Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  And there was the Time Machine, sitting in the middle of the laboratory floor. Occupying the seat was a man of about forty with long brown hair. Hatless, he was dressed in a hunting jacket and trousers. He dismounted from the machine, looked at me standing in the doorway, then turned toward Holmes and Filby.

  He approached Holmes with his hand extended. “Sherlock Holmes! How much time has passed since last we saw one another?”

  “What is time to a time traveler?” Holmes said, taking the man’s hand.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” said the Time Traveler. “Hello, Filby, old man.”

  Filby flushed with gladness. “Welcome back! We thought you utterly lost.”

  “Oh? And how long have I been gone?”

  Filby frowned. “Six months. But surely—”

  “You forget, Filby, the dictum of which Holmes just reminded you. Time is nothing when one has a time machine. For me, only a few hours have passed since I embarked on my second journey.”

  “But ...” Filby was at a loss for words. “I don’t understand.”

  “Think on it a while, Filby. At any rate, Holmes, I got your message, telling me to meet you here, at this time, this date.”

  “Thank you for coming. When did you find the envelope?”

  “I don’t quite remember the exact date, but it likely was some ten years from now. I have taken to exploring the immediate future ... and I am mystified. This house stands, but I seem no longer to occupy it. The place is shut up, empty. This lonely state of affairs continues for at least a decade and a half; then, the house suddenly has occupants again, unknown to me. I can only interpret these events as meaning that I never return from a future time trip. Perhaps even this one.”

  Filby said, “The house stands empty according to the provisions of the last will and testament which you sent to me.” “Last will and ... Filby, whatever are you talking about?” “Why, you mean to say you didn’t...?” Filby was bewildered.

  Understanding suddenly registered on the Time Traveler’s face. “Of course, a capital idea. Have the house stand empty but habitable while I travel through time, so that I always have a haven. Yes, sending you a document of that sort is something I should do, and probably will do. No, it is something I most definitely will do, for it seems that I have already done it.”

  Filby was baffled by this as well.

  Holmes said, “So, you intend to flit about in time for the immediate future—if I may put it that way?”

  “I suppose I must. For something has occurred to me. I realized it the moment I woke up this morning ... excuse me. When I woke up the morning after returning from my first trip into the future.”

  “And what was this realization?”

  “That the Time Machine is a danger to the world.” Holmes nodded. “The possibility of paradox looms large.” “Yes. Paradox, engendered by travel into the past. You can easily meet yourself coming the other way. You can appear in places where you shouldn’t be ... at the battle of Waterloo ... at Agincourt ... at the Crucifixion—” “Heavens!” exclaimed Filby.

  “Yes, Filby. Even that. I have not done it. Would it be a blasphemy? And what effect would my presence have on the course of historical events?”

  I had walked across the workshop to the where the three men stood. “Why is the Time Machine such a danger?”

  “Dr. Watson, is it? A pleasure to meet you. It is a danger because of the unknown effects of paradox. Can history be changed? Should it? And think of this: one Time Machine can change history. Imagine, then, the chaos that might result when every man has one. Think of every Tom, Dick and Harry with a Time Machine, gadding about History, causing all sorts of bother.”

  Holmes said to me, “He’s right, Watson. The thing must be destroyed. I spent the day thinking along much these same lines.”

  “I can destroy the machine,” the Time Traveler said. “I never dreamed that I would say this, but I am willing to destroy it, and all the plans and drawings for it. But there is still a dilemma. At least a dozen people know about it. One of them was that journalist fellow— What was his name again, Filby?”

  “Wells,” said Filby.

  “Yes, Wells. So, the secret is out. Once the world at large finds out about it, investigations will be made.”

  “No one will believe it,” I ventured.

  “At first, yes. But slowly, incredulity will yield to facts. And if I am around, the secret can be coaxed out of me, if the coaxers are ruthless enough. Even if I am not around, the fact that the feat can be done might be enough to inspire future inventors. No, gentlemen. I have made my decision. I will destroy all these drawings, my notebooks ... and then the machine itself—but only after I use it to effect one and only one change in history.”

  “You will eliminate the invention of the Time Machine,” said Holmes.

  “Exactly!” said the Time Traveler, “though I don’t know just how I will do it. I may have to eliminate myself.” “Good Heavens, man,” I said. “How can you do that?” The Time Traveler grinned impishly. “Simple, take my revolver, go back before the Time Machine was constructed, and shoot myself.”

  I was dumbfounded. “But ... then you’d ... but how could you—?”

  The Time Traveler laughed heartily. “Paradox! Or, if that’s distasteful, I can murder my grandfather.”

  ‘This is insanity,” I muttered.

  “Or,” Holmes said carefully, “see that your grandfather marries a woman other than your grandmother.”

  “Precisely, Holmes. And there are other, even more subtle ways to effect the same change. A minor historical change. It shouldn’t affect the main stream of mankind’s history— which, as I found out, leads to tragedy anyway. In any case, I might have to go farther back than one or two generations.”

  “After you do the thing,” Holmes said, “will you return to the far future?”

  “I might. There is a possibility that I might rescue Weena—a woman of my acquaintance. But... Holmes, will I have a future? I might be erased from the cosmic scheme of things, become a chimera, a ghost without a place to haunt.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Holmes said. “As I said, I have done some thinking. The likely result is that the great river of history will split into two alternative streams.”

  “Never thought of that,” the Time Traveler said. “Now that I consider the notion, though, it sounds plausible.”

  “We will never know,” Holmes said. “One way or the other.”

  “Likely not,” agreed the Time Traveler. “Now, will you help me? Destroy the papers, I mean.”

  “Most assuredly,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  We did the deed. All the notebooks, the drawings, the detailed plans and specifications went up as smoke through the house’s great chimney. What spare parts there were we bent out of shape, or disassembled, or smashed. We made a thorough job of it.

  “Done at last,” said the Time Traveler. “Now I must leave you. Forever, I’m afraid.”

  Holmes shook his hand. “Good luck to you. May you find a place to rest, a home in some distant sunny clime, in the past, or in the future.”

  “Thank you. My gratitude is boundless.”

  The Time Traveler shook my hand, then turned to Filby. “Filby, my old friend and advocate.”

  “I will keep the house as it is for as long as I am able,” Filby assured his friend. “You will always have a place to come back to.”

  “Thank you. And now, gentlemen, I must be going.”

  The Time Traveler returned to his machine and mounted it. After consulting the dials between the control bars, he activated the machine. It began to whir and whine. Dust on the floor rose up, and a cold draft blew from the direction of the anomalous craft.

  The Time Machine grew soft and indistinct, blurring like an image in an unfocused telescope, and the bench behind it was clearly visible through the miasma. Then the air cleared, and there was nothing.

  We put on our coats, and were about to leave the workshop, when I
remembered something. I looked at the bench, and was astonished all over again.

  “Holmes! The letter!”

  “Eh, Watson? What is amiss?”

  “Your letter. Why, the seal is intact! That fellow never did read it. But how did he—”

  Holmes was laughing, and suddenly it dawned on me. I felt rather foolish. “Oh,” I said. “Stupid of me. Of course.” “Don’t castigate yourself, Watson. Human beings are unaccustomed to thinking in terms of the Eternal. We are time-bound creatures. Come, let us go home.”

  And that is all there is to the Richmond Enigma. Not a week goes by that doesn’t have me thinking about the Time Traveler, and where he might have gone. And what he might have done. I wonder what course Holmes’s historical river will take.

  But I also think that we might have been hoodwinked, somehow. It is a preposterous story. I don’t quite believe it myself. After all, we only have the Time Traveler’s word, and Filby’s. The two could be in collusion.

  Oh, bother. This will do for a first draft, I suppose. Not that I’ll ever polish it. Really, it’s all so improbable.

  (The MS. ends here)

  AFTERWORD

  It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Watson here was trying his hand at pure fiction. In any case, fact or fancy, “The Richmond Enigma “ is a fascinating story. There are interesting things in it. One wonders, for instance, whether the “Wells’’ mentioned was Herbert George Wells, the young novelist who has lately made a name for himself painting our contemporary social world in bold strokes. Intriguing to speculate what he might have produced had he taken up the writing of scientific romance.

  This, then, is the last of the unpublished manuscripts of John H. Watson, now seeing print for the first time in this limited edition of the complete works, published by the Museum. We hope you have enjoyed them.

  This last story has sparked a strange bit of speculation in me. Does Watson forget that Holmes and the Time Traveler are distantly related?—and does he realize that, should the latter go back far enough in time to do his meddling, there arises the possibility that Sherlock Holmes would be eliminated as well?

  Sheer fancy, of course. For we avid Sherlockians know, to paraphrase a French agnostic, that if Sherlock Holmes did not in fact exist, as he does in our “stream” of history, it would be necessary to invent him.

  A. Conan Doyle, Curator The Sherlock Holmes Museum London

  A STUDY IN SUSSEXby Leah A. Zeldes

  It had been some years since I had last seen my old friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. He had retired down to Sussex to keep bees more than thirty years before, and our paths seldom crossed afterward.

  At first he was greatly occupied with setting up his farm, and with his researches for his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. During the Great War, of course, I was busy with my medical practice, my junior, Dr. Verner, having gone to serve at the front, and it was several years thereafter before he was again fit to take up a full load.

  Holmes, meanwhile, became more and more reclusive in his habits, seldom leaving his lonely South Downs estate. An occasional weekend visit was the most that I ever saw of him.

  In the decade since my own retirement, I had been greatly troubled by rheumatism in my shoulder and leg, where I was wounded during my service in Afghanistan, and had been content to spend my time reading quietly by my hearthside. I wrote to Holmes now and then, and received characteristically terse replies, to the effect that he too was troubled by the scourge of aged joints, but I feared that barring that one trait in common, we had greatly drifted away from each other.

  It was, then, with some surprise that I received a telegram from Holmes last Wednesday:

  Come at once if convenient—if inconvenient come all the same.

  S.H.

  At my age, I am unused to such peremptory summonses, and I was inclined to feel rather ruffled at first, but then I reflected that Holmes had never sent for me without good cause. I cursed the fact that his rural neighborhood is not yet on the telephone, but wired back that I was on my way.

  Travel, however short, is not such an easy thing for an octogenarian, and by the time I reached Eastbourne I was feeling quite exhausted. I engaged a cab to take me the final five miles to Holmes’s house near the village of Fulworth. His housekeeper admitted me.

  “Mr. Holmes is with his bees just now,” she said. “If you would care to rest a while, sir, he will return in time for tea.”

  She showed me to my room. I removed my coat and shoes and lay in my clothes on the bed, thinking to relax for a few moments and then go in search of Holmes at the hives, but my old body got the best of me and I was soon fast asleep.

  When the housekeeper woke me, I had a few moments of confusion, wondering where I was. The sun was already setting, and the room was purple in the deepening gloom. The housekeeper lit a lamp and brought in a pitcher and basin.

  “Mr. Holmes asks that you join him in the study, sir. The tea is nearly ready,” she said.

  I had forgotten how few of the amenities that we now take for granted in London, such as electricity and running water, were available in the country. I could almost imagine myself back in the old days in Baker Street.

  This sense of being in another time and place deepened when I entered the study, for Holmes had taken with him most of the furnishings from our old rooms and still had them, arranged in much the same way as they had been there.

  The chemical bench stood in one corner, near the acid-stained, deal-topped table. The same old sofa, reupholstered, but littered as always with papers, and my old armchair sat near the fireplace, where Holmes’s unanswered correspondence was transfixed to the wooden mantelpiece with a jack-knife. The coal scuttle contained cigars, and the ancient Persian slipper lying by the pipe rack, I had no doubt, held strong tobacco in its toe.

  The only indications of the change of location and the passing of time were the thatched roof above, the titles of the rows of reference books on the shelves, and the patriotic initials, G.R., picked out in bullet-pocks upon the plaster wall.

  “Why, Watson!” said Holmes, as he came into the room. “I would scarcely have known you. You are as thin as you were when we first became acquainted, five decades ago.” It was true. I, who have been a heavyset man for most of my life, have shrunk in my old age to gauntness such that I only ever had before upon my return from the tropics, suffering the effects of my war wounds and enteric fever.

  “But you, Holmes,” I cried, “you have hardly changed at all!” The well-remembered features were a trifle sharper, the forehead a little higher, and his body in the purple dressing gown a little thinner, but that was all. And Holmes, who had always been a pale man, shone with a wonderful color and moved with the vigor of a man twenty years his junior. “How splendid you look!”

  “The country agrees with me.”

  The housekeeper came in with the tea tray just then, and set it on the table. “If that is all you require, Mr. Holmes,” she said, “I’ll be going. Tomorrow being my day off, I’ll see you Friday morning. I’ve laid out the things for your breakfast, and a cold luncheon is in the icebox. Are you sure you’ll be all right for tea?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Merton. We shall manage.” Holmes looked at me. “As you see, Watson, in my later years, I have adopted the workingman’s habit of high tea in place of dinner. But there is an excellent tavern nearby where we can sup tomorrow.”

  With that, we fell to on Mrs. Merton’s fine repast of Scotch woodcock, thick bread and butter, sliced ham, and iced gateaux. As Holmes reached to pass me a plate, the sleeve of his dressing gown fell away from his arm, revealing it to be dotted with innumerable round, red and angry welts, as from punctures.

  “My dear Holmes!”

  “It is nothing,” he said, drawing his sleeve back over his arm. I scanned the room for a familiar morocco leather case.

  He laughed. “Ah, Watson, you fear I am back to my old unsavory habits. No, these are not the marks of a needle. They are merely remem
brances from my friends, the bees.”

  “But so many, Holmes!”

  “That, Watson,” said he, “is why I sent for you. As you know, I have for the past thirty years—a longer period than I practiced as a detective—been engaged in apiarian research. Bees are curious creatures, totally devoted to their communities. The continuance of the hive is more important to them than any individual. The individual may die, but the hive goes on.

  “At first I occupied myself with systematically studying the best methods of beekeeping, the results of which research I set out in my Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. But thereafter I began to look into the properties of various substances produced by the bees. You will recall that I sent you copies of my monographs on the dangers of honey as a food for infants and the uses of beeswax in salves.”

  “Yes, I found them quite useful in my practice,” I said. “It’s a pity they were not more widely disseminated.”

  ‘The medical profession does not take to new ideas easily,” said Holmes. ‘To continue, for a long while I studied royal jelly, the secretion that worker bees prepare to feed the larvae and the queen. I was convinced that this substance had properties linked to longevity, for the queen bee, who dines on nothing else, lives for three years, while the worker bees, who eat it only in the first two days of their lives, have a life span of only six weeks. I conducted various tests.

  “I even ate it myself and smeared it over my body. But apart from a certain smoothness to the skin, I found it had little effect. The properties that have so wonderful a consequence in bees appear to have little influence on human beings.”

  *’I wonder at your research into longevity, Holmes,” I said. “I recall that after the Adventure of the Creeping Man you expressed your revulsion for those who would try to rise above Nature. Such a one is liable to fall below it, you said. ‘The highest type of man may revert to animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny. The material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their useless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit.’ “