Doppelganger (27 page)

Yet the world he had been sailing in was an altered state of affairs. The ship they had just attacked had never put to sea. Was this the same ship he had led through the Mediterranean, and against the Japanese? He knew how he could find out, with a few questions of his own.

“Doctor, is there any damage to the ship?”

“Nothing I am aware of,” said Zolkin. “That was a fairly good jolt we took, and it rattled my teacups, but nothing broke.”

“Then all is well—even the reserve command citadel?” He gave Zolkin a close look, for he wanted to see if he knew about the damage there, as he clearly should.”

“Reserve citadel? Yazov was in there today for system checks. It was all he could talk about while he was in here earlier. He had a bout of nausea as well.”

“He was working on the equipment in the reserve citadel?” said Fedorov slowly.

“Isn’t that where he spends his time when he’s not on the bridge relieving Rodenko? You know the officer rotations better than I do, Fedorov.”

“Of course,” said Fedorov. “Yazov is a good man.”

“Tell me,” said Zolkin. “Who is this Kamenski you asked me about earlier?”

Fedorov felt that reflexive caution again, and thought he had better not say anything more about the Director.

“Oh, just a
matoc
from the dock service crews in Severomorsk.”

“Ah, than that explains why I did not know the man. He stayed there, yes? At Severomorsk?”

“Apparently,” said Fedorov, suddenly hearing the sound of a helicopter revving up for takeoff. Zolkin took the opportunity to ask him about it, still casually questioning him to gauge his situational awareness.

“Now what are they doing?”

“A KA-40,” said Fedorov, as the sound of the engine was unmistakable.

“Ah yes,” said Zolkin. “The Big Blue Pig. I flew in on that one before we left Severomorsk. Frankly, I like it better than the other one they just sent up, what is it called?”

“The KA-226? You say they just operated with that helo?”

“I believe you were indisposed at the time, but yes, that is the one. I don’t care for it. Yes, it’s much newer, sleek and fast, but I rather like the Big Blue Pig myself. Maybe I’m just getting old.” Zolkin smiled.

Fedorov took a deep breath when he heard that, knowing his blood pressure was not being helped by the realization that was now solidifying all around him, moment by moment.
This was not the same ship!
This was not the same
Kirov
he had been Captain of, promoted up by Admiral Volsky after Karpov’s failed mutiny. We lost the KA-226 long ago, and even Zolkin would know that by now. And the reserve command citadel was made a smoking wreck by a Japanese pilot. The only thing Yazov could have done there was stack up supplies, as that’s all we could use the space for.
This was not the same ship!
How was this possible?

I’m the same man I was, he thought, in spite of the uniform. There is simply no way I could have dreamed up everything I experienced. It’s all clear in my mind, as if it happened yesterday. We were steaming with HMS
Invincible
, set to engage the German battlefleet. Then everything seemed to come apart, the ship itself experiencing odd warping, men missing, and Lenkov, poor Lenkov. Even the men left behind intact after our sudden disappearance were beset with a debilitating memory loss, but that is not the case for me now. I can remember everything, every missile fired, the anguish and torment of every decision we had to make.

He remembered it all, the hunt for Orlov, that strange event on the back stairway of Ilanskiy, Sergei Kirov, and the massive contamination he had introduced into the world with his own errant whisper in that man’s ear. It was real, by god. No. It was not something he could have dreamed up in a thousand years. It all
happened
, but even as he asserted that, he had the sinking feeling that no one else on this ship would know any of this.

Then one more memory emerged from the montage he was playing in his mind—Turing’s watch! It had been found in that file box, though Tovey reported that Turing claimed it went missing some time before that. He knew there was no way that he could have placed the watch into that file box—at least not in the world where he was standing, not in those horribly altered states they were just sailing through. It came from another world, another meridian of time, a remnant from that first sortie they had made to the Med. And here he was, plucked out of that altered history he had been sailing in, and set down here aboard the ship that first started this journey.

My god… where were they? Were they in the Norwegian Sea, or still in the Atlantic where they had last disappeared? I’m the navigator here, he thought. I’m supposed to know. It’s a good thing I was shocked speechless when I saw Karpov on the bridge, because if I had blurted out any of this, than Zolkin would probably be certifying me as insane by now.

Something has happened. Time has played some cruel trick on us. We must have fallen out of the shift and into some confounding loop in the tormented fabric of time. This whole thing was twisted so badly that it has bent back upon itself, and here I am. This is the ship that just left Severomorsk!

Now he suddenly recalled Zolkin mentioning an accident, that jolt the ship had taken, rattling his teacups. I thought he was referring to the shift we initiated, but now I realize it could be the accident aboard
Orel
. Yes, that was the first cause. That’s what lit up Rod-25 like a sparkler and sent us reeling through time. But if that is the case…

His mind was doing the reeling now, and with one throbbing question. Did any of what I remember even happen? Are we sitting there in the Norwegian Sea, just moments after that first time shift sent us back to 1941—July 28, 1941—
Paradox Hour.
If that is so, what happened to the other ship? What happened to Volsky, and Rodenko, and Nikolin and all the rest? Time caught up two slippery fish in the same net, and she only had room in her boat for one. Did she simply throw the other one back? Was that ship and crew simply tossed away into oblivion, or is it still out there, sailing in that oppressive Atlantic fog? Would that mean that Doctor Zolkin has a double out there somewhere, a doppelganger sailing on that other ship? And if the man I saw on the bridge was Vladimir Karpov, what about the other man in Siberia? Were there two Karpov’s now—two of every crewman on this ship that still survived in the ordeal we went through?

He remembered the logic he had settled on before—both ships could never occupy the same space, but two objects could easily occupy the same time—just not the same
spacetime
. Is that what had just happened here? Did this ship come through to 1941 from the future, just as I feared, even as the ship I was on came to this same moment from the past? If this was happening, then was I simply moved here, like Alan Turing’s watch? And what about the other Fedorov, the man I was just hours ago, speaking with Admiral Volsky on the bridge as we decided to make that last shift with the reserve control rod? Did the other Fedorov vanish, just like Kamenski had vanished, or do I have a doppelganger out there as well?

No he thought. I am that man. I know I am. I’m the man who watched the sea red with fire when
Yamato
burned. That memory is etched in my mind forever.
I’m that man!

Chapter 24

Fedorov
had a very long time to consider his situation as he rested in his quarters, though his mind was so beset with questions that sleep did not come easily. He passed moments of deep sadness, realizing that the men he had known were gone now, the Admiral, the bridge crew, every man on the ship. Oh, they were still here, all around him, yet they were not the same. There was an innocence about them, and unknowing. At this very moment, they did not even know what had happened to them. They were here and gone all at once, and his mind and heart were shaken as he remembered that last speech the Admiral had given to the crew, and the sound of their voices cheering, singing, celebrating that last moment just before they shifted into oblivion.

And so it ended there, he thought with grim finality, even as it begins again here. A story never really ends, as a river never ends. It just flows on and on, turns round another wide bend, curls back on itself. Some leave it to find a longed for shore or the promise of the sea, others come to it beginning a journey they can never really see the end of. That was life. We were here, and hearty travelers all, and then gone. Yet here he was again, strangely changed, yet in the eyes of those all around him, he was still just Fedorov. Here he was, still aboard this old familiar ship, and everything in his quarters looked the same.

After he was finally released from sick bay, he made a point of taking a walk about the ship before he retired, almost as if he thought he might suddenly find it back the way it was, bruised, yet unbowed by every circumstance and trial they had faced.

The first thing he did was to go to the reserve command citadel. That was the place that had been demolished in the Pacific when a Japanese plane came careening down on the ship there. Only the heavy 200mm armored roof, and then the equally well armored floor, prevented the plane from penetrating deeper into the ship. Yet the battle bridge, as they called it, had been completely demolished, and everything there had been destroyed.

Before they returned to Vladivostok, they cleaned the space up, painted over the fire and smoke damage, and then covered the whole thing with a tarp. Once in port, the roof was sealed off with some new armor plating, but restoring the equipment there was impossible during their short stay in the Golden Horn Harbor.

Fedorov wanted to see the place again with his own eyes, and when he arrived there, finding it all in perfect working condition, completely undamaged, he knew his premise was now proven. The impossible had happened again. This was the ship they had started this whole journey on, and not the one he had commanded only hours before that last attempted shift.

Some sort of strange time loop was in effect here. Either time had made a choice as to which ship she would allow in this meridian, or
both
ships were here. The implications of that last possibility had already shaken him, for it would mean that everyone here might have a duplicate self out there somewhere, on that battered and weathered ship he had recently commanded. Yet he knew in his bones, with no doubt whatsoever, that he was the man from the ship that had fought
Yamato
, the ship that had been boldly engaging a German battlefleet just before they vanished into the grey fog of Paradox. He had taken the good counsel of Admiral Tovey, and given the same, and he had stood with restrained awe beside Churchill in the desert oasis of Siwa.

So now I wear this old Lieutenant’s uniform, and not the Captain’s hat I earned through all those harrowing hours at sea. But I am not that younger officer, naive and unknowing. I remember everything we did, every experience. So how did I get here? Was I moved here during the shift, just as Alan Turing’s watch was moved to that file box? If that is so, what happened to the other Fedorov, the man I replaced here? Is he gone forever so that I might remain. Have I stolen away his innocence, his astonishment, the delight in his eyes when he first saw that Fairy Fulmar overfly the ship?

If the old ship is still out there somewhere, then they are probably realizing I am gone. From their perspective, I was just another crewman who failed to shift properly, just like Orlov and Tasarov. I wonder… Did time move them here as well? Is that where the missing men all went—to this new ship? No. Orlov gave no indication he knew anything at all. He was his old grumpy self, ordering me about like a schoolboy on the bridge. I knew that felt odd when it happened, but I was so relieved to see him there that I overlooked it. Then the real shock came—Karpov.

How could this have happened?

He thought deeply about it, unable to sort through the Paradox, and then a possible solution suddenly occurred to him as he lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It was born of his own tortuous logic when he had been trying to determine what might happen to the ship. He reasoned that the very existence of the ship, its design and building, rested on a long series of events that had been stored away in the icebox of the Cold War between Russia and the West.

I just could not see how everything would turn out the same, he thought, particularly with all the damage we were seeing in the history. With Russia fragmented into three warring states, how would events lead to the building of this ship, and to that very same mission to the Norwegian Sea to conduct live fire exercises? How could that same accident aboard
Orel
trigger everything as it did—the first cause. It seems so improbable that it simply could not happen. And yet… that same logic also told him that for him to be there in the past worrying about all of this,
Kirov
had to begin this journey somehow. That was an imperative. It
had
to happen, yet he could see no way it could repeat itself now.

The evidence of his own eyes told him differently. Here he was, Lieutenant Anton Fedorov, posted as Chief Navigator on the ship. It had happened again, and now he thought he knew why. The changes to the history were going to affect the future, that much was certain. Yet he had no idea how long it took for the damage to migrate forward.

I was assuming that when we change something in the past, the effects it might have on the future occur immediately. Maybe that was true of some things. Admiral Volsky had no trouble getting that letter I put in the storage locker at the Naval Logistics Building—except when Volkov intercepted it. Yet I wrote it in the past, and because that locker remained undisturbed for all those years, it turned up in 2021, almost immediately. Perhaps there were no other events in that chain of causality that could have interfered with it.

He shook his head. What about the Japanese? They occupied all of Vladivostok. Wouldn’t that have interfered with the survival of that letter? No. At that point, Karpov had not yet even gone to 1908, so the letter got through. The locker proved to be a safe means of transmitting the information from the past to the future. I found that journal Orlov wrote that put me on his trail, and Kamenski had produced photos of
Kirov
in the past, and of
Orlan
in 1945. He turned up evidence of these events with no problem, but does that always happen? Do the changes migrate forward immediately?