“You’re going to sail Kirov right into port, sir?”
“Possibly. If the situation permits and it seems safe and prudent. You have told me that Sergei Kirov is leading the Soviet State now. I want to speak with the man-in fact, I think you should speak with him as well. After all, you two met years ago.” The Admiral smiled.
“Do you think that is wise, Admiral? Look what happened after I met him in 1908. Just the slightest word form me may have caused all this.”
“I told you to lay that burden down, Fedorov. You must not blame yourself. It may be that we vanish next July as you fear, but Kamenski could also be correct and we may simply be forced to live out our lives here if these new control rods no longer work. Oh, we will keep your volcanoes in mind, but we may be here for some time, and this ship will need a friendly port. There is no other way to say it. We’ll need food, water, supplies. Beyond that, I have the men to consider. Perhaps sight of home would do them some good.”
“But you can’t be considering shore leave there, sir. Wouldn’t that be very dangerous?”
Volsky remembered how Fedorov fretted in the Pacific when they had put men ashore. He wanted all his eggs safe in the basket where he could keep count. “I know you still hope we can avoid further changes, further contamination here, but that may not be possible.”
Fedorov sighed. “I know that, sir. One night I was standing a quiet watch and seemed to be able to let all those concerns go and just accept the fact of my own existence here-that this was my life now, here, in this time and place. It was very liberating, far better than carrying these troubled thoughts around in a big burlap sack on my back.”
“Yes? Well have you considered this, Fedorov? You say Sergei Kirov followed you up that stairway at Ilanskiy. It may be that he discovered what was happening there in some way, even as you did. He was a clever young man back then as well. Suppose he did discover that there were two different worlds joined by those stairs. Then what?”
“I’ve thought about that, Admiral, but how can we know this?”
“By speaking with Kirov, that’s how.”
Fedorov was silent for a time, finally realizing what the Admiral was driving at. Yes, he thought, we could learn a great deal about what happened in such a meeting. For that matter, if we do make port somewhere, then I could get my hands on some history books and read all about it. This would clear up many questions, but it would also be very risky, and he said as much to Volsky.
“Yes, yes,” said Volsky. “It’s risky to get out of bed each day. But we still get up. Breakfast is waiting. So we must take a few risks here if we want our eggs and sausages, eh?”
“Or a good blini and jam, sir.”
“Exactly. But there is one more reason I think we must speak with this man, and this is one you may have considered yourself. If what I have said is true, and Sergie Kirov did learn the peculiar nature of that back stairway, then he knows it still-to this day. There is one other way we can move in time, Mister Fedorov, and without control rods, nuclear bombs or volcanoes. That stairway may still exist, and if it does, it is the single most important place in all of Russia. You understand? The innkeeper at Ilanskiy may be the most powerful man on earth and not even know it! But that said, only a very few people on this earth may know about this. Aside from a select club on this ship, Sergei Kirov may be one of those people.”
“I see…” Fedorov suddenly realized that Volsky had been thinking a great deal about things, and had plans and schemes of his own. Then the Admiral held up a finger.
“There is one other man who may know of what we speak, that Intelligence officer Kamenski told us about, the man who shares the name of the current leader in Orenburg-Ivan Volkov.”
The name fell like hot coals hissing in a bucket of water. They passed a brief moment, with a palpable sense of dread between them, clearly evident in the eyes of both men.
“So you see, Fedorov, we may have more to worry about here than this rendezvous with fate on July 28th next year. We have business of our own making to attend to first, and something tells me time has left us here for that very reason.”
Part III
“The pattern of the prodigal is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration.”
Chapter 7
The madness that overtook him was a raging storm, yet something within him struggled to restrain it. End it! End it! The shame was too great, welling up like bile in his throat, and he raised the gun to his head. At that moment Admiral Tovey intervened, steady at the wheel of HMS King Alfred, bearing down on the ominous shadow ahead. A shell from his guns fell very near the ship, sending a hail of splinters up when it exploded, one scoring Karpov’s face even as he began to squeeze the trigger. The pain and blood shocked him to the realization of life, harsh, stunning blood-red life that was still pulsing in his veins.
The ship lurched and he was thrown off balance, careening against the gunwale as Kirov rolled, and he was thrown completely over, falling from the weather bridge and scudding off the Korall BN-3 space communications system dome cover, which sent him flying right off the ship and headfirst into the sea! He plunged into the water with a hard thump, dazed and yet moving with an instinctive frantic impulse to save himself.
Beneath the frothing sea, he opened his eyes in a moment of panic, gaping at the shadow of fear itself in the shape of a submarine, like a phantom from his own private hell. There it was, lurking like a predatory shark very close to the ship! It was as if he had been flung into his worst nightmare, and he flailed, nearly gasping in the seawater as he struggled to reach the surface.
The broad hull of the ship had passed on, looming up as it slid away on the turbulent waters. He found himself batted about in the swirling wash of the ship’s wake, the sea suddenly alive with energy, a scintillating seafoam green radiating out in every direction. Only his adrenaline kept his limbs moving, thrashing and flopping to keep his head above water. In one last terrible moment he saw the horizon studded with the squat iron shapes of the enemy ships, dark and threatening, iron monsters churning forward, their bows biting into the waves as they converged on the scene.
From the bridge of Kirov, with the power of the ship at his command, they were no more than heedless targets for his anger and ambition to squash on a whim. But here, alone in the wild sea, they loomed as steely devils, belching steam and black smoke, their guns training and firing, booming out reprisal.
It was over, he realized in a sudden moment of lucid thought. This was his end. Death waited for him here in the cold, merciless sea. Then he closed his eyes, his struggle finished, feeling a sensation of feathery lightness, his skin tingling as with the prickle of a thousand needles. There was no pain, only the strange sensation that he was slipping, falling, sliding away into the unseen depths-the infinite sea of time itself. His vision faded to grey, his consciousness fleeing as he lay in the hand of fate that moment. Yet its resolute grasp did not choose to close upon him with the finality of its crushing weight. Not yet… not now… not this day…
It was not over. Death was not waiting hungrily for him as he hoped it might, and when he finally awoke he felt himself adrift, still floating, his body moved by some unfathomable power beneath him that he instinctively recognized as the rise and swell of the sea. Karpov was alive. The sun was warm on his face, but something else was there. Eyes closed, he reached his hand, still feeling the soreness in his shoulder where he had fallen against the ship… coarse cloth… a bandage on his face. He opened his eyes, squinting up at the azure sky, studded with fluffy white clouds and resounding with the call of seabirds. A quiet bell rang, very close. The salty marine smell and an odor of fish was all about him. Then a shadow loomed over him, and he saw a face.