“And summer's lease hath all too short a date,” said Kamenski, quoting the famous bard himself.
Fedorov nodded. “So you see why I have been worried what will happen to us come July 28th next year?”
“Yes, you believe we will be asking Mother Time to make a choice. Which Kirov will she permit in that time and space, this ship, or the one arriving from the year 2021?”
“The one that must arrive from 2021 in order for this ship to even be here,” said Fedorov.
“Mother Time will have to choose,” said Kamenski, “and being busy with other matters, she will not want to be bothered by us again. We have certainly caused enough trouble for her as it stands. Yes?”
“Then she will hand the matter over to Paradox,” said Fedorov. “And one ship or the other must fall beneath his axe.”
“So you ordered Troyak to abort his sortie to 1908 for this reason? You wanted to keep this paradox from happening?”
“Yes sir. I realized there could not be two Volkovs in the same time and place.”
“Well,” said Kamenski. “Time can be quite the magician, Mister Fedorov. Troyak could have collared him, and the Sergeant could have returned to 1940 on his journey up those stairs, while Volkov reappeared in the year 2021, still thinking he is hot on your trail along the Trans-Siberian rail line.”
“Perhaps, sir, but then I return to my first problem.” He swept his arm at the unseen world beyond the ship’s bulkheads. “What happens to this world? What happens to the Orenburg Federation, to all the troops facing off along the Volga. What happens to all the history this moment now rests on? I’ve been reading how Volkov slowly rose to power and established control of Denikin’s White faction after Sergei Kirov forced him out of the Bolshevik movement. Do all those books get re-written, and do I suddenly forget I ever read them this week past?”
At this Kamenski gave him a sympathetic smile. “This is exactly what happened to me,” he said quietly. “I tried to explain it to Inspector General Kapustin once. It is very disconcerting when you reach for an old favorite book, read the chapter where you left off, and find the story is coming out to be something quite unexpected! Then you go back a few pages and find out one of the characters is missing!”
“And you have told us you remember things,” said Fedorov, “from time lines that no longer exist, at least not from our perspective here.”
“Correct, just as you remember the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Americans reprisal at Hiroshima at the other end of that war. Yet there are those who remember the bombing of Vladivostok instead, and have no recollection of Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.”
“So we retain memories of past times we have lived in.”
“Apparently so,” said Kamenski. “Strange little remnants remain stuck in our head. Are they figments of our imagination or real remembered events? Is your memory of what you did yesterday a real thing, or something you construct within your own imagination? If it is a real thing, then where does it go if you die? Where do all those memories of all the days you have lived go? They are no more substantial than the images from a dream you have in your sleep, and in fact those images are woven from the very same cloth your lived memories are made from.”
Now Admiral Volsky reached for the small flask of Vodka he had in his jacket pocket, giving them both a grim smile.
“The two of you will make a drunkard out of me yet. How can we possibly sort through all of this?” He took a small swig, offering the flask to the others, who both politely declined.
Kamenski tamped down the bowl of his pipe, thinking. He lit the tobacco again with his lighter, watching the thin curl of smoke billow up. Fedorov had been warming his cold hands on a mug of coffee. Each man had their own places to find small comforts.
“So you were worried that this world we now sit in would just go up in smoke like the tobacco in my pipe, correct Fedorov? And I suppose you were worried that you would go up in smoke with it. Yes? And if not, and we are still here when the next wave of change passes through, would we remember anything of the old life, or would our memories vanish too, like the flame from my lighter when I close it?”
“Perhaps I thought something like that, sir.”
“Perhaps, perhaps. But remember that Mother Time does not like to make these kind of decisions. In fact, I believe she will do everything in her power to avoid turning out the dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“The hounds of paradox, Mister Fedorov, the wolves of change that she holds fast with the rein of causality. When time is presented with a situation that cannot be resolved in any other way, she releases the hounds. But before it comes to that, a little sleight of hand will also serve her quite well at times. Notice how you just prevented Sergeant Troyak from going down those stairs and asking an impossible question of time that could make her very disagreeable. You see what I mean? Time finds a way.”
“And what about plan B,” said Volsky. “Have we heard anything further on that question?”
“I have Nikolin glued to his chair,” said Fedorov, “with orders to contact me the instant Troyak confirms the demolition was carried out.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Mister Fedorov,” Kamenski said quietly, and he took another long slow drag on his pipe.
“Sir?”
“Well… If your Sergeant Troyak destroys that railway inn in 1940, then how in the world did you go down those steps in 1942, to eventually end up here and get the idea for this little mission? For that matter, how did Volkov go down those stairs in 2021?”
Fedorov’s pulse quickened at that. My God, he thought. I may have set up yet another paradox by ordering Troyak to demolish that stairway! This is what he had feared. If Kamenski is correct, that would be impossible, and how might time handle such a dilemma? She would have to handle Troyak first, he thought darkly, and realized he may have just signed the Sergeant’s death warrant.
Troyak was back at the railway inn with his assault rifle squad. He looked to see Zykov’s men falling back through the park behind the inn with cool precision.
“Hold here!” Troyak raised his fist. They could see that a squad of grey coated soldiers had again come up the roadway from the causeway and they would soon filter in to the town center. “Zykov! Take three men and lay a spider web across these roads.” He was referring to a special kind of anti-personnel mine used by special forces to discourage pursuit on missions like this. The mine would be set, battery activated to eject and deploy up to six stakes, trailing thin tripwires that would shoot out in all directions like the web of a spider. Should anyone trip on them, the mine itself would then pop up a center core that would explode in a hail of fragmentation shrapnel. A single web set on a road would buy them the time they needed to slip away. Zykov set three in an arc protecting their line of withdrawal.
“Private,” said Troyak. “Set off your charges.”
The man nodded, and produced a hand held device with a small retractable antenna. He turned a dial on the back, called out a warning, but Troyak reached down and tapped his shoulder, his palm open as he reached for the device. Then he thumbed down hard on the detonator switch. There was first one, followed by a second loud explosion, with charges set at each end of the back stairway. Troyak waited until the smoke cleared, then raised a small pair of field glasses, studying the inn carefully. The entire left side of the building, including the dining hall, the chimney from the hearth, and a large segment of the second floor above were completely destroyed.
Troyak had just done something impossible, or so Fedorov would believe when he radioed in the report. Yet that thought never entered his mind. This was just a simple search and destroy mission, and the little engagement with the zeppelin was only icing on the cake. It was time to move his men out.