By Jove, Holmes thought, amused, I’m getting ‘the birds and the bees’ lecture. But he listened, well aware matters had changed substantially since his day, and curious to understand why.
“Clothing got skimpier, and skin got exposed a lot more. And sex outside of marriage became accepted. Now it’s automatically assumed if two people find each other attractive, they’re gonna sleep together. Some people take it to extremes, like the two women who hit on you tonight, and go after…well, sometimes it seems like any opportunity they can find. Other people take it a lot slower.”
Holmes frowned as he listened. An idea had occurred to him, and he found it bothersome.
“Skye, this ‘Pill’…is that not the medication you take from the little blue pack every morning?”
“Um, yeah,” Skye admitted, blushing.
“Then do you…?” Holmes turned a disturbed gaze on her.
“Uh, no,” she informed him, blushing even deeper. “I tend to be one of the old-fashioned types who take things a lot slower. I had,” she looked away, too embarrassed to hold his gaze, “I had some problems with my cycle being irregular, and having horrible cramps, and my doctor put me on the Pill to regulate things. It’s purely for medical reasons.”
There was a pause while Holmes absorbed that. He was not ignorant of such matters, having studied the human anatomy in detail, both male and female, in the course of pursuing his profession. He had to admit he had not seen signs of such difficulties in Skye’s physiognomy, so he concluded the treatment was working.
“So your mores are closer to my own, but you wear skimpy bathing costumes that expose most of your body,” Holmes observed, letting his irony become evident in his tone. Skye gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Yeah, it seems contradictory, doesn’t it? But seriously, look here.” She rummaged in the magazine rack and pulled out a catalog of women’s clothing, flipping through it until arriving at the swimsuits. “This will give you a good idea of what my options are.” She held out the open catalog to Holmes.
Holmes accepted it, setting his drink aside to leaf through the pages. His eyes widened in surprise as he looked at the selection of swimsuits on rail-thin models.
And so that is a Brazilian string bikini. String is, indeed, the operative descriptor, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with a tesseract. He shook his head at his own wry attempt at humor. There is more female skin exposed on these pages than I have ever seen before in my entire life, even including the autopsy room. No wonder Skye thought I would be offended. He paused, studying the suits. And Skye was right about another matter, as well. Her bathing garment is one of the more conservative.
He looked directly into her eyes. Despite himself, he felt his face warming, but he pressed on, needing to know.
“Skye, was I being tested today?”
“Well…yes and no.” Skye blinked, and it was obvious the blunt question had caught her off guard.
“Oh?” The grey eyes narrowed.
* * *
Skye grimaced, noting the narrowed eyes, and realizing he wondered if she had been propositioning him.
“Yes, from the standpoint that I wasn’t sure how you were going to react. But I wanted to enjoy the sunshine, and I figured you had to be…excuse the pun, ‘exposed’ to it, sooner or later. I never dreamed it was going to be the theme of the day.” Then it was her turn to meet his eyes. “But if you’re thinking I was prospecting for a bed partner, that’s the ‘no’ answer. Besides, even if I was, I’d know better than to approach you. I know your attitude on such matters.”
* * *
Holmes nodded, having gotten the answer he wanted. His face cooled, to his relief.
“I don’t have to guess whether or not you heard Jake’s comments at the end,” Skye noted, turning to stare back into the fire, “because I know those eyes and ears of yours don’t miss much, if anything. So you can probably deduce I gave up on fairy tale notions of white knights, shining armor, and happily ever after, some time ago. But my standards are high, and I won’t settle for some casual affair. I have yet to find someone I can’t live without, and I do fine on my own.”
“I had noticed. But Skye, may I ask a personal question? I will understand if you decline to answer, but I am trying to understand your…philosophy, let us term it.”
“Shoot.”
“Would you ever…?” Delicately, Holmes didn’t finish the question, but his tone and expression left no doubt regarding its meaning.
“My definition of love and marriage has never revolved around society’s definitions,” she informed him, gazing into the flames of the fireplace. “A piece of paper and a church ceremony don’t mean the union is any holier than one without.”
“Now there,” Holmes remarked, out of his wealth of observational experience, “is a wise statement.” He shot her a sideways glance. “So you would?”
“With the right man,” Skye confessed. “Please to note the singular. My parents always said marriage was between three people: the husband, the wife, and God. Politicians and clerics may be around at the outset or not, but they aren’t part of it.”
“Your parents sound like intelligent people. No wonder they produced so astute a daughter.” Holmes laughed.
“Thanks. And on that note, I think I’ve had too much to drink, and I should go to bed.”
Holmes rose as Skye put down her glass and stood. He watched in concern as she left the room, but she was navigating well, per his practiced eye. It occurred to him that her purported overindulgence was an exaggeration calculated to allow her escape from a difficult, and possibly painful, discussion.
So Holmes permitted her a graceful retreat: He remained by the sofa as she wandered down the hall, disappearing into her bedroom.
Holmes knocked back what was left of his own drink thoughtfully, banked the fire in the fireplace and closed the fire screen, before betaking himself to his own room.
* * *
Skye went through the motions of getting ready for bed. She crawled between the sheets and flicked off the lamp.
Then she curled onto her side and let the pain within well up. She didn’t fully understand its origins, but it would out, and she let it occur.
She cried herself to sleep.
* * *
Holmes prepared himself for bed, turned out the lights and went through his usual ritual, opening the window and smoking his pipe while staring into the night. It had been an eye-opening day, in more ways than one, and he wondered if he could get used to the much more blatant sensuality and sexuality of this world. With a shrug, he decided he could; after all, it did not pertain to him personally, and the detective could see where the increased openness would have advantages in his line of work. It might take awhile to learn to restrain his instinctive responses, but Holmes was nothing if not adaptable.
When his pipe was depleted, he tapped the dottle from it and cleaned it, then put it away. Leaving the window partly open, he crawled into bed.
But he lay for a long time, staring into the darkness, while soft, warm, phantom skin pressed itself silkily against his palm.
Chapter 8—Making and Taking Potshots
THE NEXT WEEK, HARRIS RETURNED TO visibility, but it proved difficult to get close. While they sometimes saw him coming or going from a distance, he seemed always out of the office whenever Skye popped by. Holmes notified Jones, who had his officers keep watch. Word returned that Harris was spending his time running back and forth between various document repositories on the two bases for reasons unknown, but at no time did he go anywhere near the auto shop.
Holmes, clad in his RAF flight jumpsuit, took the opportunity to visit Dr. Peter Wellingford and size him up. Wellingford now was seldom in his office-cum-clinic near the Chamber, and Holmes tracked him down at the base infirmary, where he had another suite of offices. Holmes informed the reception nurse he wished to speak with Dr. Wellingford when convenient, and he, Commander Holmes, had been a colleague on the…project…the good doctor had re
cently served.
That brought Wellingford right away, concerned something else had occurred in the Chamber. He led Holmes to his office in the back of the suite, scanning him to ensure nothing was wrong with the detective. Once the door was closed and the two men seated, an anxious Wellingford looked at Holmes.
“Is everything okay…downstairs?” Wellingford asked meaningfully.
“Oh, quite,” Holmes noted with an air of insouciance, then gave an admirably feigned start. “Oh dear. You thought I’d come to fetch you for a medical situation in the Chamber? No, no, my good man, nothing so dire as all that.”
“Oh, good,” a relieved Wellingford muttered. “I’d thought…what with everything that’s happened…well, you know. What can I do for you?”
“You might give me information, old chap,” Holmes said in a friendly tone. “Skye has informed me that, since my time, it’s been discovered tobacco smoking is injurious to the health. I was hoping you might be able to provide me with some reading matter on the subject. I am fond of my pipe, and would prefer not to give it up unless necessary; but neither do I wish to damage the corpus for which she endured so much to prevent its expiration.”
“Good for her! She’s having a positive influence on you, I see.” Wellingford laughed. He spun his desk chair and opened his filing cabinet, rummaging through the files, looking for brochures and papers on the effects of tobacco smoke.
“I believe she has a positive influence on most of those around her—contrary to her own beliefs regarding the nature of her influence.” Holmes chuckled, and followed the lead he’d orchestrated.
“What do you mean?” Wellingford paused in his foraging to look at Holmes with concern.
“She is suffering from what might be termed a crisis of faith, I suppose. She doubts herself, is second-guessing her decisions, and is wondering whether her life’s work has proved a dangerous lapse of judgment.” Holmes shook his head, having launched into his meticulously constructed opening volley.
“You didn’t really come here to find out about smoking, did you?” Wellingford queried shrewdly, turning back to Holmes.
“No,” Holmes admitted honestly. Wellingford seemed to accept the change of subject readily.
“Yes, I can understand why she’d feel like that.” The medical doctor nodded. “After all, I’m a scientist too, just in a different field. Ethics in the sciences is important. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to study the intervening history much…”
“I am working on it.”
“Have you read about the Nazi experiments in World War Two?”
“Some,” Holmes noted in grim distaste. “She has a first-rate personal library, and not infrequently I leaf through some of Skye’s books in my spare time. I find it an excellent way to catch myself up to the various subjects contained within their covers. So I have run across references, yes.”
“Then you’ve got an idea what I mean. Skye and I have had some chats about the subject over lunch. She’s very serious about ethics and morals in her work, and I agree with her wholeheartedly.” He shot Holmes a worried glance. “How upset is she?”
“Well, it comes by turns. But she has, on at least two different occasions that immediately come to mind, and several others I seem to recall, expressed regret she ever embarked upon this line of research.”
He neglected to mention the one occasion in which Skye had confessed to regretting her very existence; his purpose was to draw out the doctor, not betray Skye’s inmost secrets. The fact he had heard her admit her research concerns before Caitlin, as well as other members of the tesseract team, gave him excuse for discussing the current subject with Wellingford. He hoped Skye wouldn’t be upset.
“Yeah, that would make two of us,” Wellingford noted ruefully. “No offense, Mr. Holmes, but I started wondering what we were getting into the day you arrived. I was okay with it until then; I was on the roster of rotation for such assignments, so my position on Project: Tesseract was sheer luck of the draw. I did my job and didn’t have much notion about it one way or the other. I will confess I found it fascinating. But when you…arrived…so unexpectedly, it started me thinking about whether this was the right thing to be studying. Or, for that matter, the right way to be studying it. And then when Swann…died…” The physician shook his head, perturbed.
“Yes,” Holmes said, in a subdued tone. He watched Wellingford closely from under heavy lids, affecting a casual, reminiscent air. “I do not recall seeing you in the Chamber that day, doctor. But then, I was not there either until after the accident, so I may have simply missed seeing you.”
“I was there earlier, but I got called out. I pull double duty, you know—I have a regular practice of sorts here in the base infirmary. And one of my patients—who was it? Oh, yeah, it was that lieutenant over in Admin, oh what was her name?! Ah! Mary Elaine Shelley—went into premature labor. By the time I got her stabilized and settled in a hospital room, the accident in the Chamber had already happened. So I got the fun job of plugging puke.”
“Ah, yes, I see. Were you involved in the…post-mortem?”
“Well, more or less,” Wellingford shrugged, wincing. “It wasn’t like there was enough left of poor Swann to autopsy. I sent a few tissue samples to the lab and we got positive DNA identification. That was about it.”
Wellingford paused, then met Holmes’ eyes. The medical doctor’s own pale blue gaze was clear, but troubled.
“I know this sounds…bad, but I wish I’d been there when it happened. It isn’t like I’ve ever had my hands on any of the instrumentation or computers; I’m a physician, not an engineer or physicist. Hell, I’m doing good to get my PC to run half the time. But I can’t help thinking: Maybe, just maybe, I’d have seen something, some little detail that would’ve—well, I don’t know anything I would have recognized would have stopped the thing messing up, from what little I understood of the preliminary report. But maybe I could’ve gotten Swann out of there before it all went to hell.” He stopped, then admitted honestly, “Then again, maybe I’d’ve only been blowing chunks into the nearest wastebasket myself.”
Holmes nodded understanding, filing another colloquialism into his mental library. Wellingford glanced at Holmes with sincere concern.
“Listen, if you think it would help, I can set Dr. Chadwick up with a counselor. Several of the team members requested it after the accident. There’d be no issues with her personnel records, I can promise you. General Morris and I debated about making it mandatory for the whole team, but there was resistance from the department heads, so we made it optional.”
“I see. You think it a normal response, then?”
“Oh, most definitely, under the circumstances. Especially in her position. To tell the truth, I’d be a helluva lot more worried if she wasn’t having second thoughts. But if she’s disturbed by what she’s seen, that’s reason enough to seek counseling.”
“Let me find a way to discuss the matter with Skye. It is her decision, after all. If she desires counseling, I shall most certainly recommend her to you. I was simply concerned for her welfare, and wished to obtain an expert’s opinion. For that, I thank you; you have reassured my mind.”
“Let me know. And if you ever do want information on smoking, or help quitting, just yell.”
“Thank you, Doctor, I will take that under advisement,” Holmes nodded with a hint of amusement. He rose, the two men shook hands, and Wellingford held the office door while Holmes left, then headed off in the opposite direction to resume his patient rotation.
On his way out of the office suite, Holmes paused at the reception station and addressed the nurse.
“By the way, I was wondering if my old friend, Lieutenant Shelley, has had her baby yet. I should like to ensure I get Mary a gift before it is born. I’ve not seen her in quite some time, due to…travel.”
“You’re in luck, Commander Holmes. She hasn’t had it yet. It was a near thing, though.” The nurse’s face lit up.
�
�Oh?” Holmes said, feigning startled concern. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh yes, everything’s fine,” the nurse soothed. “Just some premature labor. Happens more often than you’d think.”
“My,” Holmes remarked, as if in mild alarm. “When did this happen?”
“Why, she was in the ER through the earthquake and all. I was sure it was going to make matters worse, scaring her and such; that was quite a jolt we had. But it didn’t, and Dr. Wellingford got everything settled down before he had to take off again on some other emergency.”
“Well, thank you very much. I shall go straightaway and see to getting a nice baby blanket or some such for Mary.”
“I’m sure she’d love it, sir,” the nurse beamed.
Holmes put his cap jauntily on his head as he exited the suite.
* * *
Several minutes later Holmes arrived back in Skye’s office.
“Well?” Skye asked.
“He passes the test,” Holmes noted.
“Okay, good,” Skye reflected. “I thought he would. Sounds like we know who we need to find and watch, then.”
“Agreed. Oh, and Skye?”
“Yeah, Holmes?”
“Dr. Wellingford can set you up with a counselor if you should find yourself unduly disturbed by…events,” Holmes commented innocently.
Skye gave an amused, if unladylike, snort, and Holmes chuckled.
* * *
On Saturday, Colonel Jones called.
“Hey, can you two come down to Peterson? It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”
“Sure, Colonel, what’s up?” Skye asked, while Holmes listened in, his head bent close to Skye’s.
“I need you and Holmes to show me your stuff at the range. Bring your Glock and a box of rounds. What caliber is it?”
“Nine millimeter.”
“Good. It’s an indoor range, and the back plates handle up to a .45 caliber. Smith is also bringing a twelve-gauge shotgun. Know how to use one?”
“Oh, yeah,” Skye grinned. “Not a problem.”
The Case of the Displaced Detective Page 25