Altered States -Volume III. Hinge of Fate

Chapter 2

Tovey’s pulse began to quicken as Nikolin translated, the yawning realization opening in his mind now that was pushing this whole matter to the edge of oblivion-sheer lunacy! For one other thing that Alan Turing had included in that Manila envelope had been a copy of the report Tovey had written summing up the very same meeting and discussion that Admiral Volsky had just mentioned! He thought it all part of the carefully contrived deception, but here was an independent source, having no connection to British intelligence whatsoever, calmly referencing the meeting his report labored to describe! A meeting that he would swear had never happened, yet one he felt on some inner level to be a reality.

Tovey was dazed, beside himself with the implications that gathered like ravenous wolves about the fading campfire of his mind. Yet even though he thought he was doing nothing more than courting folly, he ventured another question. “If such a meeting took place, Admiral, might you tell me what was agreed between us there?”

“Of course. The same thing we have just set our minds to here-a truce. We found ourselves at odds, and rather than continue a struggle that could do neither of us any good, I agreed to proceed to the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic in exchange for free passage of the Straits of Gibraltar and a pledge of non-belligerency in the war that is before us both now.”

There it was, chapter and verse as Tovey’s own report had described the meeting, and the agreement that was negotiated-a meeting he knew he had never taken with this man, particularly on the dates listed! Yet Tovey persisted, if only to test the fullness of the mayhem that was now before him.

“I must tell you that I am a very busy man, and one sometimes given to forgetfulness, but I could never put from my mind a meeting of such importance. I have no recollection of ever seeing you, or ever speaking with you before we first met aboard HMS Invincible, though I have harbored, as I confessed, a lingering feeling that we had met. Now you sit there and describe the very substance and purpose of that meeting, and it corresponds precisely with this report on the matter-a report supposedly written by my own hand by all appearances, but one I would swear before any court that I have never contemplated, let alone produced. It would seem logical for me to assume you are somehow connected to this document, and perhaps to all the others found in the box I have mentioned. One more question, before I certify myself as hopelessly insane, or conclude that you are a part of a grand deception. The date… Do you recall just when this meeting was supposed to have occurred between us? Even if my own memory has failed me, my whereabouts are fairly well documented.”

Fedorov leaned over and whispered something to Admiral Volsky now, and he nodded. “My Captain here informs me now, as my recollection is a bit like Swiss cheese at times as well. But there will be no record you can produce documenting your whereabouts in this regard-except perhaps that report you have referred to. The date… Forgive me if what I now say gives you every reason to think that I, too, am insane, or playing some macabre game with you here. I assure you that I am not guilty on both counts. The date of this meeting was August 14, and a little after 17:00, in the year 1942.”

The log on the fire popped loudly, as if in protest to the facts that Admiral Volsky asserted. It was the very same information documented in the report Turing had forwarded. They all jumped at the sound, then sat there, looking at one another like marked men, and certainly bound for the only place where any of this would make even the slightest bit if sense-bedlam.

Tovey gave the Russians a narrow eyed look. Could these men, this ship, all be part and parcel with the same plot that produced that box of material Turing fished out of the archives? Why would anyone contrive a story like this? He could think of no reason, but reason was not the order of the day, or the moment here. This was all entirely unreasonable, completely irrational, some perverse joke the world was playing on them, or a devious plot that Turing may have inadvertently stumbled upon.

He shored up his will, resolved to get to the bottom of this here and now. “The date you have given me is exactly what I see noted here on this report-yet preposterous. I have read the popular novel by our own Mister H. G. Wells on the matter of time travel, gentlemen. In fact I read it many years ago, as a young boy of ten when it was first published. But I am not given to such flights of fancy, so it should be clear to us all here that this notion that we have met at some future time is poppycock… And yet… I have had a long look at the material in this archive, and I find it all rather disconcerting in a way that is difficult to explain. It documents that our first meeting was in combat, with me aboard a battleship that we have only just commissioned into the fleet. So this entire box is either a wonderful work of fiction, like our Mister Wells’ story, or I’m a bullfrog. Then I sit here and look at those photographs, note your own astonished reactions to the same, and am I to assume you are all in league with the perpetrator of this fiction?”

Admiral Volsky sighed. He could either agree now that this was all a hoax and spare this man the trip down the rabbit hole he had been forced to take, or he could reveal the impossible truth that he had lived with and would continue to live with here-a truth that could simply not be hidden any longer as he saw things. Then he thought of Ivan Volkov, Vladimir Karpov, and even Sergei Kirov, all men who had also taken that same impossible journey through time, all key players now in the shattered reality of this world. The truth, as impossible as it seemed, was his only recourse.

“Admiral Tovey, I could spend hours trying to explain what I am now about to tell you, but I think there is a better way. You were kind enough to invite me aboard your ship. May I suggest now that you take a moment to visit me aboard Kirov? There you will have the answer to all your questions, and if the evidence of your own eyes is not something you can believe, then I will join you in happy retirement to your Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the two of us can sit out the remainder of this war as a pair of crazy old fools.”

‘Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table…’ Tovey ran the words of T. S. Eliot through his mind now as they made their way through the small settlement towards the Admiral’s launch by the quay. ‘There will be time, there will be time… time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea…’

The ship loomed in the lee of the tall stony sail of Tinholmur rock, thrust up from the hidden depths below in some upwelling of chaos in the earth itself, its sharp, jagged edge still unweathered by wind and rain over the centuries. As he looked at the ship he felt that its sharp metallic lines were also the product of chaos, something wholly unaccountable, out of place, a misfit in time. It was as if this strange ship had haunted his nightmares all his life.

He thought once that his recollection of that harrowing moment aboard King Alfred in the Pacific had been the source of this long steeped anxiety. One moment he was charging ahead into battle, leading in the British China Squadron, his forward cannon blasting away at the ominous shadow on the sea. The next moment the distant ship seemed to be enveloped in haze, a green mist, luminescent, like the artful and eerie dance of Saint Elmo’s Fire in the high mast at the edge of a storm.

The ship just seemed to vanish, presumed sunk, but with no wreckage ever found in the shallow waters near Iki Island in the Tsushima Strait. So the official report would state that it was obliterated, though Tovey could recall no explosion big enough to destroy a ship of that size. It was a deep mystery, and the report was since lost to the weathering of time and events. Yet he always thought about it, the ship that took the Captain’s life and thrust him into his first daring moment of command.

Now as he drew near to the broad hull of the battlecruiser Kirov, he felt a strange magnetism, a connection, linking his life and fate to the cold metal hull and decks and battlements of this vessel. The closer he came, the more he felt that compelling sense of discovery, as if he was finally to have the answer to a stubborn question that had lingered in his mind all his life. It was here… It was this ship… It was Geronimo.

He could stop now, just here beneath the lowering curve of the ship’s hull, the edge of uncertainty. ‘Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.’

The growl of the small boat’s engine stilled and they came along side. Seamen at the bow of the boat tossed up the rope to tie it off. Tovey felt his arms and legs moving almost mechanically as he climbed up from the Admiral’s launch, onto the metal stairwell that had been lowered from above. It was as if he was crossing some barrier now, between the real world he had known and lived in all his life, and a world of twilight and mystery where everything he had ever learned was to be called into question.

He could feel the old and familiar slipping from his grasp with every step he took, as if he was forfeiting the safety and comfort of his old life, and the innocence of unknowing that had been his before this moment, the propriety and civility of an English gentleman’s life, the calm, rational framework that was the core of his personality. ‘For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…’

Who was he, really? What was he? How did he come to be here? These were questions that one asked of the night and stars above, in quiet moments alone, in the solitude of inner thought. Now it would all be called into question and profound doubt. Step beyond that gunwale and onto the deck of chaos and uncertainty, he thought, but he pressed on nonetheless.

He heard the familiar high strain of the boatswain’s pipe. Not one, but two Admirals would now walk the decks of the mighty Kirov. An honor guard in dress whites awaited him, and the Marines snapped to attention, bayonets gleaming at the end of their rifles.

Admiral Volsky had gone first, so as to welcome him again with another hearty handshake when he came up. “Please walk with me, Admiral Tovey,” he said. “I will now give you a tour of the most marvelous ship in the world-in this world or any other. You will see much here that is familiar to your eye, the men below decks in their dungarees and striped naval shirts, the sweat and toil of the matros, that we call our able seamen, the mishman, or midshipman, the starshini, or petty officers all falling to their evolutions to keep this ship running smoothly. The bulkheads and hatches and ladders up and down will all feel like any ship to you, but the places they lead you to will be quite different, quite astonishing.”

They walked the ship, touring the outer decks first as Volsky pointed out the broad domes covering radars and communications equipment, and the ceaseless rotation of the Fregat system high above them.

“With that we can see out to a range of 300 kilometers. You may not believe this but it is quite true.”

“But that would be well over the horizon, Admiral. How is this possible?”

“I wish I could tell you that. All I know is what I hear when my radar man, who is now the Starpom of this ship, tells me when he reports a new contact.”

“Starpom?”

“Ah, that would be the name we give to our Executive Officer, “Mister Rodenko. You will meet him when we visit the bridge. But first, let us have a little stroll on the forward deck.”

Fedorov could hear the pride in the Admiral’s voice as he led Tovey on, and he felt it as well. This was, indeed, the finest ship in the world. While he had passed moments of real trepidation when Volsky proposed he would reveal their true nature and origin to the British Admiral, now he had come to realize that this was inevitable from the first moment they decided to remain here and intervene instead of taking their chances again with the control rods.

Admiral Volsky had the men attending their party summon a missile deck engineer, and open one of the many hatches there. The sharp, dangerous nose of a Moskit-II was seen waiting silently in its vertical silo, like a sleeping monster waiting to be called to life.

“That is one of the missiles you witnessed-actually not this particular model. This one is much bigger than the rockets we used against the Germans. And now you will hear what I say next with disbelief, but I will tell you the truth. This rocket can hit a fly on a wall, and at a range of 222 kilometers, that is 120 of your English miles. The warhead is 450 kilograms, nearly a thousand English pounds.”

Tovey was more than impressed. The interior of the silo was immaculate, the missile threatening in every line and aspect. There was clearly technology and knowhow on this ship far in excess of anything he could imagine possible. Was the admiral merely boasting to make an impression? Could this missile hit its target over a hundred miles away? How would it see it? He asked this, and got an answer.

“Those radars tell it the general location of the target, and then when it is in flight it uses its own radar, right there in the nose, to have a look for itself. It is extremely accurate.”

“My God, your advances in radar technology must be very far ahead of our own.”

“Come, now I will show you my bridge.”

They made their way up, climbing ladders and stairways, and in time came in through the aft hatch of the main citadel.

“Admiral on the bridge!” Rodenko’s voice was sharp and clear, and Tovey needed no translation to know what he had said when every officer and watchstander snapped to attention.

“As you were, gentlemen. Admiral, may I present the ship’s Executive Officer, Grigori Rodenko, a very able man. He will show you the control interfaces and systems we use to receive the data those big radar dishes send here.”

Rodenko walked them from station to station, describing the equipment as Nikolin translated, and noting its basic purpose. They toured Radar and then Sonar, where Tasarov waited quietly beneath his headset.

“We could hear the approach of a German U-Boat from over twenty kilometers away, and if we were simply listening for your ship, we would hear it coming at many times that range.”

Then came to the combat information center, aglow with lights and status panels, where the Admiral introduced Victor Samsonov. “Here is my strong right arm, Admiral Tovey. This man executes battle orders to deliver the appropriate ordnance on the target, and he is very efficient, as the German navy has already seen.”

Tovey was taking this all in, one amazing fact after another. The electronic devices that seemed to be everywhere hummed with quiet energy. There were no telescopes for sighting on distant ships, no voice pipes for the officer of the watch to bawl out orders to stations below. Instead there was an enormous flat black panel overhead that suddenly came to life with the image of his own ship, HMS Invincible, where it road at anchor behind a screen of destroyers hundreds of yards away. To his utter astonishment the image was zoomed in at Admiral Volsky’s request, and Tovey gaped when he clearly saw men he recognized standing on the weather deck at their watches. The resolution and clarity of the image was impeccable.

“Now let us retire to the officer’s dining room for dinner. I am eager to repay your hospitality in hosting us for lunch some weeks ago, and there is much we have to discuss.”