Chapter 30
“Not exactly,” said Karpov, folding his arms. His meat was long cold, but the wine was still good, and he took a long sip. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Fedorov. I decide what happens here, not you. My word is final, but let’s consider it from a practical standpoint first. How would you carry out this mission.”
Fedorov thought for a moment. “I take a KA-40 inland over Siberia, and rendezvous with one of your airships. I board that, and then it’s off to Ilanskiy. Easy enough.”
“Suppose you did this—repeated your warning to Kirov. How can you be sure he would ever act on it, or go so far as to kill Stalin?”
“Because I could explain all that to him, reinforce how important it would be. He was already pre-disposed to act that way. I think a little nudge in the right direction would do the job. If I do this, I have at least given Time some justification for the continuance of these Altered States, at least for a while.”
“Alright, and suppose we leave the matter of Volkov to time. What about the situation we’re facing here? I’m invading Sakhalin Island because the Japanese are sitting on a good chunk of Siberian territory, and all that happened long ago, after my sortie with the ship to 1908. How does time deal with that?”
“One step at a time,” said Fedorov. “First we save Kirov, then we work out how to deal with the paradoxes you set up with your shift to 1908.”
“We already know that Sergei Kirov fails to defeat Volkov or unite Russia. He didn’t fix it, so let’s consider the other side of the coin—you don’t warn Kirov, and he dies. Are you saying Stalin would correct all this? Would he take back the territory we lost in 1908, and do so before this war begins?”
“You’re asking me things I cannot answer.”
“But is that what you would want? Here I am trying to undo all the damage that happened from my ill fated sortie to 1908 and do exactly that. Don’t you want to get the train back on the tracks, Fedorov?”
“I don’t think that’s possible now.”
“Ah, you don’t think it’s actually off the tracks, but only diverted to another rail line.”
“Yes,” said Fedorov, “and it’s heading for a cliff. The Japanese are going to be more of an adversary than you think. They’ll fight you tooth and nail, even in defeat. They’ll force you to expend every last missile you have, and each time you confront them, you get weaker and weaker. Face it, Karpov. It will take the Americans to truly defeat them. You may take Sakhalin after a long slog here, but Vladivostok is quite another matter, and don’t think you’ll ever invade Japan successfully. That is what it would take to force their capitulation.”
“You’re forgetting I have three nuclear warheads aboard this ship. All it took was two in the old history. The Americans chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could choose Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka.”
“Chaos,” said Fedorov. “If you use those weapons we have no way of knowing what might happen. Time is so fragile now that it could shatter completely. You talked about that Japanese cruiser reaping the whirlwind. That’s what we would be facing.”
“Doom and gloom, Fedorov. All this talk of time shattering is mere speculation. You said yourself that you can’t really say what might happen, no matter whether we act or not. However, I do like one thing you said here. I like this time loop business.”
Fedorov widened his eyes. “What?”
“Yes, and don’t look so surprised. If that were to happen, how might it play out?”
“What do you mean?”
“How would the loop start again this time?”
“Well… I suppose the ship would have to move again, to a time before it first arrived. We all would.”
“Might we prevent that?”
“We might, but don’t underestimate time. If I’m correct, and this is the only choice time has, then it will find a way. Many of our shifts were involuntary.”
“In that case, what you said a moment ago would not be true.” Karpov smiled.
“What are you talking about?”
“I would survive. I wouldn’t die, would I? Perhaps you would survive as well. We would all just start things over, only just a little wiser—just as you did, remembering everything that came before. Don’t you see. This is what has already happened! If this loop repeats, then it happens again… and I live forever….”
Fedorov just stared at him, unable to believe he could be so selfish. “You mean you would let this time loop occur simply to sustain your own personal life indefinitely? My God, Karpov. You can’t be serious.”
“Now don’t get all huffy on me. I was only speculating. Yet you must admit, that this endless time loop might not be so bad, as long as we survive each time. A man could drink a lot of good wine—forever. He could eat well, have the finest women on this earth, over, and over, again and again.”
“Yes, you might see it as your nice private heaven,” said Fedorov “always in the know, satisfying every appetite, while the world spins through the loop, oblivious. Well, let me tell you that some very strange things could happen in that event. Your little heaven could start disintegrating before your very eyes. I’ve seen this. And beyond that, nothing would ever resolve. Your life would never reach a point of fulfillment. You would loop through these years, the struggle to win, but that final victory would never be grasped. If you ask me, that’s a nice private hell… over and over again.”
“Oh, you never know, Fedorov. Give me enough time, and I’ll find a way to win.” Karpov smiled, then set his wine down, considering the situation further.
“There is still the second alternative,” he said. “We could help time along and just kill Kirov where he sits there in 1908. If we go with the honey, and spare Kirov, then he might kill Stalin to justify this world. But then we’d still have all the other unresolved paradoxes to deal with. Furthermore, even if you do warn Kirov, there’s no guarantee he’d follow through as before and kill Stalin. You see? There is no certainty to that alternative. Too many things remain outside our direct control.”
“I see your point,” said Fedorov.
“On the other hand, if we go with the vinegar to catch our flies, we just make sure of things, and do Stalin’s work for him a little early by killing Kirov in 1908. Then Stalin survives by default. The history rolls forward from that point. He takes power, probably unites all Russia, gulags and all. That solves our problem with the Japanese, and he’ll probably get rid of Volkov for us in the bargain. As sad as it seems, Stalin could simply be our best move here. Could you do it, Fedorov? Do you really think you could go down those stairs and kill Sergei Kirov if I were to make that decision?”
“Decisiveness is often the art of timely cruelty,” said Fedorov. He was quoting the French dramatist Henry Becque when he said that, but still wondering whether he could master that art. That was what Sergie Kirov had mustered the courage to do when he went into that dank prison cell in Baku with a revolver and fired the shot that changed all history. Could he do that—and to Kirov himself?
What about the alternative? What if he simply repeated what he had already done once before in warning Kirov of his fated death by assassination. That would suit his temperament quite well, but he swallowed hard to think that he would be the man who made the same mistake twice to write this history. If he did that, and it was enough to justify the continuance of this time line, could they solve all the other paradoxes, and then find a way to win this war? If he chose the honey instead of vinegar, he knew that he was abandoning, forever, any hope of returning the history to its old course. Yet to do so, to kill Kirov and return Stalin to the meridian as Master of the Soviet Union, would cause wrenching, all consuming change here. He had no idea how that would all play out, but he had experienced some inkling of it on a smaller scale. It frightened him to even think on it.