“Alright, I argued this myself when you were looking so glum the other day. So what are you saying—Orlov caused everything, and now he can’t raise havoc here by jumping ship?”
“Yes.”
“And because of this, the world we’re in has no basis to even exist? What? Do you expect it all to simply vanish tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” said Fedorov, settling down now, and taking Karpov’s advice to quaff down some wine. “In three days we reach a critical point in this whole story. It wasn’t simply Orlov’s doing, it was mine.”
“There you go again.”
“Hear me out,” Fedorov raised a hand. “Alright, Orlov jumps ship. I fired those five S-300s at him, on your urging, and we think we got him. So what reason did I have to take any further action at that point? None. It wasn’t until I was doing that research back in Vladivostok, and came across that letter he wrote, that I had reason to suspect he was alive.”
“Letter? Ah… I remember now, the letter from a dead man. Orlov kept a journal, and somehow a page turned up on the Internet.”
“Exactly! In that letter he talked about where he was, and what had happened to him. And he dated it—30 September, 1942. That was the critical act, the writing of that letter. On that day, Orlov created evidence of his existence in the past, and as fate had it, I found that evidence. We had other clues as well—remember what Nikolin said about that card game he played with Orlov before he jumped ship?”
“Yes, yes—Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin, you lose.”
“Correct. So we got clues of his existence, but that letter was the real key. It gave us an exact time and place where we could find him—Kizlyar, on the 30th of September, 1942, and with that evidence, I hatched the plan to go rescue him. So you see, the key date is September 30. That’s the day I was convinced we had to take action, and we both know how that all turned out.”
“Alright, so what are you saying now, that the world will end on September 30 if we take no action? Let me humor you and grant you the fact that we may be facing some kind of paradox here. How can you be sure anything will happen on the 30th of this month? Why not on the day you actually did take action, the day you put the plan in motion and shifted back from the Primorskiy Engineering Center? Even then, your arrival in 1942 was prone to any number of outcomes at that point. Anything could have happened. You might not have even stopped at Ilanskiy as you did.”
“But I did stop there, and something tells me that was fated.”
“It was mere happenstance, Fedorov.”
“Was it? Think… What are the odds that Ivan Volkov also stops at that inn in 2021. I used the back stairway, and so did he, not once, but twice to reach the year 1908, just as I did. And why did the ship fall all the way back to that same year when that Demon Volcano erupted?”
“I ended up in 1945,” said Karpov.
“And after that? You got into trouble there, didn’t you, and you used a nuke.”
Karpov pursed his lips. “What of it?”
“Then where did the ship go? To 1908, that’s where. Don’t you see? Shifts to this time in the 1940s are linked in some odd way to 1908. It’s as if that year is a kind of magnet. Everything falls through to 1908, but we’ve never gone back any farther than that, not in all the many shifts we’ve tried. It’s always somewhere in the 1940s, and then back to 1908, just like the stairway at Ilanskiy. Well, I think I know why—the Tunguska event. That’s what set all this time business in motion. I think that was the blow that first shattered the meridian. We’ve got residue from that explosion right here aboard ship, in Rod-25, and we both know what it causes when we mix it with a nuclear reaction. And when I sent Troyak and the Marines to try and destroy that railway inn, who finds something odd in the taiga when their airship gets blown off course and ends up on the Stony Tunguska? Orlov! See how all of this is wound up together?”
Karpov nodded. He was beginning to see Fedorov’s point now, as he had thought about all this for many hours himself. “You know,” he began, “I once contemplated simply going down those stairs and finding Volkov—killing him there in 1908. Then again I also contemplated going up the stairway and killing him in 2021, before he ever discovers it. Then I changed my mind, and decided it would be so much better to fight him here—kill him here, and then live with that. You see, I have no intention of ever leaving this world—not to go back to the future. If I never see our time again that will suit me just fine”
Fedorov nodded. “Then you should realize that if I don’t take action to prevent it, everything here could be… compromised. I can’t say I know what might happen, but I can certainly feel it. Don’t you? Can’t you sense impending doom in all of this? All I know is what Kamenski once told me. Time is tidy. She likes things neat, a zero sum game when it comes to changes and variations in the meridians. She will find a way to punish those who challenge her order, and those who have cut through the loom of fate where she’s been weaving.”
“How very colorful. Well, she had every reason to get rid of me when we faced that last paradox, and look now—I am redoubled!”
“At the moment,” said Fedorov, feeling more than thinking in expressing that. “Hitler once did a jig in Paris. Berlin burned five years later. Have you considered what your situation would be now if one of those missiles had struck us?”
“Certainly, but none did. Our defenses were simply too good—I was simply too good, and if this Mother Time you speak of so fancifully wants to pick a fight with me, she’ll regret it. That said… what is it you propose?”
There was always a crack in Karpov’s brave outer face, and Fedorov perceived one here. He understands what I’m saying, he thought. But what should we do?
“Admiral,” he began, “unless you want to see our situation here fatally compromised, you had better heed what I’m telling you now. Here is what I have in mind.”
Chapter 29
“Ilanskiy,” said Fedorov. “That’s the key to this whole situation. We both know that. From there we have absolute power to effect changes in the timeline.”
“I have absolute power, not you, Fedorov. I control Ilanskiy. All you could think of doing there was sending in Troyak and his Marines to blow the place to hell. Well, I remedied that. It’s been rebuilt from the original plans, and I had the advantage of taking some very accurate measurements… in 1908. Yes, I was there myself, Fedorov. There are things I haven’t told you.”
“You went down those stairs?”
“Not exactly. But you realize I spent a good long while in 1908 before you showed up with your submarine.” Karpov lied now, leading Fedorov to think that he went to Ilanskiy after the ship took him back to 1908 to have his argument with Admiral Togo. He did not want to get into the strange shift he made aboard Tunguska, or how he consequently flew to Ilanskiy at that time.
“So what would you do if you could utilize that stairway again? How do you propose that we can somehow shore up the reality of this world? Yes, I understand your logic. Orlov doesn’t jump ship, you never go back after him, and you never meet Sergei Kirov. Volkov never goes after you. Stalin survives, and this world looks entirely different. Russia is not divided, and we get a situation that looks very much like the world we came from. Well isn’t that what you might wish for? Isn’t that what you’ve been striving to re-create all along as you defended your precious history?”
“It’s too broken now,” said Fedorov with a shrug. “I realize I can never restore things as they once were.”