A Study in Starlight—Chapter Five
Continuing this serialised novel, in which Holmes and Watson find themselves very far indeed from Victorian/Edwardian London.
Watson
Mary conferred briefly with Inspector Francis, perhaps implicitly including Holmes, though he said nothing. Then she shuffled herself forward, carefully keeping below the rim. “Anyone hear me in there?” she called. A faint echo came back, nothing more.
She tried again, a little louder.
She paused, licking her lips—a hint, perhaps, of nerves otherwise suppressed. “Guys, it’s cold out here. It don’t make me patienter. And I can have a dozen miners with heavy lasers here in half an hour. Ten minutes after, your wall’s slag. Might get vrai hot inside. Plus I’m not sure they could guarantee what happens when them beams start—”
“All right!” Finally an answering voice. “Come down and we’ll talk.”
“Just talking, pledge? Nil shooting.”
“No tricks, no shooting.”
She moved swiftly, almost vaulting over the edge, down to a halfway ledge and down again to the level regolith. I realised that I’d raised my head out of cover to watch, but I couldn’t look away. Every cell in my body screamed in instinctive outrage. Remaining in cover while a woman exposed herself to extreme risk violated every tenet I’d ever learned. It seemed an offence against nature itself.
Worse, she was not just any woman…
I could not bear it. Holmes grabbed at my arm, a half-second too late. “Don’t be a damned fool, Watson!” he hissed, but I was already descending. Even as I scrambled down over gritty, rust-red, rock, I was asking the inevitable question: what am I doing here? I thought of all the times I’d been reassured by the weight of my revolver in my pocket. What could I do for her now? Throw stones?
I had no good answer, but I kept moving.
As I came up to her, Mary turned. Her eyes widened, mouth opened, but before she could speak there was another flash, a hairline of dazzle drawn across the chilly air. A yard ahead of us the ground sizzled and smoked.
“You said nil shooting!” she yelled furiously.
“Only applies to you.”
“How ya reck that’s gonna fly at a tribunal?” She flicked me one more unreadable glance, faced front again. “You know me, vrai? I’m Mary Syrtis Mall’stang. Inspector Francis of Station Police is here too. We’re on live uplink from our comms and from the drone. Sly up: you ain’t walking away from this. All you can do now is make it worse, grok? ‘Sides… I know your voice, don’t I? Don’t I… Shinsuke?”
There was no sound but the drone’s hum overhead, just audible over the whisper of the alien wind. Then, from the shadows under the overhang, low but distinct, a voice: “Ah, fuck!”
“All right,” said Robin Francis. “We know what you did. The question is why?”
The older of the two women, Shinsuke, grunted, then reached into a drawer and pulled out a pouch of something transparent and flexible. She spilled its contents onto the table between us. At first glance they appeared nothing more than a handful of rough pebbles. Francis and Mary looked no wiser than I, but Holmes leaned forward, plucked one of the stones, and examined it closely.
“Well, well,” said he. “Diamonds.”
“Flight sked’s three hours fifty,” said the Inspector. “Feel like answering a few questions?”
The two women were strapped into their seats like the rest of us, but Mary had done something to prevent them releasing themselves. Neither looked enthusiastic about answering questions, but neither actively objected.
“Diamonds,” said Francis, “And lots of them. But exactly what were you planning to do with them?”
“Uncut diamonds,” said Holmes. “I have a passing acquaintance with the business, and cutting diamonds requires highly specialised skill and equipment. Without these their value is impossible to estimate accurately.”
“Even then, where’s the market for diamonds on Trevallan? Fifteen hundred people, none of us exactly overflowing with disposable income.”
Shinsuke ignored the implicit question, instead leaning forward as far as the seat-harness would allow to peer at Holmes. “Who the fuck’re you? Never seen you before. Nor you either,” she added, glancing at me. She was a short, stocky, woman, her hair shaved at sides and back but standing up atop her head in straw-coloured spikes.
“This is Sherlock Holmes,” said Francis. “Arguably the greatest detective ever. And the reason you’re in custody now.”
“You are too modest, Inspector.” There was an undertone to Holmes’s disclaimer; this case hadn’t satisfied him.
“You’re the great detective,” said Shinsuke, “You work it out.”
Holmes had no immediate answer, and neither did Francis, but Mary drew a sharp breath. “Coldsleep. That’s your plan, ain’t it? Volunt’ry coldsleep till the Fast Ship shows.”
Holmes was frowning. To spare his blushes, I nominated myself the voice of ignorance. “Pardon me, but what is ‘coldsleep’?”
“Kinda like hibernation,” said Mary. “Put someone under, slow their metabolism right down. Was another way they thunk ‘bout shippin’ people to the stars. Decided compilin’ was easier, less risky.”
“And the ‘Fast Ship’?”
“They’ve been developin’ a new kinda drive. You know I said nothin’ travels faster than light, but they reckon they can… not break the limit but get around it. Kind of a short cut. Last updates from Earth, they were designin’ a prototype.”
“And that was twenty-four years ago?” said I, to show I had taken in at least a little of the new information I’d been bombarded with.
“To be clear,” said Holmes, “If a prototype was in preparation then… you infer that a ship could be in service now, or very soon?”
“Very possibly.”
“And then, journey time between Earth and here would no longer be measured in decades but in—what?—months?”
“Maybe just weeks.”
“I see,” said Holmes. He sat back, appeared to sink into reverie, eyes hooded.
Francis continued with the questions. After a while, I realised Mary had gone very quiet. I looked across, saw something in her face. And… was she trembling?
Under pretence of asking her to show me how the galley-spensary worked, I drew her away from the others. It was as close to privacy as we would achieve on the small ship. “Are you quite well?” I asked quietly.
“Startin’ to hit me. Walkin’ out there, them holdin’ a laser. They coulda recked they’d nil to lose.” She shook her head. “And you… vrai sterlin’ of you, comin’ out like that, but scared me maxly.”
“I couldn’t have just stayed hidden,” said I, resting a hand on her arm. No doubt now, she was trembling.
“I hope…” said she, and then stopped.
“You hope?”
“I hope it wa’nt just some oldtime thing, lil woman can’t take care of herself.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer, and then it came as if of its own volition. “I wouldn’t have said little.”
Then we were both laughing. I thought the others might be looking askance at us, but I found I didn’t care. There was something in that laughter, a sense of things shared; the lingering shadow of fear, the euphoria of survival. And something else too…
Her height made it awkward, but she half-sat, half-leaned, against a countertop, bringing herself nearer to my level, and I wrapped my arms around her.
“How long is it since you cosied with anyone?” she whispered, lips close to my ear.
“Cosied?”
“C’mon, John, you can figure it.”
I figured it. “Seven years. Or, by an alternative reckoning… three hundred and thirty-three.”
“How much longer you wanna wait?”
“The dumb thing is,” said Francis, “There are so many diamonds in that one lode, they could have shared the discovery with everyone and still made a good return.” Ve stared gloomily into veir beer. We were in a spensary close to the docking area, where ve had joined Holmes, Mary and myself after seeing Shinsuke and her accomplice into confinement.
“As they shoulda done,” added Mary, who seemed calm again. “We’re s’posed to be syndical.”
Francis nodded. “Once the stones could be shipped to Earth there’d be a solid payout for everyone, plus finders’ fees for those two. Instead they wanted it all to themselves, and then someone got killed.”
“It seems some things never change,” said Holmes. “I have never attempted an analysis, but intuitively I suspect more miscreants are tripped up by their own greed than anything else.”
“Well,” said Francis, “They’ll get one part of what they wanted.”
“What’s that?”
“Coldsleep. The Council’ll meet tomorrow and ratify it.”
“How intriguing,” said Holmes.
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