1
"Again."
It took him a full ten seconds to understand the word. A conference table in green baize. Seven ashtrays. The chart on the wall. The date stamp on the papers: the twentieth of November, Shōwa 16. The same room as two worlds ago. Not the same world, though. He knew that much by now.
What he did not understand was why nobody was startled. No chair went over, no papers went up, the military policeman did not put a hand to his holster. A few men caught their breath and a few looked at one another. That was all.
His right pocket rang. The old man at the head of the table heard it, and only then narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Even the sound is the same."
2
Thirty minutes later he was being shown a thin file. A registry number on the cover; four sheets inside. In August of Shōwa 13, into this same room, a man had come down in a column of light. Three years and three months ago.
"And he?"
"He remained in this residence eighteen days," the old man said. Chief of the Naval General Staff; he sat in the seat Hashiguchi had occupied two worlds ago, and his face was a little different. "And then he vanished."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing."
"He did not speak a single word."
He turned the four pages. The time he sat down. The times he took meals. How long he spent looking out of the window. Questions put to him: fourteen. Questions answered: zero. On the last page there was one line.
On the morning of the eighteenth day, vanished together with a light. No further information.
He looked at that line for a long time. This man did nothing. And then he vanished.
He did not know who it was. Not himself: he does not come twice to the same world, and each world begins from the beginning. So it was somebody else. Somebody with the same phone, making the same sound, who came down in this room. And that somebody, for eighteen days, did nothing.
The man he had been before four worlds would have clutched at a thought here. Perhaps if I do nothing, it ends. He did not clutch at it. Four worlds would not permit it. Zero had become one and one had become three. Each time it went up, the things he could do went up. Each time the things he could do went up, the number of people who lived changed. Aircraft not burned in Washington. A convoy not sunk out of Tokyo. Crates that reached Chongqing. A fleet in Berlin that survived without firing a round. Is he to vanish without using that hand?
He closed the file. That man did not vanish. He simply never began.
3
He opened the phone.
Elite Battleship Squadron / Grand Carrier Force Available War Economy / Research Head Start / Accelerated Research Available Opening Diplomatic Mission Available Minor Power Handicap (Stage 1) / Campaign Chronicle / Victory Decorations / Ending Gallery / Admiral's Record Room / Flagship Title Unlocked ―――――――――――― Veteran Air Groups Requirements not met Seasoned Army Requirements not met Inherited Technology Requirements not met Industrial Mobilisation Requirements not met Theatre-Wide Reconnaissance Requirements not met Ironman Requirements not met Hell+ Requirements not met Battle-Honoured Hulls Requirements not met ―――――――――――――――― Admiral's Record Room Campaigns completed 3 Nations completed 3 Next Theatre Modern Fleet Requirements not met
Twelve lines black, eight grey. The plan he had made in the previous world was in his head.
Of the eight grey lines, three could be aimed at in this country. Two if he got through at Historical difficulty or above. One if he won decisively.
He took everything that could be taken, the squadron included. Two worlds ago he had not taken it. This time he would have it recorded as ships that had been in this country's navy from the start. This old man, he felt, would write it that way.
And then he decided that in this world he would take none of the eight.
The reason was on the fourth sheet of that file.
4
The three questions were put here too, and his answers were nearly the same as two worlds ago. Only the question about the sea was different.
"The striking force is assembled at Hitokappu Bay. If it is to be stopped, tonight is the last night."
"Stop it."
"Taking only the south."
"No."
The old admiral raised his head.
"Stop the south as well."
The room went quiet. It was a level deeper than the quiet two worlds ago.
"Adviser. Are you saying that we do not fight this war?"
"Yes."
"That is not a plan for winning."
"No."
"Then what is it a plan for?"
"For not beginning."
He had fought four wars in four worlds. A war he won, a war he ended by negotiation, a war that ended in neither victory nor defeat, and a war he lost. All four had taught him the same thing. What can be done after a thing has begun is always less than what can be done before.
"Adviser." The old admiral pointed at the file. "The gentleman three years ago also did nothing."
"That is not the same," he said. "That man did nothing. I am going to do everything, so that it does not begin."
5
He used all eighteen days. He had never been stronger. The stockpiles were large, research was ahead, three technologies chosen in an earlier round were in his hands from the start, and there were friendly countries across the table. He spent all of it on not letting the war begin.
He stopped Hitokappu Bay. He stopped the south as well. In exchange he had three other sources of oil built. He had them drill under the Manchurian snow, handed over the process for making oil from coal, and had them buy from the countries that would still sell.
"Can we buy?"
"You can. There are still parties who will sell."
On the twenty-sixth of November the note arrived. The General Staff was up in arms — this is an ultimatum, there is no longer room to negotiate, everyone said. He spread the paper on the table and read it aloud line by line.
"Let us separate what is written here into what we can swallow and what we cannot. Swallow the swallowable first, and leave only what cannot be swallowed. For that one remaining item, we extend the negotiation by a year."
"And what does a year buy us?"
"A year in which ships do not sink."
6
The war did not begin. The tension remained and the embargo continued. There were small clashes on the borders and monthly exchanges of abuse across tables. History dragged itself forward in a thoroughly uncomfortable shape. Even so, nothing happened on the morning of the eighth of December.
That morning he was in the room beneath the residence. Nobody was looking at him; everyone was cleaning up after a thing that had not occurred. Only the old admiral came to him.
"Adviser."
"Yes."
"I put fourteen questions to that gentleman three years ago."
"So I have read."
"The fourteenth time, I asked him this. What is it that you are protecting? He only looked at me a little."
The old admiral looked at him straight on.
"May I ask you the same thing?"
He received the question across four worlds of time. Then he answered.
"You."
"Me."
"Men like you. Four of them so far."
The old admiral did not ask anything further.
7
In the summer of 1945, it came. The fifth time. There had been no war in this country. It came regardless — cloud rising over a distant atoll, in the month he knew, in the place he knew, the thing he knew.
He read the news in a newspaper. He took out the sheet of paper; the fold was beginning to tear. He wrote the fifth line. Summer 1945 — completed. Five.
Looking at the five lines, he remembered the fourth world. In those days this one line had existed to crush him. There is a thing that will not move whatever I do; perhaps what I am doing means nothing. He had read it that way, and sat a long time in a room with the lights off. Now he read it differently. Because there is one thing that cannot be moved, the things that were moved can be counted.
Everything he had moved across five worlds was a difference measured against that summer. Carriers saved at Pearl Harbor. Airfields not burned. A convoy not sunk. Crates that arrived. A fleet that did not fire. A war that did not begin.
Precisely because that summer did not move, all of it was his.
8
That autumn he sat in his room looking at his own phone. Across five worlds he had never been able to switch it on, because he had not brought anything to charge it with. He had asked an engineer in this country, and in two years they had built a converter that fitted.
He opened the photographs.
There was a photograph of a hill.
The way home. He did not remember taking it. Something must have made him raise the phone, on a day when he was climbing that hill with a rucksack on his back.
He looked at the screen.
He could not remember it.
The photograph was there. He remembered the gradient. But the man who had been walking up that hill was nowhere at all.
What came up instead was the pattern of the carpet in the Cabinet Room in Washington, and the bare bulb in the basement in Tokyo, and the give of the plank floor in Chongqing, and the hardness of the parquet in Berlin.
Five worlds had pushed one world out.
Across all five he had gone on saying the same phrase.
In the world I come from.
He can still say it. He can say it, but he can no longer point at it.
He looked at the screen a while longer.
Then he closed the photographs and shut his eyes.
Five faces came up.
The Chief of Naval Operations who laid out the mooring plan for Pearl Harbor and asked whether it was a target in rows. The old admiral who tapped the chart of Hitokappu Bay and said that tonight was the last night. The naval officer of a country with no ships. The Grand Admiral on the wharf who nodded at that they were not sunk. And, in this world, another old admiral in the same seat.
He cannot remember the hill.
He remembers all five faces.
9
That night there was a small gathering at the residence — the autumn of the fourth year of a country that had not begun a war.
When it was over, in the corridor back to his office, his right pocket rang.
The fifth time.
ATLAS Operations in this world are complete. Your decisions have changed this world. Choose what you wish to take to the next one.
Complete, it said.
He opened the app.
Not one line had been added.
…… Admiral's Record Room Campaigns completed 4 Nations completed 4 ―――――――――――――――― Next Theatre Modern Fleet Requirements not met Remain in this world Requirements not met
The record had gone to four. But no line had been added.
He knew why. Preventing a war from beginning is not the condition on any of the eight. All eight grey lines were about ways of winning. Not beginning is not among them.
And still it said complete.
He set the two facts side by side. Complete. Nothing added.
Someone is watching this and finds it entertaining. He thought that. It was the same someone he had been angry at in the fourth world. This time he was not angry. Instead he thought:
Whether or not you find it entertaining, I am going to do this.
The two lines below the rule were still grey.
One cannot remain. The fifth time as well.
He took out the torn-creased sheet of paper and wrote one line beneath the others.
Is there an end?
He looked at it for a while after writing it.
Then, to his own surprise, he wrote one line more beneath that.
Where next?
He compared the two lines.
Before four worlds, he would have written only the upper one, and been shaking.
Now the lower one had come to him first.
He folded the paper and put it in an inside pocket.
He closed the screen.
The light was beginning to come up around his feet.
He did not stop. Five worlds had taught him that stopping achieves nothing. And in any case he no longer wanted to stop.
The smell was beginning to change. He could not yet tell where it belonged to.
Before he could tell, he did what he always did, and waited for his right pocket to ring.
In five worlds, that at least had always rung.
When it rings, another eighteen days begin.
Eighteen days is still enough time.
Is there an end?
End