John Schettler: Devil's Garden

Volsky gave him a wide eyed look and picked up his desk phone, quickly punching line one. “Admiral Volsky,” he said.

“Admiral! This is Fedorov. Good to hear your voice, sir.”

“Fedorov…Just a moment…” He pushed the speakerphone so that Kamenski could listen in. “There now. Where are you, Fedorov?”

“I am aboard Anatoly Alexandrov in the Caspian, sir.”

“Thank God! Dobrynin got through to you. That is good news. And what of your mission, Fedorov? Did you find Orlov?”

“We did sir, and we have him aboard. It was a very long journey, and now we are home.”

“And the Mi-26? Did it get safely away to the coast with those control rods?”

“No sir. I was forced to cancel that mission. We needed to use the helicopter to find Orlov. It’s a long story, Admiral, but I will explain it to you as soon as I get there.”

“Then Kirov is still trapped in 1945? I have some evidence it may have been destroyed there.”

“No sir… The ship is not in 1945. There was another incident. It’s Karpov, sir. He’s back to the same mindset as before. He was thinking to do something dramatic, something spectacular.”

“Yes, I have been discussing that with someone here, yet the outcome is not yet clear to us.”

“I can tell you that Kirov shifted again in time, sir. There must have been another detonation to cause it, just like the first one. And you know what that means…”

“Yes, yes, Karpov resorted to nuclear weapons. We have evidence of that as well. You were correct, Mister Fedorov. The history is not set in stone. It is still changing.”

“Yes, sir. I thought it was Orlov all along, but it was Karpov. He shifted further back in time. The ship is now trapped in 1908!”

“What? 1908? This is a most shocking development, Fedorov. How did you learn this?”

“Because I have been there too, sir. I will tell you about it when I arrive, but first I must tell you that we were able to reach Karpov on shortwave and we proposed your mission to him. He put it to the crew and they voted to stay where they were!”

“What? That’s impossible? How could they do this?”

“I believe the Captain has persuaded them that they are better off there than they would be in attempting to return here. I can half understand that. After all, there was no way we could predict what would happen if he ever did try to use those other control rods you found. What an amazing development!”

“But what now, Fedorov? The ship is marooned in 1908?”

“At the moment I have a very pressing need for two things, Admiral. First I need priority orders for a fast cargo lift from Kaspiysk to Vladivostok. We will bring the control rods with us.”

“I can cut that order immediately, Captain.”

“Good, sir. Then I need a ship-somewhere in the Pacific. I will tell you why when I get there. Can you arrange it?”

“Yes, I suppose I can, Fedorov…” Volsky thought on that a moment, wondering what Fedorov was thinking.

“We will talk soon, Admiral. But trust me, I have a plan. Fedorov Over and out.”

Kamenski smiled as the Admiral hung up the telephone. “An enterprising young man. 1908? That is very interesting, but now the more I think of it, the more it begins to make sense to me. 1908… You know that was the year of the Tunguska event.”

“How could that effect the ship?” Volsky saw the puzzle pieces, but he could not yet put them together in his mind.

“Have you ever had a persistent gopher or a mole in your nice front yard or garden, Admiral?”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“They are very clever animals, thankfully short lived, but very clever. If one gets well established in your garden it become a little devil there, and it will eat the roots of everything growing, killing off the lawn, the flowers, and anything else. Believe me, I have had more than one battle with these creatures in my garden. They dig tunnels to make their entry, then a main tunnel where they create a nest, food cache, and many side tunnels for escape hatches. You can try everything to root them out, and fail-water, gas, traps. They are very clever and persistent little devils.”

“Mister Kamenski. Please make sense!”

“Forgive me, Admiral, but bear with me here. You see, a gopher will dig all these little tunnels in the ground, and at varying depths. I tried to dig down into one to set good traps, only to find, by chance, that the rascal had an even deeper network. That is what may be happening here. Kirov fell through a gopher hole in time when that first detonation occurred aboard Orel . That sent you down the hole to 1941, and the ship had a very hard time trying to climb back out. You dug around a good bit of history in the process, and every time you popped your gopher heads up out of the hole all you saw was a dead and barren garden, never realizing it was your own handiwork that killed everything off. Well there are deeper holes, in that garden, Admiral, and I think Kirov just found one that sent it sliding back to 1908! Who knows how these holes got there? Perhaps whatever came out of the darkness of space that day in late June of 1908 was the real devil in the garden. It may have created all these holes in time with that impact; holes that remain to this day.”

“You are speaking of the Tunguska event again?”

“Yes. Now I begin to see the connection. As fate would have it, we found materials for our control rods in the ejecta of the Tunguska event. Stick them into a nuclear reactor and they become nice little spades that cut through the soil of time rather well, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I see…” Volsky finally had a handle on the problem now.

“Yes, and we have been digging in the devil’s garden, Admiral, like a mole or vole will sometimes come along and re-colonize abandoned gopher holes. Believe me, I have been gardening for a very long time. From what your Mister Fedorov tells me, we still have a mole down there in your Mister Karpov. There is still a devil loose in the garden.”

“Yes, and I can just hear Fedorov now. He will tell me that in 1908 Karpov could cause so much damage to the course of events that the history would be completely unrecognizable.”

“Very true, Admiral. With a ship like Kirov he could do a good deal of harm, and very quickly. Nothing could oppose him, at least at sea. How his mischief might affect events on land remains to be seen, and you and I just may be able to read about it soon.”

“Yes, Kamenski! Why don’t you consult those references you mentioned to me earlier. Can’t we find out the end of this tale now? Won’t it all be history we can read in any library?”

“Perhaps…and then again perhaps not. Remember when I told you why you and I recalled the old history, but no one else?”

“Yes. You said it was because we have traveled in time.”

“A pair of funny looking little gophers, you and I.” Kamenski smiled. “Well, I talked about that dead space in the course of events, like the eye of a hurricane where all is still and calm. Can you feel it, Admiral? Here we sit, deep underground in our own little gopher hole in this reinforced bunker, and at the edge of an event that could prove to be the destruction of all humanity. Here we sit, waiting for the ICBMs. This war has run out for nine long days, and now it is about to really begin. Unfortunately the beginning and the end are one and the same when it comes to ICBMs. It is my guess that others like us have also gone into their little holes, just as we have, and some of them may be holes in time as well as space.”

“Others?”

“We are not the only ones who have learned about some of the things we have been discussing here, Admiral. Yes, there are others, and they may have ways of digging in the garden of fate as well. But here we sit, you and I, and the world seems breathless. We can hear the clock ticking out the last moments of the time that may be left to us, and that sound grows ever louder in our minds and souls. At any minute the alarm clock may go off, and then what? This we do not know. But at this moment I think all fate and time is waiting for something that will prove to be the decisive element in all of this.”