Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (17 page)

“Considering the situation,” said
Volsky, “I believe you acted appropriately. But explain it to an old man again,
if you will.”

“Well sir, I had been wondering
what might happen here if Troyak did go down that stairway and managed to find
Volkov. I knew it was a long shot, but what if he did make it to 1908 as I did,
and managed to find him? What if he took him back up those stairs again? Where
would they appear? In my experience, I returned to the same time that I had
left, only what was just a few minutes for me at the bottom of those stairs was
much longer for Troyak and Zykov. But at least it was the same year. So I
thought that it must be something to do with the traveler. Perhaps there was a
connection between the moment he leaves and the place he ends up, as if he had
some kind of tether or life line when he went down those stairs, like someone
going over a cliff with a safety rope. Then I realized that Volkov was not in
this year—1940—so how could he return to this time with Troyak? We can only
speculate, but we have been assuming Volkov went down from the year 2021, so
his connection would be to that year. How could he go with Troyak to this year
if this holds water?”

“But that isn’t the reason you
gave this order,” said Kamenski, a knowing light in his eye.

“No sir. I was also trying to
understand what would happen here—to us, to this whole world we find ourselves
in. If Troyak did find Volkov, and if he was able to bring him up those steps,
well… would there be an Orenburg Federation? What would happen? I just couldn’t
see how everything in this world could suddenly re-arrange itself right under
our noses, and if it did, would we still know about it? What about Troyak?
Would he know why he was even sent there when he reached the top of those
steps?”

“I see what you are getting at,”
said Kamenski, calmly poking at the bowl of his pipe. “If he did find Volkov
and bring him to this year, or any other year for that matter, then he would
have never had a reason to go there and look for him in the first place.”

“Paradox,” said Fedorov darkly,
and the word itself carried a sinister new meaning for him now. He explained it
as best he could. “Paradox is not simply some thorny problem—I think it is the
force that rearranges things when time is confronted with an insoluble contradiction.
It is a real and dangerous force.”

Fedorov had hit on a great truth.
Paradox was time’s black hooded executioner, the slayer of impossibility, a
sharp sword that cut through the Gordian knots they had twisted with their
meddling.

Kamenski gave him a solemn nod. “This
is the first time our own necks have been on the chopping block,” he said.
“Yes, the edge of paradox is a very dangerous precipice to hike along. We must
be very careful here. I cannot say how that problem might resolve itself, Mister
Fedorov, but something tells me that time would find a way. Yes. Mother Time
does not wish to have her skirts ruffled any more than necessary. She would
find a way.”

“Agreed,” said Fedorov. “Yet I
realized something else that might be impossible. Volkov is here—in this world,
at this very moment! How could he then be brought up those stairs by Troyak?”

“Correct,” said Kamenski with a
smile. “Yes, he could not co-locate. There cannot be two Ivan Volkovs here in
this moment, one the young man who disappeared in 2021, and one the old man who
now rules the Orenburg Federation, or so we have learned.”

“But we rescued Mister Orlov,”
said Volsky.

“Correct Admiral,” said Fedorov,
but we brought him back to a place and time where he did not exist at that
moment. We brought him back aboard to the year 2021, a year he had left long
ago when
Kirov
vanished.”

“I see,” Volsky nodded. “So a
person cannot go to a time or place where he already exists. This makes sense.”

“And if he tries to do so he puts
time in a most uncomfortable position,” said Kamenski. “He creates work for
paradox—yes, Mister Fedorov, I agree with you. Paradox is not simply a mind
puzzle. It is death itself—worse than death! It is the force of utter
annihilation. If Volkov tried to go up those stairs to this time, then paradox
would have to get rid of one version or the other, yes?”

“What about us?” said Volsky.
“We’ve been shifting all over time and back again.”

“But we have never shifted to a
time or place where we already existed. Each time we shifted we seemed to
bounce a little ahead in the 1940s… until we appeared here, in a safe time
before our first arrival, but one with a short lease, or so I fear.”

“And summer's lease hath all too
short a date,” said Kamenski, quoting the famous bard himself.

Fedorov nodded. “So you see why I
have been worried what will happen to us come July 28th next year?”

“Yes, you believe we will be
asking Mother Time to make a choice. Which
Kirov
will she permit in that
time and space, this ship, or the one arriving from the year 2021?”

“The one that
must
arrive
from 2021 in order for this ship to even be here,” said Fedorov.

“Mother Time will have to choose,”
said Kamenski, “and being busy with other matters, she will not want to be
bothered by us again. We have certainly caused enough trouble for her as it
stands. Yes?”

“Then she will hand the matter
over to Paradox,” said Fedorov. “And one ship or the other must fall beneath
his axe.”

“So you ordered Troyak to abort
his sortie to 1908 for this reason? You wanted to keep this paradox from
happening?”

“Yes sir. I realized there could
not be two Volkovs in the same time and place.”

“Well,” said Kamenski. “Time can
be quite the magician, Mister Fedorov. Troyak could have collared him, and the
Sergeant could have returned to 1940 on his journey up those stairs, while
Volkov reappeared in the year 2021, still thinking he is hot on your trail
along the Trans-Siberian rail line.”

“Perhaps, sir, but then I return
to my first problem.” He swept his arm at the unseen world beyond the ship’s
bulkheads. “What happens to this world? What happens to the Orenburg
Federation, to all the troops facing off along the Volga. What happens to all
the history this moment now rests on? I’ve been reading how Volkov slowly rose
to power and established control of Denikin’s White faction after Sergei Kirov
forced him out of the Bolshevik movement. Do all those books get re-written,
and do I suddenly forget I ever read them this week past?”

At this Kamenski gave him a
sympathetic smile. “This is exactly what happened to me,” he said quietly. “I
tried to explain it to Inspector General Kapustin once. It is very
disconcerting when you reach for an old favorite book, read the chapter where
you left off, and find the story is coming out to be something quite
unexpected! Then you go back a few pages and find out one of the characters is
missing!”

“And you have told us you
remember things,” said Fedorov, “from time lines that no longer exist, at least
not from our perspective here.”

“Correct, just as you remember
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Americans reprisal at Hiroshima at
the other end of that war. Yet there are those who remember the bombing of
Vladivostok instead, and have no recollection of Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.”

“So we retain memories of past
times we have lived in.”

“Apparently so,” said Kamenski. “Strange
little remnants remain stuck in our head. Are they figments of our imagination
or real remembered events? Is your memory of what you did yesterday a real
thing, or something you construct within your own imagination? If it is a real
thing, then where does it go if you die? Where do all those memories of all the
days you have lived go? They are no more substantial than the images from a
dream you have in your sleep, and in fact those images are woven from the very
same cloth your lived memories are made from.”

Now Admiral Volsky reached for
the small flask of Vodka he had in his jacket pocket, giving them both a grim
smile.

“The two of you will make a
drunkard out of me yet. How can we possibly sort through all of this?” He took
a small swig, offering the flask to the others, who both politely declined.

Kamenski tamped down the bowl of
his pipe, thinking. He lit the tobacco again with his lighter, watching the
thin curl of smoke billow up. Fedorov had been warming his cold hands on a mug
of coffee. Each man had their own places to find small comforts.

“So you were worried that this
world we now sit in would just go up in smoke like the tobacco in my pipe,
correct Fedorov? And I suppose you were worried that you would go up in smoke
with it. Yes? And if not, and we are still here when the next wave of change
passes through, would we remember anything of the old life, or would our
memories vanish too, like the flame from my lighter when I close it?”

“Perhaps I thought something like
that, sir.”

“Perhaps, perhaps. But remember
that Mother Time does not like to make these kind of decisions. In fact, I
believe she will do everything in her power to avoid turning out the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“The hounds of paradox, Mister
Fedorov, the wolves of change that she holds fast with the rein of causality.
When time is presented with a situation that cannot be resolved in any other
way, she releases the hounds. But before it comes to that, a little sleight of
hand will also serve her quite well at times. Notice how you just prevented
Sergeant Troyak from going down those stairs and asking an impossible question
of time that could make her very disagreeable. You see what I mean? Time finds
a way.”

“And what about plan B,” said
Volsky. “Have we heard anything further on that question?”

“I have Nikolin glued to his
chair,” said Fedorov, “with orders to contact me the instant Troyak confirms
the demolition was carried out.”

“Don’t hold your breath, Mister
Fedorov,” Kamenski said quietly, and he took another long slow drag on his
pipe.

“Sir?”

“Well… If your Sergeant Troyak
destroys that railway inn in 1940, then how in the world did you go down those
steps in 1942, to eventually end up here and get the idea for this little
mission? For that matter, how did Volkov go down those stairs in 2021?”

Fedorov’s pulse quickened at
that. My God, he thought. I may have set up yet another paradox by ordering
Troyak to demolish that stairway! This is what he had feared. If Kamenski is
correct, that would be impossible, and how might time handle such a dilemma?
She would have to handle Troyak first, he thought darkly, and realized he may
have just signed the Sergeant’s death warrant.

* * *

Troyak
was back at the
railway inn with his assault rifle squad. He looked to see Zykov’s men falling back
through the park behind the inn with cool precision.

“Hold here!” Troyak raised his
fist. They could see that a squad of grey coated soldiers had again come up the
roadway from the causeway and they would soon filter in to the town center. “Zykov!
Take three men and lay a spider web across these roads.” He was referring to a
special kind of anti-personnel mine used by special forces to discourage
pursuit on missions like this. The mine would be set, battery activated to
eject and deploy up to six stakes, trailing thin tripwires that would shoot out
in all directions like the web of a spider. Should anyone trip on them, the
mine itself would then pop up a center core that would explode in a hail of
fragmentation shrapnel. A single web set on a road would buy them the time they
needed to slip away. Zykov set three in an arc protecting their line of
withdrawal.

“Private,” said Troyak. “Set off
your charges.”

The man nodded, and produced a hand
held device with a small retractable antenna. He turned a dial on the back,
called out a warning, but Troyak reached down and tapped his shoulder, his palm
open as he reached for the device. Then he thumbed down hard on the detonator
switch. There was first one, followed by a second loud explosion, with charges
set at each end of the back stairway. Troyak waited until the smoke cleared,
then raised a small pair of field glasses, studying the inn carefully. The
entire left side of the building, including the dining hall, the chimney from the
hearth, and a large segment of the second floor above were completely
destroyed.

Troyak had just done something
impossible, or so Fedorov would believe when he radioed in the report. Yet that
thought never entered his mind. This was just a simple search and destroy
mission, and the little engagement with the zeppelin was only icing on the
cake. It was time to move his men out.

“Alright, back the way we came,
and we’ll get ourselves into that tree line north of the rail leading east.
Once we get well away we’ll signal the
Narva
to arrange for an
extraction point.”

The men had picked up all their
equipment and began moving quickly through the narrow streets until they passed
the tin roofed warehouse buildings by the rail yard. From there they sprinted
across a 300 meter clearing and back into the woods that would take them to the
culvert and small railroad bridge. Even as they went, Troyak looked over his
shoulder to see the massive shape of yet another zeppelin descending from the
clouds over the small town. Its guns began to blast away at targets on the
ground, but he gave it no mind. His mission was accomplished.

The back stairway at Ilanskiy no
longer existed.

* * *

Karpov
had been up on high
overwatch in the
Abakan
, worried about that third airship out there
somewhere. He was listening to the radio traffic as
Andarva
continued
its pursuit, and keeping one eye on his Topaz radar system, bothered that the
strange interference was limiting its effectiveness now. Volkov must have
rigged some kind of jammers for that frequency. I’ll need to see if I can get
the engineers to figure out frequency modulation and find some ways of
hardening my equipment. This damn war is only beginning, and there isn’t
anything in any of Fedorov’s history books about any of it. Not here.