Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  I shall not repeat the details of that case here. It is fully reported in my story, “The Gloria Scott.” I wish only to establish that this was the first case in which Eakins-who- became-Holmes involved himself, much to the annoyance of the police.

  As we walked, I observed a curious transformation coming over Mr. Eakins. He had somehow lost his dreadful American twang and was sounding more and more like a proper gentleman. When I remarked on this, he acknowledged that he had studied stagecraft for many years and had developed an impressive skill at adopting the speech mannerisms and dialects of others. He said he found the “English accent” charming. Charming indeed! Nevertheless, to give him credit, within a very short time, his speech had become as clear as a native-born gentleman’s.

  Eakins reported the basic facts of the case to Inspector Lestrade without explaining how he had come to learn them. The good man listened politely at first, then with growing irritation. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why should I take you seriously?”

  At this point, Mr. Eakins bowed politely and introduced himself as, “Sherlock Holmes, at your service.” He had a most self-satisfied expression as he did. “And this is my associate, Dr. John Watson. We are private investigators, and we are happy to make our services available to you, Inspector.”

  It was here that Lestrade asked the question that shaped all of our later destines. “How did you find this out?” he demanded. “My top men have been working on this case for a week and a half.”

  For just a moment, Holmes-n6-Eakins appeared flustered. He had not considered how he would explain the manner in which he had obtained his knowledge, and it was obvious that he did not want to reveal to anyone else the secret of his time traveling device. I felt sorry for him at that moment; he had demonstrated such power, and he did not know how to use it. That is why I came to his rescue. “Mr. Holmes has developed a methodology of criminal deduction. Over the years he has worked on his theories and philosophies about the nature of the criminal mind, and he finally feels confident enough to put his hypotheses to the test.” Both Holmes and Lestrade were looking at me curiously now. I bulled ahead. “For instance, it is obvious even to an untrained eye like mine that you have a stain on your waistcoat, Inspector. But to Holmes’s trained powers of observation, that is clearly a stain from a steak and kidney pie purchased from the stall on the other side of the mews. Indeed, as we made our way across the street, Holmes pointed the meat pies out to me and predicted that an investigation of police vests and waistcoats and ties would probably reveal the entire menu of comestibles available in a three-block radius.”

  Lestrade stared at me speechless. Holmes (as I was now beginning to think of him) was beaming with pride. To Lestrade, he said, “Dr. Watson is correct. Others only see, but I observe. That is the difference, Inspector. If you wish a full accounting of how I applied my deductive techniques to solve the mystery, you shall have to purchase a copy of next month’s Strand. For Dr. Watson intends to write it for publication.” And with that, we swept out.

  That is how the whole affair began.

  Over the years, Holmes became quite the talk of London. He used his time machine and his acting skills to whisk himself back and forth about the scene of a crime, observing everything he could. Then, taking the raw facts of his observations as grist for my literary mill, I would carefully craft about them a tale of deduction and intellect to inspire even the dullest of readers. Holmes was delighted at my invention, and I was equally pleased to be a part of such a delicious game at the expense of the authorities.

  I do not ask for forgiveness. I believe that both Holmes and myself passed beyond forgiveness very early on. On more than one occasion, I asked Holmes if instead of solving the mystery, could he use his time machine to prevent the tragedy. Every time I raised the question, Holmes reacted angrily. “If we did that, there would be no mystery to solve!” He snapped in annoyance. “We would be out of business. I would have no fame and you would have no stories to write.”

  “Nevertheless, Holmes,” I said, “you and I are taking a profit on the miseries of others, and I cannot help but feel that we are acting immorally. It is abhorrent to me.”

  Holmes regarded me dispassionately for a moment, as if trying to decide just what he should or shouldn’t say. Abruptly, he apologized for his flash of irritation. “I am tired and I’m feeling a bit peckish. Please forgive me.” Then he added, “Besides, my dear Watson, we cannot change the timestream. Not without serious risk to ourselves and others.” He then expounded at length on matters totally incomprehensible to me; I remember only a few of the words and phrases, “. . . continuity disasters, the dangers of crosscutting, unbegun happenings ...” I was not totally convinced by all of this fancy explanation, for I remembered his casual remark on the first day I met him that he had killed his grandfather, and it occurred to me, seeing his anger on the subject, that he would be equally willing to kill anyone else who opposed him. His time device gave him the power to murder with impunity, and I often justified my participation in the whole affair by telling myself that at least this way, we were serving the cause of justice.

  There were, however, several who suspected that Holmes was not all he appeared to be. Moriarty for one. The affair at Reichenbach Falls caused no small amount of distress to a great many people. Afterward, Holmes told me that he knew he was never in any danger because he had observed the whole incident several times before he actually allowed himself to participate in it.

  While I have elsewhere detailed the blackguardly behavior of the arch-fiend, Moriarty, I must now confess a strange admiration for the man, and in fact, on several occasions, I found myself wishing that he would actually succeed in killing Holmes and free me from the velvet trap in which I had found myself. But over and over again, Moriarty’s intricate schemes came collapsing down around his shoulders at the hands of Holmes, until finally I realized that Holmes was toying with the villain as a cat toys with a frantic mouse. Holmes never had any intention of capturing the man and ending his crime spree once and for all. Rafter, he needed Moriarty to succeed just enough so that he, Holmes, could continue to flourish as his justice-serving opponent.

  It was at this point that I realized the absolute corruption of power. Holmes had developed such an arrogance toward other mortals that he no longer regarded himself as bound by their rules. And, likewise, I recognized that my life depended on my ability to provide continued service to him—at least until he tired of the game.

  I have realized that there is no way that I can make any of this information public. Not even after my own death, not even after Holmes’s. For with his time-traveling device, he can easily travel far into the future to see how history has regarded both of us. Should he discover the publication of any manuscript detailing the truth of our exploits, he would know that I had been the ultimate source of the revelation. It would be a simple matter for him to return to our time and strangle me before these pages could even be written. My only protection, indeed the only protection for any of my heirs, is for us to keep this secret throughout all time. For I have no doubt in my mind that the man who is known as Holmes will track us down and kill us to prevent this truth from becoming known.

  After observing his ability to escape death over and over again, I have no choice but to assume that Holmes is effectively immortal, at least as immortal as it is possible for any man to be. If there is a way to immobilize the monster, I have not yet devised it.

  But, now it is time for me to complete this piece and put it in a safe place. My next paper will detail my thoughts on how it may be possible to stop Holmes once and for all.

  I shall now give this manuscript to one whom I trust and ask him to pray for us all. May God have mercy on my soul!

  EDITOR’S NOTE: The manuscript ends here. No second part has yet been found, and all attempts to contact the author or owner of the piece have met with failure. If anyone has any information on how to find the heirs of Dr. John Watson, please contact me c/o this publisher.r />
  SECOND FIDDLE by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  WEDNESDAY, 5:36 A.M.

  Holmes looked out of place as he crouched on the pavement, staring at the streak of blood. I had already put Vicks on my nose and lit a cigarette. The stench on the side of the road had nearly gagged me—a ten-year veteran of homicide and fifteen on the force. The area smelled as if someone had run over a herd of deer three days ago, then left them in the sun. Holmes had merely wrapped a scarf around his face before examining the blood streak as if it contained the secret of the ages.

  I had already followed that blood streak. It led down an embankment to a mutilated female body lying in the drainage ditch against the chain wire fence. The killer had been daring this time, dumping the body next to one of the busiest interstates in the area, only yards away from Cabot Hill, Santa Lucia’s newest—and ugliest—housing development.

  But the location didn’t seem to catch Holmes’s attention, and neither did the rusted-out 1970 Oldsmobile abandoned on the roadside, with blood on its fender. A member of the forensics unit was scraping off the blood into a plastic bag. The photographer was straddling the drainage ditch, snapping pictures of the body. Three men from the unit were scouring the car, and two other detectives were scanning the roadside looking for other clues.

  I was standing beside the squad car listening as Rae Ann, the only woman on the team, hunched over the radio, requesting a few more hours at the crime scene. It would play hell with the morning commute, but Holmes had requested it. And since the department had paid over a quarter of the budget to get the only privately run time travel company to bring the Great Detective to Santa Lucia, it had to honor his requests.

  I had been watching him since they brought him into the force twenty-four hours ago. He was thin, of average height, with a hawk nose. I had expected a taller man, and perhaps by Victorian standards he had been. His suitcoat was a bit more tailored than I had expected, but he did wear a deerstalker cap, and he carried a curved pipe which he put away when he discovered that a person who owned something made of elephant ivory was subject to verbal abuse in California.

  I had protested Holmes’s arrival, but the chief insisted. Our small department had had a running rivalry with the FBI for years, and since there was no actual proof that the murderer was kidnapping his victims and running them across state borders, the chief was doing all he could to prevent FBI involvement. Holmes was merely the ace-in-the-hole, a last-ditch effort to prove to the feds that the homeboys could solve one of their own.

  From the moment Holmes arrived, he listened a lot, asked few questions, and asked for information on the era, on California, and on Santa Lucia in particular. I had snorted when they told me that. He may have been the greatest detective that ever lived—although I would wager greater detectives had existed in relative anonymity—but his information was one hundred years out of date. How could a man who had made his reputation by observing the small details discover a twist none of us—good detectives all—had failed to see?

  And believe me, we had looked. I had had four hours of sleep a night since the task force was formed a month ago. That’s when we realized that Santa Lucia was as much a victim as the mutilated bodies we found. The killer was preying on the rich and famous—two young movie stars, a former child television star, a Princeton football player who was this year’s number one draft choice, and the wife of one of the state’s most famous senators—a well-known sculptor in her own right. Each of his victims was famous enough to make the evening news across the country, and all of the bodies had been found here, in Santa Lucia, even though most of them had disappeared—alive—from somewhere else.

  Holmes followed the bloodstain to the crusted grass on the embankment before putting a hand over his nose. Then I nodded. He seemed to have a diminished sense of smell, probably from snuff, or his pipe smoking.

  “What the hell you think you’re doing, Ned? You too good to scour the crime scene?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Birmar was standing there, his tiny eyes running and his round face pale and greenish. He was a different kind of detective than I was. Holmes had been his idol as a boy and Birmar had been the brains behind calling the Santa Cruz Time Wizards for help in this case.

  “I’m working,” I said in a tone that brooked no disagreement.

  “Looks like you’re watching Holmes,” Birmar said, but he walked away, his overcoat clinging to his frame like wet sandpaper.

  I had been watching Holmes, but I had already surveyed the crime scene. I had been the first member of the team to arrive. My house was a block away. That galled me. I was the spokesman on this case. If the killer was following the press coverage, he knew about me. And even though my address and phone number were unlisted, it wouldn’t take a lot of effort for a guy this smart to figure out where I lived.

  “Officer Zaleski.” Holmes was looking up the embankment at me. “Would you join me for a moment, please?”

  I sighed, leaned over, and stamped out the cigarette in the squad’s ash tray. Then I approached the embankment, careful to avoid the blood streak. A low irritation was building in my stomach. Whenever this guy wanted a consult, he chose me, not Birmar. And I had better things to do than babysit someone who was wasting more of the department’s money than the chief was.

  “Do we know who this unfortunate woman is yet?” he asked.

  Even with the Vicks and the cigarette, the smell was nauseating. A body, decaying normally, shouldn’t smell that strong. “No,” I said.

  “Well,” he said. “This one may be exactly what we have been looking for. She does not have much in common with the others.”

  I looked down, reluctantly, holding up all my training as a shield. The body was not a person; it was the king in a chess game, the reason for the fight and no more. But the killer had left her face intact, and the look of horror in her wide blue eyes would haunt me if I let it.

  I made myself examine her for the clues Holmes was talking about. Her teeth were uneven and discolored—certainly not the product of million dollar attention. The remains of the dress she wore showed a store-bought label. Holmes reached down and held out a piece of fabric to me. The cuff of a sleeve. One button was missing. The other had been sewn on rather ineptly.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Copycat.”

  Holmes leaned on his haunches and peered up at me from beneath the brim of his cap. “Copycat?” He clearly didn’t understand.

  I pulled myself out of the embankment. “We got two of these nuts on the loose. One of them is killing for weird personal reasons and the other is reading the press coverage and imitating.”

  Holmes clambered up beside me, remarkable at ease with his body although he looked as if he never exercised. “Nonsense,” he said. “Such a thing is preposterous. The odds of having two killers with the same—”

  “It happens all the time,” I said. I walked to the squad. Rae Ann’s cheeks were flushed. She was fighting with dispatch.

  “They’re already rerouting because of a multicar pile-up on 1-5,” she said.

  “Let me talk to them.”

  “There is no need.” Holmes was standing behind me. “As long as your photographers are finished, we may return to the station. You and I must discuss the way these copycats work.”

  WEDNESDAY, 11:53 A.M.

  The last thing I wanted to do was sit at my desk and talk basic criminal theory with a man who had died three decades before I was born. But he absolutely refused to work with Birmar (“I am afraid, my dear sir, that the man does not understand nuance”), and the chief told me my job was on the line if I ignored Holmes. Wonderful. It seemed that the Great Detective needed a foil, and he had chosen me as this century’s Watson.

  The chief was using his office to brief a new team that would handle a double murder reported to the Gato Apartments. No privacy anywhere. So I took Holmes to my favorite dive, a bar just off Fifth that had been passed over by ferns, gold piping, and neon lights. The place hadn’t seen daylight si
nce 1955, and the windows were painted shut. The interior smelled of cigarette smoke layered so deep that the walls were half an inch thicker. The floor was littered with popcorn and sticky with spilled beer. Someone had to be bribing the city health authorities because logically the place should have been closed in its first year.

  To my surprise, Holmes said nothing as we walked in. He followed me to a booth and slid in as if we were both regulars. I ordered a light beer and he ordered an iced tea “heavy on the sugar and cream,” then smiled at me. “I have grown quite fond of that in the last few days,” he said.

  I was in no mood for idle conversation. “So you want me to explain copycats.”

  He shook his head, a slight smile on his narrow lips. “I think I grasp the concept. However, I thought I should let you know that I believe you are wrong.”

  1 felt a heated flush rise in my cheeks. The man knew how to get to me. I had been decorated three times by the State of California for my work, recognized as one of the best detectives in the nation by the New York Times, and had been portrayed in a TV movie based on one of my cases.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ve investigated more homicides than I care to think about, and I’ve been on teams that have captured six different serial killers. Someone who doesn’t follow the pattern is inevitably a copycat.”

  “But the pattern was followed,” Holmes said. “All the way up to and including the directions of the knife wounds, as well as the advanced odor of decay. Some of the flesh was not hers, and beneath her were the bits and pieces of another corpse. An animal, as in the other instances. In the past the killer has used this technique so that a hidden body will be discovered, and has done so this time. I do not believe you have put these details in the press, have you?”