recurrence of first arrival. The officers and crew will be experiencing events as if they were happening for the first time, and therefore, they may have no recollection of anything that occurred earlier.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tovey. “Is this not the same ship that vanished some weeks ago? Why would they forget anything.”
“Yes, it is the same ship, in one respect, the same officers and crew should be there as before, but they are the crew that arrived for the very first time. The ship is the one that actually arrived here on July 28th, 1941, and this is, for all real purposes, that first arrival.”
“But this world is entirely different,” said Tovey, “at least I’ve been told as much. To me it is the world as it has always seemed, completely in order, except for this bloody war.”
“Yes, it would seem that way to you, but remember, the wave of change the ship initiated in 1908 may have reached this time, but not the year they are now arriving from—not 2021 in our day. Precursor waves may have reached there, but not the real damaging waves with the power to radically change things. I believe they will just have to start over, and sort through their situation from square one, the square they presently occupy in this crazy game.”
“Good lord,” said Tovey. “Then what has happened to the ship that was with me in May? What has happened to Admiral Volsky. That man had a good head on his shoulders, and a heart to go with it. I learned his caution and desire for accommodation saved some very difficult situations in our first encounters. You’re telling me the man there now remembers nothing of the interaction we have had since they appeared here?”
“Not only that,” said Paul, “but most everyone outside a safe Nexus Point will have no recollection of those events either. The Heisenberg Waves presently sweeping through these years can have the effect of wiping such memories clean, though there are exceptions. Persons safely harbored in a Nexus Point will retain their memories. Think of them as safe zones, protected bubbles in the stream. They have limited range, however, and leaving them can lead to some rather strange disorientation. I believe a nexus has formed around this ship, Admiral—more specifically, around you, a Prime Mover at the heart of all these events. The same should hold true for your ship, Miss Fairchild. Your crew should have no memory loss if I am correct.”
“Yet when we take the launch back over to Argos Fire—what then?”
“I think you are also a Prime, or possibly a Free Radical, if you’ll pardon the expression. Your presence here was not an accident, it was willful. That tends to put you right inside a nexus, and where you go, it goes with you. As for the ship you knew, Admiral, when it vanished last May, that may have been the result of the impending Paradox. I do not presume to know exactly what may have happened to it, or to those good men you came to know. They may have entered some undefined region, where minutes and hours there could manifest as months and years here.”
“Could they reappear? They did this vanishing act many times before, in the North Atlantic, then off the island of Saint Helena, and again in the Pacific. The reports I supposedly wrote on those encounters clearly spoke of that.”
“Of this I can be certain of only one thing,” said Paul. “They could never reappear here at any time occupied by the ship that has just arrived. From what we were able to determine, they were here only twelve days initially.”
“Yes,” said Tovey. “Their Captain Fedorov explained that to me. It had something to do with a maintenance cycle on the ship’s propulsion system, and it occurred every twelve days. He said it took them some time before they discovered this. According to my reports, I did not encounter them until eight days after their arrival, on August 4th. But just a moment… With all due respect to your theories, Professor Dorland, there is something quite irregular about this message we just received. It uses a code word I personally assigned to that ship—Geronimo.”
“Yes, I was wondering if you might notice that.”
“Well, see here—my reports indicate we didn’t assign that name to the ship until after it vanished, on August 8th. I spent hours and hours reading all that material after our Mister Turing discovered it. I’m quite certain