Nemesis (35 page)

“What
would that do?” asked Elena.

“What
would it do? It would produce sudden, catastrophic change, that’s what it would
do. The ship went south after it first appeared here, yet this time it has
turned north. That has already avoided the initial point of divergence that
began to alter the history, and so events arising from that intervention are
now in jeopardy—this whole altered state is very fragile, completely exposed to
the possibility of a radical transformation.”

Tovey
scratched his head. “You mean to say things in
this
world could change?
I might wake up tomorrow and find myself on another ship—not this one, which
you claim was never supposed to have been built?”

“That’s
about the size of it. You see, it isn’t simply those future times that are in
jeopardy. During Chaos Time anything could happen. We could be laboring here to
effect a favorable outcome, and then all of a sudden…”

“We
could wake up and find Herr Hitler has already won the damn war,” said Tovey.

Paul
nodded his head, accepting the Admiral’s example as a real possibility. “I’ll
give you a more concrete example. You tell me Sergei Kirov now rules over the
Soviet State. Well it is certain that a chain of events preceded his rise to
power, and they started with the coming of that ship, and its movement into the
Atlantic. That isn’t happening this time. And now, moment by moment that chain
of causality is being weathered and rusted away. Should that process reach some
key event, it’s like a link breaking, and you get an obvious result.
Understand?”

“You
mean that the events that led to Kirov’s survival and subsequent rise to power
are now being re-written,” said Elena. “But hasn’t that chain already been
fatally compromised? The ship isn’t heading into the Atlantic. That first point
of divergence, as you call it, has changed.”

“True,”
said Dorland, “but if the Push Point lies elsewhere, say in 1942, then the
Heisenberg Wave has not yet reached it, so things stand as they are until that
happens.”

Now I
see the problem,” said Elena. “Captain Fedorov told me how that happened. In
fact, he claimed he was directly responsible, a careless whisper, as he
described it, just like one of your Push Points. If the history that led him to
that moment changes…”

“Exactly,”
said Dorland. “Then that moment loses its foundation in the line of causality.
Think about it. Sergei Kirov is standing on quicksand now, and if he goes, then
everything he did and built in this world goes with him. He’s a Prime Mover by
every definition of the term. And the thing about these changes is that no one
knows anything has happened—except Primes protected in a safe nexus. Oh, they
might have inklings and inner whispers that something isn’t what it should be.
People get these hunches, intuitions, intimations of something that they cannot
quite clarify in their minds.”

“Damn
if that isn’t the case with me,” said Tovey. “I’ve had these dogging
recollections of the events depicted in those file boxes, yet the memories are
never really clear. It’s as if I was right on the cusp of seeing it all, but
then it slips away.”

“Precisely,”
said Dorland. “You have already suffered through one of these great changes,
Admiral Tovey. I call them radical transformations, but timequake might be a
bit more colorful. Your part in the chain of causality that led to these
altered states was probably not fully formed when it happened, which is why you
struggle to remember. Well, what I am telling you now is that we could get
another change like this, all of the sudden, and the outcome is completely
unpredictable.”

“Damn,”
said Tovey. “We could set the table for six and then find twelve at the door.
We could sit here making all these plans only to have them undermined by one of
these bloody timequakes.”

“You
have it exactly,” said Dorland with a frown.

“But
what if we could do what you have suggested?” said Elena.
“What if we could prevent that ship from ever coming back—eliminate first cause
in the chain of all these events?”

“That
would be quite difficult.”

“Yes,
but you appeared here, and that would seem impossible. The very difficult
should be much easier to accomplish. Why not use your time machine, or whatever
it is, to simply get to the days before
Kirov
departs Severomorsk and
prevent it from leaving harbor?””

“I
would love to lend a hand in that, but I cannot.”

“Why?”
Elena folded her arms.

“Because
I cannot travel to a time when I already exist. I’m already there, and doing
something else on July 28th when that ship vanished. Trying to visit a time
when I already exist would cause a Paradox that I would not survive.
Understand?”

“Karpov
did,” said Elena.

“That
was an anomaly, a mistake, an aberration. It arose only because of the dual
Heisenberg Waves created when the wave from 1908 encountered the Paradox. I
could explain it all again, but trust me, this is a very rare and unusual
occurrence. No. If
Kirov
is ever prevented from arriving here, only men
living in the days and hours before its departure could effect that outcome.
And, as they have no way of knowing what is going to happen…”

He
thought for a moment. “There is one possibility… The Admiral’s remark about
that other John Tovey dropping him a line put my mind on it. It was something I
tried during my
Bismarck
intervention. When we deemed it too perilous to
physically go back to try and alter events, we tried something else first.”

“What
was that?”

“We
sent information—right to the Admiralty using a clever ploy. I dug up a lexicon
of code handles used by undercover operatives in WWII, and I used one to sign
off on a radio transmission we beamed to 1941, right over London so the
Admiralty could pick it up.” He smiled, quite pleased with his trick.

“I was
trying to persuade you to get up steam and get moving, Admiral Tovey. So we
sent a message through to alert you
Bismarck
was on the move, but it
didn’t work. Lütjens was apparently a free radical, and he made a decision that
changed things again. There’s nothing ever certain in all of this. It isn’t
always cause and effect. We learned that the hard way, and so I decided I had
to intervene personally, as this Lieutenant Commander Wellings, and get aboard
Rodney
to get a firmer hand on the tiller.”

“Information…”
Elena had a strange look on her face now. “Yes! That was what we received.
Information!
Someone else tried your little trick, Mister Dorland. Someone from the future,
or so we came to believe.”

Now she
related the story she had once told Gordon, of how the Watch had received radio
transmissions, signals in the long, lonesome nights at sea. They were
predictions at first, designed to establish the credibility of the sender.

“We
learned of the 9-11 event before it happened, and we were sent closing tickers
on the stock market for a future day that panned out exactly as the signal
predicted.”

“I
see…” Paul was suddenly very interested in this. “What else came through?”

“A
warning,” said Elena, her eyes flashing with realization. “Yes! It was a
warning from the future—beware a ship, beware
Kirov.
That was what we
were established for, to stand a watch for the coming of that ship in any time after
this one. You started all this, Admiral Tovey—the Watch.”

“So I’m
told,” said Tovey. “And yes, I read my own hand on that in those file boxes.
The Watch…”

“Well
those signals were trying to warn us about that ship,” said Elena. “Don’t you
see? We received them before
Kirov
left for those live fire exercises.
Someone was trying to do what you just suggested. They were trying to send a
warning through to the Watch!”

“My,
my,” said Tovey. “This is getting darker and darker with each passing moment. I
recall you revealing all this during that meeting with Captain Fedorov before
we ran the Straits of Gibraltar. Yet so much was going on that I’ve had no time
to bother with messages from the future. Day to day signals traffic has kept me
quite busy.”

“I
understand,” said Elena. “But Professor Dorland here should know all of this.
Those messages had to be coming from the future, because the predictions they
made all happened. Only someone from the future could have known that. Then we
just get this one final message, the warning. Why couldn’t they be more
specific? They could have spelled everything out, chapter and verse.”

“Unless
they were desperate in that hour,” said Paul in a solemn tone. “Remember what I
said about the danger all of this poses to that future—to all possible
futures—and how things can change. If they sent such a message, then they were
opening the time continuum to do so. That means they were in a safe nexus, but
if it was artificially created, as we create a nexus with our own Arch
facility, then it depends on the viability of that technology. If that future
time was suddenly threatened, they could have just gasped out that one last
warning before the danger overcame them. I’m going back to my future shortly,
and believe me, it will be no picnic there. We were right at the edge of the
Third World War! I have no idea how much longer we may be able to operate.”

“Seeing
this one first hand,” said Tovey, “I can only imagine that the next one would
be a desperate affair indeed.”

“Believe
me, I’m not looking forward to that future,” said Paul, “but it’s the only
place where I can take any meaningful action—by getting to some moment in the
past where I can find a Push Point, or a lever on these events, and attempt an
intervention. Yet, as I’ve tried to explain in more than one way, my future is
on very shaky ground.”

“Well,”
said Elena. “Trying to stop this by preventing first cause sounds like the only
real solution, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes,
but I can’t use my technology to do anything in that hour.”

“You
can’t go there, nor anyone from your team.”

“Nor
can
you
go there with your ship, assuming that box might be able to move
you forward again.”

“So
this is why you thought we might be able to send information through instead?”

“That
was my thought,” said Dorland. “If we could get a warning through—perhaps to
men or woman of your group—the Watch as you call it—then they might take
action.”

“Sounds
logical,” said Elena. “The Watch has already received such a warning, as I’ve
explained. It was just not clear enough to us to act on the threat. Whatever we
send, it needs to be clear and specific… But how might we do this?”

“I might
be able to help in that,” said Paul. “After all, I managed to send a message
through to 1941. Any ideas on what I could try?”

“An
order,” said Tovey. “I assume there’s a Royal Navy in that time, Professor
Dorland?”

“Yes, I
can’t say that Britannia rules the waves as they have in earlier generations,
but there is a small, and fairly professional Royal Navy.”

“Then
perhaps we could send an order through to the navy. All they would have to do
is try and prevent this accident—the first cause that sent the Russian ship
here. Yes?”

“I
suppose that could help,” said Dorland. “If nothing more, it might stop this
time loop and allow things to resolve.”

“What
would happen?” asked Elena. “Assuming we did that, and the Royal Navy was able
to somehow prevent that accident. What would happen to the Russian ship if it
were still here?”

The
Professor inclined his head, thinking. “An interesting question. I might
discuss this with Maeve when I get back—she’s our head of Outcomes and
Consequences—a very good mind for things like this. You might ask your own
resident puzzle solver, Admiral. Why not pose the question to Alan Turing? For
my part, I am thinking that the elimination of first cause would be very
significant. You see, that accident is a perfect example of how a Push Point
works, just happenstance, yet it had catastrophic consequences. We could try
this, in fact I think we must. Yet my own attempt to sink the
Bismarck
this way failed. I suppose it all comes down to what the people on the
receiving end do when they get our message. That isn’t easy to control. It
would be so much better if we could intervene more directly—personally, as I
did aboard
Rodney
, yet no one from our team could go.”

“But
what about men from this era?” asked Elena. “They don’t exist in 2021. They
could go there with no ill effects. Correct?”

“I
suppose so, but who to send?”

“We
have some very good people for little cloak and dagger missions like that,”
said Tovey.

“Then
the next question arises,” said Dorland. “How would we get them there? I can
return to my own time, only because my people have a quantum link to my pattern
signature here to move me back where I belong.”

“I know
a way,” said Elena. “We’ve been discussing it all along—these time rifts. We
know they exist, opening portals to the past. But I know of one that goes both
ways—Ilanskiy.”

Tovey
raised an eyebrow, for he had heard about all of that in an earlier meeting.
Miss Fairchild related the story to Dorland, telling him everything she had
learned from the Russian Captain Fedorov.

“Another
rift,” said Dorland. “And this one seems very stable. Where is this place?”

“Siberia,”
said Elena. “A small hamlet east of Kansk.”

“Is
that friendly territory? Could we send these men Tovey suggests there?”

Elena
looked at Tovey now, wondering.

“Technically
Siberia is a Free and independent state,” said the Admiral, “though it seems
they now have ties to Soviet Russia. At least they are now openly at war with
Volkov’s Orenburg Federation. It’s said that the enemy of my enemy is my
friend. I suppose they might be considered fledgling allies in our cause, yet
Britain has no formal accord signed with the Siberians.”

“And
don’t forget the Doppelganger,” said Dorland. “This man Karpov… From all I have
heard about him, he does not seem all that cooperative.”

“Captain
Fedorov and Admiral Volsky seemed to think he was very dangerous,” said Tovey.

“Does
he know about this rift at Ilanskiy?”

“Quite
possibly,” said Tovey. “In fact, Sergei Kirov must also know about it. Fedorov
told me he certainly used that stairway, because it connected these years to
his own time, 1908. The Captain believed Kirov used those stairs to come here,
and the world he saw was so unpalatable that he decided to do something about
it.”

“Stalin!”
said Dorland. “So now I finally see the connection between the coming of the
ship and the death of Stalin. What a devious pathway it took, and remember the
example I gave earlier. It may not be all that difficult to disrupt that chain
of events. Why, with an open time rift like that, someone could even do it
unintentionally. These rifts are dangerous. I can see why operatives in the
future were trying to secure them, and what these keys may be all about.”

“But I
don’t think they knew anything about this one,” said Elena darkly.

Paul
considered that. The messages were coming to the watch from the future
stretching beyond his day, the meridian he came from. They could not be coming
from any future arising from this altered meridian, because this time loop has
been preventing any clear outcome. What if Miss Fairchild was correct? What if
they knew of these other time rifts, but knew nothing of Ilanskiy? They
apparently went to great lengths to find and secure the other rifts—under lock
and key. Yet if one existed that they had not uncovered… He saw now how their
plans could all be thwarted, simply because the existence of that unseen rift
was allowing major contamination to the continuum.

“They
had their finger in the dike,” he said, “and at more than one place. You say
you knew of at least one more key, in addition to the one that was lost on
Rodney
.
Might it relate to this rift at Ilanskiy?”

“No. I
don’t think so. As far as I know, neither British intelligence, nor the Watch,
knew anything about that rift at Ilanskiy either.”

“Very
strange,” said Dorland. “And yet it’s been sitting there all this time. We know
it goes all the way back to 1908!”

“The
time of yet another first cause,” said Elena, “Tunguska. I believe exotic
material from that detonation may be able to disturb, even rupture, the flow of
time, just as I told you earlier. In fact, that is how I believe my ship
appeared here. A key that led to a box, that then brought me and
Argos Fire
here to this place. And apparently the whole affair was well
considered—planned.”

“There
I go again,” said Tovey. “You’ll say I was behind it all.”

“Well
Admiral, I’ve been listening very carefully to Professor Dorland here,” said
Elena. This bit about sending information through time really struck home. You
see, that is what the Watch received, and it is what I received that sent me on
this journey—information. It came to me as an order, just as you suggested, on
a special red telephone aboard my ship. Information! Someone was aware of this
whole adventure, and trying to get me involved.”