“No… I don’t think so. We stayed put this time, and never shifted, though I was more than a little concerned when you suggested we might use a special warhead earlier. You are well aware of the unexpected after effects of a nuclear detonation by now.”
“No argument there,” said Karpov. “Then you feared we might shift again if I had used such a weapon here.”
“Quite possibly. I would not want to be anywhere near a detonation like that. If I were you, I would reserve those warheads for the longest range missile we have, so the ship would be as far from the impact site as possible.”
Karpov nodded. “So then, if there’s no paradox to worry about come this August, what has you so spooked?”
“Just what I discussed with you earlier. We could do something, cause a change here that would knock out a key supporting beam holding up the future that built this ship. I’ve been thinking about that, and trying to discover what it could be, where the key event is that we must not disturb, and I think I may be on to something.”
“Tell me.”
“Think about it yourself, Admiral. I was the man who whispered in Sergei Kirov’s ear. Yes? My careless advice, and I suppose his inherent curiosity, led him to try that stairway again at Ilanskiy, and he ended up assassinating Josef Stalin. Hence we have the world we are sailing in.”
“It wasn’t all your doing,” said Karpov. “I was largely responsible for the fact that we are now trying to throw the Japanese off Sakhalin Island. I’ll say again that, had it not been for your interference—”
“Yes, yes, we’ve been over that,” Fedorov interrupted.
“All I am saying is that there is plenty of blame to go around. I know what I did, and here I am, trying to set things right, take back the territories Russia lost as a result of that fiasco in 1908.”
“Fine, but that still won’t lift the burden from my shoulders. We still end up with the Orenburg Federation because of me.”
“Ah, now I know why you are so glum. But was it really you, Fedorov? What were you doing there at Ilanskiy? You certainly had no idea that stairway had this amazing property. It was pure happenstance. In fact—why were you there?”
“I was looking for Orlov. You know what we planned.”
“Of course I do. I was right there when you persuaded Volsky to let us take Rod-25 to the Primorskiy Engineering Center so you could shift back that way.”
“You see? It was all my doing.”
“I don’t think so.” Karpov was watching his reaction closely now. “No Fedorov, I don’t think it was you at all. You have to look further back on that chain of causality you speak of. Pull on it a while, and just a few links down the line you come to someone else who had a good deal to do with all of this—Orlov.”
Fedorov shook his head. “Kamenski said the same thing, but It wasn’t Orlov at Ilanskiy, it was my fault there.”
“Yes, but you were only there because Orlov jumped ship. Ever consider that? Our surly Chief of Operations didn’t like his lot after our failed coup attempt—alright, after my failed mutiny the first time out. I’ll admit the plan was mine, and I duped him into supporting me. So there he was, busted in rank, stuck with Troyak and the Marines, and so he just flat our deserted. Remember? You tried to stop him in the very first minutes you realized what he was doing. We put five S-300s in the air after him, but his life seems charmed. It was Orlov. Yes. He’s the one that led you on that wild goose chase to fetch him back, and that was how you came to Ilanskiy. When did he do that—jump ship like that?”
Fedorov thought hard…. “It was August of this year, 1942. We were still in the Med, running for Gibraltar, and we wanted a helo up to scout ahead.”
“Right, and Orlov wormed his way onto that helo, with the deliberate intention of abandoning ship. And here it is, 1942 again, and with August just a few months off. I think we might want to keep an eye on this version of Orlov as well, though he seems completely clueless as to anything that happened before.”
Fedorov’s eyes widened slightly, for he knew that was not the case. Orlov had just awakened. The bad dreams that had been plaguing his sleep had become real memories. Karpov didn’t know any of that yet, and something warned him not to speak of it here. And with that thought, he also ran the words of Director Kamenski through his recollection again:
“Nothing you did would have ever occurred if not for Karpov’s little rebellion, or Orlov’s strange letter. He is more than a little fish, I think, but Karpov is a free radical, a wildcard, an unaccountable force in all of this history we’ve been writing and re-writing. Everything that has happened, except perhaps that first explosion on the Orel, can be laid at Karpov’s feet…”
Interesting that Karpov failed to take his line of reasoning that one step further, thought Fedorov. Yes, everything can be laid at his feet, the first detonation that sent us to 1942 and Operation Pedestal was his doing. He led the ship through the hole in time caused by the Demon Volcano, and from there, it was again his doing that sent it to 1908. What he did there is still apparent here in this world. As for Orlov… He brought us Kinlan, and when I threw that thing he found overboard, who knows what else it may have done?
Part III
Fafnir
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”
Chapter 7
Orlov had taken to lurking about below decks, but it was inevitable that he would soon encounter Karpov. Fedorov had urged him to lay low, and to be very cautious about revealing anything he had remembered. The Chief was still simmering about it, lying in his bunk during off hours and running it all through in his mind, as if he was afraid the memories would slip away again, eluding his grasp, and plunging him into the dull unknowing self he had been before that fateful conversation with Fedorov.
He didn’t understand it all—this strange business about the second coming, nor could he understand why he could remember these events, but no one else. Yet that was not entirely true. Doctor Zolkin had been feeling very strange since he had a similar conversation with Fedorov. At that time, just after the ship arrived in this impossible past, he had been bothered by oddities in his computer files, the names of missing men, and then that strange find in his cabinet, the place he kept mementos and other precious things.
It was that bloodied bandage that first brought on the odd inner feelings that he somehow knew what it was, and why it was there. Then Fedorov had come right out and explained it to him. Ever since that time, he had struggled to remember, and at night, he would sometimes have dreams like Orlov, seeing things that he knew he had not lived through when he awoke, but nonetheless feeling that they were, indeed, real lived events. He saw his old friend Leonid Volsky, sitting in a cot bed and lecturing Karpov, and then in another dream, he thought he and the Admiral had been trapped there in the sick bay, until Fedorov came, finally getting engineers to pry open the hatch. He thought it was probably just grief for his old friend. Zolkin had taken the news of Volsky’s passing very hard.
The ears of Chief Dobrynin would also carry whispers from another world to him at times. He would be leaning back in his chair, listening to his reactor plant, hearing it as a kind of music, when suddenly there came an errant sound in the low woodwinds. He would incline his head, listening, hearing and feeling the sound at the same time, and just as a sudden smell could be a powerful memory trigger for others, these sounds worked the same way for him. They meant something—very important—and by listening to them, he came to feel that he had heard such sounds once before, carefully controlling them himself, like a conductor directing his orchestra. Then they vanished, taking that powerful sense of recollection with them… until they came again.