Doppelganger (31 page)

Maeve nodded, with only one more question in her mind now, and it was soon on her lips. “Can we stop this? Is there anything we can do?”

“I’m not really sure, but we can damn well try.”

Chapter 27

Kirov
was at the heart of it now, they could all see that. Even if all the connections to the major variations had not yet been mapped out, it was clear that the ship was going to cause severe trauma to the continuum because of its presence at a point in time prior to its first displacement to the past. Paul thought deeply about the impending Paradox event, and knew what he believed might happen.

“One thing is certain,” he told the team members. “That ship has already displaced from this present meridian. The event has already occurred.
Kirov
was reported missing in that Norwegian Sea accident. Then it mysteriously returns in the Pacific, evading detection by a very capable US Navy, not to mention the spy satellite networks, so that means it was arriving from some point in the past. Then after the eruption of that Demon Volcano, the ship is reported as being sunk in that recent engagement with the 7th Fleet, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think the damn ship displaced again, and the Golem variation data we’ve got here is ample evidence of that.”

“Agreed,” said Robert. “So then what happens to the ship that was approaching Paradox Hour from the past?”

Paul smiled. “There aren’t two ships, Robert, only one. The ship that vanished again in the Pacific recently is the same one approaching Paradox Hour in 1941. We may speak of them as if they were separate entities, but in reality, they are one and the same.”

“Then how is there Paradox here?”

“Because in 1941, the ship is now about to enter time reserved for their initial arrival—Paradox Time. That is not possible.”

“But you just said there was only one ship, so it’s not like there’s any real collision here. We have only one entity. Why wouldn’t they just sail on into Paradox Hour and simply become the ship arriving from the future?”

“There you go again. There isn’t a separate ship arriving from the future.
They are that ship
, and in order for them to be there at all, the first arrival event
must
occur. It’s an imperative. So time will not permit what you suggest.”

“Christ, how did they end up displacing to a time before their first arrival?”

“I haven’t mapped out all the time they may have made, but it’s clear that they somehow managed to get to 1908, and then attempted to move forward again.”

“They were most likely trying to get home,” said Maeve. “Yet we still haven’t accounted for how the ship moves each time. We have several very energetic events that explain some of its shifts, including the nukes they were flinging around, but at other times we have evidence of a displacement that seems to have no direct cause.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “I’ll see if Fairchild knows anything about that, but my guess is that it has something to do with the ships nuclear reactors.”

“A lot of ships use nuclear propulsion, but they don’t just start shifting in time,” said Nordhausen.

“True, but this one does. That’s a given. We have to work from known facts.”

“I still don’t get what you said about there being only one ship,” said Kelly, finally joining the other team members after setting up his shift program for the planned mission to the Azores.

“Of course there’s only one ship,” Paul said flatly. “The last attempt they made to move forward created a real anomaly. They fell out of their displacement event prior to first arrival. Who knows why, but that caused a real nightmare, because the ship in the past cannot enter the same timeframe they occupied during first arrival, as I’ve just explained.”

“They were in 1941 for twelve days,” said Nordhausen. “Then they shifted out somewhere.”

“Right,” said Paul. Well those 12 days stand like a great stone wall, and the arrow of time is pushing the ship towards that wall from the past, yet it cannot enter that time—it’s Paradox Time, and therefore completely impregnable.”

“Do you think they know this?”

“We can’t say. Who knows, someone aboard may be trying to sort this out, but if they did, they are sure playing chicken here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Maeve.

“If they see the Paradox ahead, they should get the hell out of there before they reach that time.”

“Golems haven’t found any evidence of that attempt yet,” said Nordhausen. “But they’re still working, particularly Golem 7. It’s taking a real long time to process data sets now.”

“We need more computer power here,” said Kelly, “but for now we have to work with what we have.”

“So what if they don’t move, or can’t move again to avoid the Paradox?” asked Maeve.

“I think that would be impossible,” said Paul. “That’s the nature of Paradox. It draws a line and says it will not be possible for the ship to cross it, and it has considerable power to enforce that line—the power of annihilation.”

“You mean if the ship persists and does not displace prior to reaching the Paradox time, it could simply be destroyed? Annihilated?”

“That is very possible,” said Paul, “yet then we get a time loop. The ship arrives from the future as first cause dictates, and the whole mess repeats itself—with only one catch—the ship displacing from the future will reach a meridian in the past that has already been altered by the Heisenberg Wave that generated in 1908.”

“I see,” said Maeve. “Then the next loop is going to play out quite differently. The altered meridian the ship enters may not give rise to the same circumstances they dealt with the first time.”

“Correct,” said Paul, but the ship remains there in the past, and it has a momentum that is going to start this whole chain of events again.”

“You mean it must all play over again, their sortie to the Med, those battles with the Japanese?”

“We don’t know what may happen yet,” said Paul, “because the Golem modules can’t seem to reach a weight of opinion. I think the shadow from the Paradox is inhibiting their performance. Also, the Heisenberg Wave is at work here now, so all of that history may be rewritten, and may never occur. The initial events after first arrival may seem strangely similar to what happened the first time, but the longer this goes on, the more variation we will likely see. At this point, there is still no outcome that can be expressed with any real certainty. Yet I do know that ship cannot enter Paradox Time while approaching it from the past, any instance of Paradox Time, and now there are a good many locations on the continuum where those barriers had formed. I believe the next one will be in late 1942.”

“Right,” said Nordhausen, looking at his notes. “I have them in the Mediterranean in August of 1942. They got involved with the British Operation Pedestal.”

“But isn’t that on a different meridian?” asked Maeve.

“It’s being revised into a new prime meridian by the Heisenberg Wave,” said Paul. “That work will surely be complete for every day they live out between their initial point of entry and that next Paradox Time in August of 1942. But you say they only remained in 1941 for twelve days after the first shift.”

“Yes, then they turned up in the Med a year later, and twelve days later they vanished again and re-appeared in the Pacific off Australia, yet only a day later.”

“They won’t be able to pull that trick off again this time, because that’s Paradox Time as well. See what I mean? Their ability to move in time now is more restricted. They can’t displace to any timeframe they visited before.”

“Which means they can’t get back to 1908 and do whatever they did there to generate the Heisenberg Wave.”

“Correct, but there’s still too much haze around those events. We don’t know what they really did there, where the Pushpoint is that really caused the wave to form.”

 “Interesting,” said Nordhausen. “This is going to be very interesting.” As I read it, the first series of time displacements saw the Russians mixing it up with the Royal Navy, but later they seemed to mend fences and sailed as allies.”

“Yes,” said Paul, “I suppose the initial hours and days after the ship arrives are going to be very… interesting, just as you say.”

“Is this a predetermined loop?” asked Nordhausen. “Are they fated to make the same choices and experience the same events as before?”

“Not likely,” said Paul. “It’s not even remotely probable. The historical milieu they are entering now is completely altered by the Heisenberg Wave. Some circumstances they encounter may be similar, but otherwise, things will be very different. And remember, nothing is ever certain when you get willful agents making choices. The ship is mechanical, but the officers and crew determine what they do with it. So we may not see them make the same time displacements as before.”

“Let’s hope they’re good little choir boys this time around,” said Nordhausen. “Maybe we should plan a mission to that ship, and we can tell them to behave themselves.”

Maeve rolled her eyes. “Not bloody likely,” she said.

“Yet the British in that milieu will soon detect the arrival of this ship, assuming Paul is correct,” Robert pressed on. “Won’t they assume everything is still chummy? Perhaps if things start off on a better footing at the outset, we can avoid some of the damage that was done in that first loop.”

“That’s the only ray of hope I see here,” said Paul. “Actions they take now could serve to revise and alter the history the Golems have been digging up. In fact, we’re already starting to see that in the Golem data. Those events from 1942 in the Mediterranean are starting to lose their certainty factors. They are falling below 40% probability now, and some may never occur.”

“You mean they already started re-writing their own history?” Maeve raised an eyebrow at that.

“Apparently,” said Paul. They got to 1940 somehow, and their actions there will bear on things they already did earlier when they visited 1942. Yet there will be some events that are like load bearing beams in a house. They form a chain of causality that got them there to 1940 in the first place. So while some things change, others may be much more stubborn.”

“Sounds encouraging,” said Nordhausen. “At least we know all of this damage hasn’t solidified yet.”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” said Paul. “The backwash from the Heisenberg Wave striking Paradox Time will stir things up. In that environment, things may take longer to solidify into a new Prime Meridian. That’s probably why the wave is still stuck in the 1940s. Yet, as hopeful as that sounds, this whole situation is still very grave. There are other considerations in play here.”

He gave Maeve a furtive glance and she realized he was referring to their earlier private conversation. Other considerations… dual Heisenberg Waves, backwash, fragmentation and phasing issues, time loops, and then the possibility they may end up with a doppelganger somewhere in the mix, not to mention the grim prospect of a Grand Finality forming at the end.

“Backwash,” said Kelly. “I thought the Heisenberg Wave only moved forward, with the arrow of time.”

“This is an aberration,” said Paul. “But backward migration is a very real phenomenon in quantum physics. We have laboratory proof that quantum particles can alter their state and position in order to create a certain outcome from their past. It’s referred to as backward causality, and it’s one of the conditions prevalent when we get a backwash event like this. The whole situation is very dangerous. I gave Maeve an earful on that a while ago, but I won’t go into it again now.”

“Well, here we go again,” said Maeve. “This ship has every potential to help us now, but it could still continue to ravage all this history. We can’t assume their next intervention will be benign. Like it or not, the Russians are Free Radicals, and the senior officers, the real decision makers, may even be regarded as Prime Movers now. This is going to be a very chancy thing.”

“And there are still several loose threads we haven’t uncovered yet,” said Paul. “I want to nail down how this
Argos Fire
displaced in time, and what these keys are all about. And if I can get some answers as to how
Kirov
is making these unassisted shifts, it would help us plan some kind of countermeasure as well.”

“Yes,” said Maeve. “We still aren’t seeing the whole picture. We have no clear chain of causality between
Kirov
the ship, and the man it was named for. In fact, we still don’t know why Stalin was assassinated, or who really did it.”

“I’m hoping to find that out on this mission,” said Paul. “And I’ve got a little coinage to trade for the information they might give me, like my idea about retrieving that key that went down with the battleship
Rodney
. Fairchild may be very interested in that. The British may also be very interested to learn the location of the door that particular key opens. Remember, I’ve deciphered the coordinates.”

“First things first,” said Maeve. “Let’s get you there and back again in one piece, and then we’ll see where we stand.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “Let me get this mission to the Azores under my belt. When I get back, we’ll be in a much better position here. Come on Kelly. You have good numbers?”

“Solid,” said Kelly adjusting the fit of his Giants baseball cap.”

“Then let’s get started.”

* * *

They
wasted no time getting to the lab monitors. Kelly manned the shift module, as always. Nordhausen and Maeve took up work at the Golem module. Between the two of them, they would closely monitor the Golem fetch data stream during Paul’s mission to see if they could detect new variations. Paul was back in uniform and down through the long access corridor and elevator to the Arch. There he stood calmly in the pre-scan position, while Kelly took a double reading to generate and store his pattern signature. It was a bit like a quantum fingerprint, or DNA, describing who and what he should be when manifesting in the stream of infinite particles that defined the world.

The technology they had developed could only hold Paul safely in another time for a limited interval. Then he would have to be pulled back, though, basically, to get him to another time, the Arch was going to do something with the particles that formed his being. And to bring him back again, they simply had to cease that activity in as controlled a manner as possible. It was as Kamenski had described it to Fedorov, there were no ‘places’ in time, only activities and expressions of reality. To go anywhere in time, one had merely to learn how to dance with infinity. The Arch complex achieved that, though only Paul could really say how it worked, and he seldom ever tried. But it did work, and that was all that mattered.