Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1)

by Ralph Vaughan

  Life moved across the Earth like a formless dark wind.

  Civilisations rose and fell in seconds.

  The veil of stars began to darken.

  The sun swelled like a child’s balloon overinflated, changing from a bright diamond to a sombre ruby. The moon crumbled and flowed until it became a bright silver girdle for the Earth, the Earth taking the appearance of a smaller, fairer Saturn.

  A sooty blackness seemed to close about Holmes, obliterating his view of the elderly Earth and the dimming stars, until it seemed that the whole of the universe consisted of him and the creature fleeing final justice.

  Abruptly, the Time Machine pitched forward, spilling Holmes into a swirling maelstrom of darkness and cold.

  Stunned, Holmes crawled, then forced himself to stand, prepared for an attack from the creature he must destroy if humanity was to survive. At first, he saw nothing but shadows reaching through an endless night. The sky was black except for a few nebulous patches that could have been clouds in space or eyes in the void; there was no indication of stars, no sign of the moon-ring he had seen form about the Earth, and the only trace of the sun was a vague dull glow in the high blackness, like the last pitiful ember in a dying campfire.

  As Holmes’ vision became accustomed to the gloom, more details of the sere landscape emerged. He seemed to be upon an ancient roadway of pitted metal that ascended a cliff-line into the sky. Neither tree nor bush, not even the thinnest blade of grass pushed its way through the black earth, nor did the simplest moss stain any rock’s surface; not a single bird winged through the chill sky, nor did the smallest insect scuttle across the craggy inclines.

  The dark hills rising away from him and the dusky mountains beyond were etched by thin rivulets of volcanic fire, indicating that the Earth was not wholly moribund, that some remnant of the planet’s internal fires yet burned, though weakly. Among the far mountains squatted strange colossal sentinels, perhaps of stone, perhaps not, only vaguely illumed by lethargic lava rivers, immobile Watchers at the end of time. To the left, stretched a vast glassy sea, utterly waveless, totally unruffled, mirroring the obscure sky.

  To Holmes’ right was the Time Machine, overturned, yet apparently undamaged by its abrupt halt.

  The wind was chill and thin, whispering among the talon-like crags and around the Watchers in the foothills. Holmes stood resolute and wary, the gusts whipping the hem of his overcoat as he searched for some sign of the Morlock.

  Up the road and against the other side, he saw that for which he searched, the Time Machine used by the Mother-Thing. He disabled his own machine, as Maddoc had shown them, then moved forward to examine the other. It, too, had crashed in Earth’s midnight, unable to venture any farther forward (whether due to some mechanical limitation of the machines or to some factor of time itself, Holmes could not say), but it had not fared as well as had Holmes’, having crashed into an upthrust basaltic column. The gears were bent and broken, the wheels within wheels twisted and warped, many of the crystals shattered – it would never again venture into time. To make sure, though, Holmes grabbed a black volcanic rock, shattering every unbroken crystal, smashing every piece of metal that would yield to his strength. The sounds of destruction were harsh and without echo, the air being so tenuous.

  It was a tempting thought, to return to his own machine and seek more familiar times, to leave the Morlock stranded as the universe’s final curtain was falling. With its Time Machine utterly destroyed, what could it do here but bring a dying brood into an already dead world, eventually to die itself?

  Then Holmes saw a structure at the summit of the roadway, a sort of Temple with walls and towers of ebony stone rising against the black sky. Holmes knelt and examined the pitted metal roadway. The queer narrow tracks of the Morlock, outlined in its own pale blood, led up the road, toward the enigmatic Temple.

  Where it might find haven, he thought, or a even path back.

  He pulled his revolver from his overcoat pocket and examined the chamber. Only two shells remained unfired, and he no longer possessed the box of ammunition he had procured in London. But he dared not turn back now.

  Following the ichor-tinged prints, he made his way up the road, always on guard lest the desperate beast try to move behind him. It did not leave the roadway, however, but kept on for the structure at the summit. It was hurt, but nowhere near death, Holmes realised, for although it had been injured in the crash, there was no indication in its footprints of weakness or unsteadiness, only a resolute determination to attain the walls of the Temple.

  As Holmes approached the Temple he perceived no portal in the walls facing the ancient roadway. Following the footprints, which were beginning to fade as the wounds of the Morlock ceased to ooze blood, Holmes followed the curving line of the wall, all the while keeping his distance from it lest its deeply carven baroque surface afford some point of ambush for the agile beast.

  The architecture of the Temple was totally familiar and yet wholly alien, as if descended from all the building forms used by man in his long history while at the same time owing nothing to any of them. Faces, human and otherwise, peered out from the walls. Robed beings, thin and manlike, formed columns supporting porticoes and mansards. Massive stone arms and sinewy metallic tentacles held against the coalish sky numberless cupolas and stupas, bartizans and deity-adorned obelisks. Beyond the walls, rising sharply from the centre of the compound upon an ornate platform of a metal that gleamed like electrum, and was attained by a steep flight of griffin-guarded steps, was a tall tholos, its circular walls seeming to hold the glittering masses of stars and galaxies absent from Earth’s sky.

  By the time Holmes came upon an entry into the wall, the Morlock’s tracks had vanished.

  It could not have doubled back on him, and he was certain it could not have escaped his keen gaze as he made his way along the wall. The Temple fronted a sheer cliff, its walls separated from the edge by the thinnest margin. A walkway led from the yonic portal, projecting over the edge of the cliff upon a narrow basaltic spur.

  Warily, revolver in hand, Holmes approached the portal. As he did, he glanced over the cliff’s edge. The sluggish quicksilver sea shimmered more than a thousand feet below, hard upon a shoreline mottled by pools of stagnant lava that simmered and smoked in the cold darkness of day, proof that the Earth’s molten heart had not yet ceased to beat.

  A sensation of vertigo seized Holmes as his vision conveyed his mind over the ledge, then released him just as quickly. In that instant, the pale form of the Morlock leaped from its hiding place behind the portal’s far edge.

  It struck at Holmes with all the fury of a mad beast, all the anger of a mother intent upon avenging its murdered young, its broken dreams. Its muscular limbs, which were naturally much stronger than any normal man’s, were empowered further by hot waves of bestial rage. The rocks and walls shuddered at its insane howl. Holmes’ revolver flew over the cliff and vanished into the darkness.

  Holmes gripped its wrists, tried to hold it at bay. He had once straightened an iron fireplace poker after it had been bent by the detestable Dr Grimesby Roylott, but that was nothing compared to the strength required to keep the Morlock’s talons from his eyes, its fangs from his throat.

  “Murderer!” the Morlock hissed viciously.

  “So you learned the language of your prisoners,” Holmes spat. “What a clever animal you are.”

  “You are the animals!” the Morlock growled. “Fit only to be consumed!”

  Holmes and the creature grappled on the brink of mutual destruction. As they struggled against each other, they edged closer to the plummet, then found themselves upon the projecting stone spur. For an instant, Holmes felt himself oddly dislocated, suspended above bubbling lava pools while simultaneously grappling above the dull roar of the Reichenbach Fall.

  “You have no right!” the Morlock insisted. “We are the superior beings, the inheritors of your own science! All existence is the triumph of the superior over the inferior.”r />
  “Your defeat at our hands belies your claim,” Holmes snapped.

  “Defeat?” the Morlock demanded, twisting its torso, trying to throw Holmes into the void. “We battle yet! You will not last much longer, man! You struggle uselessly! You lost the fight as soon as you dropped your weapon! Foolish tool-making animal! Superiority is strength of muscle, quickness of motion, fire of mind!”

  Suddenly Holmes threw himself back with the aplomb of an acrobat, not releasing the wrists of the startled Morlock. He drove his boots into the creature’s midsection, using its own weight and momentum to propel it over him. It landed in a heap on the projecting stone spur and would have tumbled over the edge had it not gripped the stone surface with unbelievable tenacity.

  The Morlock stood and faced Holmes who had regained his feet.

  “Fool!” the Morlock snarled. “You are a pathetic weakling without your machines and weapons!”

  “You have lost,” Holmes said calmly. “The future does not belong to your kind.”

  “I will kill you!” the Morlock screamed, stalking toward Holmes, its rows of pendulous breasts quivering with each threatening step. “Your flesh shall be my nourishment as I prepare to breed! I will use your machine to escape back to the light.”

  “You shall not pass,” Holmes told the thing upon the spur of rock, just as, billions of years earlier, another man had stood alone upon a bridge leading into Rome and spoke those same words. Like that ancient Roman, Holmes stood against the end of civilisation, against the fall of night.

  With a final savage growl, the Morlock rushed at the man standing between it and victory over humanity.

  Holmes reached inside his overcoat and lashed the startled Morlock with his loaded hunting crop. The iron weights in the whip’s handle gave it a force of impact much greater than ever used by a rider upon a horse, and Holmes was driven to strike harder than he had ever struck a criminal across the wrists. The crop slashed the Morlock’s shoulder, unbalancing it, then struck its face.

  The Morlock staggered back under the attack, but did not fall, retaining a precarious balance upon the rocky spur. When it fully recovered, Holmes knew, the advantage would again belong to the Morlock, to its speed and strength.

  Holmes threw the crop with all his strength. The heavy handle struck the Morlock full in the face, smashing through thick bone, sending it reeling. It screamed in pain and rage, momentarily blinded. Holmes rushed onto the projecting rock and pushed the beast over the edge.

  The talons of its right hand gabbed blindly and caught Holmes’ coat. Holmes fell, was slammed hard against the stone. He held on for all his worth lest he also go over. For a long instant, they hung there, Holmes gripping the stone, the suspended Morlock gripping Holmes. Then there was the sound of ripping fabric and the sleeve came away. The Morlock plummeted into the lava pools, screaming more from rage than terror.

  And then the silence of a dead world came softly surging back.

  Holmes crawled to safety.

  Twice now, he thought. Perhaps Colonel Moran was right after all. Holmes was a cunning fiend indeed!

  Standing now before the portal, Holmes saw the long stairway within, guarded by griffins and leading to the tholos upon the platform at the centre. A pale light gleamed within. He passed through the gateway and slowly mounted the stairs. Within the tholos was a silvery sphere, apparently suspended by nothing, above an ornate bezel and lit from within by shifting pastel hues.

  Holmes gazed at the sphere for long silent moments. It was perhaps some kind of unfathomable machine, he reflected, and yet at the same time he sensed he stood in the presence of something conscious and aware, something alive.

  “I exist,” declared a soft voice emanating from nowhere and everywhere.

  “Yes, the caretaker of what was,” Holmes said. “The repository of time.”

  “All that will be, still is,” the orb replied. “That which was, never shall be.”

  “That future has been averted, has it not?” Holmes asked. “The path leading to Morlock and Eloi has been turned.”

  “Has it?” the orb said.

  “No, it has not,” Holmes replied after a moment. “Not until I return to the year 1894. Logic is the one inescapable quality of the universe, that which endures even when the stars vanish; not the logic of petty philosophies, but that of time and space, all but unfathomable to those whose viewpoints are trapped by the web of time, to whom life is as unvarying as the measured beat of a metronome ticking down to silence.”

  “Yes,” the voice uttered with finality.

  The sphere darkened.

  Holmes returned down the stairs and wearily made his way back to the Time Machine. He reactivated the mechanism and once more stirred its engines to life.

  Within the tholos, the sphere glimmered with final life, and a familiar voice whispered: “I wish you well, Mr Holmes.”

  The Time Machine shimmered and vanished from a future already in the unmaking.

  Chapter XVII

  The Journey to Now

  In the early morning hours of Monday, March 26, 1894, residents of Limehouse heard a curious sound from the direction of the Thames. Some of more elderly Chinese living near the Causeway likened the sound to river-demons, recalling the rural tales of their far off youths and linking it to the other weird happenings lately afflicting the East End; others too sophisticated and westernised to believe in such things, those who took white wives and saw the herbalists of Pennyfields only on the sly, said it was nothing more than an animal, or maybe a freakish wind from up the estuary, certainly of this world and nothing of the realm of shadows. Those lounging upon the waterfront, at least those not completely sotted by gin or befuddled by tarry opium, also heard a loud splash in the centre of the river when the odd howling or whirring noise ceased.

  Olan Jefferson, a seaman standing watch upon the Canadian merchantman Halifax, reported seeing a strange machine appear out of nowhere, hover a moment, then plummet into the river. He was severely disciplined by his captain for drinking on duty, though no bottle was ever found and Olan had never been known to imbibe anything stronger than an occasional shandy.

  A watchman near the Greenland Dock on the Surrey side saw a man come ashore dripping wet and entangled with weeds, but by the time he was able to get to the water’s edge the man (if living man it was, for the watchman believed in ghosts) had vanished into the darkness. An enquiry made of ships at anchor revealed no sailor had deserted ship or fallen overboard.

  Sherlock Holmes sat in the rooms he had engaged at the Bridge House Hotel on Borough High Street, not far from London Bridge Station, taken while disguised and under a name not his own. While the Bridge House was not an establishment where questions were unduly asked, he still exercised extreme caution. As far as London and the world was concerned, he was still three years dead, and would not return to the land of the living for another week yet. A slight slip, and the tapestry of time would begin to unravel once more.

  He remembered the new1954 that had been revealed upon his return journey, a London of glass and steel, a vibrant civilisation as ignorant of Morlocks as it was of Time Machines.

  The future was cast, and he dared not do anything that might again set humanity devolving toward the futility of the Morlock and Eloi schism, not even to the extent of saving a man.

  The day before the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair in Park Lane, Holmes sat at the writing desk in his Bridge house room; he reached into his pocket and pulled out a much-folded piece of paper, a letter he had received while still in France. He had read it often since plucking it from the post and puzzling over the familiarity of the hand that had penned the address. The paper was creased to the point of splitting and the letters were smudged, almost illegible in places; his frequent handling of it had done it no good, nor had his recent dunking in the Thames after abandoning the Time Machine to the deeps.

  When he had first received it via the Channel Mail, it had been in much better condition.

&nb
sp; Holmes pulled a new sheet of hotel stationary from the desk, uncapped the inkwell and dipped his pen into the ink.

  After but a momentary hesitation, he began to write:

  My Dear Sherlock, You will no doubt recognise the hand in which this letter is penned. Though you will naturally be dubious of its authenticity, I assure you it is not a hoax, nor does it in anyway violate the principles of logic by which you…by which we live our lives. It is imperative that you return to London and investigate the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair, which will occur tomorrow night. I know you will chafe at the thought of an innocent man murdered – as do I – but I cannot avert it. There exists an inexorable universal logic, which we disregard only at great peril. Contact Mycroft and make arrangements; you will also learn of the case of Sir Reginald Dunning. True, our enemy awaits still, but I will ensure he believes Sherlock Holmes is in 221-B Baker Street while he aims his air-gun…yes, that air-gun at the window of the room, at the waxen bust manipulated from a position of safety by the good Mrs Hudson. Afterwards, you will be called upon by Sir Reginald regarding his brother, William, the latest victim of the Vanishments. You must take the case. More than that I dare not say.”

  He started to sign the letter, then thought better of it. Let the recipient deduce the reality from the ink, the paper, from the dozens of attributes there to be observed by the careful eye. Such an activity would not, of course, help him believe more, but it would allow him to doubt less. If nothing else, it would occupy his time on the train, then the channel steamer, as he eventually eliminated the impossible to reveal the highly improbable.

  He folded the letter into an envelope and wrote upon the envelope the name he was currently using upon the Continent, the address at which he was conducting his chemical experiments. Changing into his disguise of an elderly bookseller, Holmes posted the letter.