The Time Surgeons

The incoming call announced itself as from Dr Ravan Harlington.

Vickie Gray’s eyes were tired and her head was fuzzy after a morning of hard thought, chasing an idea that would not allow itself to be fully apprehended; but now both eyes and mind cleared with anticipation.

“Good morning, Ravan,” she said with a smile when she accepted the call. “This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?”

“Good morning, Vickie. I thought you would be interested to know I have completed those investigations I told you about. The results are remarkable, truly remarkable.”

“Why, that is excellent news! Thank you for calling! What can you tell me?”

“I think you deserve to see it rather than just hear about it. I should like you to fly here. Tonight. Then I can show you in the morning. You don’t want to miss it.”

“Why…” she said, looking at the time, “It is a bit late but I guess I can do it. Is it that important?”

“I think it is very important, yes.”

“I’ll be there.”

Good. Each in our own way we began this, didn’t we? It seems fitting that we are both at its end.

By the time Vickie landed at her destination it was dark. She’d assumed that Dr Harlington had arranged for transport to her hotel, but was surprised to see the man himself standing there waiting for her.

“Why, Dr Harlington!” she cried. “Ravan, I mean! I didn’t expect such personal service!”

He smiled, “It is my pleasure, Vickie. It was rather rude of me to insist on your presence at such short notice.” Too risky to delay, and I owe you this much. “I owe you some compensation.”

Under his smile she saw something else, some intensity or even pain, but that made no sense. She imagined it was just the hour, and the excitement of whatever he wished to show her in the morning.

He drove her to her hotel, where she had already been checked in, and escorted her to her room. She opened her door then turned to look at him in farewell, and she was again struck by the strange intensity that seemed to hold him rigid, like an electric current coursing through him. She remembered her thoughts on the immaculate singularity of their night together, that it could never be repeated.

Hang that, she thought savagely as she grasped his forearm, and with neither apology nor explanation pulled him into her room and slammed the door shut with her foot.

He had said nothing, with only a faint look of astonishment on his face as reaction, and she stared at him with a touch of defiance. Tell me you don’t want me, and go. Tell me I am a fool, and I have lost my chance at whatever revelation you had wished to honor me with, by throwing your honor into the gutter of my desire. Or laugh at me with that ironic smile of yours, to tell me I was one of your casual flings, unworthy of another when you can have many younger and more nubile than me.

But he said none of those things, just remained standing, his look of astonishment vanishing into its previous intensity. But before, the intensity had been focused on some vision of his own. Now it was focused on her. She faced him fully and squared her shoulders, ready to endure his rebuke. Or take me now, without words, with nothing but the act, of and for itself.

As if he had heard her thoughts, he grasped her roughly by the shoulders, and she felt her defiance crumble under his strength. He pulled her to himself, asking no permission as she had not asked it of him, and kissed her. He pushed her away to arm’s length and looked into her face.

Then he pushed her to her bed.

When Vickie woke, lying on her back, she could vaguely see the ceiling and its light fittings in the grey morning light, shining dimly through the blinds of her room. She turned her head and saw Ravan, his face in profile to her. His eyes were also open, but he was staring at the ceiling. Something about his eyes and the set of his mouth sent a shiver of fear along her spine.

“Ravan? What’s the matter?” she whispered.

He turned to her, and for a moment it seemed he gazed at her as if he had forgotten who she was; as if the passion of last night belonged in somebody else’s memory.

“Nothing,” he whispered, but she quailed from the look in his eyes. “Nothing is more important than this, now,” he added, and he reached out, ran his hands from her cheeks down her neck and down to her naked breasts. She groaned and threw her leg over his hip, drawing him to her. Then his words became true and nothing else mattered for a long while.

Afterwards they lay together, limbs still entangled, her breath soft and panting on his chest. It is fitting that our last time is with each other, he thought. Will you forgive me when you know? Will you understand? Or will you curse my memory and damn the pleasure we have shared? Will you even know? I cannot tell you. I cannot ask forgiveness. I can only do what I must, as must we all.

When he was able to speak, he touched her cheek. “We should go now. The cafeteria at the facility is open all hours. Let’s get breakfast there. Then you can see what you need to see.”

She stretched luxuriantly and smiled, sighing. Many replies came to her head, some witty, some ironic, but all that came out was, “OK.”

He rose and dressed, and she followed; they could have showered, but for some reason neither wanted to wash away the residue of the other. They drove to the facility in silence. It was as if nothing more needed to be said, or should be said. What they had done, and where they were going, were enough.

They ate breakfast in the cafeteria. As she was sipping her second coffee, he stood. “You finish your coffee. I’ll run along and set things up. Follow me in about five minutes. Here’s a pass, it will let you into the Machine Room.”

She smiled and watched him go.

When Vickie arrived at the Machine Room she was confused. It was only dimly lighted and she couldn’t see Ravan anywhere. Then she looked down at the stage where the great forces gathered to create the wormholes, and was surprised to see him standing there.

He turned his head to stare back up at her, and called out, “Stay where you are. I’m nearly finished down here. When I’m done, keep your eyes on the screen there. That’s what I want you to see.”

She nodded, wondering. The Machine was on and she saw the telltale signs of a wormhole already created, though as yet nothing showed on the screen. She was surprised he was there so near its presence: surely the risk of leaking radiation was too high? He was wearing an apron or toolkit around his waist, and if she didn’t know better she’d have though he was holding some kind of gun. On his head was a helmet that extended an armature beneath his mouth. There was a small black controller on a bench next to him and he looked at it as if uncertain.

Perhaps I am wrong. It may be history cannot be changed, and the tensions that repair the world on the small scale will repair anything. Perhaps I will be unable to achieve what I seek, or if I do the rules of causality will induce some other disaster with the same effect. In any case I have cast my own die. Whatever happens to the world, my own time ends here.

She saw him look up at her again and she wondered why he stared at her with such a strange intensity.

I leave you as my witness. If I fail then you will see my failure, and our world will be wiser for it. But if I succeed, will you even know it? What will you see? Your youth, our first night, last night: surely they happened. Yet they will never happen. You, me, all we have held dear, will be erased from eternity.

He reached for the controller and pressed a button, and the number 6 appeared on the display. A second later it became a 5. Ravan looked around for the last time at the space housing his greatest achievement, before his gaze returned to her as if in silent homage or farewell. “Goodbye, Vickie,” he said as the counter reached zero.

The pinpoint became a sphere, eight feet in diameter: blacker than night, black as nothing, filling the space where Ravan had stood. She gasped in horror, wondering what unimaginable disaster was unfolding, wondering if that terrible blackness would expand to destroy the world.

Then it was gone and the stage stood empty.

She stared at the scene of the disaster, unable to believe it. She noticed that the tiny wormhole still seemed to be in existence. Then she looked at the display and gasped again. In it she could see the Russian Commander, the man who might have stopped the war: and there facing him was Ravan.

She swayed on her feet, then fell into one of the chairs facing the screen. It is I. I who have done this. We always thought history was a vast manifold, continuing on its way no matter what rocks we might throw in its path. I did not know we could visit the past. But you knew. And it is I who showed you what to do there.

Then she slumped back and watched the fate of her world unfold.

Vasili woke suddenly, a faint sheen of sweat on his brow testimony less to the heat than to the dream that had awakened him. But when he tried to grasp the dream it danced away from him like the shimmer of a mirage, and was gone.

He sat up on the narrow bunk in his cramped cabin, stretching the kinks out of his muscles as best he could. Then his eyes widened, as a sphere of blackness limned with an aurora-like sparkle appeared. Then his eyes widened even further, if that were possible, when the sphere vanished and in its place stood a man.

Vasili was unable to move. I am still dreaming, he thought. The man was dressed in some unfamiliar fashion and was holding an object pointed at his chest, as if it were some kind of gun. But no gun I have ever seen. Wake up, Vasili!

Then the apparition spoke, in accented but understandable Russian. What the accent was Vasili could not have guessed. There seemed to be an odd disconnect between the movements he could see on the man’s face and the sounds that issued from the object covering the bottom half of his mouth.

“Do not fear, Commander, I have no wish to harm you. This,” he said, waving the object he held, “is merely to prevent you from doing anything foolish. To remove any doubt you might cling to as to its nature...”

The man moved the gun slightly so it no longer pointed at Vasili, and there was a soft hum, upon which six metallic darts embedded themselves in rapid succession into the metal wall next to his head. Before he could react, the weapon was again aimed at his chest.

“As you can see this is a gun, even if it doesn’t look like any you are familiar with.”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The man moved forward, and Vasili automatically leaned backward. The man placed what looked like a block of dark glass on his desk and stepped back. With his other hand he took yet another object out of an apron he wore, but pointed this one at the block of glass. “Watch,” he said, pressing a button.

Vasili gasped and jerked back. An image had appeared above the glass. More than an image: it was like reality; like looking at a three dimensional scene within the confines of his room.

“What magic is this?” he cried.

“Watch,” ordered the man again, pressing another button on his device.

Vasili watched. He would have watched even if the man not held his strange gun on him; even if the man had said nothing.

He saw, as if he were a bird soaring above a real scene, a marine flotilla sailing on the sparkling blue waters of the Caribbean. At its center was an aircraft carrier with the insignia of the USA. He saw the carrier, and most of its attendants, obliterated as a terrible flash and then an even more terrible mushroom cloud rose above the formerly peaceful sea.

He saw other missiles raining down on military bases, on cities. He saw scenes of rioting, of starvation, of death. He saw visions of skulls, miles of skulls in fields of bone. He saw the skeletons of dead cities on the shores of lakes of glass.

When it was over, he saw an unmoving image of the mushroom cloud rising over the Caribbean.

“What… what is this?” cried Vasili.

“It is the future of your world.”

“Why are you showing me this?!”

The man pointed at the mushroom cloud. “It is you who caused it.”

Vasili stared at him, thunderstruck, the feelings of his dream returning. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“This is your future. It is my past. The past of my world. A billion dead. The destruction of your own country. Decades of suffering, beyond the power of any to know or bear.”

“You say I caused this? I? Are you here to kill me then?”

For the first time the man appeared to smile, though it was not a happy smile. “That would be counterproductive.”

“You are making no sense!”

“Then I shall explain. Today, in a little while, the Americans above will find you. They will drop explosives around your position, trying to force you to surface. Your Captain and Political Officer will believe you are under attack. They will want to launch your nuclear torpedo. You will agree.”

He pointed to the mushroom cloud. “This will be the result. All the rest will follow. All the rest. Hundreds of millions will die. All told over a billion lives, now and in the decades to come.”

The man stared at Vasili, and Vasili’s soul quailed at the sight. “You are not at war. The Americans only want you to surface. If you fire your torpedo, you will start a nuclear war.”

Vasili turned grey, and looked like he was about to throw up.

“You’re lying! This is some kind of trick!”

The man smiled again. “You do not believe that, Commander. You do not believe that your American enemies have the ability to make weapons like this,” he said, waving his gun, “Or machines that can show such movies and images,” he added, pointing it at the three-dimensional tableau still floating in the air. “Most of all, you do not believe they can walk through a hole in spacetime into your room in a submarine hundreds of feet under the sea.”

The man looked at him, daring him to object. “If you did, I think that when the Americans knock on your door, you would rush to the surface to surrender as fast as your submarine could get you there.

“So accept what I say. Accept that I am a man from the future you created, and I am telling you the truth. That I know it is true, because it is the history of my world. A world whose fate is now in your hands, even more so than it was before: for now you know the truth. Now, if you launch your weapon, it will be in full knowledge of what you are doing.

“I know this is a burden you did not ask for, Commander, but I pass it to you now. A thing from the future cannot long endure in its own past, only the things it does will. If you make the right decision I will no longer be, for I will have never existed. Even if you choose to ignore me, still I cannot remain in this existence much longer.”

Vasili could only gape at him. “You’re mad…” he whispered, but all the man did was gesture to his evidence. “Or I am mad…”

The man shook his head. “You are not mad, Vasili. Madness would be to launch a nuclear torpedo at the Americans.”

Vasili continued to stare at him, unable to speak. He looked at the mushroom cloud still floating impossibly in the air of his cabin, and he knew what he would do.

Then the man was gone.

Vasili rushed to where he had been, but there was no sign he had ever existed. He spun to his desk, but the glass slab was also gone. The darts were no longer in the wall. Surely I am mad! Or I was dreaming!

But then he looked more closely at where the darts had been, and six deep narrow holes were drilled in the metal, where no holes had ever been before.

Vasili put his head in his hands.

“Blya!”

Far in the future, a woman watched this tableau, reading the automatic translations as they floated under the scene. She stared as she watched a new history unfold, too stunned to fully appreciate its meaning. But slowly, her mind grasped a glimpse of its full import.

So this is why you wanted me to be here. To share in the end of our world. To judge you? To forgive, or condemn? Or is it to condemn me? Or just to see?

She knew why he had done it; even understood it, though the visceral terror of an animal clinging to life gripped her.

But there was nothing to grip on to any more. No ledge or crack to cling to that could save her. Save anyone she knew.

Oh my god, what have you done?

It would have been the last thought she ever had, had she ever existed to have thoughts at all.

Vasili rose and left his room, his head continuing to spin. But as he walked he straightened his spine, forcing his usual military bearing back into his reluctant bones and tendons. Perhaps you are mad, but you are still a man. And if you are not mad, you must not appear so, lest you lose more than your life.

Then as he walked the first boom and rattle sounded, and he knew the enemy had found him, and he knew it was all true. So now I go to meet my destiny, and hope I am worthy of it.

When Vasili entered the room, the captain and political officer stood in greeting and respect, but said nothing. He looked slowly from face to face and knew their thoughts. Beneath his own trademark calm, icy currents swirled in the darkest reaches of his soul. He knew what they would say. He knew what he would say when they did.

But they had to say it.

“Report status,” commanded Vasili.

“Still nothing from Command,” replied the Captain, “and we are now under attack.”

“No word from command after all these days,” added the Political Officer, unnecessarily voicing their thoughts.

Vasili gave them each a hard stare.

“We are not under attack. Can you not tell that these are small charges, not intended to sink us, but merely intended to tell us we are discovered? The Americans have found us. They want us to surface, nothing more.”

The Captain replied angrily. “And how can you read the Americans’ minds? I do not think dropping explosives on us is an act of peace! If they want us to surface, it is merely to make us an easier target! I say launch!”

“I concur,” added the political officer.

“Comrades, we need cool heads, not hot metal. I know what you think and why you think it. But do you really think that the Americans would do this if they suspected we had a nuclear torpedo with which to smite them? And if they did not suspect it, and we are indeed at war, that they would hesitate to destroy us once they found us? No. We are not at war. We are trying to run their blockade and we have been discovered. That is all.”

The argument went for some time, the Captain and Political Officer expressing their conviction that their duty demanded action, unable to understand how Vasili could be so unmoved by their plight or their reasons. He looked like a man who was sure, though how he could be sure they could not tell.

“I cannot agree to an attack, but I understand your fears,” he said at last. “I suggest this. Load the torpedo and prepare it for launch. Then surface. If I am right we will find there is no war. If you are right the sole purpose of the Americans is to expose us, the easier to destroy us without risk. They will have miscalculated. We will have time to launch. They will destroy us, but at the last we shall reach out to take them with us.”

He looked at the two men. “If we launch now, we are dead anyway. This way, perhaps nobody will die.”

At last, the men agreed. When their ship breasted the surface, they looked around at the enemy.

“What is that noise?” asked the Captain.

Vasili laughed, a laugh of vindication and release. “I believe they call it ‘jazz’, Valentin. I think the Americans wish to reassure us by having their band play us a song, which they would hardly do if we were in the middle of a war.”

The submarine was sent on its way, its mission a failure, running back to Russia with its tail between its legs, humbled and ashamed. On the bridge, the Captain’s face was red with shame and anger. “Failure! Failure! Now we must face the consequences.”

But Vasili merely smiled, and in an unexpected act of informality clapped the man on the shoulder. “Be of good cheer, my friend. I think they will understand. Surely it is better to be sent on our way with a slap on our rump, than to be the men who destroyed the world.”