Curse of the Purple Pearl

by Adrian Speed

  I closed down my terminal and thanked the New Martians who let me look at the records. Five thousand years after it had first been plucked from an oyster's mouth the Purple Pearl finally knew peace.

  *****

  Sir Reginald stirred in bed and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw were two long hairy limbs hanging over him. They were muddy brown in colour, and could have been mistaken for ape or bear arms, but Sir Reginald knew their owner. After all, the gravity was much lower than earth's.

  “Good afternoon Dr Harper,” Sir Reginald reached for his hat. It wasn't on his head. He looked around for it and pulled himself upright.

  “Please be careful Sir Reginald, your bones may be healed but they are still fragile,” Dr Harper raised a leg in warning.

  “A man without a hat might as well be without bones.” Sir Reginald hoisted himself into a sitting position and looked around the room. He wore loose hospital pyjamas. His suit hung on a hanger over the door. His cane leant against a wall. A peace lily sat in another corner and had grown to tree height in the low gravity. And there I sat, waiting for him. I had his hat in one hand and a clothes brush in the other.

  “Just getting it how you like it,” I said, brushing the top hat. The silk fibres followed the brush, forming a coating as sleek and neat as cat fur.

  “Oh, my dear Hannah,” Sir Reginald smiled. “How long has it been?”

  “For you? About eighteen hours,” I said, still stroking the hat to get it just right. “Dr Harper repaired your broken bones and torn arteries.”

  “Six hours in surgery,” Dr Harper clicked her mandibles. “Tsk tsk, Sir Reginald. I haven't had a surgery last that long in years.”

  “I will endeavour to injure myself less severely the next time I am being tortured by a god-planet,” Sir Reginald said with a faint smile. “May I have my hat back, please?”

  I handed it over and Sir Reginald pulled it onto his head, regaining some of his confidence.

  “I'll need to do some tests to make sure you're healing,” Dr Harper turned her eyes on him and brought her forelegs together as a human would tent their fingers.

  “Later, please,” Sir Reginald waved her away. “I’m not going to drop dead any moment soon and I would like to talk with my associate for a short while. But, nevertheless, I thank you Dr Harper. I had thought I was beyond a doctor's skill.”

  “No human has my fingers,” Dr Harper waggled her exoskeletal hands. “I will give you an hour, while I do my rounds.” Dr Harper was already leaving as she said this. Her bulky abdomen took a while to manoeuvre.

  Sir Reginald and I sat for a few moments in silence, Sir Reginald considering the best way to broach the topic that was filling his mind. I moved to the chair next to Sir Reginald's bed, tripped and fell into it. I bounced off and eventually came to rest, cursing, on the floor.

  “I will never, ever get used to lunar gravity,” I muttered, crawling upright and then into the chair.

  “Your body would adjust if you stopped wearing the resistive suit,” Sir Reginald said, offering a hand to help me up.

  “If I want to be stuck on the moon forever, I suppose that would be an option.” I took his hand and took up position in the chair. The slightest nudge threatened to dislodge me from it, but I managed. “I think I'll stick with my regular earth-strength, thank you.”

  “As you wish,” Sir Reginald shrugged and went limp. He coughed awkwardly. “Eighteen hours has passed for me,” he began, “but, how long for you?”

  “Between when I left the ninety-ninth century and when I rescued you was only about ten hours, and I spent most of them asleep,” I assured him. “After that, well, it took about a month to follow the pearl's history after the twenty-third century to...er, now. I guess it's been maybe forty days since I rescued you.”

  “It's dangerous to run so far outside of your own timeline,” Sir Reginald said. “Even with access to the ageing treatments of the seventy-seventh century, death comes to us all, Hannah, and it is a terrible thing to die outside your true time,” He smiled. “But I thank you all the same.” He stretched and flinched from sharp little pains under his skin. “Despite Dr Harper's skill it looks like I am going to be a bit of an invalid for about a week.”

  “At least,” I said. “And then I'm taking you home and forcing you to stay in your flat and rest until you're better, doing nothing more strenuous than going to the theatre.”

  “Oh you hardly have to fear that, the theatre of the early twenty-first century is ghastly,” Sir Reginald shook his head and laughed. “You found out the fate of the pearl then?”

  “Thrown from a space ship in the fiftieth century, half way between the Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda.”

  “And the theft in 1919?”

  “That was me.”

  “Oh.” Sir Reginald blinked in surprise. “Well, I suppose that clears that up.”

  “Certainly does,” I patted him on the shoulder.

  “Of course, I cannot stay in my flat forever,” Sir Reginald put his head on one side.

  “Oh, I'm sure we'll solve some more mysteries soon.”

  "Ah, yes, but there is one matter we've been putting off..."

  Epilogue:

  Amir drummed his fingers on the counter of Wilson and Sons. The reading glasses, lollypops and e-cigarettes bounced up and down. His son sat in the doorway between shop and home with a laptop on his knees. Amir stared at the clock above the doorway. The hands shuddered as the seconds ticked past. Three minutes to eight p.m. Three minutes until Wilson and Sons closed its doors.

  “Face it, Dad, they're not coming,” the son of Wilson and Sons said.

  “That's it, I'm gonna kill 'em,” Amir slapped his hand on the table. “I'll just kill ‘em both.”

  “With what, Dad?” the son scoffed.

  “We still stock rat poison right? Go get a box,” Amir reached for his keys. “I'm tired of that Sir Reginald and his holier than thou attitude.”

  “Dad, come on—”

  “Or—Fire!” Amir picked up a bottle of lighter fluid, a crazied look in his eye. “Always a good solution.”

  “Daaaaad. You can't go arson about—”

  “I just want them to pay me what's owed!”

  Before his son could restrain him, the electric chime of the doorbell rang through the store.

  “Ah! Amir! So glad you're still open!” I stopped to catch my breath but held my arm forward, fist full of cash.

  “Er...”

  “Sorry about the delay, Sir Reginald only had Guineas - er - the currency of New Guinea. He travels a lot, I had to change it to pounds,” I pressed a roll of twenties into Amir's hands. “That's five hundred for the groceries.” I counted out another five. “Another hundred for taking so long,” I fiddled with the rest. “And the next three months in advance.”

  “You said you'd get it done as soon as possible,” Amir glared, but holding over a thousand pounds in cash does a lot to soften a bad mood. He put down the lighter fluid.

  “I said I'd get it done today, and I did,” I said brightly, ignoring the fact it had actually taken me two months. “So, if that's all, I’m afraid I must get back to work.”

  “What, at eight in the evening?”

  “A detective agency never sleeps, Amir.” I bowed my way out of the shop and stepped onto the cold March streets of London. There was a letter in my pocket from two thousand years in the future, and one from two thousand years in the past. And Sir Reginald would want to hear both.