Paradox Hour (27 page)

“You say you heard or felt this on that mission to Ilanskiy… Have you heard anything lately, here on the ship?”

“No sir, just my men complaining more than they should.”

“Complaining? About what?”

“Little things. Nothing in particular. They’re just edgy.”

“Give them some rest, Sergeant. They were away on combat tour for several months. Getting back into the routines of the ship may take a while. Give them some rest.”

“I will sir, but it would be better if we don’t find any more body parts in the lockers.” Troyak smiled. “Sir… There was one other time when I heard this sound. It was in the desert, just before that incident—the lights in the sky.”

“I see… And did it continue?”

“No sir. It settled down when the sky did the same.”

And that was when Kinlan’s Brigade came right through a breach in time at the Sultan Apache facility, thought Fedorov. Orlov had that object with him, and he reported it changed temperatures at that same time. The dots were slowly connecting in Fedorov’s mind, and he was slowly convincing himself that this sound being reported by Tasarov and Dobrynin had something to do with the Devil’s Teardrop.

“Very well, Sergeant. If you hear this sound again—any sign of it at all—please report it to me at once. Keep that locker sealed off for the moment. I’ll have Doctor Zolkin and the Engineers take care of everything.”

“Good enough, sir.”

Fedorov was off, returning Troyak’s salute and heading forward and up, bound for the bridge. He stopped several times along the way, and made a point of visiting Doctor Zolkin, where there were several men waiting in a line outside his sick bay. Zolkin saw the Captain and stuck his head out.

“Privilege of rank, gentlemen,” he said with a smile. “Let me have a moment to see what the Captain needs.”

“I hope you are alright sir,” a man said, as Fedorov stepped in through the hatch.

“I am fine, Mister Yakov. I just need to see to the doctor’s supply needs.”

The men smiled, somewhat relieved to know that Fedorov might not be coming here for the same reasons they were. Once inside, with the hatch closed, Fedorov folded his arms.

“We found the other half of Lenkov,” he said starkly, getting right to the point.

Zolkin raised his cinder grey brows. “Where?”

“In a locker near the Helo Bay. Can you summon those same Engineers and see to it?”

“Of course, Mister Fedorov.” Zolkin shook his head. “Now I have the whole body, and we can arrange a proper burial at sea. Should it be a ceremony with the men standing by?”

Fedorov thought for a moment. He wanted to keep the discovery of Lenkov’s legs quiet, to still the rumor mill that was already troubling the ship. But the thought of just summarily dumping Lenkov overboard like so much trash was distasteful. The man deserved more than that.

“Yes, Doctor,” he said. “Arrange it and inform the bridge ten minutes before you begin. Either I or the Admiral will have some words for the crew over the P.A. system. Lenkov sailed with us, fought with us, and endured everything we have been through. He will be given his due respect.”

“Agreed,” said Zolkin. “And let us hope we have no further incidents like this. What could have caused it?”

“I’m still not certain, but it may have something to do with that thing Orlov found. We have it stowed in a radiation safe area, but its effects may not work that way.”

“Quite a little bag of wizards tools we’re collecting here, Fedorov. First the control rods, now this!”

Fedorov nodded. “That line out there is a little troubling,” he said, thumbing the hatch. “What’s going on with the men?”

“Nothing serious. Oh, there were a few bruised shins from the engineering section, a cut thumb, and the rest just seem to be complaining they can’t sleep well. And several have complained about hearing something. I asked what it was, but they had no real answer for me.”

“Who were these men?”

“Tomilov for one…. And Sorokin.”

“They’re both assigned to the missile bays, yes?”

“Ask Orlov. I just pass out the aspirin and sedatives, and take care of men who end up in two places at once when the world can’t decide where they belong. This is very strange, Fedorov. I hope you get to the bottom of it. But do be careful.”

“I will, Doctor, carry on, and thank you. I know this must be hard on you as well.”

“I can’t say it’s all in a day’s work, but I’ll manage.” Zolkin smiled.

Fedorov was out past the line of waiting crewmen, talking briefly with the men there, and then on the way to the bridge to report to Volsky.

“Things are adding up now, sir,” he said. “But I haven’t decided what we should do about it. If this sound is associated with a time breach, as Troyak’s report seems to suggest, then its emergence here is most alarming. I’m beginning to suspect that object may be responsible for destabilizing the ship’s position in time. The fact that several men are now reporting they hear or feel this deep sound, as Troyak calls it, is not something we can ignore.”

“What do you suggest we do, Fedorov?”

“We’re well out to sea,” he started, thinking. “I once considered dropping that thing from the KA-40 into the Qatarra Depression, but held on to it to see what we could learn. Dobrynin gave it a good inspection. He does not think it is a natural object. He thinks it was machined, which made me all the more curious about it.”

“Machined? By who?”

“We don’t know, but the level of technology required to achieve the properties he observed was very high. It could not be from this era.”

“Then you believe this thing came from the future? Our Future?”

“Dobrynin says we might create something like this in 2021, so it must be from some future time, possibly even beyond those years. Remember, time goes both directions. We arrogantly believe there is nothing after our own time until we live it, but the future is as real as this past, or at least I think it is.”

“You don’t sound all that convinced,” said Volsky. “And what we may have seen of the time beyond our own was not very pleasant.”

“Miss Fairchild strongly indicated they believed that future time was attempting to contact them.”

“Yes,” said Volsky, “and sending them warnings about this ship! What do they know that we don’t know, Fedorov. This is what I wonder now. I think you were going to suggest that we throw that object Orlov found over the side. Yes?”

“Well, these strange effects associated with it are putting us all in grave danger,” said Fedorov. “Lenkov got the worst of it, and I must think now to the safety of this ship and crew. If that object is affecting our stability in time, then we might continue to phase, and that could happen on a quiet night at sea, or right in the middle of a battle. Suppose it gets worse? Suppose the entire ship moves again?”

“We’d be leaving Tovey high and dry here,” said Volsky, “and then this history would take its course as it might have without our meddling. Didn’t you say yourself that it may be something we do here that causes this great doom the Fairchild lady was speaking of?”

“Or something we fail to do…” Fedorov was deep in thought. “That’s the dilemma, sir. We could throw that thing overboard, and it would most likely sink to the bottom of the sea. Unless we get to an abyssal trench, it might be discovered again one day, and who knows how long it would still remain active, and cause these strange time aberrations?”

“A little like contemplating throwing radioactive waste into the ocean,” said Volsky. “Well, the Japanese didn’t worry much about that after the Fukushima disaster. Out of sight, out of mind, Fedorov. Nobody knows what that contamination really did to the sea, or the coastlines all around it.”

“This is why I hesitate to simply throw it over the side, but then I think that decision may be wrong as well. It’s maddening.”

“But yet we must choose,” said Volsky. “Few men have the privilege of knowing what the consequences of their actions may be when they must make a choice. We at least had a peek at that when we shifted to the future, and the world we see here now is also the result of our choices in the past. I do not think we can sit on the fence here. We must decide. I could make this decision now on my own, but I ask your opinion. What should we do?”

Fedorov hesitated, but he knew there was nothing to do but choose one course or another. He could think of no reason to keep that object aboard the ship. What good would it do them? He already suspected it had caused grievous harm here… then he remembered what Dobrynin had said about his attempt to localize the sound.

“One more thing, Admiral. Chief Dobrynin said he tried to find the source of this sound, but could not localize it. He wanted to get out into a boat and listen—away from the ship. I wonder if we could try that?”

“You mean put that thing in a launch and tow it—get it off the ship while still keeping it under our control? I see what you are thinking now.”

“That may not work, Admiral. Its effects could have a very wide radius. Remember, it may have helped open that breach that brought Brigadier Kinlan’s troops here to this time, and that force was spread over many kilometers.”

“So what then? You propose to just send someone out in a launch with it?”

Fedorov shook his head, realizing he was being foolish. “No sir, you are correct. I’ve been stubbornly holding on to that thing, though I don’t really know why. Now I think we must put the ship and crew first. Let us dispose of it, in the deepest water we can find out here, and soon. We should be approaching the Peake Deep. That is a small trough or depression on our present heading. The water there is the deepest in this region, over 4000 fathoms.”

“Deep enough,” said Volsky. “Very well. Then it is decided. I will rely on you to take care of this matter. Please let me know when it is done. Then, once the ship has sailed on, we will see if Tasarov and Dobrynin can still hear this thing.”

“Agreed, sir. I will handle it, and I think now is as good a time as any.” He reported what the Marines had found in the helo bay locker. Volsky nodded gravely, and agreed that the man should be given a decent commemoration.

“I will make a statement to the crew,” he said. “In the meantime, I suggest you steer for this deep water.”

Fedorov consulted a few navigation charts, then had the navigator plot an appropriate course adjustment, and told Nikolin to inform Admiral Tovey that they would need to steer a little to port for a time. So here we are, he thought, caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. He smiled, glad to have finally made a choice in this matter, and started aft again to go and retrieve the object.

Sometime later he had the small radiation safe box in his hand. It is probably not necessary, he thought. Orlov had the damn thing in his pocket for days on end, and with no ill effects. I wonder why he never heard anything—this sound the others are reporting. I hope I’m not wrong about this. What if I toss it overboard, and Tasarov and Dobrynin still report this sound? Then what?

Still, he could think of no good reason to keep the object on the ship, though if it was responsible for catalyzing the shift of Kinlan’s brigade, it was an object of considerable power. Yet it did not seem to act on its own, unless Lenkov’s fate is evidence of that. It needed a nuclear detonation in the future, and then served like some beacon or magnet, opening the breach here in this era. Very strange.

From what we already know, there will be no shortage of nuclear detonations in the future. Thus far we’ve been lucky not to sail through a place where one went off. Gibraltar would have been a most likely candidate for an early ICBM strike, yet we sailed on through the Pillars of Hercules with nothing else following in our wake. At least nothing we know of…

Thank god for that.

He removed the object from the box, staring at it as he felt the cool smoothness of the metal surface, and seeing his own distorted features reflected on its gleaming shape. He suddenly felt a strange sense of dread, and quickly slipped the object into his pocket and started on his way.

Doctor Zolkin had arranged the sea burial for Lenkov off the starboard side, and while the crew focused its attention there, Fedorov made his way to the opposite side of the ship. He consulted his watch, seeing the time was right now. For the next ten minutes they would be over the Peake Deep, and so as the sound of Admiral Volsky’s voice came over the intercom, speaking of Lenkov, and how he served the ship, shared their many days at sea, the good times, and the bad, Fedorov took a deep breath. He took the object out of the  box, then hurled the Devil’s Teardrop as far as he could, watching it vanish into the choppy green sea. He did not know if he had chosen rightly, or if he had just secured the doom of the world, or even if this strange object had anything to do with that at all, but he had made his choice.

As he went to rub his hands together to warm them, he was startled to see that his right hand seem to be wrapped in a strange luminescent aura. Then, for the briefest moment, he was aghast to see his hand phase and vanish! Thankfully it reappeared immediately, and he blinked, his heart racing as he flexed his hand to see that it would still work. There was no pain, the light was gone, and all seemed well, but the incident weighed heavily on him, and he did not put that hand into his pocket all that day, in spite of the cold. He wanted to keep an eye on it at all times, afraid he would look and find it missing, and then discover it in a drawer somewhere… Like Lenkov’s legs.

At the same moment Fedorov threw the Teardrop overboard, Lenkov’s body, its two parts finally together again, slipped silently down the ramp and joined the object that had taken his life. Now they would both take the long journey down into the deep trough beneath the ship. Lenkov fell like a grim shadow, descending slowly with the weighted body bag dragging him inexorably down, down, down…

Not far away, the Devil’s Teardrop fell with him, still glittering with eerie light. Then something happened that no one saw, and that no one could ever imagine. Fedorov would never know about it, nor would any other man aboard the ship. The only witness was poor Lenkov, but the old maxim that ‘dead men tell no tales’ was very true, and he would never speak a word of what he had seen.