I must admit that it certainly had some very real effects. I felt them myself during that terrible night aboard Tunguska. Yet I survived them easily enough. Time has been lusting to find a way to redress that. There are two of us now, my brother and I. She cannot abide that, and looks for any way to balance her books.
So here comes Volsky again, just when I thought that man was dead and buried for good. And here comes Kazan…. What should I do about this? Fedorov cozied up to me real good when he returned from that mission. He realized, as I did, the consequences of his tampering at that foundational level of these events. This world rests on the shoulders of Sergei Kirov. He built it, and now he’s fighting to save it, just as I am. I thought I had finally convinced Fedorov of that, but now here comes old Papa Volsky, and he’ll muddle the waters with this business stuffed into his head by Kamenski.
What to do here?
Fedorov will bring this to me, and if I refuse to hear Volsky out, then what? Is he going to turn to his henchman Gromyko? Does he think he can kill this ship that easily? If I do agree to a meeting, how should I arrange it? I suppose it was at least decent of Volsky to make this call. Yet he did not sound like that bumbling old fool I met in Murmansk. No. He spoke of things that man could have never known, and this thing Fedorov said about two lives being mingled together in one head is most interesting.
Perhaps that was supposed to happen to me.
That thought suddenly shook him. Perhaps Time was going to merge the recollections and experiences I lived through into the body and head of my brother self when the Second Coming happened. Yes… That was what was supposed to happen, but Time could not accomplish it. I was in some kind of protective Faraday Cage aboard Tunguska, and she couldn’t touch me. I was elsewhere. There might have been only one version of myself, just like Fedorov, but one who remembered all that had happened on that first loop. Very interesting… If this happened to Fedorov and Volsky, then might it also happen to other members of the crew?
Now he reached a decision.
I must meet with those two rascals, he thought. They have been my enemies in the past, but Fedorov gave me his word that he would stand with me here. Volsky wants to have his little talk, so I will hear him out, but they will hear me out as well. How to best arrange this?
First things first… Fedorov.
Chapter 33
As predicted, Fedorov went to Karpov, his heart heavy and mind very troubled when he knocked on the stateroom door. He could not see how he might persuade Karpov, or how their present situation would be any different than the sortie they made to 1908 if he failed, but he had to try.
“Come.”
He opened the door, removing his cap as he eased in and closed it securely behind him. Karpov was sitting at his desk, his eyes scanning paperwork under an LED lamp. “What is it, Mister Fedorov?”
“Sir, we’ve received a secure message on the EAM comm-link system, and we need to discuss it.”
Karpov looked up, rubbed his eye as if to chase away an annoying tick, and gave Fedorov a look that seemed to indicate he had come to some inner decision. “I don’t feel like theater this morning,” he said. “Yes, Mister Fedorov, we certainly need to discuss this one, don’t we. You see, I have a secure comm-link unit right here, and I have it rigged to alert me to any pass-code level communications. So you might as well know that I was listening in on your entire conversation with Volsky. Amazing, eh? That old man simply refuses to die. I must say, I was as shocked as you must have been when I heard his voice.”
Fedorov raised a brow, surprised again, not so much that Karpov had been listening, but more that he had not anticipated that from a man like the Siberian. “Very well,” he said. “No theatrics. I agree. I told you I would be straight up with you and as you can see, I came to you with this immediately.”
“Who was that man?” asked Karpov? “How did he get here—aboard Kazan?”
“Kazan was in the Atlantic when it last vanished—shifted. Apparently, it went forward again, as far as 2021.”
“So that is where they met Kamenski. My… How would he know about any of this?”
“Good question,” said Fedorov. “He’s a very mysterious man, but very insightful. When I was driven half-crazy trying to sort through this time travel business, it was Kamenski who helped me make sense of things.”
“But I don’t see how,” said Karpov. “Yes, he was Deputy Director of the KGB for many years, but now he seems privy to events that no man on earth should be able to fathom. How it is he can claim to know what the long-term consequences of our presence here will be?”
“Perhaps he’s already seen it,” said Fedorov. “Frankly, I’m beginning to think he may not be from our own time line—not native to 2021, in spite of the fact that he had a long, distinguished life line in our time.”
“What? Then where in god’s name did the man come from—mars?”
“You don’t have to ask me that,” said Fedorov. “I think he may have come from a future time—beyond 2021. How else could he possess the insight he has? He knew about the effects of massive detonations on the time continuum, and he was deeply involved in the black operations that were masked by our nuclear test program. I think he may even have known about Tunguska. It’s clear that he’s been operating on many levels here, for on more than one occasion he’s told me that he holds the recollection of lives lived from more than one meridian of time.”
“Just like we do,” said Karpov. “You’ve got a few versions of yourself locked away up there, don’t you? As for me, the two lives I seem to have lived in this little adventure remain incarnate—one in my head, and one in my brother’s. I have no idea what my brother was doing three days before he went to see with Kirov. Oh, I can take a good guess, but I have no clear memory of that.” Karpov pointed to his head. “Not up here…. And my brother knows nothing of what we did the first encounter—at least he did not have this awareness the last time we spoke, and that was only yesterday. So while you and Volsky may be a salad bowl of different selves, my head is uncontaminated by these layers from other lives. Better that way. I think more clearly. Yet your theory holds some merit. Kamenski knows entirely too much—if the man is to be believed.”
“Why would he lie?”
“Lie? What exactly has he said, Fedorov? Just what is this great doom he warns about?”
“It obviously has to do with the ship—this ship. I suppose it did originate with the warning the Watch received from the future.”
“You’re speaking of this Fairchild woman now—the one on the converted British destroyer?”
“Correct. I can’t recall whether we’ve discussed it, but here’s the gist of things. When we first appeared, we ended up tangling with the Royal Navy—never a good idea, but you seemed to think you would prevail.”
“I would have beaten them easily enough.”
“Yes, with special warheads. Let’s not get into that now. What we do know is that Admiral Tovey’s experience in those encounters caused him to establish a secret group within the Royal Navy—the Watch. They were to look out for any further reappearance of our ship. Some of the original members were Tovey, Alan Turing, who was instrumental in concluding we were not from their own time, and other key Admirals like Cunningham and Fraser. I’m not aware of others. In any case. That group persisted into modern times—even in our own day. Fairchild was a member in our own time.”