Doppelganger (19 page)

Kolchak has suggested
Baikal
, but that would lead him easily to claim the ship for the eastern task force. There is some merit to that. The Japanese are breathing right down his neck, and soon it will be December. In fact, they could enter the war at any time, and we must be prepared. Yes… the Japanese. They carved themselves out a nice little empire in Manchuria and by invading all of Primorsky Province, and then some. They hold all of Sakhalin Island, a good chunk of Khabarovsk, and even have troops in Amur, Chita and Mongolia. The threat they pose is significant. They have an estimated 25 divisions in their Kwantung army, and we have yet to determine what their war plans may be now.

They have the far east. The bastards took it from us! I could have prevented all that, rolled them out of Sakhalin Island, and occupied all of Korea… if not for the betrayal of my own comrades. Volsky and Fedorov have no idea what damage they have done to the nation. Look at Russia now! Yet Volkov is the greater threat for the next several months. Tyrenkov has detected no buildup on the part of the Japanese. No. I think they will make the same foolish mistake they did in our history, and strike south into the Pacific. To do that, they know they must take and hold the Philippines, and that means war with the United States.

All things in time, he thought. I will decide what to do about the Japanese later. For now, I have more urgent matters to consider, the least of which is my own personal fate.

Yes, he could feel it again, rising like a thrum of anxiety in his chest, a pulse of adrenaline that was most uncomfortable. Yet that was good, or so he believed. I cannot afford to be comfortable and sedate, nor can I simply wait on Volkov and the Japanese. I must act, but before I can realize any plans, there is the matter of late July to consider. What will happen?

He had given the matter some thought earlier, and even discussed it with Tyrenkov. July 28th was just around the corner now, a few days away. The ship had first arrived here on that day, but would it come again? How would that be possible if it was already in this world? How could I be sitting there on the bridge of
Kirov
and yet be here?

It was only a very brief interlude, he thought.
Kirov
was only here for twelve days, and then we vanished after I pounded the American fleet to teach them who they were dealing with. How was I to know it would blow us into the future again? We knew nothing of Rod-25 at that point, and nothing of Tunguska.

His eyes strayed out the viewport, seeing the imposing shadow of his fleet flagship on the small hamlet below. Yes, he thought,
Tunguska
. Here rides the ship with magic in its bones. I was able to ride those storms through time itself, and perhaps I can do so again. It should be easy enough. I’ll just go up and find another good thunderstorm, and go… elsewhere. But where? Would I appear in the past again? The future?

He thought deeply now. Somehow I knew that I would return here when I left 1908 in
Tunguska
. I could feel it, sense it. In fact I demanded it! Destiny needed me here, to re-write that stupid little book Tyrenkov found. But where does destiny need me now? Yes, I am fated. I know this. I can feel it. Yet my fate seems to be haunted by a shadow now, something I can sense and dimly perceive, but not really see. Does it have something to do with the coming of the ship, our first arrival here?

On the one hand, how could
Kirov
manifest here given the deeply fractured history of this world? The building of that ship rests on the whole convoluted structure and future development of the Soviet Union. First the cold war must settle in, and then we must design and build the four ships in the early
Kirov
Class. Our ship was built from their bones, rising from the decrepit ruin of the Russian Navy to sail again for the Rodina. Will all of that happen? Will Volsky and Fedorov and all the others join the navy and find themselves on that ship again? Will I do that, fighting my way up through the ranks to win that seat in the Captain’s chair? So many dominoes must fall for that to happen, but suppose it does pan out that way. It would still take that stupid accident aboard the
Orel
to trigger the incident that sent the ship back through time. How could all that repeat itself with the Russian civil war still raging even as Germany now invades the Soviet Union?

His logic was much the same as Fedorov’s in this, though he could not know that. Yet behind it, he had the same feeling he might have upon discovering a young ambitious man in the ranks below him, a rival aiming to climb higher, just as he had. Only this time that man was his own self! If Kirov did return, it would be that other Karpov that would now threaten his hard won position here.

 I am here, am I not? I am sitting right here in this chair, staring at myself in the mirror. Look at me now… Look at that scar on my cheek… look at my eyes… Power has a way of draining a man at times, even as it feeds him. I have been feeling very odd of late, thin and attenuated, as though I was not really all here.

That thought gave him pause, because he knew he did not belong in this world. Yet his very presence here, the image he was staring at in that mirror, all depended on that first coming of
Kirov
in 1941. It argued that event simply
must
occur, or how could he even be sitting there considering all of this?

The world we first entered was not like this one, he thought. Russia was not fractured, and Fedorov’s history was so intact that he could count the hairs on Admiral Tovey’s head with his library of books. But this world… My god, it is a nightmare of variation, ripped apart by our own blind intervention, and I am much to blame for that. Yet now the ship is already here. It slipped in through the back door this time. Tyrenkov tells me he believes it first appeared here in June of 1940! They were probably just trying to get home but, for some odd reason, any time the ship moved forward it got stuck here in this damn war again.

Why is that? Are the powers of Rod-25 limited? They obviously had that damn control rod aboard
Kazan
, otherwise how did that sub get back to 1908 when they came after me? And Fedorov was there earlier, unless that radio call I received from him was another lie. Yet when they shifted forward from 1908, they got stuck here again, and they have been here ever since. Perhaps the shadow this war casts on time is simply too deep to be easily penetrated. Yet I was able to go forward from this time by using that stairway at the inn. I arrived there too late. The war in 2021 had already started, and there was nothing I could do at that point but retrace my footfalls back down those steps.

So perhaps we were all sent here again for some reason, just as I appeared here at a most opportune time when I rode that storm aboard
Tunguska
. It is as if destiny calls us here, keeps us here…

Now he had that feeling again that this time was becoming a prison cell for him, and that he was sitting there, staring at himself in the mirror, while waiting for his own execution.

What will happen to me if I take no action, and simply remain here? Does that ship really arrive again from the future, and is another version of myself sitting there in the Captain’s chair on the bridge? Is that even possible? How could there be two versions of the same person?

Now, as he stared into the mirror, he had the strange sensation that the face there looking back at him was that other self, a dark ghostly self, waiting to manifest here and claim his life when it did so. He was sitting there, looking at his own doppelganger, and it gave him a chill just to see his own face.

Perhaps I could find out what happens, if we could get that damn stairway finished in another few days. We’ll have to test it, of course. Someone will have to go up those stairs—definitely up, because it will be too dangerous to do the inverse. Going down to the past could change everything in this reality again, and that could be even more dangerous than these things I now contemplate about the ship’s imminent arrival. So someone must go up those stairs.

Tyrenkov? He’s an able man. He had the presence of mind to fetch that book the last time, and that was most useful intelligence. Perhaps he could determine what happens by simply going to the future and reading the history. Then he could come back and tell me whether the ship vanishes again, and if it does he could find out where it goes. Tyrenkov is very reliable.

Yet it is not his fate at stake here, but mine. I am the one with my ass in the chair aboard
Kirov
, even as I sit here now. Something tells me that arrangement will be very uncomfortable for Mother Time. She’ll have to do something… yes, but what?

For safety’s sake, I must plan to take some operation before the 28th of July. I must either complete that stairway, and hope it still works, and that failing, I must pray for bad weather and take to the skies again in
Tunguska
. If take the latter course, nothing can be left to chance. July can be very warm, yet perhaps I can use my computer jacket to fetch up historical weather data. Yes, I must do this.

He looked out the window again, having the strangest thought that as he did so, the image in the mirror continued to stare at him. He could not stop himself from glancing at the mirror again, and of course, he would meet his own gaze there and find his suspicion had been correct.

He was being foolish, he knew, but that was the essence of how he felt just now. He was being watched… Something was considering him, just as he ruminated on all these strategies and options, all these unseen dangers and fears. The ticking of the clock on his desk suddenly seem a loud and annoying thing, so much so that he stood up and batted it aside, sending it clattering to the floor, the glass face of the timepiece shattered, just like the history he was living out now. He looked at the calendar, edgy, harried. Then he reached for the telephone on his desk and rang up his chief of staff.

“Solokov—find me the weather master. I want to know his outlook for the coming weeks. And get me the chief of engineers. I want a full report on that construction project and expected completion time, within the hour. Then have dinner sent here to my offices, and invite Kymchek. I want to speak with him tonight.”

“As you wish, sir,” came Solokov’s dull voice—right out of his sullen, dull head, thought Karpov.

If I do mount an operation, and leave this time by one means or another, will I ever get back? Thinking I can impose my will on time is one thing, but in
Tunguska
, I really have no way of controlling the displacement that occurs. At least that stairway seemed to be more predictable. But what if it does work again? Then let me assume that
Kirov
does appear here on July 28th. What then? Will that other Karpov do everything I did before? That is not possible. The British are thick as thieves with Volsky and Fedorov now, so the damn Royal Navy would not be hounding us at all. That world we came to no longer exists. If the ship does return, then it will be to some other world, and not this one.

One question tumbled after another in his mind now, and behind them all was that thrum of fear. What if they
do
arrive here? What if there is only this one world, and no others? I’m supposed to be right there on that ship, and yet here I am at Ilanskiy. And what if that ship stays put this time, and never leaves? If I go up those stairs, I might escape this little Paradox, but then I might be trapped in any future time I reach, and prevented from returning to this place because I am already here! If I use
Tunguska
and try to find another storm, who knows where I will end up this time? I might find myself back in the past again, with all of this to live over. This is madness!

Pacing sometimes helped, a way to burn off the fight or flight reflex, and make the looming potential energy in his mind kinetic. Yet the notion that he was being tried and judged still harried him, and he knew it was more than the old pangs of guilt that once shadowed his every thought.

I did what was necessary, he thought stubbornly. The Americans had every round I fired coming, every missile, every warhead—yes, even the special warheads I was forced to use when they persisted.

They were behind the misery that had befallen the Russian Republic he grew up in, slowly engineering the fall of the Soviet Union with careful subterfuge, clandestine intelligence operations, deception, economic bullying, and sometimes even military threats. They lined up their armored cavalry and heavy tank divisions in Europe for decades, until the real center of gravity in the world centered on the whirlwind of the Middle East.

Both Russia and the United States courted client states there, arming them, and then watching them quarrel with one another, until the desert sands became a proving ground for the weapon systems each side so willingly supplied to tyrants and sheiks of the wayward, oil drenched sands.

When they wanted something, the Americans just took it, thought Karpov. Saddam took Kuwait, then the United States took it back, and all of Iraq for good measure, until they found out what a hornet’s nest the whole place was. After ten years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, they eventually pulled out, and then ISIS swept in like a bad squall at the edge of the so called “Arab Spring,” and undid nine years, and nine hundred billion dollars worth of nation building in Iraq, in only 90 days.

The Democrats wanted nothing more to do with the wars the Republicans left them. Instead they pursued their agenda by other means, smiling diplomacy and economic incentives offered to Ukraine, until the Prime Minister they put in place there balked and got too cozy with Putin. They worked to quickly remove the man, and shepherd Ukraine into the NATO camp, but Putin would have none of that. He took back the Crimea, armed and supported Russian Separatists, and within months there was all out war in the Donbass, one of the Soviet Union’s old industrial heartlands, as essential to Russia’s sphere of influence as the old industrial middle states of America had once been—before they came to be called the “Rust Belt.” Karpov admired Putin in many ways. He was a man who also did what was necessary, and when he saw what was rightfully his, he simply took it.