John Schettler - 1943

Now Gromyko had the whole thing tossed into his lap—the decision concerning the fate of another Kirov—not the man, but the ship. Kamenski had riveted that home….

“For now,” he told him, “we’ll start with the things we have control over—the men, the ship. We start with Kirov .”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“Go back and get them out,” said Kamenski with a smile.

“Director, haven’t we tried that once already? Look what happened!”

“Yes, that’s a point well taken. We still have to try, because if we don’t…” Kamenski stopped, set his pipe down, and rubbed his eyes. “If we don’t, Mister Gromyko, then this is all going to unravel, this entire present moment I’ve called home for so long. It all depends on things that happened in the 1940s. Don’t you see? Well, they aren’t happening—at least not as they were supposed to. Things are changing, and we’re responsible. Never mind about trying to stop the war that is still on our doorstep here. Now it’s about something much more. If we don’t get back there and put a stop to all this, then everything, and I mean everything, is going to come flying apart. How did that poet put it? Yes… Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming!”

He looked at Gromyko now, and in his eyes there was a profound sadness, and a vast silence of finality. “That’s what caused it, the second coming of that ship to 1941. It created a loop, and if that doesn’t resolve properly there, if anything should happen to displace that ship to a moment prior to the time of its first arrival, then we face down Paradox yet again. Do this once, and you court a good deal of trouble, just as we experienced it. Do it twice… Desolation, Mister Gromyko, that is what we are facing now, complete and utter annihilation. The cold frost of infinity is out there, and it’s a savage end, a futile end to the whole damn world. And do you know why? The second coming, that’s why. Kirov went back, and now it’s gone back a second time. Understand? If that happens again, and again, and again… See what I mean? The changes are already starting to ripple forward in time. We don’t notice them yet, but I can tell. They may seem insignificant—different missiles for your submarine and all. That doesn’t seem all that earth shaking, but I assure you, it is only the beginning.”

“You mean if we don’t get them back here safely…”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The whole damn loop will spin out again, and each time it does, the changes become more and more catastrophic. Try getting a future like this one sorted out under those circumstances. Don’t you see? Normally it takes… time for the variations to ripple forward to the future. But soon the changes will become so pronounced that they will reach this time, even before events have concluded in the past. That’s Mother Time’s problem now, and it’s also our problem. We started it, and so we’ll simply have to finish it.”

“But wait a moment… Didn’t you say this was, well, a different world, a different meridian of time here. Is Kirov’s intervention in your history recorded here? Could I read about it in a history book in your library?”

“Very astute,” said Kamenski. “The answer to your last question is no—there is no mention of any of those events in the history of this timeline. But that hardly matters. You see, this isn’t the Prime Meridian. It’s just one of many possible alternative Meridians that could arise from events happening in the Prime Meridian. That’s where Kirov is now, but the Prime is badly warped, bent out of shape, contaminated by all those missiles, and yes, nuclear bombs as well. It will change things, Mister Gromyko, and rather dramatically. It will change the fate of each and every possible meridian arising from those events—including this one. Understand? Kirov sits on the trunk of the tree, this is just one of the branches. But if you cut through that trunk, they all go down together. That’s what Kirov is doing—cutting through the Prime Meridian like a buzz saw. So we have to go back, get them out, and that failing….”

He gave Gromyko those sad empty eyes again.

“We have to kill them,” said the Captain, understanding the darker side of the mission Kamenski was handing him now. “Kill Kirov, the ship—there won’t be any magic tricks with a control rod this time. That’s the only way we can really be certain this loop you speak of could not repeat—kill the ship and crew. That’s why you want to load all those nice new missiles onto my boat.”

“Captain, as I said, you are a very astute man.”

A very astute man…. Gromyko smiled to himself. Yes, this was the trunk of the tree now. This was the new Prime Meridian, not the world he first came from, and not the world he returned to, finding Kamenski waiting for him there with this mission. This was the Prime, and it was now his mission to decide whether it would stand, or whether it would fall, and that all depended on the life or death of that ship, Kirov .

At least I don’t bear the burden alone, he thought. Time shuffled the deck on me somehow, and I have an Ace in my hand this time—Admiral Volsky. It will be his choice, won’t it…. But what if he decides that Kirov must live? Then what?

Something told him this mission had many dark corners to get around before it would ever end. Here he was, and with Admiral Volsky at his side, and now they had to decide what to do.

“So then,” said Gromyko. “What is our plan?”

He was sitting with Admiral Volsky in his cabin, a private meeting so none of the other officers and crew might overhear. Kamenski had briefed them both when they departed, yet Gromyko was still bothered by the jumble of memories in his head. Who was he now? He clearly remembered the secret rendezvous when the Admiral and Fedorov first came aboard, sneaking in on a submersible as his sub remained hidden in the still dark waters beneath the Admiral Kuznetsov.

He had been at war in 2021, his submarine already clashing with the Americans when Karpov took Kirov and the Red Banner Pacific Fleet out. Then Kirov vanished with the unexpected eruption of the Demon Volcano, and he had taken on these two other officers, hearing their impossible tale as to where the ship had turned up. It wasn’t dead as many in the fleet first thought. That volcano had sent Karpov’s flotilla careening into the past, and now Gromyko was to take his boat back and look for it. But how?

That was when he learned of the control rod they had brought aboard, and its amazing effects. He could still recall how hard it had been to internalize all of that, get his mind around what was happening and come to accept it. In time, the mind could embrace every impossible thing. He had seen the reality of the past, and used the power of his boat to fight there.

Then, while caught up in yet another duel at sea in the Atlantic, they had encountered a most unexpected challenger. Chernov had been at his station, as always, when he spoke those most unwelcome words.

“Con…. Undersea contact. Possible submarine…”

Gromyko turned, a question in his eyes. “An uninvited guest,” he said. “German U-boat?”

There was a moment’s hesitation as Chernov continued to toggle switches on the module he had been using to process the signal. “Sir… This sounds like a British sub.” His voice carried a note of alarm that surprised Gromyko, and he never liked surprises. “British? We were not informed they had anything out here.”