Fedorov nodded, thinking. “You may be correct,” he said slowly, still coming to grips with that thought.
“Of course I’m correct. I’m getting very good at this time business. So let’s explore this further. Was Kirov in that world along with Volsky? Kazan was. Were you there? Zolkin? The rest of the crew? Is there another version of me there? Something tells me that Kamenski meant for us to return there, to that world, but how would that be possible if we are already there. Imagine it, Fedorov. If I’m already there, what would happen if two more versions of myself try to shift there. Don’t you see? We can’t simply shift off to that future. Time won’t allow it. I’m all for rounding up all the other loose ends, but before we do anything more, we’ll have to all huddle and figure all this out. There are too many unanswered questions. Agreed?”
Fedorov nodded. “That is certainly true. Alright. I’ll stand with you, Karpov, on one condition. You agree that when we sort this out, you’ll take the ship forward. Give me that, and I can get Volsky and Gromyko on board.”
“You have my word, Kirov will go forward too. Now let’s get busy, because we have a lot to figure out here. The first thing we need to do is coordinate with Kazan. Why don’t you get back on the secure comm-link and allay Volsky’s fears? Tell him you have my full cooperation. Then the four of us can arrange a meeting place to work out our plan. We’ll figure out how we can get Takami, and then determine what to do about Orlov, not to mention my own little brother out there. Then, when we have our house in order, we’ll settle affairs on Kamenski’s plan for how we move forward.”
Chapter 36
Yes Fedorov, thought Karpov with an inward smile. I’ll take Kirov forward, but I didn’t say how I would do that, did I? Kamenski has some grand scheme in mind, but he hasn’t really explained how his plan would work. I’ll have to see if Volsky knows anything more, and also learn about the world he came from—a third meridian, apparently branching off from these other two I’ve been caught up in.
Yes, I’ll move forward… but I may just end up doing that the old-fashioned way, one day at a time. But I must be very cautious here at the outset. Beginnings are very delicate times. New alliances can be very fragile. They will be suspicious, and I must allay their fears and seem the perfect co-conspirator. Kazan is a very dangerous adversary. That said, if I cozy up to Volsky and Gromyko now, and pretend we’re all one happy little family again, then I’ll have every opportunity to put a torpedo into that sub and rid myself of that threat—but not before I squeeze as much juice out of that orange as I can.
Yes, Kazan has missiles, and maybe I can talk Gromyko out of a few. At the very least, perhaps I can get him to take out Takami for me. That way I won’t have to expend any of my own missiles. Then I need to seriously consider my plan to fetch more ordnance from the future. That would be very dangerous. I suppose I could reinforce the stairway at Ilanskiy here with steel and concrete, and make it sturdy enough to allow for the movement of a missile weighing six tons. But I’d have to rig out a crane to lift them in the future, and then some kind of sled to move them down the stairs here. Even if I do reinforce it here, would that persist into the future? Could I reinforce it there? Would I have the time if the world there is on fire, as we both have already seen. It’s just too uncertain. I have no way of knowing what happens between this moment and 2021, or what will be underway when my team reaches that year.
In fact, I have no way of knowing whether I could successfully get men there at all by using those stairs. My own security forces would have no point of origin in that future pulling them forward, so I would have to use members of the crew—perhaps something for Troyak and his Marines to do. I might even have to send a control rod forward with them to move a ship with munitions back here. It’s either that or I would have to find a working control rod in 2021. I already know they were manufactured in lots, so Rod-25 may have a doppelganger as well. If I could find one there, get it to that ship…. That’s where Volsky could be useful. I’ll certainly have to butter that man’s bread for a while, even if it means saluting and calling him ‘sir.’
Well, I digress. First I have to make certain I have this situation with Volsky and Gromyko under control. Only then might I have the luxury of working out these other plans. Perhaps I’ll even give some more thought to my Omega Plan.
He smiled again. Yes, Kirov was the Alpha, but I will be the Omega. Interesting that Fedorov hasn’t thought of this yet. He’s all worried about those men from the future going silent. This is all the great mysterious cloud hanging over everything—this talk of a Grand Finality. Doesn’t he realize what I have in my power now? I don’t have to use Kirov to move in time. I have Tunguska, I have that vortex that Fedorov was kind enough to discover for me, and I have Ilanskiy. There are risks and uncertainties in all three, but Ilanskiy has been very consistent—old faithful.
This business about the keys is very intriguing. Clearly they were made in the future. Where else? That would be the only place where they would have had the time to discover the location of all these time rifts and then secure them. Well, Mister Fedorov, I have the means of solving that little riddle for you, and perhaps one day it will dawn on you—my Omega Plan.
Ilanskiy… Yes, that stairway goes both directions. I’ve already gone up once, and was so shocked by what I saw with that nuke over Kansk that I beat a hasty retreat and never went back. Suppose I tried that again, and then found some way to get to the main stairway once I got there. The second floor was damaged, probably from the shock wave when that nuke went off at Kansk, but I might be able to get over to the main stairway.
If I do, I just go down and then the real fun starts. I go right back into the dining room to the base of the back stairway. From there, it’s only seventeen steps up to that dark future everyone is so worried about. Yes… I could go see what has silenced the lips of those men from the future—the key makers, as Fedorov believes.
How very interesting….
They were gathered around the ‘Thread Module,’ as Kelly was calling it now, and to all of them it seemed like the ‘Threat’ module would be a better name. It used to be called the Meridian Track, a large ultrawide flat panel display where the line of the continuum through history was displayed in a long horizontal bar that could be scrolled left or right. Colors indicated the integrity of that track to the history recorded and permanently stored in the Touchstone RAM Database. That was data that had been recorded and securely stored before the team ever attempted their first move in time, a record of the world as it was before anyone ever had the chance to tamper with the past.
The Golem module constantly monitored the Internet, sifting through millions of records, like a hundred thousand Google search bots. What they were looking for were changes and variations, anything that might indicate that something was amiss. If something was wrong, a change in the past significant enough to affect the history as it moved forward, those changes would ripple out, and the tiny outliers of that tsunami would be easily detected.
It might be something as simple as a birth or death record. Mrs. Smith was supposed to have given birth to three children, and now she had four. The Meridian Team called those uninvited guests ‘Zombies,’ the real walking dead, people who were recorded as being alive when they shouldn’t be; when they were never even born. Or John Doe’s record of birth goes missing, and no other evidence of his existence could be found—no driver’s license, social security, credit files, job, marriage or medical records. In that instance, the team called those missing souls “Wraiths.”