New Title 1

by Campbell, J R

  “ Another question,” Challenger said, holding up his hand. “How much of your vast knowledge would you be willing to share with us? Would you, for example, be willing to reveal the secrets of travelling between stars?”

  “ If you feel it is wise,” Leopold answered. “We rely on your guidance. As you know, understanding a task is not the same as accomplishing it. Travel across this vast universe requires immense commitment.”

  “And of all the people on the planet, you have chosen me as your sole advisor?” “ Who else?” Leopold asked. “You were chosen because we wished the decision to be made by a fellow scientist. We learned of you through our study, by means of the publications Catherine was kind enough to bring me. Having spoken with you, it is clear you are a kindred soul, a brother in science despite our diverse origins. Make this choice however you feel is best. We trust in your expertise.”

  Challenger nodded. Then he spoke softly, almost meekly. “May I have some time to consider the problem?”

  “Of course, Professor,” Leopold answered cheerfully. When Austin returned he found Challenger bent over in a chair with his pudgy fists pressed against his forehead. Having seen the Professor concentrating before, Austin did not attempt to communicate with Challenger until they were safely in the automobile. “Heading home then, Professor?” Austin asked from the driver’s seat.

  Challenger shook his head. “I’ll find us a spot to stay overnight then, shall I?” Taking the Professor’s silence as an affirmative, he drove off in search of lodgings.

  Days passed before Austin again loaded the Professor into the automobile and made his way back to the Lethrow cottage. It was very late and the stars above shone in all their implacable glory. Austin was not a man unfamiliar with etiquette and protocol. He knew calling upon the sleeping family at such an hour was, at best, inconsiderate but he had no other choice. The Professor was ragged, his shirt unbuttoned, his face haggard and he’d not spoken above the level of a mutter since speaking with Leopold. He'd slept little and then only fitfully. His exhaustion was plain, his grooming shockingly unattended. The famous Assyrian beard was a tangled mess, his hair more befitting a drunkard than the world’s greatest scientific mind. All of this Austin might have put off until the sun rose but the Professor’s eyes had taken on a haunted cast demanding immediate attention regardless of the hour. So it was with immense relief that Austin saw the front door swing open at their approach and the small, mysterious figure of Leopold emerge from the darkened home.

  “It’s the Professor,” Austin said to the small being, grateful for the extraordinary understanding in the creature's eyes. “’E’s not well. Not sleeping, not eating. I’d hoped –”

  Leopold nodded and moved with surprising grace to the automobile’s back door. Opening it, he spoke to Challenger in his calm, unhurried voice. “Professor, won’t you walk with me along the shore? It is such a lovely night.”

  And for a moment Austin despaired. The Professor was never one to respond to the calm and soft-spoken. To Austin's surprise the Professor’s great bulk shifted and emerged, unfolding like an avalanche from the vehicle. His eyes still bore the haunted look which troubled Austin so greatly and there was a resignation to Challenger’s posture that threatened to shatter the servant’s composure. Yet the great man followed the small Leopold.

  “Anything I can get for you Professor?” Austin asked hopefully. “Maybe a bite to eat?”

  The Professor dismissed Austin’s offer with a wave and shuffled along dejectedly behind the creature. “ If you could wait,” Leopold spoke when it was clear Challenger would not. “We would appreciate it. I know it is late and dark but–”

  “I’ll wait,” Austin assured them. “Don’t worry about me.” And he watched as they strode from the pleasant house to walk along the starlit shore.

  They walked over the rise and down to the sea, out of sight and earshot of the house. Alone beneath the majesty of the heavens Leopold kept walking until he could see the ocean waves and hear their soothing rhythm. The small being looked out across the water, his eyes hungry for the sight of starlight reflected on the waves. Taking a deep breath, Leopold turned and studied the weary figure of Challenger.“I fear you are unwell, Professor, and further suspect that I am the cause of your discomfort.”

  Challenger collapsed to his knees, shoulders slumped and, oblivious to the sea and stars, stared dazedly at the ground before him. Then he roared. Raising clenched fists in the air, Challenger threw his head back and bellowed at the stars. Too curious to be afraid, Leopold simply stood and watched. When the great howling ran out of breath, Challenger lowered his head and found Leopold waiting.

  “ Yes,” Challenger whispered but his voice soon returned to its normal, window-shaking levels. “Yes! Damn it all, yes! Let’s do it Leopold! Let’s write hello in the sky for everyone on the planet to see! Reveal yourself! Let the bold rejoice even as the ignorant cower! There’ll be a cost, God knows we’ll pay for it, but damn the price! Let’s bring a new enlightenment to this world! Let the nations tremble! It’ll be a cold day in Hell before George Edward Challenger refuses knowledge!”

  Leopold watched, fascinated. If the pale creature noticed Challenger's disheveled appearance or the shaking in his massive arms his expression betrayed no sign of it. Stepping forward, Leopold placed on of his misshapen hands comfortingly on the Professors trembling shoulder. “What is the nature of this cost you speak of?”

  Challenger looked away, shamed. “Some will oppose us. There are those who see knowledge as something to be hoarded under a damn flag! Those who seek not knowledge but an advantage, no matter how temporary, over those they perceive to be rivals. And there are others, small-minded, who will fear all you might offer. Afraid the new wisdom might challenge the quaint and familiar. They will deny everything not because of what you say but out of fear of what you might speak next. I believe some will seek to silence you by violence, the last refuge of the stupid. But you’ll be safe, you told me you cannot be harmed.”

  “I am beyond harm,” Leopold agreed. “But what of you?” A rueful smile tugged on the Professor’s thick beard. “ Who would dare? And even if they succeeded, what could be nobler than to perish in the betterment of one’s people?”

  “If I understand you correctly,” Leopold continued. “Revealing ourselves will cause disruption.”

  “To my shame, I must admit it will,” Challenger admitted. “We shall overcome it. We must.”

  “There will be violence?” Leopold asked.

  “Very probably,” Challenger answered defiantly.“A crusade for the soul of humanity.”

  “People will be killed?” “ There is a strong possibility of war,” Challenger admitted. “I will do all I can to prevent it. And if it must be, I will do all I can to keep such losses to a minimum.”

  “Are these all the fears which have occupied your mind since we last spoke or is there more?”

  “Some will doubt your good intentions,” Challenger admitted. “Many have used the blessings of science to oppress those whose knowledge is less. They will expect to see their faults reflected in you. I fear you might become idols, beings whose proclamations become holy writ rather than tested science. There is much to fear but there is so very much to be gained.”

  “Perhaps the time is not right,” Leopold said regretfully.

  “If I shun this opportunity, I am a traitor to science.” Leopold spoke softly. “If you accept and there is war, will it not make you a traitor to your people? Look at yourself, Professor. Though I know little of your people’s ways, I can see how you have struggled to reach your answer. What if - but wait, it is time. Look up.” Leopold turned to the east, pointing up with a long finger. “There.”

  Challeng er followed the creature’s finger but for an instant saw nothing. As he watched a star winked into existence, strong and steady, rolling smoothly across the sky. No brighter than the other stars, easy to overlook, but the sight caused Challenger’s mouth to fall open. A steady moving
star, unlike any the Earth's sky had known before.

  “ There is another way,” Leopold said quietly. Enraptured, Challenger did not look a Leopold but watched as the light in the sky continued along its path. Only when the light winked out did Challenger turn his attention to Leopold.

  “Another way?” Challenger repeated.

  “Our understanding of your world is imperfect,” Leopold said. “You could change that. Come with us.”

  Challenger gasped, drawing in a deep breath as he looked up to the stars. “Leave all I know. Jessie, my friends, my planet …” “ No,” Leopold said. “That is not how we travel. The rigors of travel between the stars are such that food, drink, even the air are unaffordable luxuries. Instead our thoughts, our consciousness, are studied. A duplicate awareness is made. Just as your essence is contained within the organ of your brain, an electric organ can support a copy of your essence. You will remain on your world but your intellectual duplicate would be transmitted to us in orbit. As we journey your double could teach us of your world while we teach him–”

  “- everything! Two Challengers, one for each of my desires! One for science and one for Jessie! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

  “This is not a decision to be made in haste,” Leopold warned.

  “Haste?” Challenger laughed. “My entire life instructs this choice!” Leopold smiled. “A kindred scientist indeed. We will leave, undetected by your people, but we might return someday. You will not live to see it but your duplicate may decide to return to this world's surface. He might choose to construct a body such as he remembers from the time you were one. Returning, he could share what he has learned with the world of his birth. It has happened this way before, on other worlds.”

  And Challenger, overwhelmed and joyous, embraced the two paths of his future and the small creature beneath the glory of the nighttime stars.

  POSTSCRIPT

  by Theresa Derwin It is with immense pride and pleasure that I round off this anthology Challenger Unbound edited by Michael R. Brush and S. G. Mulholland.

  Following a Challenger conference held by Tom Ue of University College London, I was keen to explore more about the eponymous hero Professor Challenger.

  So, I approached the ACD Estate with my idea; Challenger facing off all manner of foes, supernatural and otherwise. They seemed keen, only asking that we honour the creation and adhere to the canon. So, I set about releasing submission guidelines and finding editors.

  After reading Michael's novel Mycroft and the Necromancer and Mulholland's faux Nineteenth Century Jack the Ripper short story, I knew they were the perfect task masters.

  Then with editors assigned, and submission guidelines up, the stories started coming in. My only bug bear, is that no matter how I tweeted and Facebooked, I didn't get one submission from a female author, which is why these stories are all by men. But, you know what? These stories are amazing!

  By now you will have read them, so you'll know what I mean.

  I do hope you enjoyed this anthology and don't forget, Challenger is still out there, fighting the good fight!

  Theresa Derwin, May 2015

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Michael R. Brush , born in 1970, grew up in the suburbs of Newcastle Upon Tyne. From there he travelled to Durham, back to Newcastle and then to Belfast, where he lived for almost a decade fitting in between Luton, Cardiff and High Wycombe. After graduating in ’94 he worked as an industrial temp but he could not resist the pull of words. After reading so many books he was compelled to write as well. KnightWatch Press has also published his novel, Mycroft and The Necromancer. Currently, Michael lives in the West Midlands with Sarah and their rescue dog, Peggy.

  J.R. Campbell is a writer whose previous short fiction has appeared in A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes, Rigor Amortis and Spintingler Magazine. As an editor, he has worked with Charles Prepolec on the Gaslight trilogy of Sherlock Holmes anthologies and Edge Books' Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places.

  Tom English is an environmental chemist who enjoys writing weird stuff. His stories have appeared in several print anthologies including Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes (Edge SF and Fantasy) and Dead Souls (Morrigan Books). Tom also edited the mammoth Bound for Evil: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad, which was a 2008 Shirley Jackson Award finalist for best anthology. He resides with his wife, Wilma, surrounded by books and beasts, deep in the woods of New Kent, Virginia.

  As a writer, Ian Faulkner has always been fascinated by the darker side of the human condition as is self-evident from his fiction work. He draws heavily from his extremely diverse life experience for his often visceral and macabre tales. He has had stories published in several countries including Canada, UK and the USA; his short Grandpa Billy from Ash-Tree press in gained him an honourable mention from multiple Hugo winner Ellen Datlow in the USA published anthology Years Best Fantasy and Horror 17, as did his novelette Rewind in the Best Horror Stories anthology in 2010.Ian’s cryptozoological thriller pulp novel Cryptid will be released later on this year. He is an American and lives in TX.

  Rhys Hughes has been writing most of his life. He has published more than 30 books and 700 stories and his work has been translated into 10 languages. He is a writer of philosophical fantasy, ironic adventure and satirical comedy. His three new books for 2015 are Bone Idle in the Charnel House (Hippocampus Press), Orpheus on the Underground (Tartarus Press) and Mirrors in the Deluge (Elsewhen Press) and his blog can be found at: http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com.

  Paul Lewis has penned hundreds of comedy sketches for British TV and radio, along with several radio and stage sitcoms and numerous short stories. With Steve Lockley he wrote the novels The Ragchild and The Quarry, and several novellas including King Of All The Dead. His first solo novel, The Savage Knight, was published by Abaddon. Recent appearances include stories in Cthulhu Cymraeg and Terror Tales of Wales. Paul is currently working on a novella and a novel. A former journalist, he now works in NHS communications and lives with his wife and son in Swansea.

  Bob Lock was born on the Gower Peninsular, Wales, back in the Dark Ages when there were no computers, televisions or FTL spaceships. (Ok, there still aren’t any FTLs whilst writing this, but who knows how long this bio might be around?) He’s been published in various anthologies, magazines and websites. He also has a dark fantasy novel published called Flames of Herakleitos and an urban fantasy called The Empathy Effect.

  Steve Lockley is the author of more than a hundred short stories, and a handful of novels including The Sign of Glaaki written in collaboration with Steven Savile. He is currently working on a series of novels based on the hit television series 'Ghost Whisperer'. Steve's Sherlock Holmes stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Encounters of Sherlock Holmes (Titan books) edited by George Mann, in which he explores the origins of The Persian Slipper. Steve was awarded a British Fantasy award with Mike O'Driscoll for their work on the Horror Convention 'Welcome to My Nightmare' and has served as a judge for the prestigious World Fantasy Awards. He lives in Swansea.

  Harry Hawkins is a Pennsylvania-based writer. Under the pen name Harding McFadden, Mr. Hawkins has been published on everydayfiction.com, as well as in the forthcoming anthology Dragon's Hoard (Sky Warrior Books). He is the lucky husband of the World’s Greatest Wife, Naomi, and the World’s Best Children, Eleanor and Iris.

  Ian Millsted lives in Bristol with his wife and daughter. His fiction can be found in Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion, North by Southwest and Colinthology. He also writes on comics for Back Issue and Ace. He once saw a sign outside a restaurant advertising itself as the home of the Turkey Testicle festival. He didn’t stop for dinner.

  An Australian born, English writer, Steve Mulholland went through a failed attempt at being normal before finally turning his hand at writing. Eventually the voices in his head annoyed him so much that he started writing some of their nonsense down and found that he had a story on his hands. His first book is the fort
hcoming Tialoc: Book of Thunder. He resides in the West

  Midlands with his wife Samantha and their cat, Oscar.

  Tom Ue gained his PhD from the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London, where his research examinedShakespeare’s influence on the writing of George Gissing. Ue has taught at University College London. He was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at Yale University, and the 2011 Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lecturer, and he has held an Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship. He has contributed essays on Thomas Hardy, Gissing, Wilde, and with John James, Sherwood Anderson and James Cameron. He is editor of World Film Locations: Toronto (Intellect Books, 2014), which coincides with the city’s 180th anniversary, and Dictionary of Literary Biography 377: Twenty-First Century British Novelists (Gale, 2015).

  Simon Kurt Unsworth was born in Manchester in 1972 and has not yet given searching for evidence that the world was awash with mysterious signs and portents that day. He lives in an old farmhouse in Cumbria where it has rained almost every day since his arrival, and somewhere in the midst of the mud and the damp and the sheep he writes whatever comes into his head. His has three collections of stories available, Strange Gateways, Lost Places and Quiet Houses. His novelThe Devil’s Detective came out in the US and UK in March 2015, from Doubleday and Del Ray UK respectively.