“Timely cruelty,” said Karpov. “Yes, I like that, but I wonder if you have that in you, Fedorov. If you are correct, and we do nothing, then you say this time line is doomed to wither and die, or to simply loop about in circles forever. How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because I’ve seen how it happens—the withering—on the ship when we faced the last paradox. Men went missing. The ship itself seemed like it was having difficulty remaining stable. Even the structure began to warp and change. We phased and my boots got stuck in the deck, right there on the bridge. We had one man who was found half embedded in the deck of the galley—Lenkov. His torso was visible, but below that deck, there was no sign of the rest of him—until the Marines found his legs in a locker on the helo deck. Things were happening all over the ship like that. Then men started to go missing. Orlov disappeared, and others too.”
“He disappeared?”
“Yes… and I think I ended up vanishing as well. Time must have picked me up like a chess piece, and dropped me here, on this ship. Who knows why? I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. Perhaps it’s because I was fated to make this choice—to figure all this out.”
“So we either make our choice in this matter here, and carry it out, or do nothing and possibly suffer these strange effects you describe?”
“Not just us—everyone—everything. If we do nothing, and this meridian has no basis for continued existence, then it will begin to disintegrate. That’s what I think was beginning aboard the ship, but it would happen everywhere. Who knows how long it would take, the slow withering of this reality. And in that instance, it matters little whether we win or lose this war. Things fall apart, and that’s what could happen here.”
Karpov took a deep breath. Was this possible? It seemed utter lunacy, but Fedorov seemed so deathly serious. He had sorted through the consequences of their actions here many times, and he was often correct with his theories. But this? The whole world on the chopping block of time?
He considered the choice before them now. His inclination was to simply do nothing, and see what would happen, yet there was a part of him that had been tempted to take decisive action at Ilanskiy, and for a very long time. He had never quite mustered the courage to do so, and always found excuses to justify his timidity. Now, here was Fedorov, brave hearted Fedorov, ready to take on all Fate and Time.
Timely cruelty… Could he do this thing?
“If I send you,” he began, feeling like a man who was edging out to a precipice, “then you will not go alone. I will come with you.”
“You? And leave the ship? Who will coordinate the shift here? We need someone who knows the history of all we’ve done. If the ship reappears in some other time, it will take a well educated head, and a steady hand on the tiller to judge what to do—could you do that, Karpov? Could you do what is right for a change, instead of only acting to further your own interests? You wonder if I have that ounce of cruelty in me, as I wonder whether you would have an ounce of reason—or compassion, if it was needed.”
“Touché, Fedorov. Let me correct myself. I will go with you, but it will be my brother that makes this journey in my place. He’ll be on Tunguska when you get inland, and I’ll speak with him via encrypted radio to explain what we are going to attempt to do. As for timely cruelty, I have my doubts about your ability to follow through. But my brother will have no such scruples. Yes, timely cruelty will come easily for him. All in a day’s work.”
“I see… Then you’ve decided. You want me to kill Sergei Kirov, or at the very least to refrain from warning him as I did. You want me to leave him to Stalin.”
“You should want the same. It’s the only decision that brings us towards a solution here. It bends the history back as it was, gets the train back on the right track again. Unfortunately, Stalin will be back in charge, but I’ll find a way to deal with him later.”
“What? You? Deal with Stalin?”
“Believe me, Fedorov, that will not be as difficult as you might think. In fact, I think it would be much easier than trying to sort out all these impossible paradoxes. Yes. I said so earlier, and now I’m inclined to feel this is our only clear choice. Sergei Kirov has to die. He’s a maverick, an aberration, and because of the power he wields, history is all bent out of shape. I’m betting that one trip down those steps does us a world of good here. I’m betting we come out of our shift, find Volkov and his damn Orenburg Federation gone, Stalin back in charge, and the Germans on their way to certain defeat in Russia. There’s no other way, Fedorov. This is what we have to do, and I’ll send my brother self along with you to make sure it gets done correctly.”
“There’s only one problem,” said Fedorov. “Remember what I said. We never quite know where a person ends up when he uses that staircase. In some instances, it is like Old Faithful, and I’ve already stated that I think it will take me right back to the same time—June 30, 1908. But will it send your brother there as well?”
“I see your point…. We’ll just have to handcuff the two of you together. Where you go, my brother goes. Would it work?”
“I have no way of knowing,” said Fedorov.
“Well, is there any reason I could not shift back to that date?”
“That depends. You could not go to a time when you already existed in 1908. When did you first arrive there?”
“Let me see…” Karpov tried to remember, but even that was difficult. He did not want to think back on it, back through the pain of Armageddon, back to that time when he betrayed Volsky’s trust, and led the ship and crew like Satan leading his fallen angels in a war against heaven. Yes, he had fired his nuke. That’s when it happened…. He felt stunned at first, light headed. Then his numbed brain began to work again, and his senses began to assemble the clues in his mind—the light, the changing color of the sky, the eerie luminescence of the sea, and the hushed silence of the enveloping fog. He knew what had happened. They had shifted again.
“Yes… We ran across an old clipper ship, and they were sending us Morse Code. I had Nikolin signal that we had lost our ship’s chronometer, and asked for a current reading of the date and time. It was 10 July, 1908.”
“My God,” said Fedorov. That is just ten days after I arrived there.”
“Then if my brother goes with you, and you both arrive June 30, he has at least ten days to get the job done—correct?”
“I suppose so, said Fedorov, wishing he had never come to Karpov with this. He had thought he would be off to shore up Sergei Kirov’s life here, a man he admired greatly, in spite of the fact that he gave this ship to Karpov, betraying the trust of Admiral Volsky. Now he was going to murder him….
Part XI
Second Thoughts
“Is it wise to move along the path, hoping for what may never come, or to go back and change your course for the likely?”