“Karpov,” he said haltingly. “I think we’re back on the Prime Meridian.”
“Having a brain storm, Fedorov? What do you mean?”
“We thought there was an earlier recurrence—that we were not the first cause of all this, but now I think differently.”
“Differently? Well, where the hell did we get this ship? It wasn’t from this Meridian.”
“Correct, but I think that time line was like a shadow of this one. Yes, we stopped this ship from regressing, but then look what happened to that Meridian? We got caught up in WWIII, and it all went to hell. That little jump we made in the icy north showed us a dead world. The Northern Shamrock was abandoned, and there was a crater there that could have only been made by a nuke. That world died, and now that I think of it, we saw that dead world before. Remember?”
“When we went to Halifax… yes, and when we sailed into the Med. Then we ended up in WWII again.”
“Yes, but back on the same Meridian we came from. The Meridian that now had the altered history of WWII, and we’re in the future of that same time line right now. So you see, we never really did stop the first regression of Kirov on this Meridian, not on the Prime. No, we stopped it on the Shadow….”
“What are you saying, that we took the wrong train? We have to go back to July 28, 2021 on this time line? But Fedorov, Kirov wasn’t there.”
“Yes, because it shifted back to WWII.”
“That ship had two fates. I’ve just described one of them for you, all the vanishing men, the fog, the final shift to God knows where. The other fate was played out in the hands of your brother-self, the Siberian. That ship made it to the 1980s, before the reactor died, and then the Siberian scuttled it. I’m willing to bet that happened just before another Paradox Hour, the day the first steel would have been cut on the original ship. Then again, I don’t think this ship was ever built here on this altered time line. We changed the Prime Meridian so drastically, that the ship was never built.”
“You’ve said that before, it was always one of your favorite worries.”
“And justifiably so,” said Fedorov. “You see… Kirov did shift back, we know that. And it had two fates which I just identified. But now we’ve made it so that the Soviets of this era never built the ship at all! Let’s look….”
Fedorov knew he was correct, but they could easily verify that with a little Internet search. It took him just a moment to call up the status of the current Soviet Navy. It was much smaller, as there had been no Cold War to justify its buildup as a foil against the West. And yes, the Kirov class battlecruisers were not in the fleet. They were never built.
“Strange that we never thought to look this up,” said Karpov.
“Indeed. Well now, that explains a lot. We ended up doing exactly what I feared—we changed so much of the history that Kirov was never built. That makes us, and this ship, a complete anomaly here. And look what we’re doing—we’re at it again! We’re involving ourselves in the history of these events, changing things.”
“I thought we agreed this was our future, worth fighting for.”
“Yes, that may be so, but there shouldn’t be a ship called Kirov in this fight, and that goes for a Lider Class destroyer called Kursk, and a Yasen class sub called Kazan. This Soviet union never built those ships either, otherwise neither one could have shifted here.”
“A fine little group we are,” said Karpov. “The Three Blind Mice.”
“A British nursery rhyme,” said Fedorov. “Yes, I know that one. They all ran after the Farmer’s wife.”
“Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,” Karpov finished.
“Guess who the Farmer’s Wife is,” said Fedorov.
Karpov nodded heavily. “Mother Time….”
They sat with that for a moment, metaphorical as it was. It nonetheless seemed a perfect way to describe their plight. There they were, in a place they did not belong, and up to the same old mischief again.
“We’ve already drastically altered the course of this war,” said Fedorov. “Hell, you’ve sunk two of the six Chinese aircraft carriers, and now here we are, gunning for another one. Taifeng is out there south of Davao, and I know damn well that you have it in your sights.”
“What are you saying, Fedorov, that we should not have come here? Well, this is where Time sent us, all three warships. That was no mere coincidence. The Meridian we left in 2021 died, we know that now. The fact that we’re here means something. Time had to know that. Scorpions sting, Fedorov, and that is what this ship is, a scorpion.
“This was the only place we could go,” Fedorov asserted. “Maybe there wasn’t any other place to put us. In that scenario, Time had no other choice.”
“Well, we saw our appearance here as only right and just—to clean up the mess we created.”
“But we’re muddling the waters again,” said Fedorov. “We’re changing the outcome of WWIII, a completely anomalous force that doesn’t belong here. There is now no historical continuum beneath us to justify our presence here, and look what is happening to us now. You saw that eerie light in the reactor section, and it was accompanied by the same deep sound that Dobrynin and Tasarov both heard on the original ship, when we were lost in that fog. Low and behold, we have two men missing now. Don’t you see? Time got rid of that first ship, and everyone aboard. Why my soul was spared, I’ll never know, but all the rest are gone. Now Time is getting rid of us!”
“Spooky to think that,” said Karpov, but you may be right. That aberration we saw in the reactor room happened as we were approaching the Sunda Strait—Krakatoa, and we know that region was profoundly shattered when that monster erupted.”
“Correct. We’re not really stable in any time, or so it seems. We shifted here when we were in the Kuriles, and I’ll bet if we had kept to that course and entered the Sunda Strait, the temporal instability there would have sent us somewhere else.”
“Where, Fedorov?”
“You said that other Meridian, the Shadow Meridian, was dead. Where else could we go?”
“Oh, we could still end up there, I suppose, in that blighted world. It would be a fitting punishment for all we’ve done. One thing is clear. Time may have sent us here, for lack of any better choice. Yet now we’re on her list. Yes, we started meddling again, changing the outcome of this war, and reshaping this history. So now we’ve become dangerous free radicals. The Farmer’s Wife is gunning for us with her carving knife, Karpov, and she’s already taken down two of our crew….”
That was a very sobering thought. All Karpov’s bravado about his importance as a Prime Mover now seemed a wet, ragged mantle. The crown on his head was made of tin. They weren’t the irreplaceable masters of time, out to right the wrongs and settle things. The Carrier Killer was just that, a meddler, a killer, someone who had no business being here, and someone who now had to be dealt with.
“My God,” he breathed. “If the Chinese don’t get us first, then Mother Time will be after us with her carving knife. But Fedorov…” There was a twinkle of light and hope in his eyes now. “That rhyme wasn’t the end of that story. The complete version ends quite differently. Look it up!”[1]
“The mice took a trip, got hungry, begged food from the farmer, and got fed. Then the Farmer’s wife showed up, and she was pissed. In fact, she set the cat after them.”
1
Just Google “The Complete Version of Three Blind Mice” to read how it really ended in a free ebook from the Gutenberg Project.