“This is very confusing.” Gromyko scratched his head.
“It certainly is. Let me put it to you this way. That nice fat torpedo of yours didn’t kill the Ambush, but it poked a nice fat hole in the spacetime continuum. We’ve discussed all this before. Yes? Well, I suspect that British submarine found its way back to 1941 the same way you showed it the door. Infinity doesn’t like it when you disturb its long sleep. That’s what a nuke is—a brash knock on infinity’s door, and I’m afraid all too many will be thrown about in this next fight. Things are getting very tense here. I have it on good authority that we will be at war in a week… perhaps nine days at best. We’ve been here before, and it will happen again. In fact this will be the third time I’ll live through it all—assuming I do live it through.”
“The war?” said Gromyko. “It was just about to start the day we left for our mission.”
“Yes, and what a mission it was. Karpov took the ship out as the flagship of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet. He thumbed his nose at the American 7th Fleet, and then that Demon volcano ended their argument. You and I know what happened after that. Well, don’t be surprised, Mister Gromyko, to find all that mucking about in the 20th century has had some effect on things here in the 21st! That was the idea, you see, to try and stop this war here from taking place. But a lot of breadcrumbs have already fallen through the cracks in the table—Karpov, Kirov, Kinlan, Kazan. Not to mention Ivan Volkov, and some we may not even know about yet. Well, it has to stop, because if we don’t do something about it, and quickly, time is going to start making some very hard choices.”
Gromyko shrugged.
“Well now,” said Kamenski. “Let me explain…”
Chapter 35
“You may not have known much about it, but some very strange things were happening aboard Kirov before you took that shot at a British submarine. Yes, very strange things. That ship and crew were all facing a real judgment, not just a few uncomfortable questions from nosy navy inquisitors. They were facing annihilation, because the day and time of their first arrival in the past was drawing ever nearer, and it was casting a very deep shadow. Men began to go missing on that ship, and I’m afraid I was probably one of them. My disappearance must have given Mister Fedorov quite a headache, but as you can see, time is rather fastidious.”
“Fastidious?”
“She doesn’t like wasting things, and is very fussy about that. I was almost certain that my lease on life had run its course. Heaven knows, I’ve been given more than enough time in this world. But it seems there are more worlds than we think, and this is just another one. Fedorov wanted to know where the missing men were going. Where was Orlov and all the rest? Then he became one of those missing men himself. Yet time takes away, and time gives back as well. She found a place for him, as she just found a place for me when I vanished aboard Kirov. You can feel it coming, you know. You tend to feel a bit… insubstantial. For the longest time I thought it was that little treasure I had in my pocket, the key. You know nothing of that, but let’s just say it was a kind of lucky charm. I thought it kept me safe and sound, but now I think it’s just something that helps time go about her business.”
“Director… I’m just not sure I’m following you here.”
“Ah, forgive me if I tend to ramble on. The older you get, the more things you have tucked away up here, and time keeps pouring more tea in my cup. One day it will run over, but for now, I still hold it well enough. Let me put it to you this way. Suppose you were writing a story. You think you have it just the way you want, then you get an idea that simply must be given form and shape in the narrative. So you do a little editing here and there, and write a new chapter. At the end of the day, you save it, overwriting the old file with the new. That’s what time is doing. Well now, you would think your characters would have the good manners to forget the old file—the way things were before you made all those changes and additions to the story—but it seems they don’t, at least in my case. I’m a file that has been saved and replaced a good many times, but I remember each version of the story I lived in before. Yes, each and every one.”
“I don’t understand…. You are suggesting this is not the year and time we first left Vladivostok?”
“Not at all. Let me see… Kazan… yes… You are carrying the P-800 Onyx missile now, am I correct? You have those along with the Kalibr Cruise Missile.”
“I gave all those to Kirov, but yes, I still have the Onyx.”
“Well they will be scratching their heads over that one if I let technicians and missile crews anywhere near your boat. Has it been boarded yet?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Good, good. We’ll keep things that way. I will have to arrange the replenishment cycle myself. You see, the Kazan of this day and time would be carrying all new missiles. It went missing three weeks ago—in the Atlantic—and we finally get word today that you are back. But if I am not mistaken, you are not the man that took that boat out from Severomorsk when it sailed three weeks ago. You were in the Pacific, yes?”
“Correct. But what do you mean here? You are saying that another man took Kazan out from Severomorsk? Impossible. I’ve had this boat since it was commissioned, and I was in the Pacific. You must be mistaken.”
“No, not another man—another Gromyko—another you, Captain, and I am not mistaken. I was at Severomorsk myself to see your boat off, quietly. That may sound impossible, but I was not the man you hob knobbed with aboard Kazan on your recent mission. No. I never left Vladivostok with Volsky and Fedorov, even though I now have a clear recollection of all those events. That’s what makes this all so difficult. You remember things, but you haven’t really lived them through—at least not on the meridian of time you presently occupy. Yes… You remember things you did in another meridian, another world, because after you met your fate there, Time saw fit to make a little deposit. Let me see, she says. What do I do with Kamenski? Ah! I’ll put him over here with the other one.”
“You’re saying there are two of you?”
“In this world? No, just one at a time please. But are there other worlds where I lived and breathed? Of course there are—two, three, a hundred, a thousand, even a million or more. Thankfully, only these few threads have become entangled in this business, or I would be a true basket case. In fact, I am coming to think that is what clinical madness may be after all, and any number of other mental ailments like schizophrenia—time confusion. I seem to recall about five different versions of myself—all in this one little head. No wonder I am losing my hair, eh? There’s just too much going on up here.” Again he pointed to his forehead.
“Well now. If the missile men get aboard your boat, they’ll start noticing things are different. I’ll see to the matter. We’ve a few new toys in this world. Probably because Putin wasn’t assassinated here. He’s the one who started pushing the reformation and upgrades in the navy. So we phased out the S-300s, for example, and went to the S-400 and then the S-500. And for the ship killers, there’s a new VLS system now, the 3S-14 in eight missile modules. The Zirkon replaced the Onyx, and so that is what you will get.”
“Zirkon? I thought that was to be restricted to surface ships.”
“Oh? So they were working on it in your meridian as well. Interesting. Technically it was for the surface ships, the 3M22, a hypersonic missile, much faster than the Onyx/Yakhont—twice as fast at Mach 5, but they have a variant for submarines now. If Kirov were here, it would get that missile too, 80 of them! Only they’ve renamed the ship the Admiral Ushakov in this go around, and it has brothers. Here we have Admiral Lazarev, Admiral Nakhimov, and Pyotr Velikiy, all in that same class. They were going to build another and call it Kuznetsov, but it was cancelled in 1990. Funny thing… I remember a world where we took the best of each one of those four hounds, and rolled them into a shiny new ship we called Kirov. Yes, we gave it back its old name, just as it was in the 1980s. That’s the ship we have to worry about, the one that went missing—in another world.”