Doppelganger

by John Schettler

  “That is an understatement,” said Dorland. “We had alerts all over the band, red lines everywhere. At first we traced it all to an incident on the 28th of July, 1941, and then we realized the significance of that date.”

  Elena held up a hand. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Alerts? Red lines?”

  Dorland looked at his watch again, his eyes darkening. “We are a research team established in the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. On the surface the operation appears to be nothing more than a physics lab, yet its real purpose was to investigate something else—the possibility of moving through time.” The professor let that sink in a moment before he pressed on.

  “You don’t seem impressed,” he said. “I suppose your presence here is enough of an explanation for that. So let us get round the elephant and grant that both of us know time travel is a very real phenomenon.”

  “Go on,” said Elena, waiting patiently.

  “Well we tested our little theory, my theory actually, and discovered a good deal more than we expected. Once the cork was out of the bottle, everybody seemed to be pouring the champagne! You’re just the latest wrinkle in this business. How you managed it is astounding. In any case, what we found was somewhat disturbing. If we pulled off the trick, then it was an easy jump to say that others in the future would do so as well.”

  “You mean they were traveling in time?”

  “Exactly, and the sad thing is that there seemed to be a disagreement underway. Oh, let’s be plain about it—it was war—time war, and it was getting most uncomfortable. Since we believed our own project pre-dated their operations, we decided to do something about it.”

  “Aye?” said MacRae. “What was that?”

  “Put a stop to it.” Dorland took a deep breath, realizing he had too much to convey here, and too little time to do it. “Something happened, and it was somewhat catastrophic. We tried to reverse that outcome, and thankfully, we were successful.”

  “Catastrophic? What are you speaking of.”

  “Never mind that now. We prevented it, so there’s no use discussing that. Then we found certain individuals in the future were not pleased with what we had done. This event was a deliberate act, which is the only reason we were able to reverse it. Then we found out there was a great deal more to that operation, and we had to get more directly involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “In the war,” Dorland hurried on. “We figured out a way to keep an eye on things—the history. When things went awry, when we learned of aberrations and deviations from the history we knew, then we set our minds to correcting them. Believe me, this was no small task, but in the course of events we were quite successful—even in persuading these individuals to cease their little time war, and to stop meddling with things. We forced them to negotiate a peace.”

  “These individuals you speak of,” said Elena. “They were not from our day, 2021?”

  “No, they were from a future time, though we never really determined how far off that was.”

  “Then the war was not fatal. It wasn’t the cause of the calamity.”

  “What are you speaking of?” Dorland leaned in intently.

  “Grand Finality,” said Elena. “It’s a term I was given, though I can’t really say what it means.”

  “Yes, I’m very familiar with it,” said Dorland. “I was the man who first coined the phrase.”

  “You?”

  “Quite so,” said Dorland. “We were the first, you see—the first to open the continuum. At least this was what we once thought. Then I discovered that key, on a mission I was undertaking to set right a little aberration in the history. For an artifact of that nature to be found embedded in the Selene Horse was most alarming. I examined that key very closely, and found it had… properties that could not have been engineered in the past. So what was it doing there in that ancient Greek sculpture?”

  “You say you took it with you? After finding it aboard Rodney?”

  “Correct.”

  “Took it back to the United States?”

  “Yes, to the year 2021… July of 2021, to be a little more precise. Just a few weeks before the final alert came in on the 28th of that month.”

  “So you’ve just been flying about like a banshee?” said MacRae. “Traveling through time?” He rolled his eyes, incredulous.

  “Yes, we can move in time. That’s what our project tested and achieved. My presence here should be argument enough. How you pulled it off is the real question I have. You say it had something to do with that key? Well this is what I came to suspect as well. Then a very strange thing happened—on the 28th of July, 2021. I had that key in my possession for some weeks before that, and then it vanished.”

  “It was stolen?” asked Elena, finally realizing how the key had disappeared in May of 1941. This man claimed he was right there, aboard Rodney, and most likely in this very same costume. He claimed he discovered the key in the Selene Horse, and then took it with him. No wonder it was never found again in all the years between that date and 2021.

  “Not stolen,” said Dorland. “It literally vanished. I kept it on a chain, just as you have that one there, but it vanished. Naturally I wanted to know why, so I came back here to look for it at a time and place I was reasonably certain to find it—the place where I first discovered it.”

  “I see…” Elena thought deeply now, taking all of this in, somewhat amazed. “Well, Professor Dorland, I do not wish to disappoint you, but as you have determined, this is not the key you discovered aboard Rodney.”

  Dorland smiled. “There are more than one,” he said, realization evident on his face, his dark eyes alight.

  “Apparently,” said Elena.

  “How did you come by this one?”

  “It was entrusted to me, and that is another very long story.”

  Now Dorland put two and two together, his eyes narrowing. “Then you came here to look for it too. You were here to find the key in the Selene Horse?”

  “In point of fact, we were, but things slipped a bit, and we weren’t quick enough. I’m afraid it’s lost now, and I wish I knew what the consequences of that will be. Yes, Professor, there are more than one of these keys about, and they all seem to be associated with movement in time. We came to believe they were engineered in the future, and used to secure, or grant access to fissures in time.”

  “Fissures?”

  “Physical rifts in time, at certain locations. Our mission was to secure every one we could find, but it seems this one has given us both the slip. We’ll never recover it now—not unless we get back to our own time and that war settles down enough for us to mount a deep sea salvage operation on the wreck of the Rodney.”

  Now Dorland’s eyes brightened. “Salvage operation… Yes… Nordhausen could run that down for me…”

  “I don’t understand. Nordhausen?”

  “Another of our research team members. Professor Nordhausen is our chief historical researcher. Well… You are quite correct that this key will be very difficult to recover in 2021. It might be much easier to look for it elsewhere….” Now Dorland had a strange expression on his face, as though he were experiencing some discomfort.

  “Are you alright, Laddie?” said MacRae. “You might fetch the man that drink you promised, Elena. He’s white as a sheet!”

  “I’m afraid my time is up,” said Dorland quickly. Then his eyes widened. “My pattern signature is wearing thin, and they’re pulling me out. But I’ll be back! The Azores… Look for me on the first of August, 1941. I’ll meet you there…”

  He smiled, and then, to their utter amazement, it seemed as though he simply dissolved, his image quavering like a hologram going in and out of focus. There came a sudden chill, icy cold, and the sharp tinge of ozone in the air, with a crackle of static electricity. Then this man, like the key he had come looking for, like the Russian ship and submarine, simply vanished.

  Mack Morgan stood there, dumfounded. Then he realized that this very shi
p, and the entire crew, had pulled this same magic trick in 2021, and here they were.

  “Well I’ll be…” He ran his hand through the air where Dorland had been standing, feeling the palpable cold. “Looks like he was telling the truth!”

  Even though Elena had done the very same thing, she still found the evidence of her eyes difficult to believe. Was this man ever really here? It looked as though he was just a digital image! What was that he said about his pattern signature? Clearly there was more to all of this than she had come to learn.

  “Everybody started pouring the champagne,” she said softly. “The Russians, then we got in on the act, and now this fellow here—to say nothing of those individuals in the future he mentioned. Time war? My god, weren’t two world wars enough?”

  “Three,” said MacRae. “We were just shooting missiles at the Russian Black Sea Fleet before we found ourselves here in this mess.”

  “What did he mean when he said we might look for that key elsewhere?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Elena nodded. “Mack, get busy. Check the ship’s computers and see if you can dig anything up on our recently departed Professor Dorland.”

  “Right,” said Morgan. “If his story checks out, I’ll find evidence of that in the database.”

  “Good… Gordon, get hold of Admiral Tovey and see what he’s planning.”

  “I’ve already done that,” said MacRae. “It’s just as this fellow had it.” He thumbed the place where Dorland had been standing. “He’s consolidating the fleet at the new British base in the Azores. These battleships are thirsty buggers, and the fleet has tankers and fuel depots there.”

  “Alright, then we’ll join them. We wouldn’t want to miss our next appointment with the good professor.”

  “You mean to say you think he’s going to just re-appear there?”

  “That’s what he seemed to imply. Let’s get there and see whether he turns up. In the meantime, Mack, you can also do a little digging on the Elgin Marbles. Find out when they were first recovered from the Parthenon and taken to England. It will be in the early 1800s. That little remark he made about looking elsewhere may be the cat’s tail here, and we’ll need to get hold of it.”

  “Alright,” said MacRae, “so we make for the Azores. But suppose this fellow never shows up again?”

  “Oh I think we’ll see Professor Dorland again, just as he says. Did you follow that business about keeping watch on the history? In a way, that is exactly what I was doing, only my watch was on that damn Russian ship. And did you hear what he said about July 28th? That was the day Kirov went missing in that accident in the Norwegian Sea.”

  “Aye,” said MacRae. “The day he claims he was alerted to something. The day he says he lost his key. What’s this all about, Elena?”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to discover. Damn… We need to find out what happened to the Russians. That young Captain of theirs was worried about this. July 28th was the day they were scheduled to arrive here.”

  “What?” said MacRae. “Another Russian ship? Just like the first? Is that even possible?”

  “Who knows,” said Elena. “Perhaps this professor can shed some light on that. He seems to claim he invented this whole time travel business, though I was listening very closely to what he said. Did you hear it? He made the claim that they were the first to open the continuum.”

  “At least that was what they first thought,” said Mack Morgan, remembering what the American had said.

  “Exactly. You caught that too. Do you realize what he was implying? If they weren’t the first… If these keys were engineered in the future as both he and I seem to believe, then the history we were living in was not inviolate.”

  “What do you mean?” said Morgan, scratching his head. “You’re talking about our history—all the books I had to read in school—all the data in the computer I’m off to sift through?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” said Elena with a smile. “Gentlemen, someone’s had their hand on Mother Time’s leg for a good long while, and I’m bloody well going to find out who it is.”

  Chapter 12

  Rodney fought for every last minute, even though her crew had been ordered to abandon ship. The close proximity of the Britannic, a big steamship liner serving as a troop ship, was a godsend. Tovey’s battle with the Hindenburg group had taken place about 35 nautical miles southwest of the sinking battleship. He saw that the second German group, badly mauled by the Russians, had eventually turned south as well, and the latest reports had all the German ships forming a new task force, wounded, yet still very dangerous.

  The reports coming in from Argos Fire assured him the German’s were breaking off, and so Tovey took stock of his situation, considering what to do, and what to make of this request for a meeting here aboard Invincible. It seemed that Miss Fairchild had something more to disclose.

  When Rodney finally tipped bow first into the sea, there was a long moment of silence aboard every ship present. Then there came the slow, sedate strains of a small band playing “Nearer My God To Thee,” and Tovey turned his head, hearing it coming from Britannic. It had been the last song for an old sister ship in the line, the ill fated Titanic. The doleful song hung over the sea, until Tovey turned and gave a quiet order to his Flag Lieutenant. Minutes later, the ship’s band had assembled on the broad deck amidships, beneath the long steel barrels of X-turret, still warm with the heat of battle. Another song burst forth, resounding over the waves, and it carried quite a different emotion—Rule Britannia!

  Tovey looked at Villers, and Captain Bennett turned in his chair, nodding his obvious approval. When the song ended he gave an order to a watchstander to ring eight bells for Rodney, the tones that would sound out the last watch of the day at sea.

  “That leaves Nelson as one of a kind,” the Captain said to Tovey. He was referring to the only other battleship remaining in the class, HMS Nelson.

  “As we are,” said Tovey, for there were no other G3 Class ships in the navy. “And looking to our health, gentlemen, please have a full accounting of damage and casualties sent to me in the Admiral’s stateroom. I’ll be receiving guests shortly.”

  As he made ready to leave the bridge, he took one final look at the last vestige of the great cloud that had appeared with angry red fire to the northeast. The wind had sheared off its top, and it was only now dissipating. As he looked at it, that ghostly feeling returned, and he knew he had seen something like this before, a clawing memory that gave him a chill.

  An hour later, Miss Fairchild came aboard with Captain MacRae and Mack Morgan. They wanted to confer with Tovey, firm up his intentions, and determine what to do with the other ships that had come on the scene, all strange interlopers on this wild day at sea.

  “Seven more ships?” asked Tovey. “And all from your time?”

  “Apparently,” said Elena.

  “Well how did they get here?”

  “We aren’t certain. Perhaps that mushroom cloud on the horizon had something to do with it.”

  “Just what exactly happened out there?” Tovey frowned. “It’s given me the willies since I first set eyes on it.”

  “Gordon?”

  MacRae nodded, then explained. “Tha’ was not a natural event, sir.” His Scottish brogue seeming right in place. “In fact, it was a weapon of war. We weren’t sure if the Russians had them or not, but it seems they do. We believe it was either used by the Russian battlecruiser, or that submarine.”

  “Yes,” said Tovey. “Admiral Volsky discussed these weapons with me at one point, but he was rather vague about it. What kind of a weapon would wrench the sky and sea like that?”

  “An atomic weapon, sir. Your government knows about the bomb—that’s what we call it in our day. In fact, they most likely have a working program to develop one now. In our day, the history we know, no one had a working prototype here until 1945.”

  “Then that is where this damn war is taking
us?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Elena. “And the next one we fight will be quite unpleasant. Knowledge of that weaponry becomes widespread after this war. In our day, at least ten nations possessed them, the newest member of the club being the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

  “Iran? How would they manage something like that? This is most startling.”

  “In a word—oil,” said Elena. “Your main interest in Iran today is the business of British Petroleum. In fact, that was also the business of Fairchild Incorporated, my company. Oil becomes the witches brew of the modern world, Admiral, and a point of contention and crisis for decades to come. The wells British Petroleum and other concerns sink into the sands of Iran, Iraq, and Arabia, all gush to life in the next few years, but in our day, some eighty years from now, those very same wells will be running dry. The modern world runs almost exclusively on that oil, and speaking of that, I’m told one of the seven dwarves that have arrived here today is an oiler. They’ll have fuel for us there. Another is a repair ship and fleet tender. They could be very handy in helping out with your battle damage.”

  “I see…” Tovey was quiet for a moment, thinking. “These other ships. I think they had best come along with us. It won’t do to let them just sail about on their own.”

  “I quite agree,” said Elena. “It was my understanding that you were planning to refuel your battleships in the Azores. Perhaps it would be wise if we lead this little flotilla there. I have spoken with the flotilla leader aboard Diligence—the fleet Auxiliary and repair ship I just mentioned. We have just found out that in our time they were en route to Mersa Matruh.”

  “North Africa?”

  “Yes, they were dispatched to move Brigadier Kinlan’s troops back to the continent, so you see this is a rather strange twist.”

  “Indeed,” said Tovey, taking that in and wondering at the mystery behind it. “Might their appearance here be somehow mixed up with Kinlan’s chaps?”

  “It does seem rather odd,” said Elena. “In any case, there is another matter concerning the Azores we need to discuss.”