young man-in 1908. There was a broadcast out of Orenburg that mentioned his death in Bayil Prison. Apparently he was executed, though the narrator used the word assassinated. There is a statue of him there in Baku, and his name was etched on a monument as one of the instigators of the early revolution.”
“Yet you must see this as good news, yes Fedorov? Think of all the millions sent to the death camps under Stalin’s regime.”
“Of course, sir, but there is another side to that coin. The strength of his will and personality was also a decisive factor in building the Soviet Union as we knew it. Without Stalin, Russia remained divided in a contentious civil war that apparently continues even now. There is fighting today again at Volgograd. This world may simply be the result of things that happened in that decisive year-in 1908. It was the year Russia lost its only Pacific port, the year Stalin died, and one other thing-it was the year something fell from the deeps of space at Tunguska, something that found its way into Rod-25.”
“Suppose you are correct, Fedorov. What then?”
“Then we have reason to fear our own coming, sir. I keep going back and forth on this. On the one hand I think that for us to be here on this ship, this very moment, then this saga had to begin somewhere-with that accident on Orel, and our displacement to July 28th of 1941. Then on the other hand I think that for any of that to happen it must result from a history that remains sufficiently intact so that this ship is built. The events that lead to the design and commissioning of Kirov, the placement of Rod-25 aboard-well they have to remain perfectly intact. It’s a house of cards, sir, and we are an Ace sitting at the very top. Anything that changes the history significantly in the past could easily affect our very existence. I wonder if the changes we see, and our presence here now, will prevent the ship from ever being constructed-or worse, Admiral. I wonder if these alterations in the history could even lead to changes in our own personal histories. Remember those men on Doctor Zolkin’s list. It could be that our names are written in that same ledger now, and that time is simply waiting for the right moment to make an end of us.”
That was a fairly dark assessment, and it gave Volsky pause for a moment. “I know how you feel, Fedorov, and what you must fear. Sometimes I think of my wife, and I am sure many others here think of their own loved ones we left behind so long ago. It is 1940. The dear woman I married over forty years ago will not be born for another seventeen years! Believe me, to think I am now in a world where her soul does not yet exist has left me feeling very empty at times. This heart of mine was half filled, or more, with the love that woman gave me, yet she doesn’t even exist, except in my memory at this moment.”
“Yes, and forgive me Admiral, but she might never even be born at all. This is what I fear now, and while it remains troublesome speculation and worry on my part at the moment, come July 28, 1941 we will be facing a dangerous paradox. We cannot be here, alive, the ship intact in this world at the moment Kirov is supposed to first arrive here. This is what I fear, and Director Kamenski’s reassurances have not yet been sufficient to allow me a good night’s rest here.”
“Yet what can we do about that, Fedorov?”
“We can leave, sir. Something tells me we must leave before that date. Call it a hunch, but I just have this feeling about it. So I have been looking at any possible way we could resolve our dilemma here, given the fact the this new control rod we used seems unreliable.”
“So you have been brooding over volcanoes; looking for a way out of this world.”
Fedorov smiled. “Yes, I suppose I have, sir.”
“I know you too well, young man. You are scheming again, correct?”
“Well sir, I thought I would see if there were any significant eruptions in this year or early next year, but I haven’t found anything useful. Most of the volcanic activity was in the Pacific-a few eruptions in Japan, the Kuriles, Kamchatka. Now that we are here in the Atlantic, we will miss a moderate eruption on Miyake-Jima off the southern Japanese coast. That will happen July 12th, and there will be another moderate eruption in Indonesia on July 20th.”
“Well I don’t think it would be wise to try and spin the roulette wheel again and see if we end up in the Pacific.”
“True, sir. But there won’t be anything else until Asama on Honshu, Japan on July 13th next year-that’s just two weeks before Kirov first appeared in the Norwegian Sea. They were all moderate eruptions-nothing like that Demon Volcano in 2021. The biggest event near us in time and space now would be Hekla on Iceland, but it isn’t scheduled to erupt until November 2nd, 1947.”
“That is of no help to us.”
“Perhaps,” said Fedorov. “But that eruption had been building for more than a century. Hekla is the most active volcano on Iceland, producing explosive eruptions on a fairly regular basis. The 1947 event was very explosive, though it was much smaller than the Demon Volcano, just a VEI 4.”
“You have been digging, Fedorov. And you are thinking we have our own way of lighting a candle whenever we choose with our special warheads.”
“I suppose so, sir. It’s something we may have to consider if we cannot sort our this control rod issue.”
Volsky gave him a look of admiration. “Well I will consider this with you. But remember, these explosive events always send things to the past, not the future. That is a caveat we must not forget. We will discuss it with Kamenski and perhaps Zolkin as well. The Doctor always has some interesting insight on these matters. After all, it was he who suggested we simply have Dobrynin fiddle with the reactors to get us home, and that has worked for us more than once. Now, however, I think we have our foot in the door here, and we must look to what is happening with the Germans. It is in my mind to continue north now, for Severomorsk and Murmansk.”