John Schettler - Altered States

“We owe you a great deal, my friend. I have learned that it was you who gave Fedorov your ear when we were in the Atlantic and Karpov dismissed him from the bridge. You told him to return here for his prescription at 18:00 hours, and it was that happenstance that allowed us to get out of Karpov’s little trap here.”

“Ah, yes, I had forgotten that.”

“So you see, if not for your open heart, siding with Fedorov that day, we may have never been able to take back the ship.”

“Oh I think that the crew would have sided with you in the end, Leonid. Don’t make me out to be a hero or saint. I have too many sins on my soul for either.”

“Yet it was a matter of seconds in the balance there, and you were the lever on all of that. Then it all comes full circle and Karpov is again on the bridge ready to destroy the entire Japanese Navy in 1908-until you showed up.”

“Now, now-”

“Yes, Dmitri, I will call you a hero. You stepped onto the bridge and faced Karpov down, the first good man to stand up and do something.”

“Yes, and I might have died for it if his aim had been better.”

“That said, fate saw you at the heart of both these events, and so your part in all this was very significant. Would Samsonov have stood up as he did without your words, or seeing what had happened to you? All I can do is thank you for what you did.”

“Well I should have acted sooner. Rodenko came to me earlier with his reservations about what the Captain was doing. I told him I would back him up if need be, but I left the matter with him. In all truth, Leonid, I believed we were marooned in 1908 just as we all did. That control rod was not on the ship and I could see no volcanoes about, so there we were, and likely to remain there unless Karpov used another nuclear weapon. Still, I believed Rodenko should make the decision as Starpom . I wanted to give him that choice first.”

“That was wise, Dmitri. Well…what do I do? Should I go forward with this plan, with the risk that we will be separated from Kazan?”

“What else is to be done?”

Volsky hesitated, thinking, his eyes searching, head inclined as if he were listening to something far away. “I know what Karpov was trying to do,” he said at last. “He tried to argue it briefly when I called with the order to stand down here. The man believed he had the power to prevent the rise of the Japanese Empire that eventually led to the war in the Pacific. Fedorov tells me that war killed twenty million people, so this is a hard nut to chew on. I am sitting here with Kirov and Kazan . If we thought we were powerful before, with are twice as strong now. I realize that with these two ships I could do what Karpov was trying to accomplish. We now believe it is June of 1940. That means the Japanese have not yet launched their war plan, but I realized that, if I so desired it, I could stop them right here. I could make sure no Japanese troop ships ever reach their destinations, and there is nothing they could do to oppose me with the power at my command.”

“So now the devil sits on your shoulder,” said Zolkin. “Yes, I suppose you could do something, but it would mean you would have to sink quite a few ships and kill thousands of more in the process.”

“To save millions,” said Volsky. “Is that why we are here, I wondered? Is that why Rod-25 delivered us to this time and place?”

“Leonid…This same bird had been on our plate ever since that first accident with Orel . It has always been a question of whether we should intervene or not to shape the days ahead. Fedorov, god bless him, was trying to put the eggs back in the nest, but I think it is far too late for that now. Save twenty million lives? Yes, it sounds like a noble cause. But we never fought with any of that in mind. I think we just fought to save our own lives, as any man would.”

Volsky nodded. “I said as much to the men on the bridge. We were here, then one thing led to another. War is war, so I am not surprised that the moment we were discovered the other side started taking shots at us. This will happen again unless-”

“Unless you go find your island, eh?”

“I suppose so. Yes, we need some mysterious island where I can hide Kirov and Kazan away from the woes of the world. I thought I had cut a deal with that British Admiral once, then we vanished again. It was Rod-25, of course, but we did not know that at the time.”

“Well, do not waste your time looking for that, my friend.” Zolkin shook his head now. “No matter where we go, the world will find us. We will stick out like a loose thread in a well hemmed dress. Yes, it will be obvious to anyone who encounters us that time has slipped a stitch. We can jump from one place to another with these control rods, but one day they will fail us, and leave us somewhere, and on that day we decide all this, for good or for ill. Now, however, if you can take us forward to our own time where we belong, then I think you must try.”

“Of course….But I am not so sure that world will be the same, Dmitri. Fedorov has been hearing odd things on the radio here. He gathers that the history between 1908 and this time has played out quite differently.”

“Oh? How so?”

“The revolution seems to have torn Russia apart. In the last hour he has heard radio transmissions from Russia and they call themselves the Soviet Siberian State. There was something about a war being fought on the Volga.”

“On the Volga? Then the Germans have already invaded Russia?”

“We do not know yet. The news has been spotty. I have him trying to find a BBC broadcast now. In any case, I am thinking that if the china is cracked this badly here, what will the plate look like in another eighty-one years?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Yes, and suppose we do try to go home, but it has happened that events were changed so radically that this ship was never built! After all, the original Kirov class missile cruisers were a product of the Cold War. That rests on the outcome of this war, World War Two, so if things change here…”

“I see what you mean. This is very puzzling, Leonid.”

“Fedorov thinks that our very presence here is proof that Kirov is built, but Mister Kamenski has plopped another fish into the soup. He has intimated that this world, the air we breathe at this moment, may be a completely different meridian of time-an altered reality that is the product of all our meddling. In that case then we have shifted farther away from home than ever before, even if we are closer to 2021 than we were in 1908. If we have slipped through some indefinable barrier and entered a new reality here and the future that progresses from this point may not be the same as that which built this ship.…Well it is frightening to think of this.”

Zolkin had a grave look on his face. “I think we have been doing this all along,” he said. “Remember when we first reached Vladivostok and Volkov got hold of that list of casualties?”

“Yes, I have discussed this with Fedorov and Kamenski. We found out those men were never born!”

“True, but there were other cases, Leonid. Remember the suicide we had aboard ship after we docked? Voloshin, that was the man’s name. He had come to me with bad dreams after that nightmare when the Japanese ship went right through us while we were shifting.”

“Yes, I think we all had nightmares after that.”

“So I gave the man some pills to calm his nerves, but he hung himself-and not because of bad dreams. It seems he and his wife had moved to Vladivostok two weeks before we left Severomorsk for those live fire exercises. As soon as we reached port he and a few other crewmen went to the apartment, but now this is the strange thing-they said they could not find it! All the addresses on the street were changed and the building was not even there! At first I thought the men had simply gone to the wrong address, but they seemed adamant. The city was not the same. So I think we have been breathing the air of a different reality each time we have shifted. This is what I believe.”