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.