1943

Chapter 34

Orlov… Where the hell was Orlov, thought Fedorov? One moment he’s right in front of me on that staircase, the next moment he’s gone. Why? Where did he go? I just haven’t had time to try and sleuth that all out in the history. It was only sheer luck that I stumbled upon that journal entry he wrote that so clearly gave me a time and place for him. To do that again, I would at least need a better vantage point on the history. I won’t be likely to turn up anything here in the 1940s—unless he reappears here and makes his presence known somehow. I’m relying on Tyrenkov for that.

Think!

“If Orlov did appear somewhere, it would have to be beyond the year 1908, because we were going up the stairway when he vanished.”

“Logical enough,” said Karpov.

“Alright… We also know that there seems to be linkage to your point of origin when shifting through a fissure like that. I don’t know how it works, but perhaps you still harbor some residue, or even a vibration on the quantum level that associates you with a given period in time. All I know is that every time I traveled that stairway, I was returned to the time and place I was before. That’s how I got back here safe and sound, along with Troyak and all the Marines I had with me.”

“But not Orlov,” said Karpov. “Why is he an exception to the rule? I suppose it doesn’t surprise me on one level. Orlov was a loose cannon.”

“Yet he would get somewhere,” said Fedorov. “In fact, he should have reached the top of that stairway—the upper landing on the 2nd floor, but perhaps at a different time.”

“He hasn’t shown up since you arrived,” said Karpov. “I’ve had men posted there round the clock, and my brother has ringed that inn with three concentric circles of security. Speaking of him, there’s another little fly in your ointment. How could both my brother and I shift forward together? I’m willing to bet that was never considered by this Kamenski either.”

“I’m beginning to see your point,” said Fedorov, still thinking about Orlov. “What if he went much farther forward. We already know he can’t reach a time where he already exists, and he’s been here since the ship arrived in late July of 1941—the Second Coming.”

He remembered trying to explain that to Tyrenkov when he asked him to keep his ear to the ground for any sign of Orlov… this particular fissure through time has been very consistent. The connection it makes to 1908 has persisted over decades. Orlov was going up the stairs, and any movement in that direction has always produced a movement forward in time. Who knows where he may end up, but I think it will have to be a time after the arrival of our ship, and after the time we vanished over the hypocenter of Tunguska…

“And as I told you, Orlov remembers the first arrival as well. I asked Tyrenkov to use his intelligence network to look for him. Any luck with that?”

“Not yet,” said Karpov. “This argues that he’s ahead of us in the chronology, correct?”

“That would be my best guess,” said Fedorov. “But where? We won’t be able to discover anything about his whereabouts from here if that is the case. Everybody leaves an impression on history—everybody. The record glorifies some, deprecates others, but we all leave a mark somewhere. To search for evidence of his existence and whereabouts, we would have to reach a time beyond the one where he arrives. That is, at least, one more argument for moving forward now, and not remaining here.”

“Perhaps,” said Karpov. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Orlov just yet. As you say, he’ll blunder in sometime, and probably fall right into my security on that upper landing one of these days. Forget about him. We’ll eventually apprehend him, but that still won’t solve all our other problems, getting everyone else forward with us, including Ivan Volkov.”

“No… I suppose it won’t.”

“So you see, trying to run off on another wild bear hunt for Orlov is yesterday’s news, Fedorov. We’ve already done that, and trying to do it again won’t bag us Volkov. Frankly, the only way we’ll get to him will be in the here and now. He’s the real threat. Mark my words. Tyrenkov has already discovered that he is passing plans for advanced aircraft designs to the Japanese, including assistance for their Okha Rocket program. He knows the entire future, at least as it was once written. So he knows how and why Japan loses. What if he starts assisting other weapons programs? What if he tries to give Tojo, or God forbid, Adolph Hitler, the bomb?”

“I see your point,” said Fedorov. “We could still try to get to him by other means.”

“Ilanskiy? We’ve been over that. If we eliminate Volkov in 1908, assuming we could even find him there, then who knows what happens to this time line? With him gone, there’s no Orenburg Federation, and time would then have to reset everything here, millions of individual fate lines. It would bring everything down like the twin towers.”

“We visualize that as utter chaos and catastrophe,” said Fedorov, “but it might not happen that way. If Mother Time was kind enough to allow us to keep our heads full of the things we’ve done here, we might simply wake up one morning and find ourselves in a completely different world, a different meridian of time, a different war.”

“But not the one from your history books,” said Karpov. “We’re too far off course to ever get that back, particularly with Sergei Kirov doing what he did to Josef Stalin. You see, none of this matters. We can shuffle the deck any way we please here, have it any way you like it, and it will simply be a new arrangement of things, a different set of cards to play out—but play them out we must. You were so dead set on restoring things to accord with your history in the beginning, but that was just another poker hand, the same as this one.”

“But it was the original time line,” said Fedorov.

“Was it?” Karpov smiled. “A moment ago you told me that this Elena Fairchild was a member of the Watch, the group Admiral Tovey founded to look for us. Well now, that ship was right there in 2021, the same year and time line where we were when Kirov first sortied. In fact, it was headed for the Black Sea while I was in the Pacific fighting with Captain Tanner and the American 7th Fleet. So how could she be a member of the Watch, and getting predictions about 9/11? That group wasn’t founded until we shifted back.”

Fedorov raised both eyebrows this time. “Well by that time we had already shifted back, and then returned to Vladivostok. So our history was already influenced by the things we did in the past on that first loop. Yes, Tovey did establish the Watch, and that had to be one of the effects that migrated forward.”

“You’re saying that this Miss Fairchild was just minding her own business, herding her little oil tankers around for love and profit, and then one day she wakes up and realizes she is now a member of this nefarious group? She realizes that she is privy to everything we did in the past? That may be so, but I think otherwise. I’ll bet that if you asked her whether she was in this group on the day we sortied, she would affirm that. If so, that can mean only one thing: that meridian was already altered.”

“What? But how? Who could have caused it?”

“I don’t think our disappearance may have been the first instance of travel through time, it may be that we did all this before; perhaps many times before. Who can say?”

“Then why don’t we remember those instances. You and I remember the first loop, and here we are in the second. If there was anything prior, why wouldn’t we remember it?”

“Who knows, Fedorov? I could come up with many reasons. Perhaps the ship went back earlier, but did not survive. Dead men don’t have memories. It may be that someone else is responsible—someone else moving in time.”

“That’s a rather ominous assumption.”

“Possibly. All I’m saying is this. If the Watch existed before we first left Severomorsk, then it did so because that sortie was not the first. You can say that Fairchild just suddenly realizes she’s a Watchstander, but I think otherwise. So you see? If I’m correct, then the world we were living in wasn’t even the original history. All your books were already altered, even though you believed them to be the gospel truth. The deck had already been shuffled. That’s a little humbling, isn’t it? There we were, thinking we were the founding fathers for all these changes, and all the effort to set things right was for naught. What if that world was just one of many? What if this loop business has been going on for some time, and our recollection can only go back so far, perhaps one or two loops? After all, there’s only so much room in your head.”

Fedorov did not quite know what to make of that. His theory may have been correct, but Karpov made a good point. Taking his view, it really didn’t matter what they did here. Things would resolve one way or another. Yet something in him still resisted the very presence of the ship and crew here, displaced in time, aliens, weeds blown in to infest the Devil’s Garden. Seeing things the way Karpov did seemed to resolve one of any responsibility for that. Karpov simply saw himself as one more agent of change, just like the Demon Volcano, or Krakatoa, or any of the other key players on this stage.

Yes, all the world was a stage, and from Karpov’s view, you could do anything here. You could remake this world to fit any guise, just as you like it. Oh, he had his ambitions, like that soldier Shakespeare wrote of… “Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation, Even in the cannon’s mouth…” And I have taken many a strange oath myself, thought Fedorov.

“So what will it be here?” he said at last. “What will we do? Volsky is out there, with Gromyko and Kazan. What do we tell them?”

“That should be obvious,” said Karpov. “I have already shown you the futility of trying to gather up all our chess pieces, quit the game, and simply go home. What will we find there but yet another war? Here I keep this strange unspoken tryst with the Americans, only because they are the enemy of my enemy. Yet one day I must face them too. One day…”

“You’ve already done that,” said Fedorov, “in 1945, and again in 2021. Yet you know if you use Kirov to help crush Japan, you will eventually face them again. You’ll get a wink and a nod after the war, but little thanks. MacArthur will want to set up shop in Japan and establish himself as the new Pacific Emperor here, and by the time all this gets around to that, another two long years, how many missiles will you have left?”

“A very good point,” said Karpov. “But I have another little mission in mind myself, now that you mention it.”

“A mission? What kind of scheme could you possibly be hatching now, Karpov?”

“Nothing all that dangerous to these little people here—until the mission succeeds. In fact, now that Admiral Volsky is here, he could help out a good deal.”

“In what way?”

“His authority is good for nothing here, but in 2021, he still has considerable clout. I thought about trying to use the stairway at Ilanskiy for this, but it’s of limited use. Even though the Naval Armory is right there at Kansk, and just south of Ilanskiy, a Moskit II weighs over six tons. There would be no way to use that old stairway.”

“You’re keeping me in suspense. What is this all about?”

“You said it yourself, just a minute ago. How many missiles will I have left by the time I conclude these affairs? I’ll need power if I am to enforce my will in the post war world, and yes, I’ll probably have to face down the Americans.”

“That did not go so well in 1945,” said Fedorov. “And you even had the Admiral Golovko and Orlan with you.”

“True, but now I have Kazan. That boat is worth more than both those other ships.”

“That’s a pretty bold conclusion to jump to. We haven’t reached any decision here yet, and Volsky and Gromyko will both have to weigh in on anything we present to them.”

“Four votes? That won’t do,” said Karpov. “Who would break the tie, my brother?”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself—but first, tell me what you’re scheming on.”

“Missiles, Fedorov, missiles. I’ll be needing refills soon. That little scrap I had with the Takami forced me to expend thirteen SSMs, and a good many SAMs. I may have to use more to sink that damn ship, and I want to replenish.”

“But that’s impossible,” said Fedorov. “This is a come as you are party, Karpov…. Unless… Are you thinking to get more missiles from Kazan?”

“You and Volsky did that before, yes?”

“I don’t think Gromyko will be so generous this time. He’s been given a mission here as well, and one you may not like if we can’t reach an agreement.”

“Then I have another idea,” said Karpov. “First we’ll come to some accord here. Surely Volsky and Gromyko will understand what we’ve just determined. Trying to purge the contamination now is simply impossible. We have no other choice but to remain here, work our will upon this war, and bend it to an outcome that we can all agree upon as favorable.”

“Favorable for who? Right now, we may see Tojo, Hitler and Volkov as the enemies we must defeat, but something tells me that if we do accomplish that, then you’ll be lining up new enemies.”

“Only if they make an enemy of me,” said Karpov. “As to my idea, let me run it by you and see what you think.”

Chapter 35

“I want to see if I can retrieve more missiles from our own future.”

“What? With Kirov? You were planning a shift?”

“No, not with Kirov. I can’t take a risk like that. You yourself know that. Isn’t this what Kamenski is so worried about? He’s afraid the ship will shift again, not forward, but backwards to a time before its first arrival. He’s afraid it will start this whole paradox hour thing again and create this insoluble time loop. I suppose he has a point, but I’ve already told you that I could care less about that. The future can be damned as long as I have the present, and the thought that I could live it over and over again, indefinitely, remembering the events that transpire in each loop, is very appealing. What was that American movie where that happened? Ah—Groundhog Day.”

“Do you realize how incredibly selfish that attitude is?”

“Let’s not start leveling fingers, Fedorov. There’s plenty of blame to go around for all of us. In any case, I was thinking to try and get some men to 2021, load a replenishment ship, and then try and move it back here. I like what you said earlier about this affinity to one’s point of origin during these shifts. That gives me hope that this ship might get back here safe and sound, and laden with munitions and supplies, spare equipment, the works.”

“I see…. So you can continue ripping up the history here.”

“You mean continue rewriting that history. Remember, we’ll never put this puzzle back together again as it was. I thought you understood that. You yourself pointed out my dilemma. I’ll need power after this war ends—power to prevent the Americans from throwing their weight around as we both know they will. I’ve seen fit to be their ally here, but I want to be in a position where they cannot simply discard me and impose their will on the world.”

“Which is to say that you want to be sure we get the Cold War after this one ends.”

“If need be. I won’t be marginalized, Fedorov. Nor will I let them patronize me. When I’m finished here, I intend to reunite the Free Siberian State with Soviet Russia—yes, the Soviet Union will live again. Isn’t that the inherent imperative surrounding this ship? Kirov was born of that union. The Soviet State must arise to give birth to this ship. Can’t you see that my aims are very much aligned with yours? Only then might we see the wounds on the face of this history heal and reach a point where we might recognize it again. You see, we both really have similar goals. I just go about it by taking action, here and now. You want to sit there and think about it until your head spins. The world is still turning, Fedorov. It hasn’t come to an end. Each second that passes takes us to a future that we build, moment by moment. It may not be the one Kamenski might prefer, but it will arise. I can guarantee you that, because I intend to build it myself, just the way I like it. Let’s stop all this speculation and get out there and do something about it.”

The world was certainly still spinning, thought Fedorov. But which world were they really trying to mend now? One thing Karpov said earlier kept sticking in Fedorov’s head…. “I don’t think our disappearance may have been the first instance of travel through time.”

He thought about that, feeling deep down that it was true. No, it was more than a feeling. The more he thought about it, the more he came to believe it had to be the case. The evidence was right there before him, all along. First off, there was this strange Commander Wellings who appeared on HMS Rodney, and who later turned out to be an American physics professor, Paul Dorland. He knew that man had developed a detailed theory of time travel, chapter and verse, complete with a lexicon of terminology to explain it.

Then there was Kamenski…. Fedorov was already beginning to think he may not be native to the timeline in 2021, that he might even be a man from some future time. He was a Keyholder, that much is certain, and he claimed to have the Master Key, the one he left on the nightstand before he unaccountably vanished aboard Kirov.

The keys were the deepest part of this whole mystery—seven keys. Professor Dorland claimed that some had carefully machined serial numbers that corresponded to coordinates. That was why they had sought to save the Rodney, for that key had once been in the possession of Dorland himself. In fact, he claimed to find in on some odyssey involving the German battleship Bismarck.

So yes, there were other travelers in time. Kirov was not the first. And considering that these keys were all hidden away as they were, the question of who put them there leapt to the forefront. Who made them?

He had come to the conclusion that they were made in the future, yet the key they sought on the Rodney had been first found embedded in the base of the Selene Horse, an artifact of ancient Greek sculpture. Kamenski never really stated exactly how he came by the key he possessed. Fairchild told him the key that led her to Delphi had simply been delivered to her, and that she knew of at least one other key, though she could not say who possessed it.

Now he came to feel that all of Karpov’s assertions and suspicions were somehow wrapped up in the mystery of these keys, and connecting the dots in his mind, he suspected they all had something to do with the Tunguska Event. That impact was largely ignored around the time it occurred. It produced quivering lines on some seismic equipment, painted the night skies with eerie light as far away as London, and generated a few headlines in world newspapers, but little more was ever known of it until Leonid Kulik’s expedition in 1927, more than two decades later. There was much speculation and research done after that, yet none of it discovered that vortex they had run into aboard the Novosibirsk, at least not on the meridian I first came from, he thought.

It is very clear that this meridian is quite different, perhaps irretrievably different. He sighed, thinking that everyone seemed to be working at cross purposes. Fairchild seemed to be intent on ferreting out those other missing keys. In fact, the box she found at Delphi had clearly been engineered to hold all seven. Why? Was it meant that they should all be gathered there?

Thinking about that, Fairchild had used that box to move her entire ship in time, and then asserted that the hunt for the key aboard Rodney must have been the reason for that. So her key would lead Argos Fire to a place where she might find another. Interesting. And she had that mysterious box where they could all be collected together…. Then what?

The prevailing wisdom was that these keys secured hidden doors that protected time fissures created by the Tunguska event. Those doors were all locked, so why would it be necessary to gather all the keys into one place—into that box, where a clever recess was embedded in a hidden drawer to hold each one. Was that just for safekeeping, or did it have some other purpose?

All these things went round and round in his head, as confusing as they were helpful. He had only a part of this puzzle, but somehow, he thought the quest for these keys would reveal much more. Yet Kamenski seemed convinced that it could not be Kirov that would undertake that quest. They had to go home, but how could they do so while still leaving Volkov here, let alone Orlov?

“Well?” Karpov pressed him. “What’s it going to be, Mister Fedorov? Are you siding with Volsky and Gromyko on this? Will you stand with me? Help me convince them that we simply cannot leave here, not now, not yet; not while there is so much left undone, and Volkov is at large here.”

Fedorov shrugged, his eyes on the desktop, heart heavy as he realized Karpov was correct. They could not leave now—at least not without dealing with all the other loose ends that would be left behind, and chief among them was Ivan Volkov.

“What could we do about him?” he said slowly. “Is there any way we could get to him?”

Karpov smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Assassination? Don’t think I haven’t considered that. He’s very well protected. Believe me, I captured his Chief of Security during one of those Zeppelin raids he staged at Ilanskiy. In fact, I almost bagged Volkov himself. This man, Kymchek, has been very cooperative in revealing the security layers Volkov has around him. Remember, Volkov was a Captain in Russian Naval Intelligence, so he’s very clever; very cautious. Could we get to him with an expert marksman… Perhaps. It would certainly be worth a try. Historians probably wondered why no one could take out Hitler. Oh, they tried, but there must have been countless opportunities where a man with a rifle might have changed the course of WWII.”

“Alright,” said Fedorov. “I’m convinced that we just can’t pull up anchor and take a risk shifting now with Kirov, and I think I can convince Volsky and Gromyko as well.”

“Excellent!” said Karpov. “Now you’re talking. I had hoped you would see reason, and you did not disappoint me.”

“Hold on. Let me finish. Yes, you’ve convinced me we cannot simply leave—at least not now. We’ll have to see to all the other loose threads here first, and get them resolved. Some of the work has already been done. There was a brigade of modern British troops that fell through in southern Egypt. I was there when it happened.”

“Tyrenkov got wind of that,” said Karpov. “Yet we don’t have the details. Fill me in.”

“It occurred when Russia targeted the BP facilities at Sultan Apache in southern Egypt. As we both know, a nuclear event can rupture time, and it certainly did, but for a reason that I have yet to disclose.”

“Still keeping secrets?” said Karpov, wagging a finger.

“It comes back to Tunguska—all of it,” said Fedorov. “You remember that mission I ran against Ilanskiy?”

“Certainly. That wasn’t very sporting of you, Fedorov. It took me nearly a year to rebuild that railway inn and staircase.”

“Sorry, but I was possessed with the thought that Ilanskiy represented a grave threat. It still does. Only our restraint has prevented us from doing something catastrophic. Well… On that mission, we got lost in a storm, and were hovering low looking for clues to get back on course. Orlov was down in a sub cloud car and he saw something on the tundra below. We stopped to investigate, and found it was just one of those cauldron sites that they tell stories about back home.”

“Ah yes,” said Karpov. “The mysteries of Siberia. It’s all nonsense.”

“Not quite,” said Fedorov. “Orlov found something there, and I think it was a fragment from the Tunguska Event. He had it with him when we were in the desert, and very near the site of Sultan Apache when that incident occurred. I think that object had much to do with opening that fissure that sent the British 7th Brigade through from our time. Yet it’s irrelevant now. There was another incident at Tobruk. I learned that from Tovey when I contacted him on the secure radio set.”

“Yes, Fedorov. As long as we’re confessing things here, I was listening in on that conversation as well.”

Fedorov shook his head. “You certainly are devious, Karpov.”

“No more than you, Fedorov.”

“Very well, then you already may know that the Brigade, as they called it, is gone. That Tobruk event ruptured the continuum again, only this time I think something more got through—one of our own goddamned missiles. I’m not sure how it happened, but it did.”

“Interesting,” said Karpov. “You realize what that means, don’t you? That future Volsky is so keen on getting to may be up in flames when we get there, if we ever do.”

“I’ve certainly thought about that,” said Fedorov. “So Kinlan’s Brigade is gone, though a small force was not there when it happened. Churchill ordered it to the UK on the funnies—that’s what they call that replenishment fleet.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard this.”

“Argos Fire will leave voluntarily, and take on all the crews from the funnies, which will be destroyed here.”

“And I’ll handle Takami,” said Karpov. “Gromyko is also welcome to lend a hand.”

“That leaves only Volkov, so we need to seriously plan a mission to take that man out—not on the back stairway at Ilanskiy, but in the here and now. If you agree to that, commit your resources to it, then I think I can get Volsky and Gromyko to side with us.”

“Done,” said Karpov with a smile. “I’ve been planning it for some time, and now we can all pool our assets to see that it gets done.”

“Then that leaves us with Orlov,” said Fedorov.

“Yes… Orlov. That son-of-a-bitch is at it again, isn’t he? Why don’t you work on that problem. I’ll handle Volkov with Tyrenkov and my brother.”

That brought the last straw to Fedorov’s mind. “Now that you mention him,” said Fedorov.” I think that will be the final problem we’ll have to solve.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your brother… He can’t remain here either, and I have no way of knowing what might happen if the two of you try to shift forward.”

Karpov was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he looked Fedorov in the eye. “If we do this—shift forward—where in God’s name do you think we’ll end up? Did Kamenski talk about that?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but I think he meant for us to return to our native time—to 2021.”

“Yes, but which 2021—from which meridian? Will we arrive back on the time line where we first started? Will we reach the future we may be building now on this altered meridian? Was that where Gromyko shifted in from with Volsky? Did you hear what he said? Volsky has a third layer of memories in that old head of his. He said he was just sitting at his desk at Red Banner Fleet headquarters when in walked Kamenski. How could he be doing that, when we both know he was supposed to be aboard Kirov? That means that timeline was not the original one we came from. It was a third world.”

Fedorov nodded, thinking. “You may be correct,” he said slowly, still coming to grips with that thought.

“Of course I’m correct. I’m getting very good at this time business. So let’s explore this further. Was Kirov in that world along with Volsky? Kazan was. Were you there? Zolkin? The rest of the crew? Is there another version of me there? Something tells me that Kamenski meant for us to return there, to that world, but how would that be possible if we are already there. Imagine it, Fedorov. If I’m already there, what would happen if two more versions of myself try to shift there. Don’t you see? We can’t simply shift off to that future. Time won’t allow it. I’m all for rounding up all the other loose ends, but before we do anything more, we’ll have to all huddle and figure all this out. There are too many unanswered questions. Agreed?”

Fedorov nodded. “That is certainly true. Alright. I’ll stand with you, Karpov, on one condition. You agree that when we sort this out, you’ll take the ship forward. Give me that, and I can get Volsky and Gromyko on board.”

“You have my word, Kirov will go forward too. Now let’s get busy, because we have a lot to figure out here. The first thing we need to do is coordinate with Kazan. Why don’t you get back on the secure comm-link and allay Volsky’s fears? Tell him you have my full cooperation. Then the four of us can arrange a meeting place to work out our plan. We’ll figure out how we can get Takami, and then determine what to do about Orlov, not to mention my own little brother out there. Then, when we have our house in order, we’ll settle affairs on Kamenski’s plan for how we move forward.”

Chapter 36

Yes Fedorov, thought Karpov with an inward smile. I’ll take Kirov forward, but I didn’t say how I would do that, did I? Kamenski has some grand scheme in mind, but he hasn’t really explained how his plan would work. I’ll have to see if Volsky knows anything more, and also learn about the world he came from—a third meridian, apparently branching off from these other two I’ve been caught up in.

Yes, I’ll move forward… but I may just end up doing that the old-fashioned way, one day at a time. But I must be very cautious here at the outset. Beginnings are very delicate times. New alliances can be very fragile. They will be suspicious, and I must allay their fears and seem the perfect co-conspirator. Kazan is a very dangerous adversary. That said, if I cozy up to Volsky and Gromyko now, and pretend we’re all one happy little family again, then I’ll have every opportunity to put a torpedo into that sub and rid myself of that threat—but not before I squeeze as much juice out of that orange as I can.

Yes, Kazan has missiles, and maybe I can talk Gromyko out of a few. At the very least, perhaps I can get him to take out Takami for me. That way I won’t have to expend any of my own missiles. Then I need to seriously consider my plan to fetch more ordnance from the future. That would be very dangerous. I suppose I could reinforce the stairway at Ilanskiy here with steel and concrete, and make it sturdy enough to allow for the movement of a missile weighing six tons. But I’d have to rig out a crane to lift them in the future, and then some kind of sled to move them down the stairs here. Even if I do reinforce it here, would that persist into the future? Could I reinforce it there? Would I have the time if the world there is on fire, as we both have already seen. It’s just too uncertain. I have no way of knowing what happens between this moment and 2021, or what will be underway when my team reaches that year.

In fact, I have no way of knowing whether I could successfully get men there at all by using those stairs. My own security forces would have no point of origin in that future pulling them forward, so I would have to use members of the crew—perhaps something for Troyak and his Marines to do. I might even have to send a control rod forward with them to move a ship with munitions back here. It’s either that or I would have to find a working control rod in 2021. I already know they were manufactured in lots, so Rod-25 may have a doppelganger as well. If I could find one there, get it to that ship…. That’s where Volsky could be useful. I’ll certainly have to butter that man’s bread for a while, even if it means saluting and calling him ‘sir.’

Well, I digress. First I have to make certain I have this situation with Volsky and Gromyko under control. Only then might I have the luxury of working out these other plans. Perhaps I’ll even give some more thought to my Omega Plan.

He smiled again. Yes, Kirov was the Alpha, but I will be the Omega. Interesting that Fedorov hasn’t thought of this yet. He’s all worried about those men from the future going silent. This is all the great mysterious cloud hanging over everything—this talk of a Grand Finality. Doesn’t he realize what I have in my power now? I don’t have to use Kirov to move in time. I have Tunguska, I have that vortex that Fedorov was kind enough to discover for me, and I have Ilanskiy. There are risks and uncertainties in all three, but Ilanskiy has been very consistent—old faithful.

This business about the keys is very intriguing. Clearly they were made in the future. Where else? That would be the only place where they would have had the time to discover the location of all these time rifts and then secure them. Well, Mister Fedorov, I have the means of solving that little riddle for you, and perhaps one day it will dawn on you—my Omega Plan.

Ilanskiy… Yes, that stairway goes both directions. I’ve already gone up once, and was so shocked by what I saw with that nuke over Kansk that I beat a hasty retreat and never went back. Suppose I tried that again, and then found some way to get to the main stairway once I got there. The second floor was damaged, probably from the shock wave when that nuke went off at Kansk, but I might be able to get over to the main stairway.

If I do, I just go down and then the real fun starts. I go right back into the dining room to the base of the back stairway. From there, it’s only seventeen steps up to that dark future everyone is so worried about. Yes… I could go see what has silenced the lips of those men from the future—the key makers, as Fedorov believes.

How very interesting….

They were gathered around the ‘Thread Module,’ as Kelly was calling it now, and to all of them it seemed like the ‘Threat’ module would be a better name. It used to be called the Meridian Track, a large ultrawide flat panel display where the line of the continuum through history was displayed in a long horizontal bar that could be scrolled left or right. Colors indicated the integrity of that track to the history recorded and permanently stored in the Touchstone RAM Database. That was data that had been recorded and securely stored before the team ever attempted their first move in time, a record of the world as it was before anyone ever had the chance to tamper with the past.

The Golem module constantly monitored the Internet, sifting through millions of records, like a hundred thousand Google search bots. What they were looking for were changes and variations, anything that might indicate that something was amiss. If something was wrong, a change in the past significant enough to affect the history as it moved forward, those changes would ripple out, and the tiny outliers of that tsunami would be easily detected.

It might be something as simple as a birth or death record. Mrs. Smith was supposed to have given birth to three children, and now she had four. The Meridian Team called those uninvited guests ‘Zombies,’ the real walking dead, people who were recorded as being alive when they shouldn’t be; when they were never even born. Or John Doe’s record of birth goes missing, and no other evidence of his existence could be found—no driver’s license, social security, credit files, job, marriage or medical records. In that instance, the team called those missing souls “Wraiths.”

It wasn’t just people, though their individual fate lines could be very potent Pushpoints on the course of events. It was also the recorded history, as reported in every newspaper article, news item, or book stored in the data base, and it had damn near everything that had even been published, even scans of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian tablets dating back millennia. If something were found that contradicted an existing record in the Touchstone Database, sometimes simply called the RAM Bank, it would be flagged by the system and the historical point on the continuum would change color.

Yellow would indicate a minor variation that invited investigation to verify the find before being accepted. Amber was a more significant change that had turned up multiple references in discord with the RAM Bank, and that color deepened to burnt orange and then eventually went red as the violations and variations increased. When that line went black, the contradiction was so severe that it heralded chaos, a radical transformation of the meridian capable of altering all the history beyond that point.

But they had never seen this before.

There, as Nordhausen swiped at the touch screen to scroll the line left or right, they could clearly see what had happened. The first event recorded in this alert had occurred in 1908, and zooming in to that year, on June 30th, the most significant event in the recorded history was the fall over the Stony Tunguska River, where something mysterious exploded in a massive fireball that shook seismographs thousands of miles away, and lit the night skies with an eerie glow for days after.

There, in a long vertical column below that date, were links to every other event of any significance in the database. One could scroll down and down for hours on end, reading headlines of major news stories of the day, or finding something as trivial as the recorded news in the Salida Mail, Volume XXIX, Number 8, one of Colorado’s oldest news journals. You could learn that Miss Cornelia Gregg and Miss Isla Harris drove down from Buena Vista last Sunday morning and spent the day visiting with their friends. Alas, Mr. Ned Paquette, while riding his horse to Poncha Springs to attend the ball game received injuries from his horse falling through a bridge, though he escaped death.

Such seemingly insignificant bits of trivia were not always found at the focus point of major changes on the continuum. The fate of Ned Paquette might not matter one wit to the world, then again, it might have mattered a very great deal, had he died in that little mishap when he was supposed to have survived it. Had that variation been found, Ned would have become a Wraith, and his name entered in to a special list that immediately triggered a genealogical search to determine who else was now missing on the branching tree of his offspring. Imagine Adolf Hitler’s mother having such an accident before she gave birth to the man, and the point of this analysis becomes clear.

So it started at Tunguska, something as simple as a change in the arrival time of one of the teams participating in the Great Race; something as simple as a strange name in the guest register that wasn’t there before. Fedorov and others had surmised this was the origin of the disaster without the use of this elaborate tracking and reporting system. It started right there in Siberia, the mysterious impact striking the history like a stone hitting a mirror, and that very instant, a small crack appeared, aligned right along the back stairway at Ilanskiy.

Anton Fedorov heard the crack, for he was right there when it happened, albeit in 1942, some 34 years in the future. But he should not have been there at all. No. That sound should not have turned his head, a deep, ominous rumble that led him towards the upper landing of that staircase. No one should have heard it, or seen the odd glow emanating from the shadows of that stairwell. No one should have been curious enough to walk down those stairs that day.

The rest was history—an altered history of the world that never should have been written. But now the Meridian Team realized what had happened. The man who was there to hear that crack had come off a ship—Kirov—and that ship had slipped through another hole in time because of an arcane conspiracy between a nuclear reactor, a nuclear detonation, and a control rod containing exotic particles that had been mined from sites along the Stony Tunguska River. It was as if the event itself, the thing that came from the depths of space that day, was now trying to call home all the disparate particles it had shed with that terrible impact.

There at Ilanskiy, in that tumultuous hour, a man walked down those stairs to meet the man that christened his ship, and everything changed—everything.

Now the Meridian Team members hunched over the graphic display of those changes, awed by what they were seeing. It was something Dorland had predicted and provided for in the code that ran the display, but not something he ever thought he would see. The Meridian had split, not once, but twice, branching off to create new possible courses in the flow of time. The events caused by the coming of Kirov had been so catastrophic that time itself could not yet choose which of the three lines of fate it might rely on to become the Prime Meridian again, for there could only be one continuum in the end. Zooming and scrolling through the display, the team members found the ship, the officers and crewmen who sailed in it, and witnessed their exploits with utter dismay.

“My God,” said Paul. “Here we thought we had trouble sinking the Bismarck as it was supposed to happen. Will you look at the carnage this ship has caused?”

“I don’t see any way we can get a handle on this,” said Maeve. “Look at that splintering! We’ve got three threads now. The Gamma thread is the one closest to the original in terms of overall integrity, but look, it’s already beginning to receive contamination from the other two. Beta thread is almost completely unrecognizable now, at least insofar as WWII is concerned. There is no way we could intervene to try and reverse all the changes there. How do we stop Germany from taking Gibraltar, or reaching Moscow as they did in that history? It’s impossible.”

“There might be Pushpoints out there somewhere,” said Paul, and he was very correct. Given enough time and research, they might have discovered the seemingly insignificant life of one Juan Alphonso, the engineer who stopped the leaky roof in a train car on the eve of a very important meeting. It was his little piece of cheesecloth that handed the Rock to Germany, though none of them knew that at that moment.

“You’re right, Maeve,” said Paul. “If it were just one variation, one battle or sinking like the Bismarck, then we might have a chance to correct it. But WWII is a maze of consequence. There must be thousands of Pushpoints driving these events. We’d never find and correct them all in a lifetime.”

“So we’ve got to ignore the history of the war,” said Nordhausen. “We’ve got to go further back—to the source—Tunguska.”

“How do you stop that?” said Kelly. “Isn’t that an imperative, an act of nature that we can do nothing about.”

“I once thought that,” said Paul, but look here in 1942 on the Beta thread—Krakatoa blew up!”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “Scroll back to August 26, 1883 when it was supposed to erupt. There’s no sign of that event now—at least not on the Beta thread.”

“Damn amazing,” said Paul. “How do we get variations like this that change historical imperatives? I can see how the weather might change, but volcanic activity? That tells me that whatever happened to alter that meridian was so profound that it literally changed everything, even the pressure and buildup of the magma chamber beneath Krakatoa.”

“That’s damn odd,” said Maeve. “1883 predates the Tunguska Event in 1908. How could the latter affect the former in any way, shape or form?”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “How could a suspected cause follow an effect?”

“Admittedly, its confounding in the classical physics of the macro world,” said Paul, “but not on the quantum level of things. Causality is the notion that events happening now in the present are caused by events in the past, the domino theory. Caslav Brukner’s team at the University of Vienna has already published research claiming that it is possible that a single event could be both a cause and an effect insofar as quantum mechanics is concerned. They call it ‘Quantum violation of causal order.’ We won’t get into it here, but it can happen. Bottom line: causal order might not be a mandatory property of nature, so that means my concept of an imperative event like that eruption is suspect.”

“I still don’t see how Tunguska in 1908 prevents Krakatoa from erupting in 1883,” said Nordhausen, “but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, because it clearly happened, at least in the Beta thread.”

“But not in the Alpha or Gamma threads,” said Maeve. “That’s our clue. I think nature is a completely random force. It’s like a coin toss. Yes, Krakatoa was going to blow, and on two tosses, it does so right on schedule in the Alpha and Gamma threads, but on the Beta thread it holds off another 59 years until 1942.”

“That’s really a blip in geologic time,” said Kelly.

“The two events may not even be related,” said Maeve. “It could just be random, as I have it. The only reason we notice it is because we have three threads now, and it doesn’t happen on our thread.”

“That could be,” said Paul, “but I’m not so sure. Was there anything prior to 1883 we need to look at—any variation of consequence?”

“We have some yellow around 1815—in Brussels.”

“What month?” asked Paul.

“June.”

“Waterloo.” Paul rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowing. “That’s one hell of a pivotal event. We’d better have a look at it. Anything else?”

“Something further back here,” said Nordhausen, swiping the screen to move into the 1600s. “September of 1687. That was General Morosini’s Army of Vienna attacking the Turks in Greece. It wasn’t there yesterday, but it is today.”

“What? You mean to say this just appeared?”

“Yup.”

“Damn,” said Paul. “That means we have backwash. The damage is migrating backwards as well as forwards on the continuum.”

“It could be more than that,” said Nordhausen. “Look at these other variation seeds. It could be a deliberate intervention, not just random backwash. I found another incident in 1802 off Greece; and another a little earlier in 1799—Egypt.”

“Very strange,” said Paul. “Did you research those?”

“You know me better than that,” said Nordhausen. “The incident in 1802 was most curious. It involved the Elgin Marbles; the sinking of the ship they were being loaded on—the Mentor. There was a diary page from a local that was different. Strangely, that relates directly to this incident I just picked up yesterday in 1687.”

That got Maeve’s attention, and she turned, very interested now. “How?” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“In 1687, General Morosini fought his battle with the Turks in Athens, at the Acropolis in fact, which was fortified by the Turks and used as a depot for their gunpowder. They didn’t think their enemy would attack it, because of its obvious historical significance, but they were wrong. Morosini had his cannon and mortars shell it for four days, and on that fourth day—con fortunato colpo! They got a lucky hit. It ignited the Turkish gunpowder, and blew the Parthenon to hell.”

“The Parthenon,” said Maeve…. “That was where the Selene Horse was before Lord Elgin pilfered it!”

“Quite correct—in 1802…. But there’s more. I can now connect all these pre-Tunguska variation warnings, all of them, the one in 1687, 1799, 1802, and finally that blip we picked up in 1815. I found a name associated with every last one of them. No one goes anywhere or does anything without leaving a mark on the history for someone like me to find.”

“Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?” Maeve gave him a wide-eyed look.

“Well you were all hot and bothered over this volcano business, so I waited that out, but look here—the name is Ames, Sir Rodger Ames. I find references to it at all those dates. In fact, such a man was aboard an English crewed Pinco at Athens and helped transport the Turkish Garrison to Smyrna after it finally surrendered to General Morosini.”

“Pinco?”

“A Genovese ship design, flat bottomed, about 300 tons; three masts with lateen sails, and very fast and maneuverable.”

“Quite strange,” said Maeve. “It obviously can’t be the same person. Those dates span 128 years.”

“That they do…. But just for yucks I ran that name and got some very curious references. One one stands out, because his name turned up in the log entries for visitors requesting special access to artifacts within the British Museum—this very year, in 2021.”

“What artifacts?” asked Maeve, very curious now.

“The Selene Horse, for one,” said Nordhausen, “which was in the Parthenon in 1687 when that lucky shot hit home, and was on board the frigate Mentor in 1802 when it sunk in a storm of Greece. Yes, I have a record of a man named Ames there as well.”

“Go on,” said Paul, his eyes riveted on the history Professor.

“It also turned up in the crew register of another sinking ship—the HMS Rodney. It was Able Seaman Roger Ames, a Stoker working the boiler rooms, so we can add 1942 to that list of dates.”

“So someone by that name keeps turning up at historical sites occupied by the Selene Horse,” said Maeve. “Anywhere else?”

“There was a Roger Ames appearing on the guest register of the ball General Wellington attended prior to the battle of Waterloo. That one seems odd.”

“And what was the other artifact this visitor looked at?”

“Ah, you’ll like this—the Rosetta Stone…. I found a reference to a man in the survey party with Napoleon—one of the intellectual savants that went over when the ‘Little General’ invaded Egypt. He was reported near the site where the stone was discovered. Ring a bell?”

“Good God,” said Maeve. “We were there, Robert, the two of us, right there in 1799 when the stone was discovered!”

“Yes, said Nordhausen. July 19th, 1799. Very suspicious. This one doesn’t seem to relate to the Selene Horse, but someone is certainly skulking about through all this history, and in dates far enough apart to mean it could not be the same person, unless…”

“Unless he was moving in time,” said Paul.

Silence. They all just looked at him.

“My dear Nordhausen…. Did you find out anything more about this fellow who visited the British Museum?”

“That I did. He also held a title in the British Peerage. He is Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington. Interestingly, I just found out that he had some business dealings involving a certain company—Fairchild Enterprises.”

“The keys,” said Paul. “It wasn’t the Selene Horse he was after, but that damn key hidden inside it! He didn’t get to it on the Rodney, so he went looking elsewhere. Lord almighty, someone get some coffee started. It’s going to be a very long night.”