“And what do you think of the rest of this crazy situation we find ourselves in?”
“This accident you speak of? Let us both hope it is exactly that. What you suggest about Orel suffering the same fate as Kursk makes a lot of sense to me, but this business about Slava is somewhat puzzling. Neither ship responds to communications hails? Then you will have to conduct a thorough search. Better Slava than Orel. Easier to find a surface ship than a submarine, and also easier to spot any sign of flotsam.”
“We’ve sent the KA-226 out,” said Volsky, “but they have seen nothing conclusive yet.”
“I see,” said Zolkin. “And the explosion?”
“I am thinking we have lost Orel,” Volsky said heavily.
“An attack?”
“Karpov believes this. I am not so sure.”
“Any deliberate attack would not happen in isolation, Leonid. A surprise attack upon a Russian naval task force would be a major international incident, yes? It would have to have some context to make any sense.”
“Things were getting very difficult in recent weeks, my friend,” the Admiral explained. “Why do you think we are out here for live fire exercises? This business in Georgia has the Americans all up in arms again. They want the place to keep the back door firmly closed on Iran, yet the presence of three of our motor rifle divisions just over the border is most unsettling for them. They rattle their sword, so we rattle ours.”
“A little more talking and a little less rattling would be so much better,” said the Doctor. “Have you tried listening on shortwave to see if the world has gone crazy again?”
That very simple idea had never occurred to Volsky. If there had indeed been a surprise nuclear strike upon his homeland, then something as simple as a short wave radio might provide information he needed. Why not simply tune in civilian radio stations and monitor that traffic for a while? Nikolin had been on secured military channels all this time.
“Good idea, Dmitri. Now… can you give me something for this headache?”
“Certainly, but I don't think it's the headache that's really bothering you.” The Doctor gave him a cursory examination, looking at him with a warm expression on his face, puttering amongst his medication trays to fetch a couple of aspirin.
“That's a lot of crew to be worried about now out there on Slava and Orel. It's a heavy burden to carry them on your back, but if this was an accident, Leonid, you can do little more than what you have suggested. Investigate the matter thoroughly, satisfy yourself as to the whereabouts of these two ships, and then report home to Severomorsk.”
“Karpov is edgy again,” said the Admiral. “He is convinced this was a deliberate attack.”
“Perhaps so, but why? The political situation was deteriorating. Why else would we be here shooting missiles in the middle of nowhere like this, just as you say? But it was not all that bad. I do not think the world is crazy enough to start World War III. We are still really not over the scars left by the first two.”
The Admiral nodded, forcing a smile. “Well, I’d best make room for Fedorov. He’ll be here directly. Let me know how he is when we meet for dinner this evening.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” said Zolkin, “And don't let Karpov get under your skin. He's your canary in the mineshaft. Listen to him, but use your best judgment. He'll fret and fume for a while, but things will settle down soon enough, you'll see.”
“I had best get back to the bridge,” said Volsky. “This idea about the shortwave might allow us to get our bearings again. Have you looked outside? Did you see the ocean?”
“Every crewman who has come in here in the last half hour was talking about the sea conditions. We should feel fortunate that Rodenko’s weather report was wrong today, that’s all. This is better than that storm front he was tracking.”
“That’s another thing that bothers me,” said Volsky. “I’ve seen the weather change suddenly at sea many times, but that looked to be a major storm brewing yesterday, which is why I was rushing to complete these live fire exercises as soon as possible. Now the sea seems eerily calm…. Unnatural.”
“Perhaps it is merely an algae bloom,” said Zolkin. “Such things are not that uncommon. The ocean is as temperamental as Karpov. It’s just a mood. It will pass.”
Volsky nodded, heading for the bridge, but the Doctor’s suggestion would soon raise many more questions than it answered.
Chapter 23
Fedorov could not believe what his eyes had seen on the bridge, yet he heard the man speak, he could feel his steely presence. He had been so shocked by what he experienced that he was speechless, nearly collapsing again when his legs felt so rubbery. For a brief moment he thought it was his own problem, that he was hallucinating, another bad after effect from their recent time displacement. Yet something within him knew the reality of what he had seen. It was Karpov, dark, brooding, wound up like a coiled spring. Yet how was this madness possible?
The medical team rounded the last turn and was hastening down the corridor to sick bay, edging aside when the looming presence of Admiral Volsky appeared. Fedorov finally found his voice, dry and thin as he looked at Volsky.
“Admiral…. I must speak with you!”
“Not now, Mister Fedorov. Let these men get you to the Doctor. I will check on you later. For now I have too much to consider on the bridge.”
Fedorov was going to speak again, more urgently, until a pulse of warning made him hesitate. He leaned back, resting his head on the stretcher pillow, and breathed deeply.
The shift, he thought. Something went crazy during the shift, but what in god’s name has happened? I was heartened to first think Orlov and Tasarov had finally re-materialized. Their disappearance might have simply been a phasing issue. They might have been out of sync when we first disappeared. Yet Karpov? How could he be here now? This makes absolutely no sense!
Now the little things returned to mind, after the numbing shock of seeing Karpov there on the bridge. He recalled his earlier conversation with Doctor Zolkin as they carried him into sick bay, and the odd little incongruities that had cropped up. Zolkin knew nothing of Kamenski, yet he seemed to think Orlov, Tasarov, Dobrynin and Lenkov were all alive and well. I was worried his memory might be affected, but my god, this is something entirely unexpected. Karpov? He was right there, standing three feet from me, just as I remembered him. How could this occur?
His mind raced through everything he had discussed with Director Kamenski, and all his speculations over what might happen to the ship when it finally faced the question of Paradox. Was this some strange effect from that moment? Think, Fedorov, he chided himself. What could have happened here?
“Back again, Mister Fedorov?” Zolkin gave him a warm smile. “I see I was a little too hasty in discharging you. Perhaps that medication I gave you did not settle with your system well. Get him up here, gentlemen.” He slapped the examination table, and the men shifted Fedorov over from the stretcher station.
“Good enough,” said Zolkin. “You two can return to your posts, and, as I have no line outside waiting for my attention, I can give Fedorov here a proper examination.”
The men saluted and left, shutting the infirmary hatch as they went. Zolkin folded his arms, just giving Fedorov a quiet look at first, making a general assessment of the man. He could perceive much in that, the obvious anxiety on Fedorov’s face, the sweat on his brow. Then he proceeded to take more note of his vital signs, fetching a stethoscope to check his heart rate and pulse, and ready to check blood pressure.
“Stressful business, all of this,” he said to Fedorov. “It was no surprise to find a line of men half a kilometer long outside my door after that accident. Tell me, Fedorov, did you see what happened?”
“Accident? No. All I remember was the sudden jolt, and then …” He hesitated remembering the strange tingling and other sensations he had felt during the shift, but something told him not to talk about all that with Zolkin now. He needed to get his bearings, find his posi
tion in the scheme of things here, like the navigator he was, looking for latitude and longitude to make sense of all this.
“And then what? Zolkin raised his heavy brows.
“Then I was here.”
“Yes, and I let you go without taking proper note of your condition. I’d like to run a few tests this time around, just to make sure. Then the Admiral tells me you are given the entire day off tomorrow. That is good for you, and I would have most likely ordered it in any case. Now then… Do you feel any numbness or pain?”
“No Doctor.”
“Alright. Then Let’s check your blood pressure, and as I do so just answer a few simple questions for me. To start with, how are things back home?”
“Home? Well enough I suppose.”
“And where is that, exactly. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about your family.”
“Saint Petersburg. My mother and father still live there.” Fedorov answered perfunctorily, yet he was still inwardly wrestling with a hundred questions. He knew what Zolkin was doing here, sizing up his mental state by asking these simple things.
“And your wife?”
“I’ve never married.”
“Yes, of course. I remember reading that in your file earlier.”
“Look Doctor, I know you want to see to my wellbeing here, but I can assure you that I am of sound mind.” He knew Zolkin was assessing his sense of personal identity, his awareness of location, date, time, and the present situation. Disorientation was a definite altered mental state, and he knew it could signal a serious medical condition.
Yes, he thought. I know who I am, but does anyone else? I am Anton Fedorov, Captain of the battlecruiser Kirov, yet apparently that has changed. Orlov ordered me about on the bridge and was thinking to send me right over to the navigation station. He even dismissed Petrov when I arrived. And my god, it’s clear that the ship has one too many Captains now. I know where I am, clearly aboard Kirov. The bulkheads and deck plates are hard and firm, and this is certainly no dream. Yet from what I have gathered, I took a fall on the bridge during the shift, and everything started after that. Was I seeing things? Was Karpov just a hallucination? He decided to test this possibility with Zolkin.
“Doctor… How long has Karpov been in his present position?”
“Weren’t you at the ceremony when the command change occurred?” Zolkin gave him an assessing glance.
“Of course, sir. I know that Karpov came aboard last May, but I was asking about his time in the service.” He was really just mentioning Karpov to see if Zolkin would know who he was talking about, and hoping the whole time that the Doctor would protest, knowing Karpov was long gone. Yet he was not going to find an easy solution to this dilemma that way. It was clear that there was nothing wrong with Zolkin’s memory concerning Karpov.
“Too long, I’m afraid,” said Zolkin. “No offense to the Captain, but there are many who would say the same thing, and wish that Karpov would take early retirement. Yet here he is, finally Captain of the fleet flagship, and I suppose we are all stuck with him for the time being.”
And on the examination went, as Fedorov settled into the grim realization that something profoundly disturbing had happened. He was Anton Fedorov, but clearly not the man he was before they attempted that last shift. He looked down at his uniform jacket cuff, and there were the insignia of a Lieutenant. Zolkin had fetched a new coat for him, and now he remembered how he had referred to him wearing someone else’s coat earlier.
So now even my uniform was different, he thought with some renewed sense of shock, noticing it for the first time. And now he began to make the same inner assessment that Zolkin was undoubtedly working through in his quiet examination. Who was he, where was he? What was the date and time? What was his present situation?
He was Anton Fedorov, aboard the battlecruiser Kirov, yet possibly not the same ship he had been Captain of only hours ago. As to the where and when of his situation, everyone else on the ship seemed to be wrestling with that same problem. And yet… He could clearly remember everything he had lived through and experienced, all of it, as far as he knew. He recalled all those battles they had fought in the Atlantic as clearly as the action the ship had only recently fought against the German carrier Graf Zeppelin.
Yet the world he had been sailing in was an altered state of affairs. The ship they had just attacked had never put to sea. Was this the same ship he had led through the Mediterranean, and against the Japanese? He knew how he could find out, with a few questions of his own.
“Doctor, is there any damage to the ship?”
“Nothing I am aware of,” said Zolkin. “That was a fairly good jolt we took, and it rattled my teacups, but nothing broke.”
“Then all is well—even the reserve command citadel?” He gave Zolkin a close look, for he wanted to see if he knew about the damage there, as he clearly should.”
“Reserve citadel? Yazov was in there today for system checks. It was all he could talk about while he was in here earlier. He had a bout of nausea as well.”
“He was working on the equipment in the reserve citadel?” said Fedorov slowly.
“Isn’t that where he spends his time when he’s not on the bridge relieving Rodenko? You know the officer rotations better than I do, Fedorov.”
“Of course,” said Fedorov. “Yazov is a good man.”
“Tell me,” said Zolkin. “Who is this Kamenski you asked me about earlier?”
Fedorov felt that reflexive caution again, and thought he had better not say anything more about the Director.
“Oh, just a matoc from the dock service crews in Severomorsk.”
“Ah, than that explains why I did not know the man. He stayed there, yes? At Severomorsk?”
“Apparently,” said Fedorov, suddenly hearing the sound of a helicopter revving up for takeoff. Zolkin took the opportunity to ask him about it, still casually questioning him to gauge his situational awareness.
“Now what are they doing?”
“A KA-40,” said Fedorov, as the sound of the engine was unmistakable.
“Ah yes,” said Zolkin. “The Big Blue Pig. I flew in on that one before we left Severomorsk. Frankly, I like it better than the other one they just sent up, what is it called?”
“The KA-226? You say they just operated with that helo?”
“I believe you were indisposed at the time, but yes, that is the one. I don’t care for it. Yes, it’s much newer, sleek and fast, but I rather like the Big Blue Pig myself. Maybe I’m just getting old.” Zolkin smiled.
Fedorov took a deep breath when he heard that, knowing his blood pressure was not being helped by the realization that was now solidifying all around him, moment by moment. This was not the same ship! This was not the same Kirov he had been Captain of, promoted up by Admiral Volsky after Karpov’s failed mutiny. We lost the KA-226 long ago, and even Zolkin would know that by now. And the reserve command citadel was made a smoking wreck by a Japanese pilot. The only thing Yazov could have done there was stack up supplies, as that’s all we could use the space for. This was not the same ship! How was this possible?
I’m the same man I was, he thought, in spite of the uniform. There is simply no way I could have dreamed up everything I experienced. It’s all clear in my mind, as if it happened yesterday. We were steaming with HMS Invincible, set to engage the German battlefleet. Then everything seemed to come apart, the ship itself experiencing odd warping, men missing, and Lenkov, poor Lenkov. Even the men left behind intact after our sudden disappearance were beset with a debilitating memory loss, but that is not the case for me now. I can remember everything, every missile fired, the anguish and torment of every decision we had to make.
He remembered it all, the hunt for Orlov, that strange event on the back stairway of Ilanskiy, Sergei Kirov, and the massive contamination he had introduced into the world with his own errant whisper in that man’s ear. It was real, by god. No. It was not something he could have dreamed up in a thousand years. It all happe
ned, but even as he asserted that, he had the sinking feeling that no one else on this ship would know any of this.
Then one more memory emerged from the montage he was playing in his mind—Turing’s watch! It had been found in that file box, though Tovey reported that Turing claimed it went missing some time before that. He knew there was no way that he could have placed the watch into that file box—at least not in the world where he was standing, not in those horribly altered states they were just sailing through. It came from another world, another meridian of time, a remnant from that first sortie they had made to the Med. And here he was, plucked out of that altered history he had been sailing in, and set down here aboard the ship that first started this journey.
My god… where were they? Were they in the Norwegian Sea, or still in the Atlantic where they had last disappeared? I’m the navigator here, he thought. I’m supposed to know. It’s a good thing I was shocked speechless when I saw Karpov on the bridge, because if I had blurted out any of this, than Zolkin would probably be certifying me as insane by now.
Something has happened. Time has played some cruel trick on us. We must have fallen out of the shift and into some confounding loop in the tormented fabric of time. This whole thing was twisted so badly that it has bent back upon itself, and here I am. This is the ship that just left Severomorsk!
Now he suddenly recalled Zolkin mentioning an accident, that jolt the ship had taken, rattling his teacups. I thought he was referring to the shift we initiated, but now I realize it could be the accident aboard Orel. Yes, that was the first cause. That’s what lit up Rod-25 like a sparkler and sent us reeling through time. But if that is the case…
His mind was doing the reeling now, and with one throbbing question. Did any of what I remember even happen? Are we sitting there in the Norwegian Sea, just moments after that first time shift sent us back to 1941—July 28, 1941—Paradox Hour. If that is so, what happened to the other ship? What happened to Volsky, and Rodenko, and Nikolin and all the rest? Time caught up two slippery fish in the same net, and she only had room in her boat for one. Did she simply throw the other one back? Was that ship and crew simply tossed away into oblivion, or is it still out there, sailing in that oppressive Atlantic fog? Would that mean that Doctor Zolkin has a double out there somewhere, a doppelganger sailing on that other ship? And if the man I saw on the bridge was Vladimir Karpov, what about the other man in Siberia? Were there two Karpov’s now—two of every crewman on this ship that still survived in the ordeal we went through?
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