Sherlock Holmes in Orbit

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  We walked slowly to the center of the bridge to await the arrival of the police. Holmes pulled out his pipe and thoughtfully smoked in silence as we both looked down at the black, oily river.

  Finally I spoke. “What will you tell Babbage?”

  Holmes replied, “The truth, of course. I removed only the parts that Moriarty had added. Babbage will get his machine back. As to the papers ...” He withdrew the sheaf from his coat, and taking the first page, he ripped it in half and let it fall like a leaf—though no machine now would ever predict its path. “The papers ... were lost in the struggle.

  “Like all of us who live in this glorious age of science and discovery, I have always thought that science should be free of religion ... politics ... of any restraints. Now I no longer think that.” He began to tear sheet after sheet, and we watched them flutter to the water below. “General Thompson’s fears are justified. Science is outracing our ability to manage the consequences. The Future Engine in Moriarty’s hands—perhaps in anyone’s—is a weapon of destruction ... a weapon that doesn’t destroy buildings or maim, but surely one that would destroy what makes us human.”

  Echoing now from either side of the Thames, we could hear laughter and cries as the Baker Street Irregulars made a game of skipping the fragments of the Future Engine into the Thames. A smile came to Holmes’s face. “Those boys are the future,” said he, throwing the last paper from the bridge. “Let us do our part to rid England of crime, Watson, and let the future take care of itself.”

  Weeks later, we had just returned to Baker Street from a pleasant evening’s dinner at the Cafe Royal and were discussing the ramifications of our last case. My wife was still visiting family in the South, and Holmes and I had settled into a routine much like the days when I was still a bachelor. Our conversation had—as had the case itself—taken on a disturbing aspect. Holmes—with good reason—feared that the Future Engine could yet be replicated and was more determined than ever to put an end to Moriarty. He lit his clay pipe. Drawing deeply, he puffed perfect circles in rapid succession and then watched as each ringlet lingered, and then faded into the smoky haze that now encircled him.

  “You intend to write this one up, then, Watson?” he said, as he steepled his fingers in his usual manner.

  “Not against your wishes. But yes, I do. Although I think it best that this case be locked away,” I said, referring to the tin dispatch box I kept in the underground vaults of Cox & Co. in Charing Cross.

  “I agree. Let us say, perhaps a hundred years.”

  At first I thought it a joke, though I should have known better. But looking at his thin, angled face, made even more gaunt by the events of our latest emprise, I heard the emotion behind his flat voice and saw the truth in his statement.

  “And what of my readers?”

  “Ah-h-h-h,” sighed Sherlock Holmes. “They’ll just have to wait.”

  PART II: HOLMES IN THE PRESENT

  HOLMES EX MACHINA by Susan Casper

  This story is dedicated to the memory of Robert A. Heinlein

  My name is Watson. Dr. John Watson to be exact, though not a doctor of medicine. I don’t think I was named after the great man of fiction, at least my parents always swore they never knew what I was talking about. I have to admit that I’ve never known them to read much of anything, let alone a century-and-a-half-old detective story. Still, accident or design, it certainly influenced my reading material. Indirectly, it even got me my job at Vid-Tech.

  It was at a meeting of my college branch of the Baker Street Irregulars where the group of us sat around watching a holo of The Hound of the Baskervilles, swilling down large amounts of beer and even larger amounts of potato chips. Gene was, as usual, a little worse for this consumption than the rest of us. As Holmes walked across the moors, spyglass in hand, Gene started piling potato chips on the vid-table for Holmes to walk through. That was where I got the idea for “Rootie Toot.”

  Yes, that was me, but before you start to throw things, I have to admit that it never occurred to me that there would be problems. I thought it would be cute for kids to interact with the show. I pictured them laying string on the vid table so that Rootie could tie Up the bad guys with it, or handing him popsicle sticks to help Rootie climb out of a ditch. I never realized that crayons would melt onto the screen, or that cups of water would spill into the sets. Then those big half-sized home theaters came out and, well, you know what happened.

  So they moved me from creative to production, and I’ve spent the last five years turning out holo versions of old 2-d movies so that people could watch Casablanca and Star Wars and other ancient classics on the vid. Still, there was a germ of an idea that had been floating in my head. You didn’t actually need actors to make a new film. For instance, suppose you wanted to see The Man Who Would Be King the way that John Huston originally intended to make it, with Bogart and Gable as stars. Well, all you really needed were samples of Huston’s style, and several film clips of the actors at work. The computer would do the rest. Without realizing it, they were already doing something of the sort, using computers to change the age and weight and sometimes even the sex of an actor when the script called for it. In the last twenty years the entire makeup department had consolidated into one man with a keyboard. I’d been trying for quite a while to get someone to listen to this idea, but when you have a reputation of something of a flake, no one wants to hear what you have to say. Then, when the canisters disappeared, I saw my chance.

  Personally, I had never thought of Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster as a very important film, but when word comes down from Landers to holo a film, it’s no time to ask silly questions. The only existing copy we could find was being messengered over that morning, and I had a two-day deadline to complete the job. Hard enough to do if they arrived by ten, but when eleven rolled around and the film was nowhere to be found, I called the front desk. “Yes,” Sophie told me, “the films arrived by nine-thirty. I left them on my desk for Mike and took my coffee break. When I got back, they were gone. I just assumed that Mike came and got them.”

  “Not me,” Mike said when I found him in his office a little while later. “No one even called to tell me they were in. You don’t suppose Landers has them, do you?”

  “Landers?” I shook my head. “He’s the one who’s in such a hurry. You’d think he’d bring them to me right away. Besides, the new manuals are in. I saw him leave for production with a couple of them this morning and I don’t think he’s been back yet.” I sank into the chair, defeat in every line of my being. It had been a good job. With the depression hitting the industry the way it was, I wasn’t sure that I could ever find work in the same line.

  “Well, you’re the Sherlock Holmes fan. How would he figure out what was done with them?” Mike asked. He was being sarcastic, but I didn’t even notice.

  “Hey, that’s actually quite a good idea you’ve got there,” I said, jumping out of my seat. Luckily, I kept several books in my office.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Mike asked, following me into the next room.

  “They don’t think you can make films from scratch, without actors, without sets. I’m going to show them, and maybe find the answer to my problem at the same time.” I ransacked my drawers for the books, scattering papers all over the desk. “See these?” I asked, holding up the treasured disks. “These books are about to become a person,” I said, enigmatically.

  I had already written the program to create holos directly from prose, fleshing out characters from the author’s descriptions alone, testing it out in those moments when Landers was gone. I’d even added a subroutine that would allow for interaction with those characters, in case the director decided to alter the plot. It was this I intended to use. The Anson 502 was, according to literature, self-programming, self-debugging, and voice activated. With luck, it wouldn’t take more than a few tries to get the thing right. Since I was fairly certain I’d covered all the bases, I hit return and headed for the screening room with a
puzzled Mike still on my heels.

  I had set the machine to accept external stimulus while the program was running. Now, crossing my fingers for luck, I stood in range of the camera and pressed the button marked “run.” The screen lit up. The camera whirred to life. Nothing happened.

  “Damn,” I shouted.

  “Checking for damn,” the computer said. “Then a second later, “Command not found.”

  “Debug,” I said. No matter how hard you try, you never manage to cover everything; though this time I thought I had. I waited nervously to find out what I’d done wrong.

  “Image not found. Conflicting information,” it said, mechanically.

  I sighed. “Create image from description. Use best guess sorting on conflicts.” Lights lit up on the console, and I stood back, waiting to see what would happen.

  The hologram formed slowly. I wasn’t sure what to expect as the first vague outlines appeared against the blue-walled room. Even here it would not be full sized, but close enough that we could actually see what we were filming. Would the images be completely solid at this size? Then I began to wonder if perhaps theaters could come back into style. Large audiences watching filmed stage plays? The possibilities roamed through my mind as the images solidified. First the room. The Persian slipper on the mantle, the Stradivarius thrown carelessly on the table. The knife-pierced stack of correspondence riffling in the breeze from the open window was so real that I had to suppress an urge to go over and read it. Then, with even more amazement, I watched as the man himself began to form. He was seated on the overstuffed armchair, leaning forward in his seat, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, fingertips touching right in front of his rather prominent nose. He turned to look at me and his eyes grew warm with concern. Though I’d never had the chance to holo any of the films about Holmes, I’d been lucky enough to see quite a few in my time. Oddly enough, the computer image looked quite a bit like one of the actors who was famous for the role. I wondered, perhaps, if someone had shown the machine a picture of Jeremy Brett. To make things run somewhat more easily, I had scanned in a short note which read: “Dear Mr. Holmes, I would like to see you this morning on a matter of some small importance.” This he had dropped on the table not quite stuffed back into its envelope.

  “I can see, sir, that you have suffered a great tragedy. How can I be of service?” he asked.

  “Tragedy?” I asked. Mike laughed. I could see by his raised eyebrows that he found all this as interesting as I did. I had set it up so that the character, Holmes in this case, would see only another wall where the camera and viewing chairs were. Mike was out of his range of vision, but not out of range of the mike that was his ears. I shushed him with a gesture.

  Holmes’s brows drew together and he looked positively angry. “Oh, come, sir,” he said. “If it pains you to speak of it, then we shall say no more, but the trouble itself is obvious. You are a painter, and I might say a fairly good one, who has recently fallen on hard times. This is obvious from the fact that you were forced to paint upon cloth for the lack of a canvas,” he said, gesturing at my hand-painted T-shirt. “That the fall was recent is easily deduced by the fact that your trousers and shoes are both of very high quality, though rather unusual style. Probably purchased abroad. But your tragedy, whatever its nature, a fire perhaps, is evident Why else would you wear this masterpiece other than for lack of any proper clothing?” I turned to Mike and shrugged. He was laughing out loud by now, but fortunately his voice did not reach the pickup. “You are a rather sentimental man, or you would surely have sold that ring rather than paint your picture on cloth. I can tell from here that it is quite valuable, and since you refused to pawn it, even when needed, most probably a present of betrothal.”

  Well, he was partly right. Gold, with a one-carat ruby, it was quite valuable. He picked up the note from the table and looked it over. “What is more, though you are an American, you weren’t brought up there,” he said. “Education there is mandatory through the eighth grade, but you were educated at home, and by some servant or family member instead of a tutor.”

  This was a bit far-fetched, I thought. I had been born and raised in California and had gone k through 12 and four years of college in the best schools the state had to offer. I think I rather resented the implications, and my tone was a bit surly when I asked, “And what has led you to this conclusion?” which broke Mike up even more.

  “Forgive me, sir. No insult was intended. You speak in an educated manner, though your accent is somewhat strange. I am sure that your learning is not the least deficient but for one thing that a school or a tutor, even in our more casual ex-colonies, would never have omitted to teach—a proper hand and correct use of punctuation.” He held up the note with my spidery, uneven scrawl.

  “Cut!” I called, stopping the machine.

  “Cut that out!” I yelled. Mike was making this very difficult, doubled up with laughter the way he was.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, breaking up all over again. “I didn’t know about your great tragedy. Really I didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me before, Michelangelo?”

  “Okay, okay, so I forgot that the computer wouldn’t give him any information post 1900 or so. Still, it’s exciting. I mean it works. I mean ... well, we made a person, didn’t we, of a sort. If it can do this, it can certainly make a movie without using any actors at all.”

  Mike sat bolt upright, the silly smile gone from his face. “Hey, you’re right,” he said. “Hot Reds! Do you know what this means?” I was glad to see the dime had finally dropped. “Reprogram him with modem info and see if he can find the films.”

  “I’m not sure it’s necessary. Time’s short. Let’s see what he can do as is,” I answered. “Roll,” I called to the machine and Holmes sprang once again to life. “My problem is this,” I told him, outlining the basics without mentioning what was in the box, so, of course, he asked me.

  “It’s a pair of round cans about this big,” I measured with my hands.

  “Do you have one I can look at?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. There was a shelf of them under the computer. I picked one up and handed it to him. It fell to the floor with a bang. “Shit!” I said, hitting my head with my palm.

  “Sir!” Holmes said, drawing himself up, eyes wide with indignation.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said. I put the can into the scanner and before I could even pick it up again, Holmes was holding an exact duplicate.

  “And the manuals, please.” I called “cut” again and sent Mike to get them, wondering what he was getting at. The manuals were new, a set of instructions for filming, selling, and storage of holos. For some reason they insisted on using old-fashioned, print media, books. These were large loose-leaf binders with, as yet, very little material in them, but plenty of room for adding the sheets that would certainly come. It went into the scanner as well. Then I restarted the machine.

  Holmes opened the book, put the can inside and closed it again. “Aha!” Holmes cried as soon as he saw it. “You see what’s become of your cans?” he said. I sagged into my seat. I had been counting a lot on this.

  “In the manuals? Why?” I said.

  “Money, sabotage? I haven’t enough information on your Mr. Landers yet. But you say you’ve looked everywhere. On this I must take your word as I cannot now leave this room. However, if the cans are not there, and the only person who left did so holding a pair of these manuals, which are big enough to hide the item in question, then ipso facto. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

  “Cut.” I called, then, “print.” The image shimmered away. Once again the screen was just a blue comer of the room.

  Wearily, I grabbed the book from the scanner and picked up the can. ‘They are just the right size,” I said to Mike.

  “Right, John,” Mike said, rolling his eyes. “Landers stole them, hid them inside his manual and took them over to production to sell them to Moriarty for millions
of dollars.” With a sigh and a shrug I trucked the book back to Landers’s office. He was seated behind his desk when I walked in. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but sooner or later I’d have to tell him. I braced myself for the inevitable. “Mr. Landers, I have to talk to you,” I said.

  “About these?” he asked, pulling the canisters out from under his desk.

  “Where on earth did you find them?” I asked.

  “I didn’t find them, I stole them. Well, not exactly. I was on my way out to production with these manuals, when I saw them sitting on Sophie’s desk. I thought you’d need them right away, so I started to bring them up, but the box broke. I tucked them inside the manuals because I couldn’t juggle everything at once. Anyway, to make a long story short, Sophie’s phone rang. It was production with another emergency. So, I ran out and completely forgot that I had them. When I noticed, I rushed them back right away. I was just trying to find you,” he said.

  He couldn’t have any idea why I was laughing. “I’ll tell you later. In fact, I’ll show you. There’s something I very much want you to see,” I said.

  With Landers seated where Mike had been, I ran the tape. I don’t know yet if anything will come of it, but he seemed quite impressed. Still, something felt unfinished. I waited for him to leave and pressed “run.” Once again, I was facing Sherlock Holmes.

  “Thanks,” I told him. “You were right, of course.”

  “Of course,” he said, matter-of-factly, but I thought he looked grateful to have his suspicions confirmed. “By the by, do not despair of your situation. Things will improve very soon,” Holmes said.

  My eyes widened. I had forgotten all about my supposed tragedy. “I think that they might.” I said. ‘But tell me, how did you guess?”