The Case of the Displaced Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  The video arrived later that evening on a DVD; the Holmeses used Skye’s laptop to view it from the comfort of the sofa in the sitting room.

  When it ended, Holmes glanced at his wife with an expression which asked, Well? as clearly as any words could.

  Skye bit her lower lip in puzzlement, brows furrowed, then shook her head.

  “At least now you know what it looks like. There’s something about it nagging at me, something in the back of my head that says I’m missing something I oughta know—but I haven’t figured out what, yet.”

  “Well, there is considerable data in said head. And this,” he gestured at the computer screen, “is being presented in a fashion outside the scope of your normal scientific work. It stands to reason it might not be immediately recognisable.”

  “Yeah, but it’s annoying all the same,” Skye grumbled, setting the laptop on the coffee table and shutting it down. “It’s like, ‘C’mon, Skye, you should know this.’ But I don’t.”

  “Then might I suggest you employ my technique when faced with an enigma? Allow it to drift to the back of your mind and do something completely different. One’s subconscious often has a way of dealing with such problems when one’s conscious mind ‘cannot see the forest for the trees,’ as you are fond of saying.”

  “Seems reasonable. What sort of activity would you suggest?”

  “Oh, give me a few moments,” Holmes murmured with a rakish grin, slipping his good arm around his wife and pulling her against his side. “I am quite certain I can think of something.”

  “I bet you can…”

  * * *

  But nothing came to Skye’s mind, no matter how many and varied diversions Holmes devised. In fact, she found it difficult to even consider the matter, due to the fright it had given her; her mind instinctively shied away from it in an almost phobic fashion.

  So they stayed inside for two more days, letting Ryker and Company—and the coroner—provide reports. This was not precisely to Sherlock’s liking, but he realized that this time, the delay was for Skye’s benefit: Because the encounter had unnerved her so badly, she was initially reluctant to venture out, on her own or even with the mildly incapacitated Holmes.

  At the end of that time, however, no further sightings had been made. Moreover, Holmes had discarded the cane in favor of his own two legs, and was completely recovered from his concussion, though his shoulder still twinged occasionally if put in an unusual position. Ryker volunteered the use of a helicopter, and together the couple went out long enough for Skye to get her bird’s-eye view of the vicinity. This proved useful to Holmes as well, as he was able to discern features from the air not marked on any maps. At the end of the flight, they both had a much better feel for the general relationship of locations to one another.

  * * *

  On their way back to Gibson House, Holmes suggested, “How do you feel about another excursion tomorrow, Skye?”

  “Um. I dunno. Where?” She blinked at him, uncertain.

  “Over to the McFarlane farm. I thought you might like to see its layout, and get a feel for the sight lines. We should also go over to see the dog breeder as well, and you may double-check my observations regarding their ability to see anything McFarlane would have seen.”

  “Oh,” Skye said, struggling not to blush. She had made that call to said breeder the week before without his knowledge, and did not want to risk giving anything away. In addition, she had had a mental struggle simply to endure the day’s helicopter excursion; another so soon made her anxious. “Um, no, I planned on doing some housework tomorrow, Sherlock,” she made excuse. “We haven’t done a lick of it since we moved into the place, and it’s a mess. I need to sweep and dust, and do laundry, and generally straighten up. Especially with the MI5 people coming and going constantly. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t pack for a stay this long, and I’m about out of clean clothes. So it’s a choice of: one—wash ‘em, two—smell really bad, or three—go into town and buy some more.”

  * * *

  Holmes raised an eyebrow, seeing through at least part of her subterfuge, mildly surprised at her continued reluctance. Her encounter has shaken her badly, he thought, worried. This will not do. I am loath to force her to resume the case, but she must regain her nerve, or she will be mentally and emotionally incapacitated by it. Perhaps a strategic concession, followed by a gentle nudge, will do the trick.

  “Well, I suppose you do have a point. But if it is all the same with you, I should like to go back to the farm for another look over the place. Not only will a ramble give me a better feel for the lay of the land, it will help strengthen this dratted knee, and perhaps work out some of the stiffness.”

  “No, that’s fine. Only, be…be careful,” she stuttered a bit, betraying her anxiety. “I can handle the housework no problem. Look the place over, then m-maybe the next day I’ll go around the farm. I dunno about the dog place, though. I’m more used to cats.”

  “Ah, but Skye, you must meet little Brendan,” Holmes grinned, attempting to divert her fears and shore up her confidence. “A finer pup I never saw. And such a nose! He shall make an excellent tracker one day.”

  * * *

  “If you say so,” Skye smiled tolerantly, allowing herself to be distracted temporarily. “Seriously, Sherlock, I don’t know much about dogs.”

  “Then it is time you learned. Tomorrow I shall explore the farm myself, while you clean. But the next day, we set out together.”

  “Okay,” Skye agreed, hiding her reluctance.

  * * *

  The next morning, Holmes set off, with a kiss and plans to be home for lunch—tea time at the latest—and Skye settled down to cleaning house and doing laundry with a sigh. It was a crisp, clear winter’s day, and milder than such a day would have been in Colorado; in truth, she had much rather have accompanied her husband—had it not been for several things.

  First and foremost, of course, was her fear: she simply dreaded the sight of the UFO chasing them. She didn’t much like the idea of Sherlock out and about with the thing, but he was not the type to panic, instinct or no instinct, and he was incredibly quick-witted. So she was more comfortable with him being about than she was herself.

  She also needed time to warn the Carvers of their impending visit, so as not to give away her clandestine contact with them; not to mention she had spoken truth when she said she was out of clean clothes, and the house definitely needed tidying. Holmes could be quite heedless of where he left things if his mind was on a case, and Skye tended toward the absent-minded scientist herself. So though they both preferred their surroundings tidy, from time to time things did become cluttered.

  It was while she was dusting the sitting room that she heard it.

  * * *

  “Dr. Chadwick? Skye? Can you hear me?” a vaguely familiar voice sounded behind her.

  “Yeah,” Skye replied without turning. “The door’s open. Come on in.”

  “I, uh…I’m already in, Skye. It’s me. It’s…you.”

  Skye spun.

  The duster fell to the floor.

  * * *

  “This is some kind of joke, right?” Skye said, mastering her jumpiness and staring around the empty room, letting her anger and annoyance come to the fore. “One of you MI5 folks is yankin’ my chain. C’mon out from wherever you’re hiding. It isn’t funny.”

  “No, Skye,” her own voice said quietly. “I’m you, from a different continuum.”

  “Prove it,” Skye challenged, defiant and irritated.

  “Manifold seventeen is the key. Open it, and channel the closed-loop string beam through it, and you’ve got access to any continuum you like.”

  Skye sat down abruptly in the nearest chair.

  “What…what are you doing here?”

  “We need your help,” her own voice replied. “If you don’t, our whole continuum is going to collapse—and probably take yours, and several others, with it.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Skye whisper
ed, paling.

  * * *

  It soon became apparent to Skye that the other Chadwick was not alone: A male voice, quite familiar and possessed of a distinct English cadence, could be heard in the background, softly calling off values. Sherlock is there, too, she realized. Just then, the other Chadwick introduced her companion.

  “Skye, I have a colleague here, one you might not expect. You know, of course, that Sherlock Holmes is a real person, in other continuums?”

  “Yes,” Skye acknowledged. “I thought the voice in the background sounded familiar.”

  “Greetings, Doctor,” Holmes’ voice said, and Skye could almost see the dark head nod. “It is good to meet you.”

  “Likewise. I hate to be rude, but if what the Other Me just said is correct, we need to cut through the pleasantries and get down to business. Why is the continuum about to collapse?”

  “Our tesseract appears to be causing an instability of some sort,” Chadwick admitted reluctantly. “Every so often gravity waves come through; some of ‘em feel like they’re gonna tear the whole place apart.”

  “And if I correctly understand the physics,” Holmes added, “eventually they will.”

  “Yeah,” Chadwick agreed glumly. “Anyway, I need an extra brain working the science. Specifically, a brain in another continuum, so the work can be done, essentially…in no time, if you get my drift.”

  “Okay, yeah, I can see that,” Skye said, already wrapping her mind around the problem. “You tell me what needs calculating, then dial out while I go off for a couple of days my time and do it, and come back two seconds later, your time, and get the finished work. Makes sense. So…the tesseract is hiccupping and sending instability waves through the continuum. What caused it? What’s wrong with the tesseract?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” Chadwick answered her counterpart uncertainly. “I think—I hope—maybe it was all due to one Professor Bartholomew Peter Haines—a descendant of the Moriarty family, and my continuum’s version of Holmes’ Professor James Moriarty…”

  “Oh, yeah,” Skye said with grim vehemence. “I know about him.”

  “You had one, as well, I take it?” Holmes wondered.

  “Not just yes, but hell yes,” Skye growled. “So you think he did something to hose up the tesseract function?”

  “I think so, but I’m not sure,” Chadwick admitted anxiously. “For all I know, it’s something in the design, a flaw causing instability, and it took time for it to show up. We’ve already fixed one blip—we only discovered it was there when we tried to approach you in your car the other day and realized you saw us. We didn’t mean to scare you. We were only trying to make contact.”

  “You were white as a ghost,” Holmes added. “We heartily apologise.”

  “Saw…” Skye’s voice tapered into silence as she stared at the walls, realization hitting like a sledgehammer as fear fell away. “YOU’RE the UFO people have been seeing! DUH!” She smacked her forehead in annoyance as she recognized why the data had nagged at her subconscious. “Of ALL people, I should have known! No wonder the spectral data was showing a hole in the center. It had to have been picking up the core of the wormhole! It all makes sense now! The high speed maneuvers, the flight profiles—only a wave function could do that!”

  “Probably,” Chadwick’s voice sounded sheepish. “Sorry. We had to kinda explore the continuum a bit, tune into the correct area and time, to find you. We expected to find you in Colorado, but we picked up your signature here instead…”

  “I’m here because you’re here,” Skye pointed out. “I came over to investigate the UFO, but the UFO is your wormhole.”

  “Oh. We didn’t realize the wormhole terminus on your end was visible, or we’d have fixed it. You’ll have to tell me sometime what it looked like…”

  “At any rate,” Holmes prompted.

  “Yeah,” Chadwick took the hint. “We’ve got a problem with the design, and I need your help, as an experienced tesseract scientist, to find the flaw and fix it. Fast.”

  “Maybe it is a design flaw,” Skye decided, thinking hard. “But you know, those software tweaks via Trojan horse—I assume that’s how Haines did it in your timeline, too?”

  “Yes,” Holmes confirmed.

  “Well, if it was me, I’d lay big money on Haines’ crime machine, not the design.” Skye shook her head. “I think maybe I oughta be glad…”

  “Of what?” Chadwick wondered.

  “Never mind for now,” Skye murmured, her mind already deep into the problem. “How much data have you gathered on the problem, and how long has it been occurring?”

  “It’s been going on for a couple of years now,” Chadwick answered. “And it seems to be accelerating. As to gathering data, I have a CD that contains—”

  “Someone is coming,” Holmes’ voice noted.

  “Lock out,” Chadwick’s firm voice ordered immediately.

  “Done,” Holmes’ voice replied. “Subject isolated.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Skye breathed, horrified, turning toward the door and looking down the hall. “Sherlock.”

  “Yes?” Holmes’ voice answered. “And, Doctor, while I admit your counterpart in this continuum has permission to use that name, please remember I have not extended that privilege to you. You are, however, welcome to call me Holmes.”

  “No! Not you! Him!” Skye screamed, looking at the doorway. Nothing could be seen in the opening now, save a grey emptiness.

  * * *

  Sherlock entered Gibson House from the garage, headed toward the sitting room, pleased with his morning out. He not only had a better feel for the layout of the farm, but his knee was in fine fettle, flexible and comfortable and strong. So he returned with a good appetite, ready for lunch and discussion with his wife. He could hear Skye talking with someone, and assumed they either had visitors or his wife had chosen to place the telephone in speaker mode.

  “Skye? To whom are you speaking, my dear? Do we have guests?”

  But there was no answer.

  Holmes found this decidedly odd, for he could now see his spouse through the open door. But she suddenly spun toward him, and he spied the panic in her eyes. “No!” he heard her scream.

  Responding instantly to the terrified look in his beloved’s eyes, Holmes broke into a sprint down the hall, intent on getting to Skye as swiftly as possible.

  But when he reached the door, he hit something; it was rubber-like, almost spongy—and it was completely blocking the door. He bounced off, almost falling from the near-total rebound of his own momentum. Regaining his balance, he tried again, only to be thrown back once more. His anxiety grew as he watched Skye slap and pound desperately against the other side of the invisible barrier.

  “Skye! SKYE! Can you hear me? Dearest, listen to me! Tell me what is happening! Who is there with you?”

  But she didn’t answer him, merely continued to scream frantically at some unseen person, “Stop it! Let him through! Please! Let him through!”

  A distinctly familiar feeling, almost a déjà vu, caused Holmes’ heart to sink. Skye splayed her hands on the wall of her unseen prison, desperate sapphire eyes peering this way and that, searching.

  “Sherlock? Are you there? Where are you?”

  Holmes felt a cold hand grip his entrails, and he paled as he recognized the scenario from his own dreams.

  “No,” he whispered. “It cannot be.” He put out his hands, placing them on his side of the barrier, over Skye’s hands. He detected the odd, heavy sensation, the sensation he had experienced exactly three times before in his life, and he knew.

  “Oh, dear God,” he breathed fervently, horror-stricken. “It’s a tesseract.”

  * * *

  “You don’t understand!” Skye shrieked, trying frantically to spot her mate on the other side of the grey nothingness. “Holmes, he’s you! And he’s my husband! Let him through!”

  “HUSBAND?!” Chadwick’s startled voice responded. “Holmes is there, too? And…but… You mea
n you and your Holmes…?”

  “Yes!” Skye practically sobbed. She had seen Sherlock appear down the hall just before the barrier was raised, and knew what this would be doing to him, after weeks of nightmares. “And the trauma of his arrival—he’s had some bad dreams—please! You have to let him through!”

  “They’re married, Holmes,” Chadwick’s voice repeated in dumbfounded amazement. “We must’ve missed…”

  “Well, Chadwick, we only performed a cursory scan, after determining this sole other version of you created a tesseract,” Holmes’ voice pointed out tersely. “The scan was barely sufficient to ascertain the other continuum’s health.”

  “True,” Chadwick agreed.

  “Please! PLEASE! Let him in, before we both go nuts!” Skye begged. “We’d just gotten him past the post-traumatic stress responses…”

  “PTSD? Did you have that, Holmes?” Chadwick queried her unseen companion, surprised.

  “…Somewhat,” Holmes replied, the reluctance to admit to it apparent in his voice.

  “DAMMIT!” Skye finally screamed, the fury of frustration layering atop her fear. “Will the two of you quit bloody analyzing the HELL out of the situation, show a little compassion, and DROP this damned WALL!”

  There was a shocked silence. Then the grey nothingness in the doorway faded, and Skye’s own Sherlock barreled through, catching her up in his arms.

  “Skye!” he gasped, gazing wide-eyed into fearful blue eyes. “Are you all right, my dearest?”

  “I am now,” she moaned, burying her face in his chest, as her feet dangled clear of the floor. “Are YOU okay?”

  “Reasonably so, in the circumstances,” he answered grimly. “I cannot say I appreciated being separated from my wife, however.” He shot an eloquent glare in the direction Skye had been looking before the expression of panic had entered her eyes.

  “Well, well,” Holmes’ dry, almost bitingly laconic voice remarked, “it seems not all versions of myself are as devoted to reason and intellect as I am.”

  “On the contrary,” Sherlock shot back. “I think it patently evident you and your Dr. Chadwick have become entirely too fixated upon intellect and reason, to the detriment of your consideration for others.”