“But you believe time can do this? You think it will rearrange all the pieces on the board and this little chess game will look quite different come the 1st of October, with Stalin crowned King again? That should suit you fine, because the position would be much like the one we left behind in Severomorsk. Then again, you might just get your wish and save your history by doing nothing here. Let the impossibility of this meridian stand, and leave it all up to time to fix things. If you are correct, them this meridian, as you call it, leads time nowhere. There is no foundation for it at all. Yes, I understand the threat quite well. It’s just that I can’t see how time could do anything on such a grand scale to alter this world like that—eliminate it, annihilate it, start everything new. That is what would have to happen here—complete and utter annihilation. That’s not very tidy, Fedorov. Do you really foresee something like that?”
“Hasn’t it already happened once?” said Fedorov. “Where is Stalin? The world we came from, that entire history, is completely gone. If that isn’t annihilation, then what is?”
“Not completely gone,” said Karpov. “Remember your analogy of the cracked mirror. Yes, in places we will look at this history and it will be impossibly wrong. Yet in others, it remains remarkably consistent. The Allies are launching their Operation Torch even as we speak.”
“It’s drastically different this time.”
“And yet they called it Torch, just as they did in the old history. That may seem like an inconsequential detail, but there are thousands of things like that which remain consistent.”
“But the longer this goes on,” said Fedorov, “the more distorted the history gets. Take the fighting on the Volga. That will look nothing at all like the old battle of Stalingrad. I tell you, it’s a line that diverges from the original, and the farther it goes, the wider that divergence becomes. Soon the world will be so completely changed, and that I cannot see any way this ship would have ever been built, and that is a real paradox. Is it not? How could this world exist, it the ship that caused it to come into being was never built? No, this time line leads to an impossible dead end. Time must deal with that—unless we do something first. We can possibly sustain it a little longer, if I go warn Kirov of his fate like I did before. That at least buys us some time, until the next paradox crops up.”
“The next Paradox? There’s more?”
“Oh, there’s more alright—you made certain of that when you ended up in 1908.”
“That was happenstance. I had no intention of ever going there when I took the Red Banner Fleet out in 2021. It was that damn volcano—”
“And that damn little nuke you threw at the Americans in 1945.”
“They deserved everything they got.”
“That isn’t my point!” Fedorov could not help just a little anger in his tone. “Suppose I warn Kirov and buy us some time. We were supposed to shift forward to 2021 soon, which sets that entire series of events in motion.”
“None of that has to ever happen,” said Karpov. “For example, knowing what I know now, I could easily avoid the Demon Volcano. You see. Free will, Fedorov. This isn’t all fated to reoccur. What happens is entirely up to me.”
“You misunderstand me. I’m saying that if it doesn’t reoccur, then nothing you did in 1908 will have happened. You don’t duel with Admiral Togo, Japan never invades Siberian territory in 1908, nor do I have any reason to go after you with Rod-25 aboard Kazan—so you don’t shift forward to 1938 as you did here. Understand? Your existence in your present position becomes unsustainable. You face Paradox again—did you enjoy it that last time?”
“Alright. I see your point. Saving Kirov just buys us a little time. We then have more hurtles to jump, and if we don’t? If I do nothing to try and resolve these problems, what then? You can’t believe this will all just end, come to a stop, vanish. It seems preposterous to even contemplate such an outcome.”
Fedorov thought, his eyes suddenly alight with realization. “No,” he began. “It won’t just end—it will loop! That’s what’s happening here now. This is the middle of a time loop. It’s the second time the ship has arrived in the past. The history is repeating, only it’s very distorted now. Time didn’t end, it just looped back on itself.”
“Interesting,” said Karpov, also thinking now. “Then you believe this is what will happen again? July 28th of 1941 is long gone. How could it start all over again?”
“Because in the course of these events Kirov shifted to a time prior to that first coming. That’s what set up the first paradox, and now we’re facing another. If I take no action, this time line becomes impossible in just three days, unless Sergei Kirov survives. Then it at least has some rational underpinning for a little while longer—perhaps long enough for us to deal with what comes next. But in three days, if I don’t act, Sergei Kirov’s existence here has no foundation. He shouldn’t be alive, because I will not have warned him of his fate. That becomes an insoluble problem for time, and its only solution is to loop the history back on itself, play the game again, and see if it can reach an alternative solution.”
“And if it fails to do so, what then? Checkmate?”
“No… Stalemate, a game where neither side can win. The old time line cannot be restored, the new one can have no basis for existence, and so round and round it goes—forever.”
“That may be our fate, Fedorov. This may be inevitable. What gets you so hot to do anything here? You yourself admit that saving Kirov is just a temporary measure. Is that what you have in mind? You haven’t even said anything about your plan.”
“Ilanskiy,” said Fedorov. “Yes. If I go there, and retrace my steps down those stairs, I believe I will return to 1908.”
“What makes you so certain of that?”
“I’m not sure, but I think there is a kind of connection with each traveler on those stairs to a given time. I went down once, and returned precisely to the point in time I had just left.”
“I did the same,” said Karpov, “only I was going up, and I saw what was happening in 2021 when the missiles started to fly.”
“So you retreated, just as I did, and you ended up exactly where you started. Who can say why? Yet it happens that way. So I think I would end up the same place if I went down those stairs again—1908—and on a very special day that year. I saw the burning light of the Tunguska event. I saw it happen, Karpov. And I sat down to breakfast with Sergei Kirov that morning, if only for a very brief moment. He was calling himself by an alias at that time—Mironov.”
“Then you think you would meet him there again?” Now Karpov leaned forward, his voice a near hush, and he was suddenly very interested. His flippant manner had evaporated, and the edge of bravado was gone.
“You think you would find Kirov there as before?”
“Yes.”
“And what would you do?”
Fedorov waited a moment. “If I told him about Stalin, revealed the date of his death by assassination, then he might act just as we know he has. He might kill Stalin again, and then we build one strong pillar of iron beneath the world we’re sitting on here.”
“Yes…” said Karpov, thinking it through now. “But what about Volkov? He’s the one who builds the Orenburg Federation. If what you said earlier is true, and we do nothing, then there is no reason for Volkov to even exist in this time line. He should vanish, or meet some other untimely end if time gets its way, and that would be a well deserved fate for him.”
“I’m not certain about Volkov, but remember, each person that walks that stairway gets somewhere, unerringly, and they are linked to a very specific time. For some, there is no effect at all. Troyak told me he followed my footprints down those stairs but nothing happened to him at all. He just met Zykov at the bottom and they continued their search for me.”