Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  Not that things were exactly smooth on The Shrr’lok’s side, either. His court wasn’t too thrilled about aliens digging up their precious relics, even if using aliens was the only way those relics were going to be reachable. His own ministers weren’t sure what they wanted done. First Minister Erk’ial, a bluff, clever fellow, was all for getting the material up to the surface as soon as possible so it could be put on display in The Shrr’lok’s palace—a not so subtle linking of the “noble past” with the current ruler (who, after all, didn’t share a drop of blood with the illustrious Lesek-than and could only benefit from a political tie-in with that hero)— Second Minister Re’ekas, tentative and precise, wanted us to shut down the dig altogether “so that every angle of the possibly politically awkward situation can be considered” (he was probably thinking of The Shrr’lok’s bloodline, too), and Third Minister Ch’ilen, a gentle-eyed Shrr’lok so old his mane was streaked with gray, kept murmuring about it being “not wise to disturb the past.” Ch’ilen, like many Shrr’loks, was fascinated with the stories of Lesek-than, that legendary hero-king, but in his case it took the form of quiet obsession: He spent hours laboriously writing incredibly dull poems about his hero, writing them in the old fashioned way with pen and ink, delicately blotting his work with whatever cloth came to hand. I had been cornered by him all too often to listen to one of those stupefying epics.

  But none of the counselors could come to any one decision. The Shrr’lok wanted this dig, and so life went on, and the dig went on. Working from a network of scaffolding that didn’t feel particularly secure for all that it was guaranteed to hold twice all our weights, we warily tapped away at the mortar sealing the cliff site till we’d opened a hole into the cave beyond. There was the usual rush of stale air, but as I looked inside, I found—wonder.

  The site really hadn’t been touched since its sealing away, and it held a whole cache of golden armor and what looked like one spectacularly wrought headpiece known in the Shrr’lok tongue as a Visitek.

  Unfortunately, time hadn’t been as careful as the Shrr’loks. As we enlarged the opening so we could enter the cave, I saw that the whole glittering mass was firmly embedded in mounds of fallen rock and mortar, which would mean some painstaking notetaking and photography, and much delicate work, before we could bring anything up to the surface. But as I knelt beside the Visitek, trying to make out the glyphs engraved all over its intricate surface, I forgot about the hard work to come as a little shiver of excitement raced through me.

  “Lesek-than,” I read in disbelief. Then, as though the artifact meant to prove I hadn’t made a mistake, I found a whole series of glyphs meaning, “Lesek-than, Master of Kholmes. Lesek-than the Mighty.”

  We had found the crown jewels, as it were, of the hero-king himself.

  Darkness came all too soon after that. We shut the site back up again with more modem sealants and went back up to the surface, disassembling our scaffolding as an additional safety measure. I’d sworn my team to silence; I doubted any Shrr’lok was going to try climbing down there, but I’d seen enough looted tombs to be cautious.

  The Shrr’lok figured it out anyway. “You’ve found the Visitek of Lesek-than,” he told me flatly, and I stared. “How in hell did you know that?”

  He gave the Shrr’lokian equivalent of a shrug, head dipping briefly down. “It was simple. You have plainly come from a successful day’s work. That much was clear from the way your team is acting.” They had gone straight to the Shrr’lokian version of a bar, from which was emitting a good deal of human laughter. “Yet neither you nor they have said a word of your find. That can only mean you wish to keep it a secret for now. What find could possibly be so important? One containing terrible weaponry? No. We know enough of our past to know our people had no such objects. What, then, would add that nervousness to your eyes and the hint of a tremor to your hands, if not an artifact belonging to the greatest of Shirr’lokian heroes? And what artifact was most closely associated with Lesek-than? His royal Visitek.” The Shrr’lok struck a triumphant pose. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “You’ve been waiting to use that line, haven’t you?” “For ages, yes,” The Shrr’lok said with a quick, almost human grin. “But you are quite right to keep the information of your find secret for now,” he added in an undertone. “Whosoever holdeth the royal Visitek, as your Sir Malory might have said, ruleth Kholmes.”

  “Are you planning something?”

  “I? I already rule Kholmes,” he said smugly. “I have no need of additional symbols of rank.”

  “I think I believe you.”

  “You should. Now come, let us join your team in some celebrating.”

  But morning brought no cause for celebration. When we reassembled our scaffolding and climbed back down, we discovered a gaping hole in our sealed-up wall. Hurrying inside the cave, I found everything untouched—everything save, of course, for the Visitek. Which was totally gone.

  All the evidence, circumstantial though it was (enough scuffed footprints from all of us to blur the issue, enough fingerprints that could have been left at any time), pointed to the thief being one of my crew. After all, who else but a human, given Shrr’lokian reactions to height, could have endured a climb down a cliff, especially at night?

  But before I made any wild accusations (thinking all the while of Seldan and his contemptuous “Ponies”), I knew The Shrr’lok had to be informed.

  His reaction was every bit as restrained as I’d expected; his favorite Earthly fictional detective with all his chill logic would have been proud of him. “Gone, you say. There can be, I take it, no mistake.”

  “No.”

  “Your opening of the cave could not have triggered some minor avalanche within the site?”

  “And buried just the Visitek?” I shook my head. “I thought of that. But nothing else had been disturbed. The headpiece had been very delicately removed and everything else left intact. Look, I hate to say one of my crew has turned thief, but—”

  “But such a crime would be a bit too blatant,” The Shrr’lok cut in coolly. “Surely your crew would know that suspicion could only fall on one of them. There is no starship in port or due to arrive in the near future on which they could hope to escape. And there are a finite number of hiding places when one has so short a time in which to plot a theft.”

  I wanted to shout at him that this wasn’t one of his cherished detective stories. I contented myself with, “I’ll search everyone’s quarters anyhow.”

  But The Shrr’lok, lost in thought, didn’t even answer that

  Of course I found nothing, other than a few rather private mementos, and a few rather angry crew members. But when I told The Shrr’lok about my failure, he merely smiled an infuriatingly superior smile.

  “I thought as much. Strong though the gold-hunger may be in you humans, the Visitek is an awkward thing to steal. Assuming it follows the traditional design for such an object—and if it belonged to Lesek-than it can only be traditional—”

  “It is. It does.”

  “Ah. Then a potential thief after mere wealth would have been faced with an odd-shaped, spiky, jingly object that would be most uncomfortable to carry, particularly up a cliff. Far easier for a wealth-hunter to simply slip some convenient arm-rings or the like into his pouch.”

  “Wait a minute. What did you mean by ‘particularly up a cliff?’ The Visitek can’t still be there: I looked!”

  “Not there,” The Shrr’lok mused, “not exactly. What if our would-be thief wasn’t after wealth at all?” Eyes bright, he glanced up at me. “Come, Watson—”

  “You’re not going to say ‘the game’s afoot,’ are you?”

  “Why, of course not,” he said, a touch too innocently, and looked down at his blatantly nonhuman feet. “But we must ... hoof it.”

  I had my admittedly petty revenge for that one by seeing The Shrr’lok’s face actually pale beneath his short fur as we neared the edge of the cliff. But he knelt down determinedly, st
udying the ground. “This, I take it, is where you affix one end of your scaffolding?”

  “That*s right. We set it onto these spikes and secure it with some Setfast; I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but it holds forever yet peels right off when you’re done. Handy stuff: We used it to seal up the cave as well.”

  “Mm. Then it would hold other items in addition to scaffolds and mortar.”

  I shrugged. “Chemistry’s not my field, but yes, I would think you could probably use it to hold anything you wanted.”

  “Mm,” The Shrr’lok murmured again. “Here is where your scaffolding scarred the lip of the cliff. See? The scratches are fairly deep. But what we are hunting is something else, something ... ahh.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you see these faint striations, here and here?”

  I did, but they didn’t mean a thing to me. “I suppose we made those.”

  “No.” The Shrr’lok got slowly to his feet, looking decidedly unwell. “I think I must go down there,” he said.

  It was no easy thing to get him down to the site. At least, I thought, swearing at a recalcitrant piece of scaffolding (which had not been designed to be set up single-handed), we weren’t likely to get any spies. My crew had been given the day off, so there wouldn’t be any interference from them, and the Shrr’loks were hardly about to approach a cliff.

  Of course, I mused, my crew having a day of liberty meant that gossip was already spreading, adding a certain urgency to our search for ... for whatever we were hunting. “Yes ..murmured The Shrr’lok suddenly, cutting into my thoughts. “See, here and here: the same striation on the lip of this site as well.”

  He looked as though he wanted to faint or be sick, but The Shrr’lok bravely leaned right over the edge of the cave. “This ... Setfast, I believe you called it, would look just like part of the cliff face once it had dried?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Think, Watson, think. What could have caused such delicate striations?”

  I thought. “Something hanging over the edge? Not the scaffolding. A ... rope, maybe?”

  “Excellent.”

  “But where did it come from? None of my crew was using any rope!”

  “Come now, Watson. You are not the only source of rope.”

  “What are you saying? None of your people could have— Hell, look at you! You’re about to fall over from fright, and you’re their leader!”

  “Determination can replace courage, my friend. Determination, or perhaps we should call it fanaticism.”

  “You know who—”

  “Not quite. First, Watson, it might be a wise idea for you to lower another segment of this excellently designed scaffolding a bit farther down the face of the cliff.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “An unexpected application of Setfast, I believe.”

  He was right. I found it not too many feet below the floor of the cave: a neat little limestone niche that had been equally neatly plastered over. As The Shrr’lok waited, I warily peeled away the Setfast and found—

  “It’s here!” I yelled. “The Visitek. It’s in here!”

  Whoever had hidden it away had carefully wrapped it in a soft length of cloth. I carried the whole swathed bundle back up to the cave and unwrapped it for The Shrr’lok. He drew in his breath with a sharp gasp of wonder.

  “Beautiful,” The Shrr’lok breathed, tracing the glyphs showing Lesek-than’s name with a reverent hand. “And so politically interesting,” he added with a wry glance at me. But then his hand froze, and his gaze sharpened on the wrappings that held the Visitek. “So, now. Watson, let us return to the surface. We must hurry.”

  “You’re not going to use that hoofing it line again, are you?”

  “Why, never!” The Shrr’lok said innocently. “Come, Watson, the game’s afoot!”

  As I watched, wondering if he’d been driven over the edge by literally going over the edge, the first thing The Shrr’lok did on returning to his palace was hide the Visitek carefully away, then call a meeting of his ministers “We have made a find,” he told them cheerfully, “or rather, our human friend here has made a find. You might have heard something about it by now.”

  The ministers stirred uneasily, not wanting to admit they’d been listening to gossip. “We ... heard something,” First Minister Erk’ial admitted.

  “Ah, but have you heard the best and worst of it? A Visitek has been found,” The Shrr’lok continued, still in that oddly cheerful voice, “a most important Visitek. The Visitek of none other than Lesek-than himself.”

  He leaned back against a table, watching the storm of excitement. The reactions of all the ministers looked legitimate to me; not one of them showed by the faintest twitch that he or she had known about the Visitek before this moment. And I began to wonder if The Shrr’lok wasn’t make a major strategic mistake: showing himself fallible like this.

  Or was he fallible? Holding up both hands for silence, he went on into the uneasy quiet, “Now we have the dark side of the story. You see, a thief learned of the Visitek. And sure enough, he stole it away in the night.”

  Another explosion of sound, this time, to my alarm, aimed against me and my fellow humans. ‘How could we have been so careless?’ the cries went. How could we have let a crime this foul occur?

  Another dramatic raise of hands by The Shrr’lok. To my relief, the ministers once more fell silent. ‘The tale grows worse. The thief stole away the Visitek of Lesek-than, yes, but as we all know, such a headpiece is awkward to carry. And during his attempt to climb back to the surface, it must have slipped free. Both it and the thief must have fallen.” “No!” the ministers exclaimed as one. But only gentle Ch’ilen, Third Minister, continued, “That is impossible. The Visitek is—”

  He stopped abruptly. “Is what?” The Shrr’lok prodded softly. “Is safe? Is tucked neatly away in your home?” “No,” Ch’ilen said indignantly, “it’s in—”

  He stopped again, eyes filled with sudden despair. “In the little cliff-niche you found?” The Shrr’lok asked.

  “I never said—”

  “No need. The proof was in the wrapping swathing the Visitek. Watson, if you please?”

  I pulled the thing out from its hiding place and handed it, wrapping and all, to The Shrr’lok. “If you wish to be more successful as a thief,” he told Ch’ilen wryly, “you must pay attention to the details. When I climbed down that cliff—and my congratulations to you, Ch’ilen; that was quite a feat you accomplished, climbing down not on a relatively sturdy scaffold but OH a rope.” He shuddered delicately. “At any rate, when I first saw these wrappings, I wondered at the faint stains, here and here again. One can almost make out the shapes of letters.” The Shrr’lok peered at them. “... the mighty king of mighty deeds ... wielder of most mighty strength ...”

  “That’s from one of Ch’ilen’s poems!” I blurted. “I couldn’t forget all those ‘mightys.’ “

  The gentle minister seemed to shrink into himself. “It was for honor,” he said very softly. “The Visitek of Lesek-than must not be polluted by lesser hands. It should not be worn by lesser folk.” With a sudden flash of defiance, Ch’ilen added, “Most certainly not by one who bears not one drop of his exalted blood!”

  “I had no intention of wearing it,” The Shrr’lok said gently. “It would have been given a place of honor for all our folk to see. It still will be. You, alas, shall not. I cannot have a thief in my administration, Ch’ilen. I give you leave to seek retirement on your estate.”

  “I did it for him. Not for me.” Ch’ilen’s eyes pleaded with The Shrr’lok. “You must understand that.”

  The Shrr’lok sighed, for the first time since I’d known him showing every bit of the weight of being the ruler of his kind. “I do,” he said, very gently. “Now, farewell, Ch’ilen.” But once the fallen minister and all the stunned others were gone, leaving us alone, The Shrr’lok straightened, life once more in his eyes. “So much for that.”

/>   “How could you read the smears on those wrappings? I couldn’t see anything on them at all.”

  He grinned. “There wasn’t.”

  “But—”

  “But after I had eliminated your crew as suspects (though I had no doubt they’d told everyone in sight about their find), that left one of my folk. It took a good deal of courage to make it down that cliff, more than any casual thief acting on impulse could possess. That left someone who would be powerfully motivated, indeed. Someone who worships Lesek-than. Who else but poor, deluded Ch’ilen with his stab at rebellion could ever have managed it?”

  “But that niche in the cliff—how did you know to look for it?”

  The Shrr’lok shrugged. “The chafing of the rope against the lip of the cliff told me someone had climbed still further down. But why? No rope would be long enough to safely reach the ground so far below. To hide something, then. Didn’t one of your own Earthly fictional detectives deal with a vital clue hidden in plain sight?”

  All at once I knew what was coming, and tried my best to head it off. “You’re not going to say it. Tell me you’re not going to say it.”

  Too late. With a diabolical gleam in his eye, The Shrr’lok struck a casual pose and told me, “It was sedimentary, my dear Watson.”

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE ILLEGAL ALIENby Anthony R. Lewis

  LONDON 2125 “This must be the strangest request we’ve ever gotten,” the AI educator at Minsky C/Si told the account executive.

  “Possibly, but it might even make sense for a large private detective agency like Ogden Operatives to have an AI programmed to act like Sherlock Holmes. It certainly makes sense for us since it’s hard cash in advance. Do you foresee any problems?”

  “No, I’ll load everything in the libraries about Holmes into the basic character matrix. Allow a day for the info transfer and another two or three for the character logic to assimilate it What’s the account I should charge it to?” The account executive smiled, “221B.”