John Schettler - Paradox Hour

“No, Doctor, not Chief Byko. He’s Damage Control Chief. I’m speaking of Engineer Dobrynin—Chief of propulsion and reactor operations.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. I don’t know the man. He must be very healthy. Good for him!” There was Zolkin’s inevitable humor, but Fedorov was not happy. My god, he thought. Another man that no one will have heard of, like Tasarov, like the missing man on Mister Gagarin’s duty roster, like Kamenski! It isn’t just the ship we must worry about now. It’s Paradox Hour!

Fedorov seemed shaken as he thumbed off the hand microphone, letting it dangle limply from the coiled wire. It shifted back and forth with the movement of the ship, a silent pendulum of disorder, wanting to be cradled again, safe in the overhead intercom station, and not left like that, dangling, loose, forgotten.

“See what I mean sir!” said Nikolin, and Fedorov gave him a quick glance.

Now he looked directly at Admiral Volsky, his voice taut, the tension evident as he spoke. “Admiral, what I am now about to say will seem preposterous, but you must have faith that I have evidence to support every word of it. We’re in trouble—extreme danger—at this very moment. Not just the ship, but the crew itself. Men are being reported as missing. That alone is cause enough for alarm, but what I say next is the real problem—no one remembers them, just like Zolkin there with Chief Dobrynin. Are you saying you have no recollection of the man? He was coordinating all our earlier time displacements with those ears of his. And then there is Tasarov, our number one sonar man—Nikolin’s best friend. And one more man has gone missing, Director Kamenski is not in his quarters, and does not answer to intercom hails. He’s missing too, sir. They’re all simply gone.”

“Director who? Kamenski…” Volsky lowered his heavy brows, thinking deeply. Fedorov was watching him very closely, waiting, then he spoke, with hasty urgency.

“We met him in Vladivostok, sir, after we returned from the Pacific. Inspector General Kapustin brought him in on his investigation, and he came to your office at Naval Headquarters, at Fokino. He had photographs, Admiral. Remember? Photographs of the ship as it was moving through the Straits of Gibraltar. We asked him to come with us when we boarded Kazan , on that mission to try and stop Karpov in 1908! He’s been with us ever since. My god, I spent hours and hours with the man in his cabin, right across from your quarters, Admiral. Don’t you remember? You told me to ask him about the gophers—in his garden!” He realized that last bit might make him sound like a fool, but it had quite the opposite effect on Volsky.

“Gophers?” His eyes seemed to catch fire, brightening with newfound awareness. Now he looked around, from Samsonov, to Rodenko, and then to Nikolin and the sonar station, where Velichko sat beneath his head set, oblivious.

“Kamenski,” he said haltingly. “Yes… Director Kamenski. The Gophers in the Devil’s Garden. That man had a knack for colorful metaphors. I’ve twiddled with that one in my mind for months.”

“Then you remember?” Fedorov beamed, a feeling of great relief sweeping over him. He gave Nikolin a nod, smiling. “You remember sir—Tasarov? Chief Dobrynin and Rod-25…?” He waited, almost breathlessly.

“Tasarov, Tasarov,” said Volsky. “Yes… Lieutenant Alexei Tasarov.” He looked at Nikolin now. “What have you two been up to, Mister Nikolin? Sending more riddles over the ships messaging system? Don’t think I don’t know about it.”

“That’s it, sir!” said Nikolin. “That’s how I remembered. I was just telling Mister Fedorov about it, and he remembers too, but no one else, Admiral. No one on the ship knows anything about him—not even Doctor Zolkin. I went down there first thing, but the Doctor says he never heard of him. What’s happening? Where is he?” Nikolin seemed at the edge of tears, and Volsky raised a hand, father-like, as if to calm him and offer comfort.”

Now the Admiral looked to Fedorov, a grave expression on his face. “Any others?” he said, thinking first of the crew. The instant Fedorov had said that about the gophers in the garden, it was as if a bell had rung in Volsky’s mind. That single thread of memory had rippled with fire, the energy leaping through one synapse after another in his tired brain, and the soft glow of recollection rekindled as it went. Places in his mind that had been stilled, as though misted over with that same heavy fog that now surrounded the ship, were now suddenly awake again, remembering… remembering…

“Director Kamenski is missing? You are certain of this?”

“I’ve been to his quarters, sir. No one is there, and the room itself looks as though it was never used! The Ship’s Purser has no record of any visitor quartered there, and no recollection of the man either. And by god, I nearly forgot he was here myself, until a phrase he used came to mind—slippery fish. He always said that about the way the ship seemed to move in time. Then it all came back!”

“And Tasarov? He is missing as well?”

“Nikolin put me on to that,” said Fedorov. “You know those two are inseparable. I think that attachment, a long, deep attachment of friendship, was simply too strong a bond between them to be easily forgotten. Nikolin came to me just now in the officer’s dining hall. He said he felt like he had lost his brother, but could not explain the sadness he was experiencing. Then he remembered, though no one else remembered Tasarov. Their friendship was simply too strong to be easily broken.”

That was the only way Fedorov could explain it, a bond of friendship that was so strong that not even time and fate could break it. For some unfathomable reason, Tasarov had vanished, just like Kamenski. Nikolin had felt that loss on some level, that terrible emptiness, a god shaped hole in his soul. And just as those colorful phrases the Director had used jogged loose memory in the minds of Fedorov and Volsky, Tasarov’s message ID had struck Nikolin through with the light of recollection, and he suddenly knew what he had lost.

“Dear lord, Fedorov. What is happening here? Is this what you have warned of? Are we facing this paradox hour you keep talking about.”

“Something has changed, sir. Can you feel it? First it was physical—things in the ship suffered actual physical damage. The ship was pulsing, unstable in time. We could all feel it, and god knows Lenkov got the worst of that. Then we just made an uncontrolled shift in time. Who knows why? Yet here we are… somewhere… and the effects we have uncovered extend beyond the damage to bulkheads, deck plates and hatches. Something has changed. Men are missing—so profoundly missing that no one was even remembering they were ever here. Do you remember Chief Dobrynin now?”

“Yes,” said Volsky, a vacant look in his eyes. “We needed the Chief to listen to those time displacements, when we used Rod-25. Chief Dobrynin—Yuri Dobrynin! He is a friend of mine as well, Fedorov. I have shared many a good cigar with that man, and Zolkin will come to his senses as soon as I get down there and rattle the Vodka cabinet. The three of us had a nip or two in Zolkin’s office from time to time. He’ll remember.”

“I remember Tasarov now!” It was the deep voice of Viktor Samsonov. “Yes, sir. How could I forget? He was complaining to me for days—about that strange sound he claimed to hear.”

Now Fedorov looked to Rodenko, who had drifted into the conversation, a puzzled expression on his face. “What about you, Rodenko?” asked Fedorov. “Can you remember Tasarov now?”

Something about Samsonov’s comment concerning that strange noise had shaken the teacups in Rodenko’s cabinet. He blinked, looking a bit bewildered, then spoke. “The sound… Yes sir. Tasarov. He said he was hearing something, and I had him trying to work it like a possible contact. Yes! I remember now. Lieutenant Tasarov!”