Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery
( Hwarhath - 13 )
Eleanor Arnason
Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery
by Eleanor Arnason
There was a woman who fell in love with the stories about a human male named Holmes Sherlock. Her name was Amadi Kla, and she came from a town on the northeast coast of the Great Northern Continent. It became obvious, when she was a child, that she was gifted at learning. Her family sent her to a boarding school and then to college in the capital city. There she learned several languages, including English, and became a translator, working for a government department in the capital.
She did not translate military information, since that was done by hwarhathmen in space. Nor did she translate technical information, since she lacked the requisite technical knowledge. Instead, she translated human fiction. “There is much to be learned from the stories people tell,” the foremost woman in her department said. “If we are going to understand humans, and we must understand them since they are our enemies, then we need to study their stories.”
The fiction came out of computers in captured human warships. At first the Department of Translation picked stories out of the human computers randomly. Most were as bad as the novels read by hwarhathyoung men and women. But it turned out that the humans made lists of important stories, so their young people would know the stories they ought to read. Once these lists were found, the Department began to pick out famous and well-considered works for translating.
The foremost woman said, “It may be possible to learn about a culture by reading
trivial fiction. There are people who will argue that. But humans are not a trivial species. They are clearly dangerous, and we should not underestimate them. If we study their least important work, we will decide they are silly. No one who can blow apart a hwarhathwarship is silly.”
After nine years in the capital, Kla began to long for the steep mountains, fjords and fogs of her homeland. She requested permission to work from home.
“This is possible,” the foremost woman said. “Though you will have to fly here several times a year for meetings.”
Kla agreed, though she did not like to fly, and went home by coastal freighter.
Her hometown was named Amadi-Hewil. It stood at the end of a fjord, with mountains rising above it. Most of the people belonged to one of two lineages, Amadi or Hewil, though there were some members of neighboring lineages; the government kept a weather station on a cliff above the fjord. The two men who cared for the station were soldiers from another continent. Of course they were lovers, since there were no other men of their age in the town. Almost all young males went into space.
Most of the people in the town – women, girls, boys, old men and old women – lived off fishing. The cold ocean outside their fjord was full of great schools of silver and copper-colored fish, insulated with fat. There was a packing plant at the edge of the town, that froze the fish or put it in cans; smaller operations made specialty foods: dried seaweed and smoked or pickled marine animals.
The town had rental apartments and rooms for fishers whose family homes were farther in the mountains. Kla decided to take one of these, rather than move back into one of the Amadi houses. She had gotten used to living on her own.
Her room was furnished with a bed, a table and two chairs. There was a bathroom down the hall. She had a window that looked out on a narrow street that went steeply down toward the harbor. There were plenty of electrical inlets, which was always good. She could dock her computer and her two new lamps on any wall. A shelf along one side of the room gave her a place for books and recordings. She settled in and began to translate.
It was in this period that she discovered Holmes Sherlock. There was little crime in her town, mostly petty theft and drunken arguments. But there was plenty of fog, rain and freezing rain. The street lamps outside her window glowed through grayness; she could hear the clink and rattle of carts pulled by tsina, coming in from the country with loads of produce.
The human stories seemed to fit with her new life, which was also her childhood life. Much human fiction was disturbing, since it dealt with heterosexual love, a topic the hwarhathknew nothing about. Holmes Sherlock lived decently with a male friend, who might or might not be his lover. While the male friend, a doctor named Watson John, eventually took up with a woman, as humans were expected to, Holmes Sherlock remained indifferent to female humans.
The stories were puzzles, which Holmes Sherlock solved by reason. This appealed to Kla, who was not a romantic and who had to puzzle out the meaning of human stories, often so mysterious!
After a while, she went to a local craftsman and had a pipe made. It had a bent stem and a large bowl, like the pipe that Holmes Sherlock smoked in illustrations. She put a local herb into it, which produced an aromatic smoke that was calming when taken into the mouth.
Holmes Sherlock wore a famous hat. She did not have a copy of this made, since it looked silly, but she did take an illustration that showed his cape to a tailor. The tailor did not have the material called ‘tweed,’ but was able to make a fine cape for her out of a local wool that kept out rain and cold. Like Holmes Sherlock, Kla was tall and thin. Wearing her cape, she imagined she looked a bit like the famous human investigator.
For the rest, she continued to wear the local costume: pants, waterproof boots and a tunic with embroidery across the shoulders. This was worn by both women and men, though the embroidery patterns differed.
Twice a year she flew to the capital city and got new assignments. “You are translating too many of these stories about Holmes Sherlock,” the foremost woman said. “Do it on your own time, if you must do it. I want stories that explain humanity. Therefore, I am giving you Madame Bovaryand The Journey to the West.”
Kla took these home, reading Madame Bovaryon the long flight over winter plains and mountains. It was an unpleasant story about a woman trapped in a life she did not like. The woman – Bovary Emma – had a long-term mating contract with a male who was a dullard and incompetent doctor. This was something humans did. Rather than produce children decently through artificial insemination or, lacking that, through decent short-term mating contracts, they entered into heterosexual alliances that were supposed to last a lifetime. These were often unhappy, as might be expected. Men and women were not that much alike, and most alliances – even those of women with women and men with men – did not last a lifetime. The hwarhathknew this and expected love to last as long as it did.
Bored by her ‘husband,’ a word that meant the owner of a house, Bovary Emma tried to make herself happy through sexual liaisons with other human males and by spending money. This did not work. The men were unsatisfactory. The spending led to debt. In the end, Bovary Emma killed herself, using a nasty poison. Her ‘husband’ lived a while longer and – being a fool with no ability to remake his life – was miserable.
A ridiculous novel! Everyone in it seemed to be a liar or a fool or both. How could humans enjoy something like this? Yes, there was suffering in life. Yes, there were people who behaved stupidly. But surely a story this long ought to remind the reader – somewhere, at least a bit – of good behavior, of people who met their obligations, were loyal to their kin and knew how to be happy.
Maybe the book could be seen as an argument against heterosexual love.
When Kla was most of the way home, she changed onto a seaplane, which landed in her native fjord and taxied to dock. The fishing fleet was out. She pulled her bag out of the plane and looked around at the fjord, lined by steep mountains and lit by slanting rays of sunlight. The air was cold and smelled of salt water and the fish plan
t.
Hah! It was fine to be back!
She translated Madame Bovaryand sent it to the foremost woman via the planet’s information net. Then she went on to Journey, an adventure story about a badly behaved stone monkey. But the monkey’s crimes were not sexual, and it was obvious that he was a trickster, more good than bad, especially after he finished his journey. Unlike Bovary Emma, he had learned from experience. Kla enjoyed this translation, though the book was very long.
While she was still working on the monkey’s story, she met a woman who lived on another floor of her rooming house. The woman was short and stocky with pale gray fur and almost colorless gray eyes. She was a member of the Hewil lineage, employed by the fishing fleet as a doctor. She didn’t go out with the boats. Instead, sick and injured fishers came to her, and the fleet paid her fees. Like Kla, she preferred to live alone, rather than in one of her family’s houses. She walked with a limp, due to a childhood injury, and she enjoyed reading.
They began to meet to discuss books. The doctor, whose name was Hewil Mel, had read some of Kla’s translations.
“Though I don’t much enjoy human stories. They are too strange, and I can’t tell what the moral is.”
“I’m not sure there is one,” Kla said and described Madame Bovary.
“I will be certain to avoid that one,” Doctor Mel said firmly. “Do you think your translation will be published?”
“No. It’s too disturbing. Our scientists will read it and make up theories about human behavior. Let me tell you about the story I am translating now.”
They were walking along the docks on a fine, clear afternoon. The fleet was in, creaking and jingling as the boats rocked amid small waves. Kla told the story of the monkey.
“What is a monkey?” asked Doctor Mel.
“An animal that is somehow related to humans, though it has fur – as humans do not – and lives in trees.”
When she finished with the story, leaving out a lot, because the book really was very long, Doctor Mel said, “I hope that one is published in our language.”
“I think it will be, though it will have to be shortened, and there are some parts that will have to be removed. For the most part, it is decent. Still, it seems that humans can never be one hundred percent decent. They are a strange species.”
“They are all we have,” Doctor Mel said.
This was true. No other intelligent species had been found. Why had the Goddess given the hwarhathonly one companion species in the vast darkness and cold of interstellar space? Especially since humans was more like the hwarhaththan anyone had ever expected and also unpleasantly different. Surely if two similar species were possible, then many unlike species ought to be possible, but these had not been found; and why was a species so like the hwarhathso disturbing? Kla had no answer. The Goddess was famous for her sense of humor.
In the end, Kla and the doctor became lovers and moved to a larger apartment in a building with a view of the fjord. When she had free time, Kla continued to translate stories about Holmes Sherlock and handed them around to relatives, with the permission of the foremost woman. Some stories were too dangerous to spread around, but these were mostly safe.
“People need to get used to human behavior,” the foremost woman said. “But not all at once. Eh Matsehar has done a fine job of turning the plays of Shakespeare William into work that we can understand. Now we will give them a little more truth about humans, though only in your northern town. Be sure you get your copies back, after people have read them, and be sure to ask the people what they think. Are they interested or horrified? Do they want to meet humans or avoid them forever?”
When Kla and the doctor had been together almost a year, something disturbing happened in the town; and it happened to one of Kla’s remote cousins. The girl had taken a rowboat out into the fjord late one afternoon. She did not come back. In the morning, people went looking for her. They found the rowboat floating in the fjord water, which was still and green and so clear that it was possible to look down and see schools of fish turning and darting. The rowboat was empty, its oars gone. People kept searching on that day and days following. But the girl’s body did not turn up, though the oars did, floating in the water only a short distance away.
The girl was a good swimmer, but the fjord was cold. She could have gotten hypothermia and drowned. But why had she gone out so late in the afternoon? And how had a child from a town full of skilled sailors managed to fall out of a boat and been unable to get back in? Where was her body? It was possible that the ebbing tide had pulled it out into the ocean, but this was not likely. She ought to be in the fjord, and she ought to float to the surface.
All of this together was a mystery.
After twenty days or thereabouts, Kla’s grandmother sent for her. Of course she went, climbing the steep street that led to the largest of the Amadi houses, which was on a hill above the town. The house went down in layers from the hilltop, connected by covered stairways. Kla climbed these to the topmost building. Her grandmother was there, on a terrace overlooking the town and fjord. The day was mild. Nonetheless, the old lady was wrapped in a heavy jacket and had a blanket over her knees. A table with a pot of tea stood next to her.
“Sit down,” the grandmother said. “Pour tea for both of us.”
Kla did.
“You still wear that absurd cape,” the grandmother said.
“Yes.”
“I have read some of your stories about the human investigator.”
“Yes?” Kla said. “Did you like them?”
“They seemed alien.” The grandmother sipped her tea, then said, “We have a mystery in our house.”
Kla waited.
“The girl who vanished,” her grandmother said after a moment. “People are saying she must have weighted herself down and jumped into the water deliberately. Otherwise, her body would have appeared by now. This is possible, I think. But we don’t know why. She had no obvious reason. Her mother is grieving, but refuses to believe the girl is gone. I would like you to investigate this mystery.”
“I am a translator, not an investigator.”
“You have translated many stories about investigation. Surely you have learned something. We have no one else, unless we send to the regional government or the capital. I would like to keep whatever has happened private, in case it turns out to be shameful.”
Kla considered, looking down at the green fjord, edged with mountains. Rays of sunlight shone down through broken clouds, making the water shine in spots. “I will have to talk to people in this house and look at the girl’s computer.”
“The girl erased all her files and overwrote them. We have not been able to recover anything. That is a reason to think she killed herself.”
“Then she must have had a secret,” Kla said.
“But what?” the grandmother said. “It’s hard to keep secrets in a family or a small town.”
Kla could not refuse. Her grandmother was asking, and the woman was an important matriarch. In addition, she wanted to see if she could solve a mystery. She tilted her head in agreement and finished her tea. “Tell the people in the house I will be asking questions.”
“I will do that,” the grandmother said. “The girl was only eighteen, not yet full grown, but she was clever and might have become an imposing woman. I want to know what happened.”
Two days later, Kla went back to the house and questioned the women who had known the girl, whose name was – or had been – Nam.
A quiet girl, they told her. She had no close friends in the family or elsewhere. When she wasn’t busy at household tasks or studying, she liked to walk in the mountains around the town. She always carried a camera and did fine landscape photography.
One aunt said, “I expected her to go to an art school in the capital. She had enough talent.”
“Can I see her work?” Kla asked.
“Most is gone. It was on her computer. You know she erased it?”
“Yes.”
“But some of us have photographs she gave us. I’ll show you.”
Kla followed the woman around the Amadi house. The photographs hung on walls in public and private rooms. They were indeed fine: long vistas of mountain valleys and the town’s fjord, close-ups of rocks and low vegetation. The girl had potential. It was a pity she was gone.
Kla went home to her apartment and filled her pipe with herb, then smoked, looking out at the docks and the water beyond. When Doctor Mel came home from looking at a fisher with a bad fracture, Kla described her day.
“What will you do next?” Mel asked.
“Find out where the girl went on her walks. Do you want to come with me?”
“With my leg? I’m not going to limp through the countryside.”
“Let’s rent tsinaand ride,” Kla said.
They went the next day, which was mild though overcast. Now and then, they felt fine drops of rain. The tsinawere docile animals, used to poor riders, which was good, since neither Kla nor the doctor was a practiced traveler-by- tsina.
They visited the town’s outlying houses. Most were too far away to be reached by walking. Nonetheless, they contained relatives, Amadi or Hewil, though most of these were not fishers. Instead, they spent their days herding or tending gardens that lay in sheltered places, protected by stone walls. Some of these people remembered the girl. They had seen her walking along farm roads and climbing the hillsides. A shy lass, who barely spoke. She always carried a camera and took pictures of everything.
Some had photographs she had given them, fastened to the walls of herding huts: favorite livestock, the mountains, the huts themselves. The girl did have an eye. Everything she photographed looked true and honest, as sharp as a good knife and balanced like a good boat that could ride out any storm.
“This is a loss,” Doctor Mel said.
“Yes,” Kla replied.
After several days of exploring the nearby country, they returned their tsinato the town stable and went home to their apartment. A fog rolled in at evening, hiding the fjord and the neighboring houses. Streetlights shone dimly. Sounds were muffled. Kla smoked her pipe.
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