The Case of the Displaced Detective Read online

  “There are only two seats,” Holmes murmured politely. “I can stand.”

  “No, it’s okay. Skye never sits down anyway,” Caitlin observed. “She’s always so absorbed in the run, I sometimes think she forgets to breathe.”

  “She’s right. Sometimes I do,” Skye grinned. “I’ve caught myself holding my breath more than once in here.”

  “Very well,” he conceded with a chuckle, taking the seat beside Caitlin, and settling in to watch with interest.

  “Checklists out,” Skye called.

  “Checklists out!”

  “Got ‘em!”

  “Right here!”

  “Go/no-go call,” Skye declared. “Software?”

  “Go…”

  * * *

  Soon Holmes found himself watching…himself. He had seen the video already, of course, but it was quite another thing to view this. It was three-dimensional, it was real. It was more powerful than looking into a mirror. And it was him.

  They let the observation run straight through. Holmes wrote his note, positioned it; he and Moriarty engaged in their life-and-death struggle. Skye magically appeared on the ledge, breaking the grip between the opponents and hurling Moriarty over the edge as Holmes fell back and vanished; and Holmes’ eyebrow rose as his curiosity fully engaged.

  “How is that possible without interfering?” he murmured to Caitlin.

  “Huh?” Caitlin muttered back, confused.

  “Skye is here beside me, but she is there, as well. And I am in both places, also.”

  “Oh,” Skye interjected, having overheard, “we aren’t fully ‘focused in.’ This is an observing run. We’re…sort of looking at echoes, I guess you might say.”

  “Echoes of spacetime. How…interesting.”

  “We were never supposed to fully interact with our subject continuum,” Skye explained, never taking her eyes off the events playing out inside the columns. “The protocol called for pulling the continuum into full focus and watching, then ‘de-rezzing’ enough to prevent complete connection before going into the tesseract to take direct readings.” The chief scientist sighed in chagrin. “And then I jumped into the middle of it. Me, of all people. I am such an idiot.”

  * * *

  After Moriarty fell, and Skye and Holmes vanished, little happened on the ledge along the falls for quite some time. So Skye took the opportunity to ensure she had left no sign of her presence there, even walking through the tesseract core to observe up close. Her team kept a careful watch on the focusing, however, to ensure no more untoward connections occurred, maintaining a skewed focus throughout.

  “Counting down to next event,” the Timelines console member called. “In ten…nine…eight…”

  Skye bolted out of the core.

  Watson clambered up the path.

  Holmes leaned forward, forehead creased, dark grey eyes narrowed in pain.

  “Can he see her?” he asked Caitlin in an undertone. “Is that why Skye left so hurriedly?”

  “In this mode, no,” Caitlin answered softly. “He should be able to neither see nor hear any of us. She’s getting out of the way so we can see. And I think she’s knee-jerking, too.”

  “Knee-jerking?”

  “Um…gut reaction. Yesterday upset her pretty bad. She’s torn. Doesn’t know what the right thing to do was. So today she’s over-reacting. Erring on the side of caution.”

  “Ah.”

  Holmes fell silent and watched as his oldest, dearest friend stepped methodically through the exploration of the crime scene. First came the spotting of the items Holmes had left, the locating and reading of the note; the horrified cry, which wrenched Holmes’ gut. Watson immediately perched himself on the very lip of the ledge, heedless of danger to his own person, peering into the mists below. The physician shook his head in disbelief, then turned and observed the footprints in the manner Holmes had taught him. Holmes found his breast swelling with pride as he noticed the meticulous, accurate technique Watson displayed. But in the course of being flung back through the tesseract, Holmes had flown almost completely off his feet, so there was nothing to be seen save the scrabbling footprints along the narrow edge, and only one conclusion to be reached from the evidence at hand.

  Holmes could only watch in unaccustomed helplessness as Watson dropped to his knees on the ledge, calling desperately down into the abyss for his friend, and listening painstakingly and ultimately futilely for any response or plea for help. Finally the doctor rose and staggered back, collapsing on the same rock where Holmes had written his note, tears trickling down his face and disappearing into the flaxen moustache. A despairing, grief-stricken Watson put his face in his hands as several of the local policemen hurried up.

  A pale, strained Holmes attended to the events for a few more minutes, as a deeply grieving Watson tried to explain to the police officers what had taken place. Abruptly the detective rose to his feet, turning on his heel and leaving the Chamber without a word.

  * * *

  Caitlin leaped to her feet, and she and Skye stared anxiously after Holmes. Within seconds he had disappeared through the door and down the corridors.

  “Aw,” a compassionate Skye murmured.

  “You need to go after him,” Caitlin declared. “You’re his liaison. He needs somebody there right now.”

  “I know. But I’ve got a responsibility here, too, and he knows that. He’s got a good, level head; he won’t do anything stupid. And this’ll just take a couple minutes. All consoles, open up view to maximum. Initiate automated recognition procedure. Accelerate,” Skye ordered. In the corner, Welker raised an impressed eyebrow and jotted something in his notebook.

  The images in the center of the circle of monoliths sped up, moving faster and faster, until all that could be seen was a grey blur.

  “Terminus?” the Timelines position called.

  “T-plus-five-hundred-years,” Skye instructed.

  Three minutes later the core froze in an indistinct multicolored mass.

  “Recognition procedure complete,” Timelines called. “Terminus reached.”

  “Status?” Skye barked.

  “Nominal. No immediate observable deviations from baseline.”

  “Excellent. Begin standard shutdown and start a detailed comparison to the baseline we spent weeks getting. I want a full analysis performed by tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take care of all that. You’ve got another responsibility,” Caitlin told her. “Go see about him.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Cait,” Skye said, putting down the clipboard she had forgotten she carried, and scurrying out.

  * * *

  Skye headed out of the Chamber facility and hurried across Schriever toward the officers’ temporary billets. Morris had given her a card key for ease of access as Holmes’ liaison, but she still knocked on the door of the flat first.

  “Holmes, it’s Skye. I wanted to check on you.”

  No answer. Skye knocked again.

  “Holmes, it’s all right. I understand. I just don’t want you to be alone right now.”

  When there was still no answer forthcoming, Skye wielded the electronic key and entered Holmes’ quarters.

  There was no one there.

  “Oh, shit,” Skye muttered in dismay. “Where the hell did he go?”

  She paused in the middle of his sitting room, staring at the packages she had left that morning, and thinking hard.

  Okay, it was obvious he was upset. And Holmes is known for being a loner, preferring not to show strong emotion in public, so he retreated somewhere out of sight. But he didn’t come here. Where else might he have gone?

  Skye mentally reviewed the various places on base with which Holmes was familiar that might also provide sufficient privacy for Holmes to deal with his grief. She shook her head; nothing came to mind. There was simply no other place than his quarters where Holmes could be assured of being alone.

  But he’s grieving losing Watson, the thought struck her. His best and most trusted friend.
Without him, he must feel…ah. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he doesn’t want to be completely alone right now.

  And suddenly she knew.

  Skye turned and hurried toward her office.

  Opening the door slowly, she found Holmes sitting in her visitor’s chair, leaning forward, arms folded across the desk, forehead resting on his arms. She eased the door closed, trying not to disturb him any more than she could help. Unobtrusively she moved to his side, laying a gentle hand on the back of his shoulder.

  “I know it’s hard, Holmes, but you need the closure, hon.”

  The dark head nodded once.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  His shoulders heaved once as he took a deep breath, then let it out in a protracted sigh.

  “No,” his voice was muffled through his arms. “Is the continuum intact?”

  “Yeah, it looks that way,” Skye noted in relief.

  “Good,” he responded, head still on his arms.

  “Holmes?” Keeping her hand on his shoulder, Skye knelt beside his chair.

  Another deep breath, and he raised his head. Skye scrutinized his face, but there were no signs of uncharacteristic tears, as she had feared. His grey eyes focused on hers, well aware of what she was doing.

  “Yes, Skye?” he said pointedly.

  “Do you think…? Nothing,” Skye changed her mind, staring at the floor, unaware her guilt was written clearly on her face.

  “An earlier intervention would have been gratifying,” he noted matter-of-factly, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “Something rather less than irrevocable.”

  The pain from that response, so coolly cognizant of what Skye perceived as her total failure, cut through the scientist like a laser beam.

  * * *

  The blonde head dropped, and the blue eyes became sightless for long moments. Without a word, she stood and moved behind the desk to the chalkboard. There, she scribbled a complex set of equations on the board, using them to derive a series of large matrices, most of whose entries appeared to be equations in themselves, then working to solve the series.

  Holmes sat and watched her for several minutes, but he was unfamiliar with tensor analysis and couldn’t understand what he saw. Finally he queried, “What are you working on?”

  Without looking away from her task, Skye replied, “Trying to find a way to put you back, alive, that won’t collapse the whole blasted continuum set.”

  Holmes’ breath caught in startled confoundment, and he watched as she worked her way through the mathematics. She huffed impatiently, then erased her work and started over. Ten minutes later, she’d arrived at a similar result. Holmes watched for nearly an hour as, increasingly baffled, Skye sought in vain to find the solution to the problem she’d set herself.

  Suddenly she let out a growl of frustrated irritation, spun, and flung the piece of chalk across the room. It struck the far wall and shattered. Skye slumped into her desk chair, defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then buried her face in her hands.

  Holmes was stunned. The gesture, the entire posture, was identical to one he had seen earlier that very day…when Watson had collapsed in despair along the Reichenbach ledge. It was, he realized, a mingling of grief, and guilt, and hopelessness. And both Chadwick and Watson felt it in toto.

  Holmes sighed, then stood and came around the desk.

  “Well, well,” he murmured, utilizing that way about him, that talent he had to soothe and offer comfort to even the most distressed client, as he coaxed her hands away from her face and held them in his own. “After all, I would have died had you not been there. It is certainly true our own actions are not all with which we must concern ourselves, and it is also true that often our options are more constrained than we would wish.” He paused, then admitted, “I…had not expected Watson, dear old chap, to take it quite so hard. As a result, I fear I lashed out at you when I should have been grateful instead.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Skye murmured, barely audible. She refused to meet his eyes.

  “I do,” Holmes avowed. “I also know we missed lunch, and it is past tea-time as well, nearing what you call ‘quitting time.’ I believe it was you who noted that large life changes require proper care of the body.” Keeping her hands in his, he stepped back and pulled her to her feet. “And after that fierce little display of intellect,” he nodded at the blackboard, “I expect you require sustenance every bit as much as the displaced detective struggling to find a place of stability in a universe considerably larger than he had ever before considered.”

  “Yeah, I’m hungry. I’m sorry I didn’t see to it that you got lunch. Cait’ll tell you I can get pretty single-minded when I’m working on the tesseract.” Skye disentangled one of her hands long enough to rub an aching temple.

  Holmes raised an amused eyebrow, feeling some semblance of good humor returning at the comprehension that this woman was willing to work so hard to try to help him. She said I was not alone unless I wished to be, he recalled. Perhaps she is right.

  “That sounds quite familiar, my dear Skye; I suspect we have more in common than we realise. Would an early dinner at the Officer’s Club suit? I rather suspect Wing Commander Holmes, late of the Royal Air Force, could manage entrée for the both of us.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. Are you sure it’s open tonight?” Skye gave him a tired grin.

  “It is. I made a point of observing its hours of operation last night.”

  “Okay. Let me call Cait and let her know. And I want to make sure the data we collected is getting a good, in-depth analysis, too. I don’t want to just think we’re in the clear. I want to know.”

  Holmes nodded his concurrence, and Skye picked up the phone and dialed the director’s console. A few minutes later she was assured the detailed analysis was under way, and Cait was relieved to discover the pair not only alive and well, but in search of food.

  “Very good,” Holmes declared. “And now, my dear Doctor, let us go. Last night’s meal was more than acceptable, and I have every assurance tonight’s will be equally as good.”

  He offered her his arm, and they set off.

  * * *

  They had a quiet, early dinner. The club was relatively unpopulated at that time of evening, and Holmes requested a table in the corner. They were given a corner booth, which afforded even more privacy. Little was said; neither was in a frame of mind for much talk. But the air between the two was not strained; rather it was companionable. By tacit consent, no more was said about how Holmes came to be there, or what alternatives there may, or may not, have been.

  Holmes opted for fish and chips, but Skye ordered a large steak, then tore ravenously into it when it arrived, tucking away most of it before even slowing down. Holmes’ eyebrows rose in surprise, but he said nothing—until Skye commented.

  “Mmh, that’s good,” she murmured, halfway through. “I guess I really ought to put more in me than a cup of coffee in the course of a day.”

  “You have had nothing but coffee?” Holmes wondered, disturbed. “All day?”

  “‘Fraid so. I wanted to get here early and bring your stuff this morning, so I didn’t take time for breakfast. Then, like you pointed out, we missed lunch. I didn’t realize I was so hungry.” Skye grinned sheepishly.

  “Skye,” Holmes remarked, exasperated, “why did you not eat?”

  “I told you. I was busy. I do that all the time. Some things are more important than eating. Besides, if anybody ought to understand, it’d be you.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Holmes chuckled, taken off guard by the good-natured jibe. “But, Skye, I deal with life-and-death issues.”

  “So was this,” Skye alleged, meeting his gaze. “Even if there hadn’t been a risk to the continuum, it still pertained to…”

  She broke off, and Holmes mentally completed, It still pertained to my life. Trying for levity, he pointed out, “Clothing and razors are matters of life and death?”

  Skye l
aughed, pleasing Holmes.

  “No, I suppose not. But like I said, I do this all the time.”

  Holmes said nothing. But for the first time, he took the opportunity to see his companion as a full, complete human being rather than a subject for deduction or source of information. She was in excellent shape, far less zaftig than the women of Holmes’ day, with a less exaggerated, but still shapely hourglass figure—the difference due, he grasped, to the lack of boning in modern undergarments. Her chinos and polo shirt were fitted enough to hint at musculature underneath, and the overall effect was healthy and attractive; but her face, Holmes decided, was too thin. Said face was tanned, something the high-bred women of his day would have eschewed; yet there was a touch of unhealthy paleness beneath. And there were faint shadows under the sky-blue eyes that spoke of too many hours: in the Chamber, in her office, at the computer, before the blackboard. Holmes decided he would not be the only one to enjoy their weekend jaunt, if he had any say in the matter.

  General Morris had arranged to have an on-base monetary account for Holmes, credited to the project, and Holmes had their meal charged to it. Then he escorted Skye back across the base to her office, at her request. He had intended to walk her to her car—or at least to the gate—in order to get her home more quickly. But she insisted she must go back to her office to pick up her laptop.

  There, Holmes’ intent was nearly thwarted when Skye fished a fresh piece of chalk from a desk drawer and returned to the blackboard. His eyebrows rose when he saw the same equations appear beneath her hand as had been there almost two hours earlier, and knew she was about to resume her fruitless calculations.

  Suddenly he recalled the mathematical notations he had seen her working on when he had entered her office for the first time.

  It is exactly the same, he realized, staring at the matrices emerging under her fingers. She has struggled to find a way to send me back, from the very beginning.

  “No, Skye,” he asserted, moving behind the desk and taking the chalk from her fingers. “We both know this is futile. We have had two very long days, you and I. Allow me to suggest you depart homeward now, and permit yourself the rest you undoubtedly need. In turn, I, too, will retire to my quarters, and we will reconsider matters in light of the new day, after a proper night’s sleep.”