Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Kim Newman

  It was like nothing he had ever felt, a burning, roaring sensation that swept rapidly across the back of his hand and clutched at his knuckles and wrist. Looking down, Brabbins saw a fat bee crawling across his hand. He shook his hand, trying to dislodge it, but it clung on and stung him again, causing another wave of pain to coruscate in his palm and fingers. He used his other hand to knock the creature off, sending it to the floor, and then stepped on it before it could right itself and lift into the air. More crawled over his arms and legs, and he knocked them off with the papers, swatting at them and stepping on them until they were all dead. The bees outside seemed to redouble their efforts to gain entry, as though they knew of their fallen comrades.

  Brabbins thrust his hand under the tap, letting the cold water play across his flaming skin. It was already swelling, he saw, rising around twin punctures. He scratched at them, half-remembering advice about getting out beestings, but all that emerged was his own blood, somehow paler and with a yellow tinge. Is that poison? Is that what killed Swann? And Holmes? he thought, and suspected that it was.

  When his hand felt marginally better, although it remained reddened and swollen and painful to move, Brabbins picked up the papers from where he had dropped them, and then went through the house. The lounge and parlour had open fireplaces, piled with logs and kindling, so he shut the doors to both rooms, thankful that they fitted snug in their frames. He also shut the kitchen door, closing off the noise of the bees to a lesser degree. Already, tiny dark shapes were gathering on the outside of the small glass pane in the front door, their indistinct forms filling the available space. From behind both of the doors he had closed came the faint sound of something striking the wood, not hard but repeatedly. Brabbins went upstairs, checking all the windows as he went. None were open; the house was sealed.

  Finally, Brabbins took the papers into the study, righting the chair and sitting down, noticing as he did so that he was shaking, nauseous. The poison? he wondered. The fear?

  The Bees.

  For a moment, he tried to put the bees out of his mind; they had him penned in the house, and he had no idea why they were acting so aggressively, but his policeman’s instincts, honed by years of sifting through humanity’s mud and detritus, of making sense from the senseless, told him the answers lay in the sheets of paper that Swann had been holding.

  They were bound, he saw, neatly written and tied at the top and bottom left corners with loops of thick twine. He recognized the writing as Holmes’ from the repeated ‘No’ on the letters, the words firm and decisive. The paper was thick and heavy, expensive, and the writing was interrupted here and there with illustrations and tables. Is this what Swann died for? Brabbins thought as he looked at them. Holmes? Two men, dead because of this?

  Yes, he thought, and began to read.

  It is my belief that British bees can be improved, Brabbins read on the first page, by the introduction of new queens from other breeds which possess the correct, desired, and beneficial traits. Having achieved some success in the breeding, and becoming familiar with the habits, strengths, and weaknesses of the more usual Western Honey Bee, in this paper I shall describe the initial attempts to improve upon this breed and outline any results that are obtained.

  Whilst the Western Honey Bee is currently the universal breed hived in Britain, and is ideally suited to both the climate and the geography of this land, increasing industrialization and the spread of towns and concurrent population growth may require, in future, a bee that can travel further in search of pollen, or which has a longer breeding and production season and from which increased amounts of honey and wax can be harvested. Accordingly, looking overseas for hardier breeds to increase the value and usefulness of our stock is the only logical thing to do.

  Initially, of course, a suitable breed must be identified and procured. Clearly, not all breeds will be suitable for husbandry because of differences in temperament or physiology. However, many come from the same root stock and so may prove to be viable partners. I shall endeavour to explain here why various breeds were dismissed and to show how the ultimate decision was made.

  Brabbins stopped reading and leafed through the next few pages, seeing little of interest other than detailed descriptions of breeds and their failings. Names such as Buckfast Bee, Midnite Bee, European Dark Bee, and Carnolian Bee jostled alongside phrases like movable comb hives, Langstroth spaces and Dadant design. English, but still another language.

  Eventually, Brabbins came to a new paragraph that read, After exhaustive study, it is clear that we must look further afield for the required breeding partner. Records of the earliest beekeepers, although scant, identify several species cultivated in more isolated regions, often by monks or other closed communities. These are the rarest of breeds and ones about whom little but the briefest of facts are known, except those which were written down by their original keepers. Of these, most can be dismissed immediately as variants on the breeds already discussed. However, one would seem to be an ideal candidate: the Northern Wild Bee, occasionally called the Volk’s or Wolf Bee. Almost unknown outside of a tiny area of Russia, this animal may be the perfect partner in this experiment.

  Below this were a series of diagrams, close up of bee parts that Brabbins only partly recognized; a segmented eye, a rounded body with measurement details alongside it, a wing. Further down were tables, each annotated with phrases like queen breeding pattern and season lengths and gestation and hatching cycles. Below each table was a short explanation of the way in which the Northern Wild Bee was an improvement on the Western Honey Bee. Finally, a longer paragraph ended the section: The Northern Wild Bee has a larger body and can travel further in a day than Britain’s indigenous bee population, giving the capacity for greater range and for greater honey and wax yield. It is physically stronger and has evolved to live in the harsher climes of northern Europe. It was transported to Germany in the early nineteenth century but proved a difficult creature to manage and did not last long, leaving only a few wild colonies scattered across the northern countries, their spread controlled by the depredations of the harshest of winter climates and the landscape. Despite problems sourcing the Northern Wild Bee as a result of the current world political situation, eggs were gathered from the remaining wild colonies and the experiment is now ready to begin. What follows is a record of its progress.

  Brabbins stopped reading and leafed through the remaining papers. They were written as diary entries, some with illustrations, each dated. The earliest contained repeating phrases like breeding rates and cross-breed production and, once, reproduction characteristics and techniques which made Brabbins rub his face in wonderment. What had this man, Holmes, done? Played with his bees while the letters piled up in his parlour, while the war raged in fields black with torn earth and death, and while tiny individual tragedies happened in back-alleys and homes across the country? For what? Wax and honey? And what had he done?

  The next entry Brabbins read started with the word Success! and another picture, this one a delicately drawn picture of a bee. To Brabbins, it looked like any other bee; furred, with a bulbous body and head, and wings covered in the tracery of veins. Holmes had clearly seen differences to it, though. He had arrowed parts of the diagram, each arrow neatly labelled, 31% average increased mass, larger wingspan/distance for flying, slightly increased brain capacity. There was more, but Brabbins stopped reading and flicked on to the next entries.

  April 2nd: I have set up a single hive of the Northern Wild Bee crossbreed, alongside my existing Western Honey Bee hives; by doing so, I hope to show scientifically how much greater the productivity of the new strain is in comparison with our existing breeds. Already, the bees seem to be travelling farther and wider than the drones from the other hives. The pollen they collect is a different color, as though it includes content from plants that the other bees cannot reach or find. The first yields of honey have been promising in amount, although its flavour is slightly bitter and leaves a strange taste in the mout
h after it is swallowed. The comb that contains it certainly seems sturdier, and the wax that can be harvested of a very high quality. One unexpected thing about the new breed is that its size gives it some increased ability to stave off the soporific effects of the smoker, requiring an increased level of caution from the keeper to avoid stings.

  Brabbins flicked back through the paper and found the picture of the bee, so neatly drawn and dissected upon the page. Even now, he could hear the bees battering themselves against the windows of the kitchen and front door and the wood of the two room doors, their angry buzz and the timpani of their impacts like the stuttering of some distant machine. They haven’t given up, he thought, and turned back to the sheaf of paper.

  April 23rd: The experiment goes tolerably well. The honey and comb yields are noticeably greater from the new hive than from my existing hives, leading me to believe that my original conjecture was correct — yields can be substantially increased by the application of scientific principle to bee-rearing. However, further unexpected elements have arisen that need consideration. The increased size of the bees, and their wilder nature, has led to an increased aggression and a greater preparedness to sting. The stings themselves are extremely painful, far more so than those of the Western Honey Bee or any of the other common breeds, and cause high levels of swelling. The venom of the bee would appear to be more powerful than that of its more usual cousins, and longer acting. Unusually, the crossbreed bee does itself no damage when it uses its sting, meaning it can sting repeatedly without experiencing harm, and each sting seems capable of delivering a venom load.

  Looking at his still aching hand, Brabbins smiled in humourless agreement. What had Holmes said the bee was sometimes called? The Wolf Bee? That fitted; it was fast and vicious and worked in a pack, overwhelming by sheer weight of numbers and tenacity. Even now, the sound of them was filling the house, bleeding in through glass that felt increasingly thin and fragile. Although a heavy curtain covered the study’s small casement window, Brabbins could hear noises coming from behind it; the solid impacts of things repeatedly banging against the glass, and the fierce hum of the bees. Somehow, they had found this window, knew he was behind it. Was it the light? No, there were lights on in the other rooms. Could they hear him? Smell him? He didn’t know enough about bees to be sure. Perhaps it was just a coincidence? No. No, the bees were targeting him, he didn’t know how he knew but he knew it, was sure of it. They were chasing him.

  Hunting him.

  May 1st: The breeding cycle is faster, and the queen produces more eggs than the Western Honey Bee queen. The hive is already full, leaving no space for new combs, and the larvae are already larger than would be normal at this stage of their development. The workers are bringing in more nectar (by my estimation) than the bees of the other hives. As a consequence, the social structure of the hive is showing some unusual developments. Chief among these is that, each morning, there are a number of bees and larvae on the ground under the hive, some barely alive, but most dead. Observations of the hive at night have shown that the bees and larvae are placed there by other bees, pushed out of the hive entrance in a constant stream through the hours of darkness. I can only assume that some kind of cull is occurring each night, with those found to be imperfect or underdeveloped or underperforming in some way being removed to make way for new workers. There seems little other explanation, although what imperfections the dead creatures may have exhibited is hard to fathom. Certainly, investigations of the bodies have revealed no obvious flaws or deficiencies.

  May 3rd: The hive is proving increasingly difficult to manage, even under optimal daytime conditions. The bees are extremely aggressive and defensive, and although they eventually calm under the influence of the smoker, their activity in the period before the soporific takes effect is somewhat unnerving. The bees begin, as would be expected, by trying to sting me, but seem to learn extremely rapidly that their primary weapon is of little use and cannot pierce my protective clothing. Then, they begin to cluster around the seams of the clothing, especially at the wrists and neck, and also across the facial netting of the helmet. It is almost as though the bees know to block my vision by gathering thickly across the material. Sometimes, the weight of the bees on the net is so great that it is forced close to my face and my vision is filled with naught but brown fur and stings and I have to shake the net clear of the creatures before I can carry on. In higher animals their clustering around the seams of my clothing might be taken to indicate an understanding of how it is designed and where its weak points exist, but in bees this is, of course, illogical. They almost certainly gather there simply because they are the areas that offer them the greatest purchase. Still; it is a strange coincidence.

  Another strange thing: the hive seems ready to produce another swarm. There are definite signs that a second queen is being matured by one group of the drones, and she is already bigger than the larvae in the surrounding cells. This is, of course, extremely early for a second queen to be developing, and must indicate further evidence (if it were needed) that the Northern Wild Bee is ideal to introduce into the ecosystem of Britain. Such speed in new swarm development will allow for a greatly increased production of honey and wax, and shows that already this experiment is proving to be successful.

  There followed several pages of diagrams showing the bees, or parts of them, from a variety of angles. One picture caught Brabbins’ eye and he sat for a moment staring at it. In it, Holmes had carefully illustrated a dissected bee, using arrows to neatly label particular pieces of it. By one thing (which looked to Brabbins like a twisted balloon), Holmes had written, Poison sacs. Beneath this were a series of figures, the most noticeable of which was third in the list: 23% larger. 23% more venom, the ability to sting repeatedly, increased aggressiveness; Christ, what had Holmes done here? thought Brabbins, and then, because he had no other option, he read on.

  May 9th: It is not a second queen. Since hatching, it has remained in the hive and shows no inclination to either challenge the current queen or to form its own swarm and seek to establish its own colony. Rather, it seems to have removed some of the duties that were previously carried out by the existing queen, who seems to have been relegated to a simple breed production role. Whilst it is impossible to know how bees communicate within the hive, by observing the new social hierarchies developing it has been possible to ascertain that the new creature appears to be in control. It spends far longer than the queen engaged in complex interplays of movement and touch with the drones and warriors, whereas the old queen is rarely approached now apart from feeding rituals.

  May 11th: The new creature continues to grow, and although it is not as large as the queen, it is now considerably larger than the other inhabitants of the hive. The queen continues to be a presence and have a role in the hive, producing egg after egg, but she is clearly no longer the driving force behind the hive’s activities. She is fed and her occasional needs are attended too, but that is all.

  May 14th: I have come to a startling conclusion: the new creature is not a queen, but a king. Long thought a myth, the Northern Wild Bee appears to allow the development of a king bee as well as a queen in its society. The king, slightly physically smaller than the queen, takes charge of the day to day running of the activities and of the work undertaken, controlling the actions of the workers and guards in a way that previously had been the responsibility of the queen. This will bear watching carefully, as it may indicate the advent of a new stage in the rearing and cultivating of bee societies.

  May 19th: The bees have killed a dog. I would scarcely have believed it if I had been simply told, but I watched the incident occur, and I trust the judgement of my own eyes. The animal, a local farm dog, I believe, was in the field when I went to make my morning observations of the hives. As I checked my Western Honey Bee hives, it played around my feet, obviously hoping for reward. Upon my approach to the new hive, however, the bees started to gather in a black cloud in the air above us. At first, I thought this
might be the emergence of a swarm, and that I had been wrong about the king; that it was simply a queen and that what I had observed was simply an unusual, more complex, process by which new queens are hatched and become independent. However, I was wrong.

  The bees fell onto the dog with a noise like the shriek of a saw stuck in wet wood. One minute, it was at my feet, happy and panting and canine, and the next there was simply a mass of bees, so many that the shape of the dog was lost below. It howled, once, a terrible sound of pain and confusion that rose in pitch before it was cut off. The animal had its mouth open, its tongue covered in bees, all thrusting down with their stings, their abdomens clenched and pulsing. I used the smoker, to no avail; the bees seemed to have achieved some kind of blood lust, a rage that allowed them to shake off any effect from the smoke. When I tried to knock the bees off the dog, to give it a chance to run, they performed their usual activity of clustering in my visor, blocking my vision. They were so thick about my arms and head that, although I could not feel their stings through my clothing, the weight of them was obstructive, preventing me from moving my arms effectively, and causing in me a claustrophobia, as though I was under water with no hope of surfacing.

  The bees, once the attack on the dog was over, left me. That the dog was dead was obvious when the bees rose, as though to one command, and flew back into the hive. The corpse they left behind was terrible. They had managed to puncture the dog’s eyes, blood and ocular fluid had spattered down the sides of its snout, glistening and staining its fur in dark streaks. Its tongue had swelled to the size of a bull’s so that the sides of its face were pushed out, and pink flesh emerged from between its teeth. What I saw of the gums showed that they had stung it there and, although its fur may have offered it some protection, its flanks bulged with poison. It had voided its bowels in the extremities of its fear and pain and the smell of it was strong and foul. Over that smell, however, was another, the olfactory equivalent of the strange, bitter aftertaste of the honey produced by the hive. When I went to move towards the hive, the cloud of bees reappeared and although they did not attack, the threat was clear. I left my field in a state, for the first time in my life, of terror.