Nemesis (34 page)

Berzin
knew how hard the loss would be for Kirov to take, but his was the voice of
cold hard reality, the intelligence master of the Army, and the only other man
privileged to meet with him there in the Red Archives. Someone had to tell the truth,
and so he never sugar coated anything with Kirov, giving it to him as plainly
as possible, in spite of the General Secretary’s growing frustration and
anxiety.

“Who
would have thought the Germans would drive on the Volga this early?” said Kirov
again, with a shake of his head.

“Clearly
the material has its limitations as a guide to these events,” said Berzin.
“After all… I am still alive, am I not?” He smiled, for he had read the date of
his own death there in the material, July 29, 1938, executed by Stalin on
charges of anti Soviet activity during the early purges. In effect, he owed his
life to the man standing there in the room with him now, and so he would give
him that life, an able lieutenant at Kirov’s side throughout the war.

Kirov
nodded, understanding. “So let us drink to that,” he said, listening…

The
rain… The rain falling hard enough now that Kirov could hear it on the roof, a
good steady downfall to wet the streets of Moscow, and sodden the fields for
miles in every direction.

“Is
that everything?” he asked.

“For
the moment,” said Berzin.

Part
XII

All Our
Tomorrows

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and
tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.”

—
Macbeth
(Act 5, Scene 5)

“We’ve
had no word from the ship since that last communication,”
said Tovey. “Strange that Admiral Volsky would not respond.”

“He may
not be the man you knew here,” said Wellings, the man they now knew to be
Professor Dorland. He had darkened the meeting with his predictions of imminent
doom, confirming all the fears Elena Fairchild had carried, and worse.

“A time
loop?” said Tovey. “Can you explain that again?”

“The
ship has arrived a second time,” said Dorland, “but instead of tangling with
the Royal Navy and becoming your headache, it seems to have taken another
course.”

“To
Murmansk,” said Tovey. “We’ve a pair of submarines up there, and our Commander
Bone has reported in, saying the word round the place is that a large warship put
into Kola Bay, but left soon after. It certainly isn’t ours, and the Russians
don’t have anything up there that would fit that description. So I can only
assume this is Admiral Volsky’s ship. Yet not the one we sailed with you say?
How very odd.”

“Quite
so,” said Dorland. “In fact this was only a theory, now confirmed if this is
what occurred. It will be the first instance of a time loop ever taking place,
at least that I know of, and so we are all on shaky ground here. The outcome
depends on how stable the ship’s position is in time.”

“Explain
that,” said Elena, very curious about all of this.

“Well,”
said Dorland, “the trouble started when the ship slipped to a position in time
prior to its first arrival. That is very dangerous, for anyone or anything
moving in time. It creates the possibility of Paradox, as I’ve explained.
Mother Time is a very meticulous host, and she doesn’t take lightly to anyone
barging into her living room who is already there. Usually she looks after
things by simply forbidding anything to move to a point on the continuum where
it already exists. Yet not even time is infallible. If, for any reason, this
ship slips again, to a time prior to its first appearance, then the entire loop
could replay a third time. Think of it like an old phonograph record that meets
a scratch and keeps repeating one segment of the song. Time has literally
skipped a beat in these events. If this occurs again, and continues to loop in
the same way, then time becomes stuck here, and the future cannot be defined.
You see, all our tomorrows depend on the outcome of today, just as this moment
rests atop a stack of those old records, and one that stretches back all
through history. Go to the past, and you land on one of those records. Do
something there to scratch it, break it, and you do so at your own peril.”

“For
the whole bloody stack could come tumbling down,” said Tovey. “I think I
understand what you are saying, Professor.”

“Well
what in the world do we do about this?” said Elena.

“I’m
afraid this situation is very complex now,” said Dorland. “We’ve faced thorny
interventions before, but never anything like this. In all our previous
missions, we were able to get to a point in time where it only took a little
nudge to correct the aberration. Once that was something as simple as an errant
stumble in the desert, then it took something more to correct variations. If
you will indulge me, Admiral, I can tell you that in May of 1941, your sole aim
at sea was to find and sink one German ship, the battleship
Bismarck
, at
least in the history I knew.”

“That
was just one weed in the garden,” said Tovey. “We had quite a bit more to deal
with last May. The whole bloody German fleet was out to sea, and it was only
the intervention of Admiral Volsky, and your able services, Miss Fairchild,
that allowed us to pull through. I was holding my own against the
Hindenburg
and
Bismarck
when we fought, but we were very lucky. Admiral Volsky got
to that German aircraft carrier, and that made a great deal of difference in
the outcome of that engagement.”

“I
suppose it did,” said Dorland, “yet none of it was ever supposed to happen. I
mentioned the
Bismarck
because we discovered it had survived its maiden
voyage, which has some very unforeseen effects in our day. So we endeavored to
reverse that, successfully, which is how I devised this persona of Lieutenant
Commander Wellings. I hope the real man will forgive me. In any case, we set
things right, but this situation is something quite more. The
Hindenburg
should not even exist, nor this ship we’re standing on now. How I put those
genies back in the bottle escapes me. This entire meridian is so skewed from
the history I once knew, that I cannot see how it could possibly be made whole
again. There are only two possibilities in my mind. The first is somehow
finding a way to resolve this intervention by
Kirov
.

“Resolve
it?” Tovey raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“We
would have to get back to a time before the Heisenberg Wave was generated in
1908. That is what has re-written all this history, and produced an altered
state here. That is what created this ship, Admiral, HMS
Invincible
.”

“I see…
And could we do such a thing?”

“I
suppose it could be attempted. We might work out something with the Meridian
team—an intervention of sorts, but I would need a lot more information about
what actually happened to find the Push Points.”

“Push
Points?”

“Events
that serve as triggers to set other events in motion.”

“Ah,
like the Germans having a go at Poland, which was the straw that broke the camel’s
back and got us all off to war.”

“That’s
one kind, a major Push Point that sets other dominoes falling. But they are not
always that transparent and obvious. A Push Point can be something quite
innocuous, a minor, humdrum happening that ends up having consequences no one
could foresee. This sort can be very difficult to identify, and unless we do
so, no intervention can really succeed. We have to know what the real Push
Points were.”

“And
what about these keys?” asked Tovey. “Do they have something to do with all
this?”

“It
would seem so,” said Elena. “One brought me and my ship here at a most
opportune time.”

“Yes,”
said Dorland, “the keys. That is another part of the puzzle that we must figure
out. What do these keys have to do with all of this?”

“I’ve a
man who is quite good with puzzles,” said Tovey. “Our Mister Alan Turing.”

Dorland
smiled. “Yes, the father of the computers we used to send me here! Well, I’d
welcome any help we can get, Admiral. Yet it would seem that our first move
would be to try and round all these keys up. It’s clear they correspond to
rifts in time, perhaps naturally occurring rifts, though we do not know this
yet. Who knows how they occurred? In any case, if these keys were manufactured
in the future, then they must bear on all of this somehow, which is why I was
so set on retrieving the key aboard
Rodney
. We’ll just have to look for
it somewhere else now. I’ve told you where I think the rift it is associated
with exists, Saint Michael’s Cave, Gibraltar.”

“Yes,”
said Tovey, and the Germans have the Rock now. Damn inconvenient. Well, how do
you propose we proceed?”

“Look
for the key somewhere else, of course,” said Dorland. “It would have to be
retrieved before it met its fate on the
Rodney
. We know it was embedded
in the Selene Horse, and the whereabouts of that artifact is very easy to
chart. I’ll put my team on this, and we’ll see what we can work out.”

“I
believe that key is essential to this whole business,” said Elena. “In fact, I
think the key I was given was merely meant to enable my appearance here, with
Argos
Fire
, for the sole purpose of retrieving that key.”

“Perhaps
so,” said the Professor, “though I would certainly like to know who set that
mission up.”

Now
Elena pointed, right at Admiral Tovey. “He did, or so I’m led to believe by the
note I found in the box I retrieved from Delphi.”

Paul
nodded, thinking. “I can see by the look on your face, Admiral, that you remain
oblivious of any involvement. But I must tell you that this could have been accomplished
by some other version of yourself, on some other Meridian. In fact, I believe
it was the John Tovey from the Meridian I came from. Who knows what he
eventually learned about all of this, or how he learned it. But apparently you
came to know a good deal more than you know now.”

“Apparently,”
said Tovey with a shrug. “Well it would be nice if that other fellow—my
doppelganger—well it would be nice if he would be so kind as to drop me a line
and fill me in.” He folded his arms.

Dorland
smiled. “I once tried the very same thing…” He stopped, his eyes registering
the surprise of some sudden realization. “Yes… Information. But I’m not sure if
it would even be possible at this point….” He seemed to be talking to himself.

“What
do you mean?” asked Elena.

Paul
took a deep breath. “The second option, assuming we cannot resolve
Kirov’s
intervention here, would be to try and to prevent its first coming altogether.
That ship would have to be prevented from ever arriving here in the past. The
only way that could be done, would be in our time, the year 2021. That time
still exists, because at the moment, the Heisenberg Wave is stuck here. The
ship is the Prime Mover, and the men aboard it. As long as these Primes remain
at large in the past, Time cannot resolve how the decades following their
interventions play out. And so, when I leave you shortly, as I must, I will be
returning to the year 2021, the Meridian that
Kirov
originally came
from. In fact, that is the only future anyone here can reliably reach now—the
time when we look over our shoulder and there
was
no
Hindenburg
in the history of WWII, and no HMS
Invincible
. There is no way anyone
could reach a future arising from these events, because
Kirov
is still
here, and nothing has been resolved. That future cannot be written until this
does
resolve, and if it fails to do so, that future may never be written at all.
This is the danger.”

“I
don’t understand,” said Tovey. “You say you can leave us now and safely reach
your own time in the future again, but no future can arise from these events?”

“Correct.
Not until this intervention by
Kirov
comes to some resolution. As to my
future, and yours Miss Fairchild, as you came from the same Meridian I did,
think of it all like a sand castle built well up near the high tide line on a
beach. That ship appeared here once before, and those file boxes in your
archives are the tracks on the beach it left as it passed, down near the
encroaching waves. Now the tide is coming in. A new Heisenberg Wave is being
generated by this second coming, and it is wiping those tracks clean. As it
moves forward, it rewrites all this history, second by second, minute by
minute, hour by hour to the days and years and decades yet to come.

“Tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” said Tovey, “Creeps in this petty pace from day
to day, To the last syllable of recorded time…”

“Yes,”
said Dorland. “It is doing so with this agonizing, creeping slowness now, with
every tick of that clock. But if this resolves, then that Heisenberg Wave
really gets moving. It becomes a tsunami, and cascades forward in an instant to
change everything at once. It will wipe that future I’m returning to away as
well. Who knows… I might never develop my theory of time travel, or build the
Meridian project that allows me to be here with you at this moment. Everything
is at stake now, not just a future that might arise from this time, but all our
tomorrows. Understand?”

“So,”
said Elena, “if this world survives in its present altered state, then our
future must be sacrificed. And if we do find some way to resolve the damage
caused by the coming of this ship, then it is Admiral Tovey’s world—this
meridian, that is sacrificed. It seems we cannot prevent catastrophic change no
matter what we do. At least it will happen slowly, second by second, as you
say.”

“At the
moment, that seems to be the case.” Yet Dorland had a warning in his eyes. “The
Heisenberg Wave from 1908 has struck Paradox, and split in two. This is that
overlapping time of great disturbance where the two waves interfere with each
other behind the Paradox—Chaos Time. Eventually they will reform into one
forward moving wave, and the outcome of events taking place now, particularly
those involving Prime Movers, will determine the work of that new, unified
wave. Yes, it may be moving with that creeping slowness now, for the ship is
still here, as you and your ship are still here, Miss Fairchild. But that may
not always be the case—this slow progression of change. Things could slip, and
very suddenly, like an earthquake.”

“How
so?” asked Elena, the fear in her eyes obvious.

“The
persistence of this altered state is very tentative. It arose because of events
that occurred in 1908, but events that led to that intervention have their
origins here, in the 1940s—
but not on this meridian
. All that evidence
discovered in those file boxes dated to 1942… Well, none of that is likely to
happen now, at least not on this altered meridian, which figures to become the
new Prime Meridian if these events progress. Who knows how this retelling of
that time will play out? In fact, I would think the viability of those reports
you filed is in jeopardy now. They should not be able to persist when events
here reach the time they purport to describe.
They began with the first coming of the ship, but now those
events are being revised, re-written, and that process may soon alter or
eliminate a key event or lever.”