The Fifth Heart

by Dan Simmons

  “YOU THERE! STOP! DON’T MOVE!!”

  The shield was raised on a powerful dark lantern and a beam of light stabbed out from the distant alley to illuminate Henry James—his cane held at port-arms across his chest—and four thugs in patched and filthy stockyard clothing. What James had imagined were truncheons were truncheons . . . knobbed, stained, deadly.

  “FREEZE!” bellowed the God-voice again. James had already obeyed and did not move a muscle, while his four assailants exploded into motion, two vaulting over the corral fence to shove their way into the dark mass of cattle, the other two loping back along the fence into the darkness from whence they’d come.

  The light shifted away from them to hold on the squinting James as the figure with the God-voice came closer. Then the beam lowered.

  A Chicago policeman. Not one of Burnham’s flashy Columbian Guardsmen for the Fair, but a real Chicago policeman. James took in the double row of brass buttons, the soft cap, the oversized star on the short but burly man’s left chest, the narrowed eyes, and the luxurious mustache.

  James felt some relief that the policeman had shown up when he did, but he’d not been frightened. James had not been frightened, even as the four thugs closed on him. He did not understand it. Nor did he understand himself at the moment.

  No matter. He realized that he was giving the suspicious police officer a silly smile. James composed himself as best he could.

  The now half-shielded beam from the dark lantern moved up and down James, from his soft, expensive black Italian-made shoes and dusty spats to his expensive jacket, waistcoat, collar, cravat, and stickpin.

  “What are you doing out here at the stockyards, sir?” said the policeman in a human-leveled voice. “Those men would have robbed you of everything . . . most probably including your life, sir.”

  James fought down the strange impulse to grin at the wonderful policeman with his wonderful Irish accent and his wonderful waxed mustache and even at his wonderful short, black, heavy wooden truncheon, which Holmes had told him was called a “billy club” in America.

  James tried to reply, but the master of the modern endless sentence could manage only ragged fragments. “I was . . . I wanted . . . to see Chicago . . . got off the elevated train . . . then the trolleys . . . got out to walk . . . suddenly it was all . . . darkness.”

  The police officer realized that he was dealing with an idiot and spoke now in a slow, reassuring, nursery-teacher’s voice. “Yes, sir. But this . . . is no place . . . for you . . . sir.”

  James nodded his agreement and he realized, to his horror, that he was grinning now. He’d not been afraid.

  “Where are you staying, sir?”

  It took a few seconds for the meaning of the officer’s question to sink in. “Oh, at the . . . no, not the Great Northern this time . . . no . . . on Cameron’s . . . on Senator Don Cameron’s . . . yacht.”

  The police officer squinted at him. James realized that the Irishman was handsome enough, save for a nose that looked like a squashed red potato. He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing.

  “Where is this yacht, sir?”

  “Anchored off the Grand Pier of the White City,” said James. He was in charge of his nouns, verbs, and syntax again. (In truth, he hadn’t missed them much. He realized that he’d trade the whole lot for just more of what he was feeling right now.)

  “May I ask your name, sir?

  “Henry James, Jr.,” James said at once. Then, wondering at his reply, he hurried to correct it. “Just Henry James now. My father—Henry James, Sr.—died about eleven years ago.”

  “How did you get ashore from this senator’s yacht, Mr. James?” “The City Pier. There’s a boatman from the yacht in a steam launch. I told him to wait for me.”

  The policeman turned his lantern on an inexpensive watch in his palm. “It’s after midnight, sir.”

  James did not know what to say to this revelation. He suddenly doubted if his boatman had waited all these hours. Perhaps all his friends presumed him lost. Or dead.

  “Come, Mr. James,” said the policeman, putting a gentle arm on James’s shoulder and turning them back toward the dark alley from which he’d so magically emerged. “I’ll see you back to the right trolley stop, sir. The trolleys and the new “L” quit running in less than an hour, now. Even on a Saturday night. You’ll need to go straight back to the pier with no more sightseeing.”

  Not minding at all the friendly arm on his shoulders, James walked with the Irishman back toward the lighted parts of the city.

  7

  On the Sunday before Monday’s May-first official Opening Day of the Fair, Henry Cabot Lodge’s guests had broken into various groups to find their day’s entertainment. During the time Henry James was with anyone exploring the quiescent but soon-to-erupt fairgrounds, he stayed with Henry Adams who was staying close to Lizzie and Don Cameron. But sometime in the afternoon, Adams had wandered off alone again. He’d spent most of the previous day alone as well. Everyone had agreed to meet back on the pier at seven to take the large motor launch back to the yacht. They were going up the lake to be guests at a gala given by the 68-year-old re-elected Mayor Carter Henry Harrison. Even young Helen Hay had been seduced by the old populist’s energy, candor, and charm upon first meeting him earlier that day.

  But when everyone gathered on the pier, Adams was missing.

  “I believe I know where he is,” said Holmes. “He tends to lose track of time there. You all go ahead but send the boat back . . . I shall be on the pier with Mr. Adams within twenty minutes.”

  Senator Don Cameron said, “Lizzie and I shall wait here for you and Adams and ride out to the yacht with you.”

  The rest of the happy party boarded and Holmes watched the powered boat churn out to where a cluster of yachts, including the noble Albatross, and even the iron warship U.S.S. Michigan were anchored.

  Holmes had been with Adams when they discovered the Machinery Hall, and the older historian’s fascination with the dynamos and other machines producing electricity suddenly became insatiable. Technically, none of the Columbian Exposition’s thousands of electricity-driven machines were supposed to be turned on until noon the next day when President Cleveland would depress a solid gold telegraph key—set on a red velvet pillow—which would, besides causing a thousand flags and banners to unfurl, close a circuit that would start up the gigantic 3,000-horsepower Allis-made steam engine in the Machinery Building.

  But Adams had poked around and inquired until he found the real dynamo that was already providing power to the White City’s lights and the electrical railroad bringing yellow cars to the Fair. It was the world’s greatest dynamo and it was all but hidden away in the Intramural Railroad Company building set at the far southern end of the grounds, sunken behind trees and grander buildings. Usually the building was empty save for the dynamo’s constant attendants. The curved metal sheath of the actual dynamo was larger than the arched entrance to Henry Adams’s mansion, but the various wheels—at least fifteen feet tall even with half of each wheel disappearing into its groove in the cement floor—dwarfed men and dynamo. Holmes had helped him search it out on Saturday, admired the machinery for a minute, listened long enough to hear one of the technicians shout to Henry Adams above the roar that even at that moment the dynamo was powering six and a half miles of railroad with sixteen cars in motion all at once, and then he left Adams alone in the noise and ozone. He knew that the historian was spending most of his hours on shore in this remote, almost windowless building staring at and experiencing the power of this new source of energy for the human race.

  Now as Holmes came in through the shadows of girders and wheels, he saw that Adams kept removing his straw hat and mopping his brow with his linen handkerchief—the unshaded overhead work lamps gleamed on his bald head each time he removed the hat—and was busy talking to a tall young man dressed in a far-too-heavy wool suit who, because of the young man’s long black hair, sharp beak of a nose, copper compl
exion, and black eyes, Holmes took to be a Red Indian. Adams was lecturing and looked as excited as a school boy.

  “ . . . But this! This, Mr. Slow Horse, the ancient Greeks would have delighted to see and the Venetians, at their height, would have envied. Chicago has turned on us with a sort of wonderful, defiant contempt, and shown us something far more powerful even than art, infinitely more important than mere business. This is, alas or hurrah, the future, Mr. Slow Horse! Yours and mine both, I fear . . . and yet hope at the same time. I can revel and write postcards about the fakes and frauds of the Midway Plaisance, but each day I pass through the Machinery Hall and each evening I return here, to this very chamber, to stare like an old owl at the dynamo of the future . . .”

  Adams seemed to hear his own lecturing tone, took off his straw hat and mopped his scalp again, and said more softly to the young man as Holmes came up behind them—“I must apologize again, sir. I babble on as if you were an audience rather than an interlocutor. What do you think of this dynamo and the now-quiescent wonders of the Machinery Hall, where I’ve seen you staring each day even as I do, Mr. Slow Horse?”

  The tall Indian paused before speaking and his voice shocked Holmes it was so resonant. “I think, Mr. Adams,” said the tall, dark man, “that it is the true and revealed religion of your race.”

  Adams launched into another excited speech and Holmes made himself known to him—he knew that the Indian had noticed him enter and knew where he was the entire time he’d been in the vast space with them—and Adams was saying, “The Virgin Mary was to the men of the thirteenth century what this dynamo and its brother shall be to . . .”

  He realized that Holmes was standing there and stammered to a stop. He removed his straw hat again and said, “Mr. Slow Horse, may I present my companion at the Fair today, the eminent Sher . . . that is . . . the eminent Norwegian explorer, Mr. Jan Sigerson.”

  Instead of offering his hand, Holmes stood straight, heels together, and bowed toward the man in an almost Germanic fashion. The Red Indian nodded back but also seemed as reluctant to touch bare hands as Holmes was. Without knowing how or why he knew, Holmes knew that this young man—not quite so young seen close up, Holmes realized, noting the creases around the eyes probably only a year or two short of Holmes’s own 39 years—was not only a Lakota Sioux of the kind that Holmes had met more than 17 years ago, but was a wičasa wakan—a holy man of that tribe, a shaman, a man touched with the ability to see in more dimensions than most human beings.

  “It is a true pleasure to meet you, Mr. Slow Horse,” said Holmes. “We Europeans rarely get the opportunity to meet a practicing wičasa wakan from the Natural Free Human Beings.”

  The Indian, whose real name Holmes had known instantly and absolutely was not “Slow Horse”, looked at Holmes in a way even more alert and startled than could be explained by this white man’s use of the proper Lakota term.

  Henry Adams, holding the brim of his straw hat in both hands, took two steps backwards from the two men. Adams felt he was looking at two huge eagles staring into one another’s eyes.

  Holmes broke the gaze first. He turned to Adams. “I apologize for interrupting, Henry, but Lizzie and the Senator are waiting at Franklin’s steam launch at the main pier. Evidently we’re running a little late for Mayor Harrison’s dinner.”

  Adams said something to the Indian and turned to leave. Holmes bowed toward the tall man again—still afraid, for some reason, to touch his bare hand—and said, “It has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Slow Horse, and I can only hope that someday the wasichu wanagi will no longer be a problem for you.”

  Holmes realized that he’d said that he hoped “the Fat Taker’s ghost, that is, the white man’s ghost, would no longer be a problem for the man”, but he had no idea why he’d said it. The Indian responded only by blinking rapidly.

  Holmes turned in embarrassment and followed Henry Adams out of the roaring Intramural Railroad Building and had gone about a hundred yards before he stopped, touched the historian’s arm, and said, “Please go out to the yacht with the Camerons. I just remembered one last thing I have to do.”

  “Well . . .” said Adams, seemingly shaken by something he’d seen or sensed. “If you must, but it would be a crime for you to miss Mayor Harrison’s dinner . . .”

  Holmes nodded even though he hadn’t really heard Adams’s words. He turned and jogged back to the railroad building.

  The Indian was gone. Holmes jogged down actual dirt paths and then narrow lanes back to the Parade Ground near the railway entrances, thinking that if the Indian gentleman were there as part of Buffalo Bill’s adjacent show, this would be the way he’d leave the fairgrounds.

  It was. Holmes caught up to him just before the man went through the metal turning spokes of the exit.

  “Mr. Slow Horse!”

  The tall man turned slowly. He looked unsurprised to see Holmes again.

  “I . . . there’s something I must . . . if you could help me with . . . I’m sorry,” stammered Sherlock Holmes. “Your name is not Slow Horse, is it?”

  “No, it is Paha Sapa,” said the other.

  “Black Hills,” whispered Holmes.

  “And your real name is not Sigerson,” said Paha Sapa. “You did not even try to hide your Oxbridge English accent.”

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes.” He held out his hand and finally the Indian took it.

  Holmes felt the greatest shock in his life, at least since the three bullets had struck him in the Himalayas. He saw and knew immediately that Paha Sapa had felt the same energy pass between them.

  When their hands released, the energy was still there between them—far stronger than the ozone and charge in the dynamo room.

  “I must ask you, Paha Sapa,” said Holmes, “how can I tell if I am real or not?”

  “Wicaśta ksapa kiŋ ia,” said Paha Sapa.

  Holmes somehow understood. “The wise man speaks . . .”

  “But I do not yet know if I am a wise man,” Paha Sapa finished in English.

  “Tell me anyway,” said Holmes. “I already know that I am not a wise enough man to answer this question.”

  Paha Sapa’s eyes pierced him—it was a physical sensation of being pierced, as with arrows.

  “All men born to women are real,” said Paha Sapa. “But even some of them are . . . faint. Weak in reality. The strongest beings are those who sing themselves into existence.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Holmes.

  “The Six Grandfathers were not born of women, but they are real,” said Paha Sapa. “I and all my fathers and grandfathers before me have helped sing them into reality.”

  Holmes’s expression asked the question—How?

  “By telling their stories,” said Paha Sapa and afterwards Holmes could not remember if it had been said in Lakota or English. “By telling their own stories. But mostly by having others tell their stories.” Paha Sapa paused a second before saying almost fiercely, “Telling them and believing them!”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, not sure exactly what he was agreeing with but knowing that he agreed with all his heart and soul. “Pilamayaye,” said Holmes. “Thank you.” It was not enough, but it was all he could get out.

  He had nodded and started to turn away when Paha Sapa gripped him firmly by the upper arm. Again it was as if Holmes had walked into the spinning coil of the dynamo.

  “Lucan, kte,” said Paha Sapa. Lucan, he kills thee.

  Holmes felt the cold fist of absolute fate start to close around his heart but pushed that away.

  “Holmes, uŋktepi! Yakte!” It was said almost in a whisper but it struck Holmes like a shout, a wild war cry in the prairie wind. Holmes, you kill him. Thou killest him!

  “Yes,” whispered Sherlock Holmes.

  Paha Sapa smiled. His deep voice came softly in normal tones as he said—“Toksha ake čante ista wascinyanktin ktelo. Hecetu. Mitakuya oyasin!”

  Holmes understood it completely—I shall see you again with the eye of my
heart. So be it. All my relatives!

  “ Mitakuya oyasin!” replied Holmes. All my relatives!

  The two men walked away in opposite directions and it took Holmes almost two minutes before he remembered that he was supposed to go to the pier where the boat should be waiting.

  8

  The full moon was still in the paling western sky beyond the White City when Sherlock Holmes brought Henry James with him to the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building before six a.m. on Monday.

  “I don’t understand why I have to be part of this . . . whatever this is,” said the sleepy and irritated James.

  “Because you do,” said Holmes. “You have been from the beginning and today there must be an ending. You need to be there. Besides, I gave the lady your name for the key . . .”

  “What lady? What key?” stammered James, but fell silent as he saw Colonel Rice, Agent Drummond, and Chicago Police Chief McClaughry waiting for them at the largest of the Great Buildings.

  Rice unlocked the door, let them all in, and locked the door behind them. Holmes led the way to the Otis-Hale Company’s exposed elevator. There was a metal gate surrounding the elevator area that stayed locked when the lift was closed to the public. Colonel Rice unlocked that outer gate now and handed the key to Holmes, who used it to unlock the actual gate to the elevator.

  “You see, Mr. James,” said Holmes, handing him the key, “the same key opens both gates. Use it only if a certain lady shows up and asks to go to the promenade roof level. She may be . . . persuasive.”

  “But I have no idea of how to handle . . . to control . . . to operate . . .” said James.

  Drummond stepped into the elevator and showed a lever to the left of the doorway. “Pull to the left to go up. Further left you go, the faster you ascend. Don’t forget to stop at the roof level or we’ll have to look for you and your passenger on the moon.”

  “There’s a mechanical sensor that slows it to a stop there no matter what the operator is doing,” said Colonel Rice, obviously worried that James would take Drummond literally.