“The Timelines console display gave him our date; my reference to an alternate continuum the notion that this might not be ‘his’ future. Regional dialects told him he’s in the States; a blend of military uniforms and civilian wear said he’s on a government installation, and the pink granite walls ‘downstairs’ could only be from the Pikes Peak formation.”
“Excellent,” Holmes muttered, satisfied.
“Um, yes, well,” Caitlin murmured, bemused, “I’ll be back shortly. Skye, do you or Mr. Holmes want anything?”
“No, I made a fresh pot of coffee,” Skye gestured to the table in the corner of the office, where a full drip coffeemaker sat, then shook her head, turning and taking a seat behind her desk. “On second thought, bring that box of shortbread with you. We can nibble; it’s time for Mr. Holmes’ tea. At least his stomach probably thinks so.”
“Thank you, yes, that is most thoughtful,” Holmes murmured politely.
“Okay,” Caitlin agreed. And she was gone.
* * *
Holmes and Chadwick sat silently for a long moment, she studying the equations while he studied her.
“I see you did not become ill,” he observed quietly.
“No,” she admitted. “I sure thought about it, though.” She leaned back in her desk chair. “But I’ve worked enough traffic accidents to be used to that sort of thing. The…gore…isn’t what bothers me.”
“Yes. The first time to deal death is…difficult. But I would say you did not deal death so much as…permit life. The true death-dealer is the one who died, in the end.” Holmes nodded understanding. He leaned forward, grey eyes piercing, seeking to reassure. “All you did was break his hold, to prevent his dragging me over the precipice. It is not as if you pushed him over it. He and I rather managed that on our own, I should think. And for me, it was self-defence.”
Skye put down her chalk and turned thoughtfully to face him. After a few moments, she nodded.
“Yeah, I guess so.” She took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, calming somewhat. Holmes gave her a few moments to relax before speaking again.
“Now, would you kindly tell me how your apparatus operates, and how it is you came to be observing me? And how I might get back? My friend Watson will be looking for me, I’ve no doubt.”
* * *
“Explaining how the tesseract works would take a lot longer than a few minutes, Mr. Holmes—” Skye’s face twisted in another rueful grin, and she more or less successfully hid the pain that flashed through her eyes at his last question.
“Just ‘Holmes’ will do.”
Skye blinked at this unexpected, and magnanimous, invitation. “Oh. Okay. Call me Skye, I suppose…”
“Skye. As in Isle of Skye?” Holmes nodded.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m of English and Scots descent.” She flipped her long blonde braid with a faint attempt at humor. “It shows.”
“I suspected. Not only from your features, however. Your family has retained the barest hint of the brogue through the generations. Please, continue. You were speaking of this tesseract. That is the object which I…fell through, for want of a better expression?” He gave a half-smile.
“Yes,” Skye chuckled. “I’ve spent the better part of my fifteen-year career figuring out how the tesseract works. I’ve had to develop some of the physics to do it. It’s closer to twenty years I’ve been working on it, all told; I started when I was in school. As to how we come to be observing you in particular…Have you ever heard the theory of parallel universes, Holmes?”
“I cannot say I have.”
Skye stood, catching her chalk and drawing a line around her equations to avoid overwriting them. Holmes watched with obvious interest as she dropped into a comfortable teaching mode.
“Our universe—at least the parts we can perceive—consist of at least four dimensions,” she began, sketching a four-dimensional grid on the board. “X, Y, Z, and T.”
“Length, width, height, and time.”
“Precisely.” Skye smiled. “Technically, it’s called Minkowski space. Now, some fifteen years after your little skirmish with Moriarty at the Falls, a man named Albert Einstein published a paper about his ‘Special Theory of Relativity.’ It showed, among other things, how there is an equivalence between matter and energy, how each can be converted into the other.”
Holmes considered this for a moment, then nodded. “Perhaps akin to freezing and melting?”
“Exactly!” Skye’s smile broadened. “Watson’s assessment of your scientific knowledge was inadequate.”
“A wise man does not always admit to everything he knows. And sometimes an overly-credulous friend can be a source of mild amusement,” he added, grey eyes twinkling. “Eventually he learned differently, of course. But he never went back and corrected his original statements. Watson fully comprehended the fact that occasionally it is useful for one’s adversaries to underestimate one’s abilities.” Holmes chuckled. Skye giggled appreciation, then continued.
“Some ten years later, Einstein developed his ‘General Theory of Relativity.’ In it, he postulated that spacetime,” Skye tapped her drawing with her chalk, “is actually like a fabric, analogous to a thin rubber sheet stretched taut, and the force of gravity is produced by the bending of the sheet where a massive object is placed.”
“Very well. Continue.” Holmes pondered.
“We also have the electric and magnetic forces. Some three decades before…um, before you, uh, came here,” she offered him an awkward smile, “James Clerk Maxwell succeeded in showing how those two forces could be ‘unified.’ This concept, and electromagnetism in general, was being studied intensely throughout your timeframe.”
“True. I recall reading about some very odd experiments in the last ten years or so. I was beginning to hear some strange things regarding a man named…mmm, Tesla, I believe it was…”
“Nikola Tesla. Right. Gradually the various scientists were realizing that these, and some other newly discovered, atomic forces of nature were related. They began ‘unifying’ these forces, finding mathematical expressions that worked for all of the fundamental forces. They found in order to do this unification, they needed more than four dimensions.”
“How many more?” Holmes queried, curious.
“Well, we still don’t have the whole theory worked out yet, even after all this time,” Skye admitted. “Gravity has been proving elusive. But the evidence indicates we need at least ten or eleven, and possibly twenty-six or even more. I’ve seen some theories that call for forty or better, but speaking as a professional, I’m not so sure about those. Anyway, the basic structures making up this multi-dimensional puzzle are known as strings and membranes, or just ‘branes.’ The overall n-dimensional space is called the ‘bulk.’”
* * *
“Great Scot,” Holmes murmured, anticipating the explanation of parallel universes. “So if we, as humans, only perceive four dimensions, but there could be three, six, ten times that many…or more…” He let his eyes become distant in thought before he met her gaze again. “How many of these parallel universes are there?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Skye murmured, and he saw the wonder and awe in her eyes as she spoke. “But I know the one I yanked you from was the one hundred fourteenth we’ve found so far. We’re nearing one hundred fifty, each one having at least some small differentiation, something distinguishing it from every other one. So far, we’ve only observed—a lot. Today was the first day we were actually able to…interact.”
Suddenly she blushed. Observing this, his eyebrow rose.
“As to how we came to be observing you, well, I’m something of a fan—a devotee—of yours,” she confessed, and he recognized the reason for her blush in her embarrassment over the confession. “You see, here in my spacetime continuum, this ‘parallel universe,’ you didn’t exist as a flesh and blood person, but rather as a fiction, one of the great literary characters of all time. In actuality, I’ve discovered y
ou exist across several continuums—as do I, I might add—with variations here and there, some small, some large. I thought it would be fun to watch you, to see if you really were the way you were described in the books. And my team, by unanimous vote, agreed.”
* * *
“Ah,” was all Holmes remarked. But a faint twitch quirked the corner of his mouth. Skye read it accurately. He’s wondering if he really is the way Watson described him. Her own eyebrow rose.
“Better,” she answered succinctly, and silent laughter shook Holmes’ tall wiry frame for a moment.
“It is good to know that my infinite variety does not wane, even across many universes,” he finally managed. “So I take it this tesseract of yours has found a way to span the dimensions.”
“Something like that.”
“Then it will not, perhaps, be too difficult to send me back home,” he nodded complacently, settling back in his chair with satisfaction.
“Technically, no,” Skye admitted. “But there’s still a problem.”
“What problem?” Holmes’ eagle eyes fixated on her, penetrating. His complacency vanished.
“Holmes…I don’t know how to say this…” Skye sat back down in her chair, distressed.
“Just say it.”
“In your spacetime, you were supposed to die at the Falls.” Skye met his eyes.
“Oh,” he said blankly. Then, with more understanding, and far more subdued, “Oh.” Sober grey eyes met troubled blue eyes. “Then please allow me to outline the options,” he suggested quietly.
* * *
Skye nodded.
“I go back and live,” he ticked off a long finger, “and damage the parallelism, possibly irreversibly.”
Skye nodded again, biting her lip.
“This will cause…?” he broke off, waiting for her to answer.
She shrugged, then shook her head and grimaced. He understood. She does not know. But it would not be good.
“Or,” Holmes added heavily, ticking off a second finger, “I go back…and die.”
“Yes,” Skye whispered.
“Or,” a deep voice boomed from the door, “he stays here, and lives.”
Holmes and Chadwick both turned, staring at the door.
Caitlin Hughes stood in the doorway, a large tin of shortbread in one hand, and two extra coffee mugs in the other. Beside her stood Brigadier General William F. Morris.
* * *
Morris studied Holmes and Chadwick for long moments, using every skill he had ever learned in officer training to hide the turmoil raging inside his head. To say the general’s mind was blown would be putting it mildly.
Damn, it worked. Hell’s bells, the tesseract actually worked! I know Hughes said it did, but shit. To see the man sitting there, in the flesh—it boggles the wits. A real, honest-to-God 19th-century man, stepped straight from that time to this. Look at those clothes he’s wearing. And to hear Hughes tell it, this is no less than Sherlock Holmes himself.
General Morris was a big soldier of a man, and resembled the commercial cat that shared his name not a little: Blond hair with a hint of red on a broad head, a big thick moustache, and hazel eyes. He was fairly easygoing, with a pleasant, joking disposition that made his subordinates like him. He was an experienced former jet-jockey, having flown F-16s during Desert Storm. He had a good head on his shoulders, of a technical bent, and had gotten an aerospace engineering degree when he was in his early 30s, over twenty years ago. But there was no doubt he was every inch a brigadier general. He knew the chain of command, and knew his place in it. And he fully understood the situation facing him now, a situation no other member of the United States Air Force—or indeed any branch of any military on the planet—had ever faced before.
Underneath his starched uniform with all the brass and ribbons, Morris was sweating badly. That technical mind of his was fairly reeling: Morris was being forced to re-examine all his preconceived notions of the universe and his place in it, and in mere moments. And all because of the pair who sat in the office before him now.
What to do? Chadwick violated the protocols. I should have her arrested. But the protocols aren’t formally approved, except for my say-so. I don’t have to hold her to ‘em. And…he racked his brain, trying to remember, wasn’t she the reservation cop? I need to review her record and refresh my memory on the details. But it would sure explain it. I know her record’s clean; Hughes just showed me that much. Not a single black mark—until today. And now this. He mentally shook his head ruefully.
I have to do something, though. Especially before the Defense Security Service people get here. I suppose I could strip her position. But she’s the chief scientist, and nobody else knows the science half so well. Hell, she developed it. Back to considerations of arrest, then. Well, maybe not. That’s worse than stripping her position. A suspension without pay? Damn, I need a drink. A nice single-malt scotch would go down good about now.
But there was a decision to be made before he could have that drink, and he knew it. Two, really: What to do about Chadwick, and what to do about Holmes. He already knew what he intended to do about Holmes; the man was an innocent bystander, as it were, to their experiment. And according to Hughes, it would work. Chadwick, however, was another matter.
Time to think fast on your feet, Bill, he thought. It’s your call. Command decision time. He studied the pair who gazed at him. Holmes was tranquil, if subdued; he wore the expression of a man who faced his death, but who had done so enough times before to accept the outcome calmly. Chadwick, on the other hand, wore the look of a haunted individual; guilt and pain mingled deep within the sapphire eyes.
She knows, he realized. Understands the full implications of what she did—probably better than I do. After all, she’s the expert on this shit. It’s not gonna go away for a long time, that look in her eyes. And that won’t change whether I throw her in the brig or not.
And suddenly Brigadier General Morris made up his mind.
* * *
It wasn’t exactly tea according to Holmes’ usual definition, and Mrs. Hudson might not have approved, but it was sufficient to keep him on his feet and thinking. Coffee, tinned shortbread, and several varieties of fresh fruit, which latter it seemed Skye kept in her little under-table cold closet—something the others called a “refrigerator”—along with cream, definitely provided enough sustenance to tide him until the next meal. Meanwhile General Morris discussed the situation with his project manager and his chief scientist, while the consulting detective listened.
“It amounts to the same thing,” Caitlin argued. “I’ve already looked at some of the mathematics, based on what you taught me, Skye. By staying here, Mr. Holmes ceases to exist in that continuum, and as he has no counterpart in this one, everything is preserved intact.”
“True,” Skye murmured. “I double-checked that myself as soon as I got to my office, just to make sure things weren’t hosed by his coming in the first place. General, I take it that’s acceptable to you?”
“It is,” Morris nodded. “And it should be acceptable to DSS as well. Dr. Hughes and I had quite the vehement little conversation about it in her office, before coming here to meet the man. I can’t say as how I’m particularly keen on condemning an innocent man to death after having once avoided it.”
It transpired that Morris had already seen the recordings of the entire incident; Caitlin had immediately called him into the Chamber and showed him what had happened on a monitor replay, then repaired to her office and requested his decision. He sighed, shaking his head.
“Honestly, I don’t blame you, Dr. Chadwick. Nor do I intend to take you to task, as the protocols are on my say-so anyway. Damn bureaucrats, insisting we had to have proof of concept before it was worth formalizing the blasted things. I don’t think they believed it’d work, frankly. But listen, doctor: I did a stint in the military police myself, after Desert Storm, and your reaction was just training and instinct kicking in, I’d say. You used to be a police officer,
right?”
“Yes, sir,” Skye acknowledged. “A few years ago. I was a reserve officer on a local Indian reservation. They needed help, and I was glad to assist.”
“Bingo. Attempted murder in progress; officer intervenes with deadly force. That kind of training dies hard, and that wasn’t a nice, polite little tea party between Holmes here and his…” Morris nodded.
“Arch-nemesis,” Caitlin grinned, devilish green eyes twinkling, and Holmes chuckled at the deliberate, melodramatic term.
“Right, wasn’t a nice little chat over coffee, at all,” Morris finished, ignoring the smart attempt at humor. “As for your ‘killing’ a man, which Dr. Hughes tells me was worrying you: Dr. Chadwick, I’d like for you to take a quick look at the video stream.”
“Oh, General, I’d really rather not…” Skye murmured. Holmes watched as she paled.
“You need to see it, Skye,” Caitlin insisted, coming around the desk and impertinently nudging Skye away from her secure computer, which happened to be sitting on her desk that day. “And I’d think Mr. Holmes ought to see it, too.”
“Video stream…moving pictures?” Holmes wondered, extrapolating from the term’s etymology.
“Yes,” Caitlin confirmed, using Skye’s computer to access the video feed. “Did Skye explain to you about computers?”
“No,” Skye said in a hollow tone. “I’d barely finished explaining parallel universes and tesseracts. You’ll give the poor man a headache, Cait, if you keep on. At least give him a chance to assimilate stuff.”
“All right, all right. I’ll wait until later.”
Holmes rose and moved to stand beside Skye, looking over her shoulder curiously as Caitlin worked on the computer from her other side. Sharp grey eyes studied the device and all its peripherals. After a few moments he decided, “An electrical library.”
Skye smiled, pleased, as Caitlin and General Morris looked stunned.
“I told you,” Skye declared. “Now you know why I wanted to use him as an observing subject. He’s a long way from stupid.”
The Case of the Displaced Detective Page 3