Paradox Hour (26 page)

“Mister Garin,” he said to his reactor Technician, Ilya Garin. “Any disturbance on your monitors?”

“Sir?” Garin looked over his panels, noting nothing out of order, and reported as much.

“Very well… “ Dobrynin should have been satisfied with that situation, but he was still not content. He set the sheaf of files down, sat in his swivel chair and put his feet up on the low stool he often used like a makeshift ottoman. Then he closed his eyes, listening… Listening…

There it was, something barely perceptible. Was it a vibration, or a sound? It seemed to reside on some undefined grey zone between those two sensations, and it was as if the Chief had a sixth sense that could perceive the medley. A sound… a tremor… a warning… There was nothing in his file readouts, and nothing on Garin’s monitors, but he could feel it, sense it, and it gave him a deep sense of misgiving. He listened for a time, and the longer he did, the more foreboding the feeling became. After a while it began to create a slowly rising anxiety in him, as if his body could feel the vibration, and interpret it as danger. He could feel that thrum of adrenaline in his torso, and could no longer sit still.

“Mister Garin, I believe we should initiate a diagnostic routine of the reactor system.”

“Again sir? We only just completed compiling the data from that diagnostic we ran two days ago.”

“So we will have new data to compile. Yes? Let’s begin with the thermodynamics. We will use the primary monitor, and the backup system as well.”

Garin shrugged, but knew there was really only one response that was acceptable. “Aye sir. I’ll get started right away.”

* * *

Fedorov
could feel the tension on the ship. It had been a very long journey, perhaps one of the longest deployments at sea ever endured by any modern ship or crew. After those first harrowing encounters in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and finally in the Pacific, the crew had some brief relief off the coast of Australia, and on that island Admiral Volsky had been longing for. The time they had in Vladivostok was brief, and provided no real sense of homecoming for them. There were odd incidents there, resulting from the subtle changes in the time line caused by
Kirov’s
intervention. The city was different, yet in places oddly familiar. There had been restaurants that were apparently meant to be, in any time line, and other familiar businesses. Yet some crew members had gone home to find total strangers living where their house once was, or worse, to find their home, or even street, was entirely missing!

So we left a different world from the one where we started, he thought. I was lost along the Siberian Rail line when Karpov took the ship out, so all I know of that period was what I have learned from the others here. There was more combat against the American navy, in two different time periods. And then that unfortunate situation that saw the ship blasted deeper into the past must have been very hard. When that happened, I think the crew abandoned any hope of ever seeing home again as they once knew it. Even Admiral Volsky took to a little relief in a bottle of Vodka in his quarters. I certainly don’t blame him.

Doctor Zolkin has been a life saver, and in more ways than one. It was his character and opposition to Karpov at that critical moment that eventually enabled us to complete our mission and remove
Kirov
from the early 20th Century. Yet we remain stuck here in WWII, the great catharsis of the modern world, the most devastating war mankind has ever inflicted upon itself—save that last one, the war we were trying so hard to prevent.

We arrived here last June. Now here it is May of 1941! In all that time the crew has been faithful at their posts. They got some relief when we sailed north to Murmansk, yet I think all that did was give them a taste of what they had lost. The brief shore leave we arranged in Alexandria was hardly enough. They must be wound up tighter than a spring, and this incident with Lenkov was most unsettling.

Everywhere Fedorov went as he walked the ship, he got the same questions. The crew wanted to know what was happening, and he had no real explanation for them. “We experienced a moment where our position in time was not stable,” he said in one compartment near the missile bays. “You remember what happened to us when that Japanese ship seemed to move right through us.”

“Who can forget that sir?” said a
mishman
of the watch.

“Well it was something like that, only a very minor incident. Lenkov was just unlucky, that is all I can say. I know you men have had a hard time here, We have asked more of you than any man should have to give in the service of their country. I thank you for being the strong bone and muscle of this ship, and I am sorry I have put you through all of this.”

The men were silent for a time. Then the
mishman
spoke up, going so far as to even put his hand on Fedorov’s shoulder. “We stand with you, Captain. Where you lead us, we will follow. Don’t worry sir. We are all fine.”

That was a hard moment for Fedorov. He felt the emotion clench his throat, nodded his acknowledgement, and moved on. Here the men were trying to comfort me, he thought. This is a good crew, loyal to a man, and god go with us now. God help me lead them, and if there is anyplace out there that we can ever call home again, show me the way…

He finished his silent prayer, ducked into a hatch, and found the ladder down to the next deck. That was when he ran into Chief Dobrynin.

“Good day, Chief. How are the engines holding up?”

“Well enough, sir, but there was something else I wanted to speak with you about.”

“Oh? Shall we go to your office?”

The two men walked down one more ladder, and found the Chief’s working hideaway. Fedorov took note of the books he kept there, a mix of technical manuals, physics, thermodynamics, engineering, and strangely, music. He had several books on the great Russian composers, and even a few musical scores of symphonies by Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky.

“When do you ever get time to listen to good music?” said Fedorov.

“Not often enough,” said Dobrynin. “In fact, it is something else I’ve been listening to that I wanted to discuss with you. You know I have good ears. That’s how I was able to try and control those flux events when we used Rod-25. Well… I’ve been hearing something of late—something strange.”

“A problem in the engines?”

“I’m not sure yet, though I have Mister Garin running the second diagnostic this week.”

“Have there been any unusual readings.”

“Not lately. Not even with this Lenkov incident. I went over the charts very carefully, but I could not see anything in the data that would lead me to believe that the ship had any kind of problem.”

 “That is some relief, I suppose.”

“Perhaps,” said Dobrynin. “But if the ship did lose its integrity in this time, even for a brief moment, I should have noticed it. There should have been some readings in the reactor flux.”

“But why, Chief? We are not using Rod-25, so the reactors were not exposed to anything it may have contained. Why would we begin to pulse again? Have you given that any thought?”

“I don’t know sir, but remember we do have those other control rods aboard, and that thing Orlov found in Siberia.”

“Yes, the Devil’s Teardrop. Is it still in a secure location?”

“As far from the reactors as I can get it,” said Dobrynin. “I have it down in the empty weapons storage bay for special warheads. That area has extra radiation shielding, which should be some protection, assuming this thing emits that kind of energy.”

“Explain.”

“Well sir, this whole business of the ship moving in time… It must be happening on a quantum level. I can’t say that I can give you any real explanation, but whatever is in that thing may be in a concentration great enough to have an effect, even far from the reactors. It certainly sent us right into a flux event any time it came within ten feet of the reactor room.”

“I see… Then what have you been hearing, Chief?”

“A sound of some kind. A vibration. Both.”

“A vibration in the propulsion system?” asked Fedorov.

“I don’t think so, Captain. In fact, I have listened very carefully of late, and I don’t think its mechanical at all. But I can sense it.”

“Yet it is coming from somewhere on the ship? Have you localized it?”

“Not exactly, sir. That was the first thing that came to my mind as well. So I walked the ship from stem to stern, thinking I would hear it more in one place, less in another, but that was not the case. It seems to be resonating from all directions. I could not get any sense that it was emanating from a specific place on the ship.”

“What does it sound like?”

“Very deep, sir. A very low sound, so low that it becomes something felt as much as anything heard. It may be well below the threshold of human hearing. But I can pick it up with these dog’s ears of mine.”

Now Fedorov remembered a report that Rodenko had given him concerning Tasarov. He had reported hearing something, first in his quarters, then at his post while listening on sonar. Rodenko had him prosecuting it up on the bridge as if it were an undersea contact, yet there was no data trace in the electronics, not on radar or sonar. Now Dobrynin was hearing something odd, and it was clear that it was bothering him, if only because he could not isolate it and determine the cause.

“Now here is the strange thing,” said Dobrynin. “I have tried for some time to locate the source of this sound, but with no results. In fact, I have come to think I might get out in a launch, away from the ship, and then see if I can still hear it.”

“I’m afraid we haven’t time to stop for a boat launch operation, Chief. There’s trouble ahead.”

“I understand, sir. And that is a good way of describing this sound—trouble ahead. It’s what it feels like, Captain—trouble.”

Fedorov looked at him for a moment, then scratched his ear. “Keep listening, Chief. Let me know if you think this is having any effect on the engines or reactors. I’ll go down to the missile bays, and see if any of the men there report this, and I’ll make sure Admiral Volsky is informed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A sound that could not be heard, but it could be clearly felt. Every good ghost story has seen the dogs and cats become aware of something long before it came on the scene. Dobrynin’s comment about his dog’s ears was very telling. Tasarov hears it too. In fact, didn’t Orlov report something like this on that mission to Siberia? Perhaps Sergeant Troyak can shed some light on this. I’m told he heard what Orlov reported, along with several of the Marines.

Now he found himself heading for the Helo Bay and the Marines. He thought he would find them involved with routine operations, cleaning rifles, tending to the KA-40, but when he got there he could see that Troyak had a problem on his hands. There was some commotion, swearing, and the sound of obvious alarm. He could hear Troyak’s deep voice interrogating a Marine as he came on the scene.

“Then nobody knows about this? No one saw a thing?”

“No Sergeant. It was just there! I was stowing this equipment from the desert mission, and when I opened that locker—”

“Captain on deck!”

The Sergeant turned, saluting as Fedorov came up. The other Marines were at attention, and Fedorov could see they were in some distress.

“I’d like to say as you were, but is there a problem, Sergeant?”

“You had better have a look in that storage locker, sir.”

Fedorov was surprised for a moment, wondering what this was about. He stepped over to the half closed locker, and eased the metal door open, his eyes widening as he did so. Several of the other Marines leaned in to peer into the shadows of the locker once again, as if to convince themselves they were actually seeing what they had reported to Troyak.

“My god…”

“Litchko found it a moment ago,” said Troyak.

“Yes sir,” said Litchko. “Like I was telling the Sergeant. I was just going to stow away those mortars after cleaning and inspection. When I opened the locker…”

“I had a closer look,” said Troyak. “I found this.”

He handed Fedorov a piece of crumpled paper. It was a list of supplies, cooking oil, flour, potatoes, starch, salt, and then below a line at the bottom of the note that read:
“One pack of cigarettes for one extra serving. No exceptions.”

“I don’t understand,” said Fedorov. “Who is that?” He pointed to the shadows of the locker.”

“I think it is Lenkov, sir… or at least a part of him. That note was in the trouser pocket. He had a game going taking cigarettes in trade for extra servings at the mess.”

“Lenkov? But we found him dead in the galley?”

“We found a part of him there,” said Troyak. “Those are Lenkov’s legs. Just that, nothing more. They’re stuck right in the back side of that locker at the waist. The rest of him was left in the galley.”

Trouble ahead, thought Fedorov. Too many questions, and not enough answers. Here were Lenkov’s missing legs! They did not simply wink out of existence as Kamenski suggested, like Turing’s watch, because the damn watch never winked out of existence either—
it simply moved!

And so did Lenkov’s legs.

Chapter 23

Fedorov
gave orders that this latest incident should be kept quiet, as far as possible. “No need to let this get out among the crew,” he said. “The first incident was bad enough.”

He wondered if this had happened at the same moment that the other half of poor Lenkov had turned up in the galley, and why his body would have been split in two like that. But with no answers, all he could do was try to minimize the psychological damage, and carry on. He pulled Troyak aside, asking him about that sound he had been discussing with Chief Dobrynin.

“Yes,” said Troyak. “I heard it when we found that cauldron in the clearing. Devil’s Cauldron, Devil’s Teardrop
, glubokiy zvuk.
It is not the first time I have heard it. Very deep sound. Bone deep.”

“Tell me more.”

“I come from the Chukchi Peninsula, and as a boy I would often hike the highlands and taiga. Yes, I have heard such a sound before. But you do not hear it, unless you have very good ears. You feel it, sense it, and it is very strange.”