“Watch out how you write it. If you’re not careful, your colleagues will think you’ve gone off the deep end and believe that TV show is real.” Dr. Hughes laughed.
“Oh, you mean the time gate thing they film up in Canada?” Dr. Chadwick grinned mischievously. “Whose idea was that, anyway? It’s made for one of the best covers for a classified project I’ve ever seen.”
“Nobody you’d know,” Caitlin smirked. “Friend of mine in the Pentagon came up with it. He’s a real smart-ass. Fun guy, but full of it.”
“You don’t mean Mike Waters, do you?” Skye snorted, a decidedly amused, if unladylike, sound.
“The very one. I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Hell, yeah. Met him when I was in Washington two years ago for that conference. I don’t think I told you, but he made a play for me. We even dated once or twice, but it didn’t work out. I never could figure out how he wound up in D.C. instead of L.A., though.”
“He said it was more of a challenge.” Dr. Hughes shrugged, then paused. “This is going to be really interesting, Skye. I mean, aside from the proof of concept, you’re going to get to watch one of your heroes. In action, no less.”
Dr. Chadwick nodded, the expression on her face depicting decidedly mixed emotions.
“Yeah. I can’t believe he’s real. But you know, there was this science fiction author…he theorized that our literature is reality elsewhere, and vice versa. Lemme think…who the hell was it…? Somebody famous…Oh! Robert Heinlein! You know, his ‘World as Myth’ concept. And an Argentine writer named Jorge Luis Borges first introduced the concept, sorta, even before quantum mechanics did. So I guess it makes sense after a fashion.”
Dr. Hughes listened, understanding the notion; but she knew Chadwick better than to be easily diverted, and she scrutinized her friend, then pursued the issue. “This is hurting you.”
“He’s going to die—for real—and I get to watch it. I mean, in this continuum, there isn’t a happy ending after the Falls. Wouldn’t it hurt you, if he was your hero?” Dr. Chadwick shrugged.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it would,” Caitlin sighed, sobering. “Why are you doing this particular timeline, then?”
“Because the team voted, for one, and for two, it’s the only one we’ve found where the incident isn’t…spied on. The…compatriot, henchman, whatever you want to call him…got rounded up, in this particular scenario. There’s only the two men, and we’ll be the sole witnesses to what really happened. When it’s…over, we’ll send observers in, take a good look, record some data, and pull out. We’ll be the only beings in the multiverse with an actual record of what happened.” Skye shrugged, trying to appear indifferent.
“Oh,” Caitlin said, subdued.
“Dr. Chadwick, Dr. Hughes, it’s ready,” Jim the technician called from across the large underground room.
“That’s our cue,” Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. “Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they’re apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn’t that fry your noggin?”
Outright laughter ran around the room, and Dr. Chadwick added, “Checklist out!” She raised the clipboard she had held absently in one hand for the last several minutes while she talked, scanning over it.
“Checklist…” the nearest experiment controller parroted.
“Checklist out,” the next nearest vouched.
“Checklist here…” and so on, around the room.
“Go/no-go call,” Dr. Chadwick announced. “Processing?”
“Go.”
“Software?”
“Go.”
“Timelines?”
“Go.”
“Sequencing?”
“Go…”
* * *
Ten minutes later, all was in readiness. Caitlin and Skye exchanged silent, eloquent looks. Caitlin “became” Project Manager Dr. Hughes, who nodded authoritatively. Dr. Chadwick accepted the unspoken permission to proceed.
“Sequencing, bring us to observation mode,” the chief scientist ordered.
“Going to observation mode,” the Sequencing position noted.
Dr. Chadwick checked off a block on her clipboard.
The room in which they stood was underground, deep beneath Schriever Air Force Base outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Chamber, as it was called, was the most secure facility in the United States, even more secure than Cheyenne Mountain some miles to the west, newer, and far more advanced technologically. The underground facility was composed of a single large central chamber and eight smaller support rooms clustered around the main room, all carved of solid granite. Skye, Caitlin, and their companions occupied the central chamber, while support teams manned the equipment in each of the secondary rooms. Outside the complex, high-speed elevators and a network of corridors terminating in security airlocks covertly connected them to the rest of the base.
The center of the huge rock-hewn room stood empty. The controller consoles huddled close around the periphery, but eight large columns, monoliths of titanium steel and circuits, surrounded the empty center. Upon Dr. Chadwick’s order, a hum began, moving sequentially around the room from column to column as the system powered up. A carbon dioxide laser beam shot out, interlacing the monoliths in the classic hypercube design, exchanging data, forging them into one coherent unit. In the volume of space contained within the high-tech Stonehenge, vague, three-dimensional, ghostlike images flitted.
“Locus,” Dr. Chadwick called to the appropriately-labeled console, “dial in to Switzerland. Meiringen. The Falls.”
The images translated in a dizzying kaleidoscope, then settled on an almost holographic image of a tall, multi-tiered waterfall high in the Swiss Alps.
“Timelines, shift to Continuum 114…” Dr. Chadwick checked off a block on her clipboard. No change was seen, save that the hologram flickered momentarily.
“Continuum 114,” the Timelines position called. “Date?”
“Year 1891 of the Current Era, month five, day four,” Dr. Chadwick answered. Another check.
Multicolored flashes darted through the hologram for several minutes, then settled.
“Time?” came the request.
“13:30 Greenwich Mean Time.”
“Copy, 13:30 Greenwich,” Timelines answered.
The falling water sped up to a ridiculous rate, then suddenly slowed to a complete stop. After a moment, it resumed a normal flow. Abruptly two men could be seen on a ledge near the top of the falls. One—tall, thin, dark-haired, grey-eyed, handsome in an austere, hawk-like sort of way—sat quietly on a rock only yards from the pinnacle of the path, clad in Victorian-style tweed traveling clothes. A sturdy hiking staff rested against the side of the rock on which he sat, and he calmly scribbled something on a notepad. The other man was older: Balding, stoop-shouldered, almost reptilian in movement and appearance, clad in black, waiting patiently along the downward path, and in a subtle, almost menacing way, blocking it. Before them, the falls leapt down in tiers for over six hundred and fifty feet. To one side, a gleaming, wet rock wall; on the other, a sheer drop.
“Track subjects. Initiate recording. Begin silent protocol,” Dr. Chadwick ordered in an absent voice, her eyes fixed on the image in the center of the room. “Sequencing, focus, please.”
Suddenly the images in the center of the room became more than images. They solidified.
Skye and Caitlin tiptoed forward until they stood right outside the ring of monoliths, looking between two of the columns at the active tableau. Skye tensed, face drawn. Caitlin divided her attention between the events unfolding within the monoliths, and the pale, strained expression on her friend’s face.
* * *
The tweed-clad man studied his hand
iwork for a moment, then nodded to himself. He stood and removed the pages from the notepad, then placed them on the stone, weighting them down with a handsome silver cigarette case produced from a pocket. He studied the positioning, then adjusted case and papers. A small shift in the location of the hiking stick seemed to suit him at last, convincing him it would now draw attention to the objects resting on the dark grey stone. Then, with a grim, set jaw, he turned to his companion.
“Well,” he murmured, “shall we complete this unsavoury little business?”
“We shall,” his older, black-clad companion agreed coldly.
The pair turned and walked to the very end of the path, wet with spray from the falls. Tweed Suit, pale but calm, turned and faced Black Coat. With a fierce, angry growl, Black Coat launched himself at Tweed Suit, a murderous gleam in his eye. Tweed Suit dropped into a martial arts crouch and closed with his opponent, but despite Tweed Suit’s greater strength and skill, Black Coat’s fury gave him a strength that was equal to his opponent. The pair grappled, teetering on the very rim of the precipice.
* * *
Skye’s respiration was rapid, and every muscle in her body was rigid. Caitlin briefly noticed this before the fight in the center of the room drew her complete attention.
“Dear God,” the gaping, horrified project manager breathed, barely audible even to herself, as she finally, truly grasped she was about to witness the deaths of two men.
* * *
At that very instant, Tweed Suit’s foot slipped. Desperate leather-clad toes fought for purchase, and the younger of the two men managed to twist around, away from the precipitous drop. Simultaneously he pyramided his fingers and thrust both arms up between the hands grasping him homicidally by the throat, then forced them outward, swift and powerful. The chokehold broke. A tweed knee caught Black Coat hard in the groin, and not accidentally.
Black Coat staggered back with a gasping cry of pain. His foot slipped on the wet stone and he lunged backward, arms flailing. One frantic, flapping hand caught Tweed’s coat lapel. When that makeshift anchour was realized, the other hand followed. Tweed Suit gasped as he was jerked forward. He instantly reached to break Black Coat’s grip while leaning back as hard as he could in a desperate attempt to counterbalance Black Coat’s weight and avoid being pulled over the edge. The deep-sunken, dark eyes of Black Coat blazed in malevolent, Pyrrhic triumph at Tweed as he deliberately threw his weight backward in an attempt to pull them both over the ledge. Tweed Suit saw Black Coat’s intent, and his fingers slipped under his lapel, fighting with all his strength to free himself of the death grip and its human anchour-weight as his feet slid inexorably toward oblivion.
* * *
Skye watched in horror as the scenario unfolded. For a split-instant, the scientist found herself caught up into the drama, an integral part of it. And it was in that split-instant that she reacted on instinct.
“HOLMES!” she shouted, lunging forward before anyone could even think of stopping her, directly between the two nearest monoliths.
* * *
Tweed Suit’s head shot around in surprised recognition at the name, wide grey eyes fixing in shock on the strangely-clad woman in the lab coat and blue jeans who had just materialised from a solid rock cliff face. Mere fractions of a second later, his opponent, too, responded, muttering, “Strings?” as he struggled to reinforce his grip on Tweed Suit.
Without hesitation, still carried forward by the momentum of her lunge, the tall blonde took two swift steps through the bracken and shrubs along the rock face. In the same motion, she brought the edge of her clipboard down across Black Coat’s wrists with a loud crack, deliberately striking the pressure points as she did so. Black Coat’s grasp instantly loosed, and the two men fairly shot apart, one propelled by gravity, the other by the opposing force of his counterbalance.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, his world’s first consulting-detective, staggered backward into the cliff face…and disappeared.
Dr. Skye Chadwick watched in horror as Professor James Moriarty, his world’s first Western crime lord, plunged over the precipice of the Reichenbach Falls with a dreadful cry, bouncing twice off rock spurs on the way down.
“Oh, dear God,” Chadwick whispered, before turning and sprinting for the cliff.
She, too, vanished.
* * *
As soon as she emerged into the Chamber, Chadwick spun, looking back for her own footprints, scrutinizing the ledge. There were none, due to the fact she had, fortunately, trod only on the wet stone of the ledge itself, and not in the black mud of the path. The bracken along the rock wall was bedraggled and torn, it was true; but that could as easily have been from the fight as her passage. She took a quick, deep breath, trying to steady her nerves.
“Priority terminate!” she exclaimed.
“Emergency?” Timelines queried.
“Negative! Priority only,” Skye said firmly. “Repeat, priority only.”
“Roger, priority only…”
In seconds Project: Tesseract was smoothly powered down.
She simply stood there, silent, gazing vacantly into the empty center of the room, in shock. No sound was heard for long moments, as the scientists, technicians, and government workers stared at her; at the strange, anachronistic man picking himself up from the floor near her; and at each other.
“Dear God, what have I done?” she murmured aloud. Chadwick put her hand over her eyes, badly shaken. Holmes moved forward, laying a light, comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Saved my life,” he responded quietly. “And for that, I thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But I…I’m a scientist. I…wasn’t supposed to…” Chadwick stammered.
“You were to observe only, and you intervened instead.” Holmes’ eyebrow rose, as he comprehended what she couldn’t bring herself to say.
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t help it, Skye.” Dr. Hughes came up behind her, putting a hand on her other shoulder. “You aren’t ‘just’ a scientist. You’re a—well, you were—a police officer, a detective even, and that side of you is just as strong. ‘To protect and serve,’ and all that. Besides, you…‘know’ him. You couldn’t let him die.”
“I killed a man, Cait,” Skye protested in a low tone. “He died. I saw his brains splatter all over the rocks. Oh, Lord, help…” she added fervently, as her stomach lurched at the memory. She turned toward the door.
* * *
“Where are you going?” Hughes asked, sharper than she intended, as Holmes and the others watched.
“To my office upstairs,” Chadwick replied, her voice uneven. “When you’re ready to send the military police to arrest me, I’ll be there, waiting…or if not, maybe in the ladies’ room, tossing my breakfast.”
“Military police? Why should I do that?” Hughes protested.
“I violated the protocol and I killed a man.”
Hughes marched herself over to stand before Chadwick. The two women were almost of a height, but Chadwick still had a couple of inches over Hughes, who stared up into the intense blue gaze.
“You know as well as I do the protocol isn’t formally established yet except for Morris’ orders. As for the other, you saved a good man and let a crime lord die.” Hughes stabbed a finger toward Holmes.
Skye rounded on Caitlin and snapped.
“Do I look like a jury?! Are you a judge? What right did I have to so much as move? They weren’t even from our continuum!” She put her hands over her face in despair. “What have I done? I can’t believe what I just did. Call Security to get Holmes into a neutral secure area. I’ll be in my office.”
Holmes heard the reference to continuum and looked puzzled.
“At the risk of being considered impolite…might I enquire as to precisely what is going on, and where—or, perhaps more to the point, WHEN—I am?” he wondered laconically. “It is patently obvious that this equipment is far more advanced than anything in my brother’s accounting office…”
�
��Oh, dear God in heaven,” Skye groaned from behind her hands. “Cait…”
“No,” Dr. Hughes responded firmly. “You’re chief scientist. You can explain it best.”
“All right. Give me about five minutes…maybe ten…to get myself under control, then bring him in. I’ll explain, then we can get the General to tell us what to do.” Chadwick sighed, defeated.
* * *
Precisely ten minutes later, Caitlin entered Skye’s office with Sherlock Holmes. Skye glanced over her shoulder and nodded briefly, noting Holmes was now wearing the C-badge of an escorted visitor clipped to the lapel of his tweed jacket; Caitlin had evidently been very busy.
* * *
Skye had divested herself of her lab coat, which now hung on a hook behind the office door. Her back was to the door, as she studied a series of equations on the chalkboard behind the desk.
“Skye,” Caitlin said in frustration, “WHEN are you going to move into the next century and get a whiteboard? And that clipboard of yours…”
Skye shot her a lopsided, wry grin. It didn’t reach her eyes.
“After what just happened downstairs, allow me my eccentricities, Cait. I use what I prefer. Besides, an electronic pad can’t be used as a weapon,” she pointed out ruefully.
“Whatever. Here, Mr. Holmes,” Caitlin offered, showing Holmes to a chair in front of Skye’s desk. “I’ll be back with the General soon. Meanwhile, this is Dr. Skye Chadwick, our chief scientist. You’ve met, obviously, but not been introduced.”
“Thank you, Dr. Hughes,” Holmes nodded courteously, taking the indicated seat. “I am looking forward to fully understanding what is occurring. Other than the fact that we are well over a century in my future—if it is MY future; in America, in an underground government facility of some sort near the Colorado Rocky Mountains, specifically Pikes Peak, so I assume the nearest city of any import to be Colorado Springs…I am afraid I have little grasp of your project.”
“Wha…how…?” Caitlin’s jaw dropped.
An expectant Holmes sat and watched Skye but did not answer.
Skye shot Caitlin a rueful, amused, and completely knowing grin before returning her attention to the chalkboard. After a moment, she elaborated.
The Case of the Displaced Detective Page 2