“Where?” murmurs Mason. “And when? It’s…fasc-in-at-ing.”
“Fascinating indeed,” agrees Holmes, who sits contemplating in a rattan chair nearby. He’s wearing his belted half-cape coat and deerstalker because, with childish glee, the darker visitor “from the future” specially requested this costume, even though no moor nor vile landscape is nearby unless one counts the foul mud along the Thames at low tide.
Nor does Holmes indulge himself in opium. Truth be told, not ever. When he needs cerebral stimulus, he’ll use cocaine, morphine, or shag tobacco. Right now, Holmes requires no such stimulus, since his visitors provide this fully.
The relaxing effect of opium might—or might not—loosen the tongue of even the best-trained spy. Which is why Holmes acceded to the enthusiasms of the taller, dusky young man. Downstairs at Holmes’s digs earlier on, bizarrely this “gentleman” shed a short frock coat—now resumed—as though that were some overcoat. Beneath, a double-breasted waistcoat was unaccountably loosened and flapping, as if there were a heatwave this present October. The other fellow—for so Mason claimed to be academically—wears a lounging jacket woven of Harris tweed with incongruous plus-fours below. Neither man has been near a tailor, yet they are kitted out as if to impress.
Holmes leans toward Mason. “Tell me again where you come from. And from when?”
In the Oxford of 2050 a week ago, or 170 years ahead depending upon how one looks at it, an elegant woman from Guoanbu, the Chinese State Security Ministry, instructs Mason and Sharma. She’s tall and slim in her smartly tailored future-blu uniform, two gold stars on the epaulettes. Raven hair, chestnut highlights, divide on the left to expose a wide brow. Jet-pupil almond eyes transfix from behind full horn-rimmed glasses, which may be Armani, from the Dukedom of Italy. Perfectly drawn red lips. She’s a bit like a lovely mantis.
That woman’s name is Maggie Mo. Chinese officials often have “English” first names for use with Westerners. This adds a level of mystery and masquerade.
Incidentally, when not used as a surname, Mo 莫 means Don’t. Maggie is General Don’t. And also General Do. Supposing that stars denote a general.
Right now, Maggie Mo would gladly surrender a star from her shoulder to be the person receiving instructions rather than giving them. She might even sacrifice two stars.
For her personal passion happens to be the late Victorian period of what would become the Great British Battenberg Barony—or GB-BB—within the UK of Europe. The period when Herbert George Wells envisioned invisibility, for instance—oh, to be a security officer unseen, yet with public fame as a Shanghai film star. The period of artist extraordinary Aubrey Beardsley and of forbidden absinthe.
Guoanbu’s Seventeenth Bureau—its Enterprises Division—oversees Beijing’s Time Institute that built the “pod” which can carry people into the past. Tampering with time is a sensitive political matter. This is restricted Chinese knowledge, but they use the best tools to accomplish each mission, in the sense of recruiting the best agents. In this case, as previously, Mason and Sharma fit the bill.
Although soon to be displaced by more than a century, Mason and Sharma are part of the same milieu which Holmes and Watson navigate confidently, pistols in their pockets, fists ready to box. Mason and Sharma both are Oxford men, the former a historian of ideas, the latter a specialist in the literature of the Victorian era which culminates in Arthur Conan Doyle. Lanky and dusky, Rajit Sharma could be the son of a Raja of the Indian Empire, Mason a portly stockbroker.
There’s only one person better prepared than them for the mission, not merely as regards cultural knowledge of the late Victorian period, but also of the intricate web of events which even a minor time-change might affect. Yet two-star Maggie Mo is an official too high in rank and too valuable to risk losing in the past without any rescue technology available. For you cannot dip a toe twice into exactly the same eddy of the timestream without you originating there first of all, though the time-pod can travel autonomously.
Amply compensated, Mason and Sharma will be well advised to keep absolutely mum about what Maggie Mo confides. Likewise, other worthies of useful Oxford University. The time-pod is presently stationed in the university’s vaulted medieval Divinity School, a spacious, closed-off location attended by élite Han technicians. The pod is a giant egg of shimmery pearl with three fat wheels in case it needs pushing by hand, a single porthole to see out of. On an easel rests a blackboard which Mo quickly cleans of some scribblings, chalking up instead, almost derisively, three letters followed by a couple of characters, like a primary teacher on the first day of class:
UKE
中国
“The United Kingdom of Europe,” she declares. “Down below, there’s the Middle Kingdom; in other words, Zhōngguó, namely China. Due to its unshakeable unity, the UKE impedes China somewhat. To a significant degree, whose fault is that? Our own scholars and myself alike believe that a crucial figure is the detective Sherlock Holmes, who constantly bolstered European monarchs and noble houses by solving crimes and muting scandals which otherwise would have resulted in hostilities and revolutions which would have torn apart the network of royal relationships.”
Does her voice tremble at mention of those times out of reach? That’s unacceptable. Private yearnings cannot interfere with the mission. But how Maggie yearns to visit Victorian London in person. Indeed her expertise is why she is here, so frustratingly in charge of this particular mission.
“I promise we will bring a certain vital person from that past to meet you,” Sharma says consolingly. He understands.
“Thank you! I shall merely miss experiencing the actual streets, the weather, the buildings, the sounds, the smells, the Savoy operettas—” Would the lorgnettes of ladies in other red boxes swivel at sight of her oriental face? “The Criterion restaurant, Simpson’s in the Strand,” she concludes, as much bitterly as sarcastically.
And if Sherlock Holmes refuses to accompany Mason and Sharma for a quick trip to futurity? Surely everybody wants to step ahead a century and more! Especially when the future is pleasant enough. A no-brainer.
As Mason and Sharma proceed along Baker Street, reading the numbers on doorways, suddenly the next door swings open and from the shadows within looms a sizeable moon-faced female in fulsome black drapery, a bustle jutting out behind like a cushion stitched to her backside. Upon her head, a lace cap. Endow her waist with a bunch of keys and for sure, she’s a landlady. She beams. “It’s here,” she informs the startled duo.
They look behind, they look across the way. People pass by, but no, she is addressing themselves, and she doesn’t seem to think that any more explanation is necessary. She draws aside so that they can enter.
The hallway is small. There’s nowhere for Sharma to hang his frock coat except for the arms of Mrs. Hudson, which she proceeds to offer after her dusky visitor begins to divest himself, seemingly to her mild amusement. On top of the frock coat go both men’s matching grey Homburg hats, of stiff felt, with dented crowns. Mrs. Hudson, she must be Mrs. Hudson, has to be. Sharma can scarcely stop staring at her. She’s unlike her many imaginary portraits, having a touch of the washerwoman about her.
“He’s upstairs.” Burdened by the coat and hats, she gestures with her chin at the steep stairs. “He’ll be expecting you.”
“But how did you know?” begins Mason.
How many times has someone asked that very same question in this hallway? Enough times for Mrs. Hudson to recite automatically:
“You came along Baker Street, checking the house numbers with mounting urgency the closer you got to here.”
“Amazing!” Mason exclaims with true admiration. Mrs. Hudson sketches a smug smile. “And how is it you’ve been on the lookout so much?”
“Lately there’s been little enough—” The landlady’s smile fades. She clams up; she shan’t go down in history as a gossip. The stairs await.
Holmes does not rise from his armchair by the fireplace, since visitors first need to galvanise his curiosity; otherwise, they’ll be dismissed. The coarse shag he’s smoking in a meerschaum pipe smells strong; you can suck meerschaum pipes more vigorously than briar pipes, reaching higher temperatures. There’s a dizzying fug in the air.
“Mr. Holmes, sir, the honour is ours!” Mason presents their visiting cards printed in 2050, both cards in unison, which is wise since Sharma almost capers like a giant gangly puppy. In this big sitting room of high windows, here’s the sideboard with the Persian slipper that keeps Holmes’s shag tobacco from getting dry and leftovers of a woodcock to snack on. Here’s the stick rack and the bearskin hearthrug and the cocaine cooker kit.
Also, the framed portrait of “Chinese” Gordon who put an end to the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century, the Taiping Rebellion, God-crazy proto-communists versus an established dynasty; Maggie Mo might have mixed feelings as to sides.
Over there is the chemistry corner, with side table stained by acids and a microscope of modest power. On the mantelpiece of the black marble fireplace correspondence of no value is impaled, ready to set fire to kindling.
And in the wall nearby are the famous initials V R, topped by a crown, made by bullets during precision target practice. To achieve such accuracy, Holmes must have used a long-barrel service revolver and intense concentration on several occasions.
And there’s the problem: Victoria Regina. Holmes’s extreme royalism extending protectively to any minor European princelet.
“Mr. Holmes,” says Mason. “I shall be frank. We come from the future.”
“Certainly you do not appear to be from the present,” replies Holmes, setting his pipe aside. “At least as regards discarding a frock coat downstairs instead of wearing it while visiting, as I presume has happened. Do you suffer from a nervous disease, Mr. Sharma? Something exotic brought back from the Indian Empire?”
“Not at all! I’m just thrilled to meet you at last, sir. As my colleague says, we are from the future.”
“Perhaps you are influenced by a piece of fanciful fiction?”
“Fiction? What fiction? Not in the slightest!”
No no no. They’re completely safe. Wells’s Time Machine hasn’t been published yet!
Holmes’s languid gesture indicates his chemistry corner. “I happened to notice a squib in the Royal College of Science’s journal for science students. I too am a student of science. Now what was the title of the piece? Chronic something…” Holmes raises his pipe and puffs. “Argonauts?”
In a hissed aside, “Damn it, Mason, I forgot, but that’s Bertie’s first use of a time machine.”
“So the idea of travel through time is not unknown to me. The problem is whether you yourselves accomplished this or are feigning, and why so.”
Sharma responds brightly, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Holmes snorts. “What poppycock! Whoever came up with such stupidity? To eliminate the impossible would take centuries. Raise your game, gentlemen. If you come to me with this bizarre story, I don’t doubt you foresaw that you’d need to show some proof. So what will you show me from ‘the future’?”
This is going faster than expected. From his jacket pocket Mason produces his Huawei 340 Pro, as planned. There’s no signal, of course, but the phone packs plenty inside of itself, such as molecular MiniSinoSiri. Sharma and Mason exchange nods. Mason switches on. The screen with its apps brightens.
Sharma instructs clearly, “SinoSiri, recite The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
The sweet familiar voice commences:
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred—”
Now Holmes arises, placing a hand over his heart. “Since our beloved laureate is quite recently interred in Westminster Abbey, he shall not be used as emotional bait.”
“Didn’t you know Tennyson died recently?” Mason hisses at Sharma.
“SinoSiri, stop!”
“But do let me hold that device.”
“Yes, of course.”
Holmes’s fingers dance nimbly at random, then pause as bright red British uniforms, white helmets, and rifles appear; before leaving 2050, Mason was watching Zulu, the original movie.
“Surely,” Holmes says wonderingly, “this is the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, for which eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded! Surely no kinetoscope exists which can possibly…the colour, the clarity, the continuity…unless invisible chronic argonaut carriages do exist…which must also be miniature… If this be a conjuring trick…”
“No,” Mason assures, “it’s a motion picture from seventy years in the future from now. No invisible time machines are involved. No blood is shed, nobody dies.”
“But the Zulu savages—”
“—Those Black actors live in a rainbow nation. Lived, I mean—by now, they must all be dead of old age. Sorry if I confuse.”
Holmes’s fingers fly again and a menu of names and numbers appears.
“As well as much else, this may primarily be some kind of telephone, although without any line to connect it.”
“Mr. Holmes, how can you possibly deduce that!?”
“Personally, I need no telephone. Telegrams serve me better. Telegrams are concise and permit time for analysis. Yet certain numerical principles regarding webs and networks must apply to telephony…”
Holmes’s astonishment level is still low.
“Let me show you another ‘trick’ this device performs.” Mason recovers the Huawei and snaps a photo of Holmes. He turns the screen to the detective.
“Hmm! I see myself and my background a couple of seconds ago. This is faster than any tintype photography of which I know hitherto—”
Damn it, that photo per se is not astonishing.
Yet, oh, the value of a genuine photo of the great detective in this historic room! In case of accidental deletion, Mason slips back to the previous photo in memory, which happens to be of two-star Maggie Mo beside the blackboard in Oxford’s medieval vaulted Divinity School.
“An oriental woman military officer!” exclaims Holmes. “And not lacking in charms. You have indeed now piqued my interest. Congratulations, gentlemen. Let us work on the hypothesis that I believe you. My diary is clear for the rest of the day. In what may this modest consulting detective, first and only of his profession, help you?” Few times can the word “modest” have been pronounced with such disingenuousness.
Sharma shuffles. “We want to help to make a better future world… Dear me, do I sound as if I’m taking part in a beauty pageant?”
“I think,” replies Holmes enigmatically, “you can safely leave such activities to the Belgians.” A discreet cough. “I intend no disrespect to the royal house of Leopold, despite what is noised about the Congo.”
Worse than Poland under the Nazis. “To be sure,” agrees Mason hurriedly.
They cannot reasonably request Holmes to accompany them to the pod hidden by bushes in Regent’s Park. Even if Holmes agrees to go for a stroll, an egg on wheels with three seats and a few buttons and levers might strike the most brilliant brain of the age as of dubious proof compared with contraptions from the Grande Fête of the Future in Paris, as shown in the Illustrated London News.
“If only,” muses Mason, “you might go with us on a quick hop into the future. That Chinese lady explains things so vividly, compared with ourselves.”
“You sound like a pimp,” says Sharma, which briefly shuts Mason up.
Holmes takes up his pipe and puffs shag. “Tempting. Your Chinese lady sounds intriguing. But there are cogent reasons for not straying from town…reasons beyond your ken.”
“Beyond our Kensington, ha ha.” Sharma becomes excited. “This town! I have spent half my career studying your era. Would it be too much to ask…”
“To look around town? I don’t see why not. In due course, you may confess your true motives. It’s cloudy today, but there’ll be no rain.”
“The Criterion, Simpson’s, Bart’s Hospital, Piccadilly…” Sharma might be writing a letter to Santa Claus. “To meet the Irregulars, to call at your tobacconist, to ride in a carriage—”
“To visit an opium den?” Holmes suggests.
To uphold the decorum of the street, no regular cab stand is nearby, but a vacant “growler” carriage happens to have halted by the curb thirty yards away. Its top-hatted driver is consulting a newspaper while his horse occupies itself feeding from a nosebag now flat on the roadway.
“As seeming admirers of myself,” Holmes remarks, “you may know that I favour a two-seater hansom for speed. However, for comfort, three persons require a carriage. And conveniently…” Holmes raises his cane to catch the cabman’s attention.
Out from behind the still stationary four-wheeler suddenly comes a nimble hansom. A flat-cap cabbie lays on to his horse with his long lash, cutting around the front of the heavier growler cab.
“What the deuce?” Holmes glances at Mason, at Sharma, at the four-wheeler, at the hansom—analysing the situation with the speed of a supercomputer which doesn’t yet exist.
“Looks like he’s desperate for a fare,” says Mason.
“A fare for three fellows crammed in his two-person cab?” Holmes tsks. “Plainly kidnap by hansom isn’t any plan of yours, Futurians. Yet is kidnap itself the plan? The plan of someone expecting one man, not three. Willing to risk finding out? At a push, three chaps can share a hansom. The destination must be very near to here; otherwise, alone, I would soon jump out irrespective of twisting an ankle—curiosity would keep me in the cab for two minutes at most—so the plan may be a serious bashing with broken bones to keep me at home for months.”
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Page 27
