“We talked about this once, long ago it seems.”
“Yes… Heisenberg Waves. There we were at a point in time, very close to the ship’s first regression. At that point, those waves would be very strong.”
“Strong enough to bend bulkheads and hatches out of shape, or create a bulge in the hull of the ship.” said Karpov. “Strong enough to simply sweep men away, as if they were never there.”
The light glittered in Fedorov’s eyes. “Exactly so! We shifted again—and for the last time on that ship. Volsky addressed the crew, and then it happened—the fog, that deep terrifying sound, the weird lights around us all. And the next thing I remember, I was still there on the bridge, but not on the same ship, no, not the one we sailed through the Denmark Strait. I was on the ship that was destined to arrive that very first time, and so were you, at the time of the Second Coming.”
Chapter 2
“Soul migration,” said Fedorov. “That’s the only way I can explain it. Nothing in my head had changed, but it was all in the head of young Navigator Anton Fedorov now. I was there, everything I ever knew, and with the memories of all the things we experienced after first regression. Finding you there was quite a shock, and that is what led me to conclude that I was not on my old ship any longer. I have no idea what happened to it, but who knows, it may have been annihilated by Paradox.”
“Why did you survive? Why not Rodenko, Zolkin, or any of the others? Ah, because you were a Prime Mover, just like I survived that hour aboard Tunguska.”
“No, I don’t think so. I survived because I was wearing this key, the thing Kamenski left for me before he vanished. And you survived only because you were protected from Paradox by the fairy dust in the bones of Tunguska. It had nothing to do with this Prime Mover business. No, it was something physical that protected us, an arcane property that we’ll probably never understand, but it resides in physical objects. That much is clear.”
“But you say my brother-self knew nothing of this, of all the things we did after we first vanished.”
“Of course not. He was your Doppelganger. Frankly, I don’t think Time wanted the two of you to survive.”
“I’ll have to agree,” said Karpov. “She didn’t harm the man you saw there on Kirov, but I damn well thought she was after me when I was on Tunguska. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Well, now she’s corrected the matter. My brother-self is gone. He lived a full life, Fedorov, an old man when that missile found him. I was still young, and I also had full recollection of everything we did after first regression. So I guess I was spared this time, though I still feel that a part of me died with the Siberian.”
“The question now is this,” said Fedorov. “It’s starting again. We’re starting to see men go missing, Volushin, Markov, and if the pattern holds, it will be Lenkov next. I’ve asked his mates to keep an eye on him, but I’m not sure that will be of any help.”
“A man’s fate is a man’s fate,” said Karpov, “and life means very little.”
“Spoken like a true Samurai,” said Fedorov. “Karpov, what should we do? You suggested we get rid of Rod-25, and that we could do easily enough, but what about this key I’m wearing? What about the box we used to even get here to this future? We thought it was only fitting that Kirov should get to the future we helped create, and here we are. That said, the ship is unstable. The aberration Dobrynin reported, and Markov’s fate, were clear warnings. Now Volushin is gone, and the list is long.”
“Look, at least we know the road ahead. It’s right in there!” Karpov pointed a finger to Fedorov’s head. “We know Lenkov is next, then Kornalev’s shift mate, Tasarov, Dobrynin…. But there’s no Kamenski aboard to vanish.”
“He was a keyholder,” said Fedorov. “And guess what—this is the key he held, right here around my neck, so it didn’t protect him.”
“You’re suggesting you will vanish like he did?”
“I don’t know what to think, but like I said earlier, I’m on the list, we all are. Everyone vanished in the end.”
“Not all of us,” said Karpov. “Remember, I wasn’t aboard, and since Time already got a pound of my flesh when my brother died, I could be immune. You could be immune too, Fedorov. That key saved you once already. It might work again.”
“Small comfort,” said Fedorov, clearly distressed. “My God, look what we’ve done—the two of us. We came forward from WWII in the effort to try and prevent first regression, but it’s clear that we didn’t appear on this Meridian. It was another time line. Well, we succeeded in keeping the ship where it was, but then saw that whole world careen into a nuclear war. So we make good our escape, back here, to the future we really came from in the first place, only now we find it radically altered by the things we did in WWII. And we’ve dragged this ship and crew with us. Now look what’s happening to them. They don’t deserve this fate.”
“We’re not powerless, Fedorov. We can act to stave off that fate. First, we must try to stabilize the ship, and make sure Dobrynin doesn’t start hearing that sound again.”
“Alright, let’s dump Rod-25. These waters are very deep, particularly in the Celebes Sea. We don’t need it, and we already know it can destabilize our position in time.”
“But we still keep the keys,” said Karpov. “Something tells me they will be more stable. Rod-25 was never planned. It was happenstance that saw it laden with those exotic particles in the mines near Vanavara, but this box—these keys—they’re something quite different. These things were engineered in the future, Fedorov, and that’s where they’ve been taking us—always forward. In the last extreme, we could use that box to move the ship again.”
“Move it? To another time? For God’s sake, where?”
“Who knows, but it would be better than suffering the fate you just described to me. There may be other Meridians out there.”
Fedorov thought about that. It had to be true, for they had seen more than one themselves. Yet how many were there? Was time an infinite weave of multiple universes, or was it more frugal? In his many discourses with Kamenski, and even that American Physicist, Paul Dorland, he knew that other time lines existed. The one they were on when those live fire exercises began was not this meridian… or was it?
Dorland talked about the Prime Meridian, as if Time had a preference for keeping things wrapped up on one time line. Then we go and screw the whole thing up, he thought. Yes, we shift back to 1941, Karpov ends up shifting even further to 1908, as do I, and then the entire history of that Meridian is altered. I was so adamant in my quest to go after him and bring Kirov forward, but we didn’t make it. We fell out of the shift at a point before our first regression to the past. That’s what caused the loop, and I was right there in the middle of that. When Kirov and crew vanished, my consciousness was migrated to the Anton Fedorov on the ship we called the Second Coming. But that was still the original ship, wasn’t it? That was who we were before all of this started happening. The first ship was gone, as if it had never existed, just like those men on Zolkin’s list.