A Study in Starlight—Chapter Eight
Continuing this serialised novel, in which Holmes and Watson find themselves very far indeed from Victorian/Edwardian London.
Watson
Mary’s head fitted perfectly into the hollow of my chest and shoulder, padded by deltoid and pectoral muscles (and just a little adipose tissue). It felt right, natural, comfortable. Any lingering unease I might have felt over her lack of hair vanished in that moment. It was almost, I fancied drowsily, proof that we were meant to be together.
But are we? The thought came unbidden, and unwanted. Sherlock’s question, ‘So soon?’ returned to haunt me. I must have tensed; she stirred in turn. “Wassup?” she asked softly, close to my ear.
“I suppose I’m having trouble understanding what someone like you sees in a broken-down old warhorse like me.”
“John…” She pushed up onto one elbow, looking down at me, though I wondered how much she could see; she was only a vague outline, silhouetted against the faint pearlescence of the ceiling-panels. She must have thought the same, for she murmured softly—sub-vocalising, they called it—and the lights brightened gently.
“Starters,” said she, “Let’s dump the ‘old’. We already established I’m older than you.”
“Except that I was born in 1852.”
She snorted derisively. “Neg that. You’re not old—and I dunno what you mean by ‘warhorse’… but why d’you say ‘broken-down’?”
“I still have a jezail bullet in my left shoulder, and I’ve never regained full range of movement in that arm. More generally, I was never quite the same after my long tussle with enteric fever in India.”
There was enough light now to see her smile. “I reck if you pay a visit to the medbay you might find nen bullet in your shoulder.”
“How…?”
“Compilers match everythin’ ‘xactly… ‘cept when they do a lil repair work.”
“If I’d known, I’d have asked Doctor Merhawi about it yesterday.”
“Well, you’ll be seein’ her plenty more, won’t you?”
“That’s true.”
I thought back to my meeting with the doctor yesterday. I’d thought her about my own age, no more than four inches over five feet, and of compact build. Hardly imposing, but certainly intriguing. Her ancestry, I concluded, partook of at least three continents. Her name was African, as was the way she wore her hair, in a chequering of small tight knots; but that hair was ash-blonde, her eyes a lively green, and her skin pale honey. Her features, however, especially around the eyes, were unmistakably Oriental.
She might not be physically impressive, but when it came to the practice of medicine she spoke with the quiet assurance that becomes a doctor far more than brag or bluster.
It had been, I reflected, my first actual meeting with a lady doctor, though I had been aware of pioneering female practitioners in the Victorian age. I had studied medicine in Edinburgh only a few years after the notorious case of the ‘Edinburgh Seven’, had heard numerous (and disparate) accounts of the Surgeon’s Hall riot. One of the Seven, Sophia Jex-Blake, was obliged to travel abroad to take her MD, but returned to Edinburgh and, in the same year I took my own doctoral degree, became the first lady doctor in the city. And there was the remarkable career of Elizabeth Garret Anderson…
“Squisite that she recks you can be a doc here,” said Mary, interrupting my brief reverie.
“Eventually… I suppose it will be years before I am fully qualified. The practice of medicine is so far advanced beyond my time. Still—”
“You gotta stop sayin’ things like ‘my time’. This is your time now.”
That needed a very long answer, or none. “I should hope that my training gives some ground on which to build. The fundamentals of human anatomy and biology cannot have changed, though I am sure much has been learned about many of the finer points… But it is somewhere to start. And a man must work, after all.”
“And so must a woman, and this one’s shift starts in an hour. So… we gonna hear any more kak about you bein ‘broken-down’, or can I just kiss you and jump in the shower?”
“Surely the latter,” said I. “But surely the shower can wait a few minutes.”
Had I first sighted Robin Francis guised as ve was now, I would have taken vem for a young woman. Ve was wearing a knee-length skirt in a tweed-like weave, variegated colours blending at distance to a dusty pink. Above, a kind of cardigan, jade-green. Loose hair fell in waves about veir face.
My contemplation of this shift toward the feminine lasted barely a second, banished by veir first words. “It’s Holmes…”
“What about him?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. Though I’m afraid we’re already too late.”
Too late, alas, we were. Holmes’s face under the clear canopy was as still as death, and had a waxy pallor to match.
“Are you sure he’s still alive?”
“Check the displays,” said the young man in charge of the coldsleep suite. His tone was disconcertingly casual, and he had not shifted from his position by another of the coffin-like cabinets, where he was monitoring Shinsuke’s accomplice. On another occasion I might have been bothered that I could not recall the woman’s name, but now my focus was all on Holmes.
There was a screen in the end-panel of the cabinet, behind Holmes’s head, and with some help from Robin Francis I managed to decipher the readings. His heart rate was eight beats per minute, and respiration so shallow that the movement of his chest was barely visible. His body temperature was 28.6 Celsius, changing to 28.5 as I watched. The aloof young man deigned to inform me that he was still being cooled, and that his temperature would stabilise at just three degrees.
“Then he could still be revived?” I demanded.
He sighed. “Technic’ly, he c’n be revived any time. But legally…”
Robin Francis took up the tale. “Legally, reviving him except in compliance with his instructions is an assault. And then I’d have to arrest you.” Ve said it lightly, as if making a joke of it, but I was in no mood for levity.
I floundered for a moment, torn between rage and grief, before fixing on a single word. “Instructions?”
Ve laid a hand on my arm: the nails, I noticed, taking in details as Holmes had taught me, were now a sapphire hue. “Let’s get a drink. There’s a live bar on C.”
‘Live bar’ meant that we were served by actual humans. By the time the drinks arrived, Robin had Holmes’s instructions displayed on the table-top. I sipped at something closer to American bourbon than the Scotch I would have preferred, and leaned closer to read.
I, Sherlock Holmes, of my own free will and after due consideration, request and require that I be placed in the condition known as coldsleep.
“Not the usual sort of phrasing,” said Robin, hooking hair behind one ear. “His own words, I guess, not the stock form.”
“Does that affect the legality? Is this still binding?”
“No, and yes. His wishes are perfectly clear. Court’d never overrule.”
Sighing, I read on. I stipulate that I am not to be revived under any circumstances save either of the following:
1: If a ship should arrive from Earth, travelling effectively faster than light, and offering the possibility of similarly rapid travel back there.
2: If a criminal case, not limited to murder, should arise which is deemed to proffer a challenge sufficient to exercise my particular skills in detection, this determination to be made by Inspector Robin Francis of the Trevallan Police and Doctor John H Watson, now also resident on Trevallan. Revival is to take place only if both named persons are fully convinced that the stated criterion is satisfied. I place both under trust that they act in good faith, uninfluenced by any personal feelings.
Should either of the above be unable or unwilling to fulfil this office, I request as first substitute Commander Mary Syrtis Mall’stang of Trevallan. I further authorise all three named persons to nominate further trustworthy individuals in reserve, as and when required.
Signed this 24th day of April in the year 2228
Sherlock Holmes
Witnessed by the Trevallan Orbiter QuasI
“God damn you, Holmes!” The words tumbled from me in something between a bark and a groan. So much for ‘furthering your happiness’, for officiating at a partnership ceremony… I buried my head in my hands. There was a light touch on my arm, but Robin, wisely, said nothing.
Eventually I raised my head, threw down the rest of the whisky, and slumped back in my seat. “He did this to me once before, you know.”
“After Reichenbach.” Of course, ve probably knew the story as well as I did.
Still, I needed to say it, if only for my own sake. “Three years. Three years which I shall forever consider to be the worst of my life, encompassing not only the death—as I believed—of my closest friend, but also that of my beloved wife. There was nothing Holmes could have done about the latter, of course, but allowing me… who had always prided myself on being his closest confidant and most loyal friend…”
Another glass of whisky arrived. Robin must have ordered it, and I was by no means ungrateful. “Thank you. Where was I?”
“Loyal friend…”
“Ah, yes. Allowing his most loyal friend to labour through those three years believing him to have met his death in a most frightful manner.” I shuddered, and drank some more. “Unless you have seen that abyss, Robin, you surely cannot imagine how awful it is.”
“’It is indeed, a fearful place’,” said ve; quoting my own words, I realised with a shiver. “’The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house.’ And then… ‘The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. Did I get that right?’”
“As far as I can remember… it’s many years since I wrote that.”
“Three hundred and thirty-five, I think.”
In spite of everything, I laughed at the absurdity of it, but amusement was ephemeral. “Of course I was overjoyed when he finally revealed his survival to me; so much so that I briefly lost consciousness. But a little later I was angry too. He claimed it had been necessary, for my own safety, to minimise the risk of the news percolating to Moriarty’s confederates… It was, and is, hard for me not to feel that, in this most delicate of matters, he did not quite trust me.”
“Mycroft knew, didn’t he?”
“Yes, and the implication is that he trusted Mycroft more than he trusted me. I can rationalise it to myself; as Holmes’s chronicler, I had a certain… public presence. Mycroft always worked behind the scenes, in the shadows. But…”
“But you’d hardly be human if you didn’t feel at least a little aggrieved.”
I sighed. “Yes, you’re right. And you’re very kind… I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. At least until Mary gets here.”
“You’ve called Mary?”
“On her way.”
“You’re very kind.” I was repeating myself, and I didn’t care. A third whisky arrived, and I lifted it to my lips, but took only a modest sip. A little goes a long way. “There was that three years, though I sometimes wonder how I endured… and now there’s this.”
“At least this time you know he’s alive.”
“You call that alive? Not knowing if I’ll ever see him in the land of the living again, ever hear his voice. Truly, I tell you, if I could just hear him once more bemoaning my obtuseness. You see, but you do not observe. Let me hear him say that once more…”
“I dunno what the “H” stands for, John,” said another voice, “But I’m rocksure your real middle name is ‘Loyal’.” I looked up as Mary slid into the seat beside me. Her arm went around my shoulder. I leaned on her breast and I am not ashamed to say I sobbed like a child.
“He couldn’t even wait to say goodbye,” was the first coherent sentence I was able to produce, minutes later.
“He was scared,” said she.
“Scared? Of what?”
“Scared you’d talk him out of it.”
“By damn, I would have if I could.”
“I reck in the end you were—are—braver’n him. He could’n face this new life, not if it wa’nt on his own terms. You can, you are.”
“I don’t feel brave.”
“Courage ain’t about bein’ fearless. Courage is goin’ on when you’re scared.” She wrapped her other arm around me. “Don’t gimme any kak ‘bout bein a broken-down old… whate’er. You’re a brave man, John Watson, and that’s a lotta what draws me to you.”
She released one arm, picked up the whisky-glass. “May I?”
“By all means.”
She threw back the contents—most of a double measure, I thought. For a moment her voice was husky. “Woo… Listen, John. I know I’m not the love of your life, he is. Not in any sexual way, I don’t mean that. Love and sex are diff’rent. Sometimes they intersect, sometimes they don’t. You and me, they do, mayhaps; you and him, they don’t. Least, I’m guessin’ not.”
She set the empty glass down, a faint chime on the tabletop, brushed her hand over her scalp. “He’s the love of your life and now he’s gone ‘thout e’en sayin’ goodbye. Ask me, that’s a dirty trick to play. Well, heed me, John H. Watson. I said your real middle name was Loyal. And loyal deserves loyal. I’m not promisin’ forever, not yet, though I’m feelin’ kinda… well, we’ll see. I’m makin’ you one promise today. I’ll never leave you like he just did, ‘thout e’en sayin’ goodbye. I won’t do that.”
“And I won’t do that to you.”
“Well,” said she, “That’s somethin’. D’you need more whisky? I stole your last one. And…” She sat back, grinned. “What does the ‘H’ stand for, anyway?”
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