by Eric Brown
Holmes considered his brother’s words. “The alternative,” he replied, “living incognito as you say, will mean that the world famous pairing of Holmes and Watson will be free to do the evil bidding of our overlords – and who knows what nefarious activities they might embark upon? At least, with the simulacra out of the way, we would prevent that. And if things take a turn for the worse, and the Martians become wise to our ruse, then we will do as you counsel, go to ground and assume other identities.”
“So there is no way I might talk you out of this course of action, Sherlock?”
“No way at all,” said my friend.
“In that case, allow me to assist you in bagging the pair,” Mycroft said. “I will set up an immediate watch on 221B, to ensure that the Martians do not have your rooms under surveillance. Then, and only then, do we act.”
At eleven o’clock, Holmes and I, disguised as chimney sweeps and with all the requisite paraphernalia in tow, and with blackened faces into the bargain, sat drinking strong tea in a workman’s cafe around the corner from Baker Street. Mycroft was stationed in a cab a little way from 221B. From there he had watched the simulacra depart the house at ten that morning, and satisfied himself that there were no lurking Martians or their lackeys in the vicinity. A street urchin, with half a crown for his pains, was at the ready to convey Mycroft’s word to us just as soon as the pair returned.
It was now noon, and we had received no word from the runner.
I was in a state of nervous apprehension.
“All will be well, Watson. It will be, as the saying goes, a turkey shoot. The simulacra are expecting no assault, and likely will be unarmed. And,” he patted his jacket pocket where he carried his electrical gun, “with these weapons we cannot fail.”
I nodded, reassured by his words and the weight of the weapon in my own pocket.
Minutes later the cafe door opened and the urchin hurried across to our table. “Word from fatso,” said the lad. “‘The birds have returned’ – whatever that means.”
“Capital!” said Holmes and, tipping the lad a further shilling, we hurried from the cafe.
Never had my nerves been in such a state on approaching the familiar portals of 221B. My heart was pounding as we climbed the steps and Holmes rapped upon the door.
In due course Mrs Hudson answered the summons, and my heart leapt at the sight of her homely visage. She took in our disguises with evident distaste, until Holmes hurried forward, took her arm and whispered, “Not a word, Mrs H! It is I, and my companion is Dr Watson.”
She looked flummoxed. “But, but…” she wavered, gesturing at the stairs. “Not twenty minutes ago, you—”
“All will be explained in due course,” Holmes said. “Now, wait here until I give further word.”
She nodded and backed against the wall. “Whatever you say, Mr Holmes.”
I smiled at her as I passed, and followed Holmes up the staircase to our rooms.
He paused before the living room door, and his long fingers wrapped themselves around the handle. With his right hand he drew the electrical gun, nodding at me to do the same.
I pulled the weapon from my pocket and readied myself for action.
“After three,” he whispered. “One… two… three. Now!”
He opened the door and burst into the room.
No sooner had we stepped into the room than the simulacra leapt from their chairs before the hearth and dived at us – so much for Holmes’s suggestion that this would prove to be a turkey shoot!
In seconds the Holmes simulacrum had his fingers about my friend’s throat, in the process dashing the electrical gun from his grip.
At the same time, the Watson simulacrum dived at me. I stepped nimbly to my left, avoiding its lunge, and fired my weapon. With fortune that, to this day, I find it frightening to dwell upon – for what might our fates have been had my shot gone astray? – the electrical charge hit the advancing simulacrum squarely in the chest and sent it reeling backwards. It hit the wall and slid to the floor, incapacitated.
Meanwhile, Holmes and his own mechanical copy were rolling around on the floor, the simulacrum’s grip upon my friend’s throat tightening all the while, Holmes’s face a shade of puce as life was forced from him. For one second, as he lay on his back, his bulging eyes found mine and implored me to do something.
I raised my gun as the pair rolled. When the simulacrum was uppermost, its fingers in a deadly grip around Holmes’s throat, I took the opportunity and fired at its head. The mechanical man arched with a strangled cry, then spasmed and released its grip on my friend.
Holmes struggled, coughing, from under the dead weight and I, half-delirious with relief, looked down upon the result of my handiwork.
“Sharp shooting, Watson. I owe you my life.”
“Think nothing of it, Holmes. All in the line of duty, what?”
Holmes fell to examining the simulacra, declaring from time to time that he found the mechanical men fascinating.
“That’s all very well, Holmes, but how the deuce are we going to go about getting rid of the pair?”
Holmes looked up at me. “Get rid of them? Why, they will occupy my working hours for weeks, if not months, to come. We will keep them in the storeroom, along with my stock of chemicals and other paraphernalia, and I will experiment upon them at my leisure. There is much to be learned, Watson, which will no doubt assist us in our fight against our Arkana foe.”
He stood, moved to the window and stared out. High above Regent’s Park, dominating the skyline, stood a Martian tripod – a sight that now confirmed in my mind all that was evil and duplicitous about our overlords.
“We face a stern challenge in the years ahead,” said Holmes. “A terrible evil has swept the shores of our world, but I believe in time we can repel the invaders and once again reclaim what is rightfully ours.”
“Here, here!” I said, quite stirred by my friend’s eloquent call to arms.
Chapter Thirteen
At the Lyons’ Tea Room
Later that afternoon, with the bodies of the simulacra safely stowed away and Mrs Hudson apprised of the situation and sworn to silence, we were taking a well-earned pot of tea when the telephone rang.
Holmes crossed the room and snatched up the receiver. “Yes?”
A tinny voice sounded, the words indistinct.
“That is correct,” Holmes said, and then, “My word! Yes, yes, of course.”
More words issued from the caller.
“We would be more than delighted. Yes, by all means. In thirty minutes, then.” He replaced the receiver and paced a while in silent reflection.
“Who was that, Holmes?”
He turned and gave me a rare smile. “An agent of the rebel Martians,” he said. “I was expecting a summons, of course, but not quite so soon. We have been called to the Lyons’ tea room, Piccadilly, at four o’clock.”
At three-thirty we took an electrical cab to the heart of London. Holmes was uncommonly silent for the duration of the journey, no doubt contemplating the many trials and tribulations that awaited us.
We alighted outside the tea room, and before we crossed the pavement Holmes restrained me with a hand upon my arm. I looked up at the louring cowl of the Martian tripod that defaced the Piccadilly skyline – but it was not this that had caused my friend to pause.
He said, “What happened on Mars hit you hard, my friend.”
I smiled bleakly. “Quite knocked the stuffing out of me, old man. I know we must fight on, and I will do so, Holmes – as much for Miss Hamilton-Bell’s sake as for ours, but it will be a melancholy—”
He stopped me. He was smiling. “Don’t be so downhearted, Watson. All is not as it appears.”
“What?”
“Prepare yourself for a shock, or rather a welcome surprise.”
“What the blazes do you mean, Holmes?”
“I mean,” said he, “that it is not only the equatorial Martians who manufacture the simulacra.”
I blinked. “I don’t quite follow…”
“The rebel Martians, our comrades in this battle, not only have the means to create simulacra, but have done so.”
“Very well. That’s good to know, but…?”
“Watson, you can be so slow at times!” Holmes laughed. “The rebels recruited humans to their cause. Not only that, but when an agent proved exceptional in the field, they created valuable simulacra so that these individuals might work as flight crew on the Martian ships to keep tabs on which humans were being lured to the red planet, while their originals remained to rouse the troops, as it were, on Earth.”
“Good God, man!” I felt a little dizzy. His grip steadied me. “You mean to say…?”
He steered me across the pavement and into the tea room.
“The phone call was from the lady herself,” he said – and he pointed across the room to where an uncommonly beautiful woman sat, recognisable to me despite her raven-haired disguise. “Miss Freya Hamilton-Bell,” he went on, “the original.”
In a daze, hardly able to believe my eyes, I crossed the room.
Miss Hamilton-Bell rose, smiling at my speechlessness, and reached out to take my hand.
“Why…” I said, and, “Upon my word!” I gripped her hand and kissed her knuckles, tears springing to my eyes.
“I have heard reports of our travails on Mars, Dr Watson, Mr Holmes,” she said as we took our seats.
“Forgive me,” I said. “This is something of a shock. A most wonderful shock, I might add. I thought you dead – indeed, I saw you lying dead.”
“My hapless simulacrum, Dr Watson,” she murmured. “I live to fight another day, though from now on with somewhat greater circumspection. And I am gratified that you two stalwarts will be joining me in the fight.”
The thought of the battle ahead now swelled my heart, and it was all I could do to restrain myself from embracing the woman in front of me.
“There is heartening news from my contacts on Mars,” she said when we had settled ourselves at the table. “The Arkana have no notion that you fled to Earth, and are scouring the face of their world for you, which will buy us a little time.”
“Good news indeed,” said I.
“And now,” she said, “I would like to hear, in your own words, all about your – our – derring-do on Mars. Spare me no detail.”
And so, beginning on the morning of our summons to investigate the spurious murder of a non-existent philosopher on Mars, I regaled Miss Hamilton-Bell with a full record of our many and various adventures on the red planet.
Part Two
The Fight on Earth
Chapter Fourteen
A Deerstalker and a Pair of Gloves
For the duration of the following day, Holmes undertook a minute examination of the Martian simulacra. We fetched them from the storeroom and, pushing back the chaise longue and an armchair, laid out the bodies on the hearth rug. I must say that, on seeing them side by side, as unmoving as two corpses, I felt a shiver run up my spine.
“I must give it to the Martians,” Holmes said before he began work. “One must admire the science that has gone into manufacturing the simulacra. Why, look at the verisimilitude with which they have reproduced your tegument, right down to the small mole on the left of your neck.”
“Remarkable,” I allowed. “I wonder…”
“Go on.”
“I was about to say, I wonder how far the fidelity stretches. D’you think they reproduced the bullet wound on my shoulder?”
“Shall we investigate?” said Holmes, and began unbuttoning the simulacrum’s waistcoat and shirt. He tugged back the material of the shirt to reveal the bare shoulder, and I stared down at the puckered, silver cicatrise just below the acromion where, more than thirty years ago, a Jezail bullet had brought me down.
“My word,” I said. “Why, it’s like staring into a mirror! But how the blazes do they do it, Holmes?”
“Just as they copied the contents of our minds, they somehow made faithful reproductions of our bodies – though I admit that their methodology escapes my understanding.”
On his knees, he leaned close to the face of my simulacrum and inspected it minutely. “The workmanship is astounding, Watson. Why, look at the stratum corneum: the hair follicles and papillae!” He prodded its cheek with a bony forefinger. “And it feels just like human flesh,” he went on. “Little wonder that we’ve been deceived by the hundreds, even thousands of imposters taking up the guises of the great and the good of Earth. If the mere logistical difficulties of vanquishing our Martian foe were not difficult enough, we must contend with these infernal doppelgängers.”
“There are times, Holmes, when I almost despair and admit that the game is not worth the candle. Can we really overcome the might and the technical sophistication of the Martians?”
Holmes climbed to his feet. “One way we can start,” he said, “is by understanding our foe. And to that end I will commence a thorough examination of these… these machines.”
He moved to his cluttered workbench and returned with a razor-sharp knife. “Now, which should I cut up first?”
“How about your own simulacrum?” I said.
He gave me a penetrating look. “Why, Watson, you look a trifle squeamish. You must have attended an untold number of autopsies in your time.”
“Yes,” I said, “but none conducted upon my own double.”
“Then I shall work on this one first,” he said, and moved to his own simulacrum.
He unbuttoned the waistcoat, then the shirt and, as Miss Hamilton-Bell had done on Mars, he took the knife and slit the torso of the simulacrum from throat to abdomen. The integument parted like the flesh of a ripe fruit, revealing an intricate nexus of wires beneath. Ever the scientist, Holmes shook his head in silent wonder.
For the following three hours, he lost himself in examination of the machine. He dismantled the thing bit by bit, making meticulous notes in a ledger as he did so. From time to time he muttered something to himself, in amazement and grudging admiration.
As he worked, I perused that morning’s Times from cover to cover, bringing myself up to date with the events of the world that had transpired while we had been on Mars. On the face of it, not much had changed: politicians spouted the same old party platitudes, natural disasters occurred with disheartening regularity, and England had drawn with Australia at the Oval. I found myself skimming the pages impatiently. In the past – before Miss Hamilton-Bell’s revelations had opened our eyes – I would have devoured world events with undivided interest. Now I could not take the news reports seriously. The events on the world stage were but shadow play, and the reporting of those events so much trivial verbiage disguising the fact of the human predicament and the Martians’ ultimate intent.
From time to time I looked up from the paper to see how my friend’s investigations were progressing. He was totally consumed by the job at hand, intent on the intricacies of the problem before him. I had seen him thus on many occasions, though then the conundrum had been of a more chemical nature. Now he was faced with the micro-electrical wonders of another race entirely, and his questing mind rose to the challenge.
At one point he said, more to himself than to me, “Of course I’m interested in the machines’ motive power, but what taxes my understanding at the moment is the question of autonomy. To what degree do these simulacra possess individual freedom to make conscious decisions of judgement according to their circumstances – or are they controlled, as it were, from afar?”
He lifted the electro-mechanical ‘brain’ from the split skull of his own lookalike and pored over the nest of filigree wires with the intense concentration of a jeweller assaying the quality of a fine diamond.
Lunchtime came and went. I had kippers, but food held no interest for Holmes. He agreed to take a cup of Earl Grey when pressed, but left it to cool at his side while his examinations proceeded.
Soon he had taken the entire mechanical substructure from the si
mulacrum so that only its sorry casing remained, a deflated parody of a human being that flopped grotesquely on the floor. He ferried the innards piece by piece to his workbench and examined the minute components under a microscope, from time to time muttering “Curiouser and curiouser” to himself.
At two o’clock, with the sun beckoning outside, I decided to take a breath of fresh air. When I informed Holmes of my plan to go for a stroll, he looked up absently. “Capital. I was about to ask you if you would be so good as to pop into Frobisher’s on Savile Row and pick up one or two items.”
“Frobisher’s?” I said, surprised. Holmes had never been much interested in matters sartorial, and my curiosity was piqued. “Whatever for?”
He returned to his studies and murmured, “A deerstalker and a pair of leather gloves, the latter of the softest calfskin.”
At this I could not restrain my laughter. “But Holmes, my dear fellow. What’s all this about? A deerstalker? You derided Paget’s illustrations in The Strand of you wearing the ‘infernal headgear’ – your exact words – and now you want me to purchase the very same!”
Squinting through the microscope, he said, “I still maintain that Paget’s licence in adorning me with such was almost as heinous as some of the liberties you take in the reporting of my cases, Watson. However, on this occasion the idea of the deerstalker came to mind as the answer to a vexing problem.”
“Which was?”
“All in good time, Watson. Now, to Frobisher’s for a deerstalker.”
“And a pair of gloves of the finest calfskin,” I said. “And the headgear? Do you desire any particular material, Holmes?”
“A green tweed to match my topcoat,” said he. “I take two sizes smaller than yourself, I seem to recall.”
“But you won’t tell me what all this is about?”
He fixed me with his piercing gaze. “All in good time, Watson. But I will say that it might very well be a matter of life or death. Now go.”
