Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (23 page)

"I didn't know we were allowed to accept gifts, Holmes."

"Nothing of value. This is just an old hand-me-down of Ian's grandfather's. It ought to keep your brain toasty."

He lifted the lid from the box, placed it aside, opened the tissue paper, and took the gray homburg from it. "Why . . . why this is quite thoughtful, Holmes." He placed it on his head with both hands and faced me. "How do I look?"

"Very handsome, Watson. Distinguished. The very picture of Dr. John H. Watson."

"You shouldn't have."

"Why not?"

His face grew long and troubled. "Now, this makes me feel terrible."

"How so, Watson?"

"Well, I've noticed, Holmes, that you seem to be enjoying our Holmes and Watson thing quite a bit more than I have."

"I'd noticed it myself. Now that I reflect upon it, I haven't felt this perceptive in decades. I feel as though I could untie the Gordian Knot one-handed, blindfolded, and play multiple games of championship chess with my toes at the same time."

"Feeling rather sharp, eh, Holmes?"

"As a tack, dear fellow. Why?"

"I have a confession to make. You know how I dislike reading instructions of any kind."

"Quite. As I recall DS Guy Shad's famous dictum: ‘If the damned program or machine isn't intuitive to operate, it's crap.'"

Watson chuckled. "Yes. Very amusing."

"Come, Watson. What about it?" I prompted.

"Brochure came with my Watson suit, you know, from Celebrity Look-alikes." He reached into his side coat pocket with his left hand and pulled out a leaflet folded into thirds. "You were correct, Holmes, about what you called my bumble factor. There's one built in. Slows things down and fuzzes up thoughts while mixing them in with the vocabulary, vocal mannerisms, and so on of the Nigel Bruce Watson." He waved the leaflet idly in my direction. "Something else, too."

"What's that?"

"Bit of a cost-cutting measure, I fear. Makes sense if you look at it from their end. Celebrity Look-alikes, that is. You see?"

"I'm afraid I don't see. What are you talking about, Watson? What cost-cutting measure?"

"Oh. Well, usually both suits are rented at the same time: Holmes and Watson. You see? Symbiotic relationship."

"Ye-e-es," I answered warily.

"They had to have the Nigel Bruce as Watson suits made, you see. For the Basil Rathbone as Holmes suits, though, they simply used the same model fallen officer replacement suit that you have yourself."

"That makes perfectly good sense. Why reinvent the wheel?"

"Exactly, Holmes. So you understand."

"Understand what?"

"When my Watson suit came in close enough proximity to your model suit, my Nigel Bruce-Dr. Watson bio program asked permission to insert a wireless patch through your bio receiver. You must have seen it. You agreed to the terms."

"Ever since I went wireless I must get a half dozen of those things a day. I never read them—who has the time? What—well, what does it do?"

Watson yawned, tipped the homburg over his eyes, and slid down in his seat. "Only some mannerisms, vocabulary choices, thought pattern adjustments. According to the brochure it should sharpen up your thinking a bit. Seems to have done just that. Gordian Knot and all. We can uninstall it, I suppose."

"Why would I want to?"

"Perhaps I should. Don't quite seem to understand what's going on."

I picked up the brochure and gave it a quick scan. It had an address that would be useful in finding out if it would be possible to dial back Watson's bumble factor. Something else, too, that might be a problem:

The Holmes and Watson duo are only for entertainment, guys! Silly us! So if you run into real emergency situations while occupying these bios, programming automatically calls the chaps who are the real professionals. For anything less than emergencies, programming restricts your problem solving strategies to those not involving arrests or otherwise burdening the police. Have fun! And please solve crime responsibly.

That opened all kinds of possibilities. A few dozen Holmes and Watson duos on the streets could put the constabulary out of business for good.

"Speaking of bumble," said Watson, "I used to have a bumble dessert thing when I was with New England Wildlife. Quite tasty. Bumble brain pie."

"Doesn't sound very appetizing, old fellow."

"What? Sorry." He chuckled. "Misspoke there. Bumble brain pie. Silly of me. Actually it was called bum berry pie."

"Bum berry pie? Are you certain?"

"Yes. Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries. Delicious. A Maine favorite. Woman in Farmington used to make it up special for the officers in my station."

"Terribly sorry, Watson. Bum berry pie sounds even less appetizing than bumble brain pie."

"Bumble berry pie, Holmes," corrected Watson. "Whatever are you going on about? I said bumble berry pie. Keep going on about bum berry pie and you'll make people wonder from where you got this great reputation." He chuckled again and yawned. "Bum berry pie. You amaze me, Holmes. You absolutely amaze me. Oh, about the dog—"

"Frankie Statten was caught going equipped, hence the equipment is forfeit."

"I see that. But since—how was that again?"

"Since we are all agreed that the jewelry was misplaced and not stolen, there was no crime. Hence, no need to produce anything back at the office."

Watson grunted something.

As the late afternoon countryside sped beneath us, I looked back over my thoughts of the past few days, thrilling at always having an answer almost as soon as a question arose. Such as, if I am heading east toward Exeter late in the afternoon, why is the setting sun not at my back but is, instead, perpendicular to the vector of motion and warming my left cheek? I looked at the GPS.

"Watson, you have us heading north toward Exmoor. Watson?"

I caught the sound of the old fellow gently snoring, took over the cruiser's controls, and entered the correct heading, wondering if the patch I had automatically accepted into my neural system included the ability to play the violin and an addiction to cocaine. Then I remembered my Holmes was a Basil Rathbone Hollywood Holmes whose strongest addiction was to whatever tobacco was stuffed into that huge meerschaum pipe of his. I needn't worry about smoking. Neither my lungs, my wife, nor the clean air regulations at Heavitree Tower could tolerate any of that nonsense.

My partner was having a bit of bother about the Labradoodle. To wit: had we stolen it? I suppose a case could be made for it, and I would be happy to meet Frankie Statten in court any time he wished to settle the matter at law. Once I was on the proper heading for Exeter, I settled in and contemplated blowing bubbles from that meerschaum. It went very well with the image playing before my mind's eye of Ian Collier, his wife, and two boys at Powderham playing with their old golden retriever in his new Labradoodle suit.

Rajnar Vajra

Can you imagine working on a strange and complex jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit into any logical pattern because a single, crucial piece is missing? Welcome to my life. And, if you aren't immune to the weird, I have a suggestion: brace yourself!

I'd better start by telling you about Uncle Joe, the Cloudman.

As far back as I can remember, he was a neighborhood fixture, relentlessly painting his sky-landscapes down at Beck's Beach, only two and a half blocks from the old yellow house I grew up in.

I used the word "fixture" deliberately. You would think that Joe must have sneaked off now and then to buy his next canvas or sleep or use a bathroom or cash a check; but I never, ever, caught him AWOL (which in his case would have meant AWay from Ocean Lair). For the life of me, I can't visualize our beach without the Cloudman. It's easier, honestly, to picture it without the Atlantic.

Everyone in our small community pitched in, making sure Joe had plenty to eat and drink, not that he asked for much. He was never sick, he never appeared unhappy or uncomfortable, and he never complained about anything. His chief—in fact, his only problem in life seemed to be weather that was either too bad or too good for his one fixed purpose.

Starting when I was six years old, if the summer mornings looked even slightly encouraging, Ma would send me trotting down to the seashore with a huge canvas tote slung over my right shoulder. That is, I'd start out trotting. My burden would soon wear me down until I finally needed to sit on the sidewalk and rest every few yards.

Just
thinking
about that tote makes my shoulder ache, even after all these years! My brother, who went to a summer school for "gifted" children and was allergic to carrying stuff, once called it "Atlas's Sack" (I don't mind supporting the world, folks, but someone get this damn
sack
off me!). It typically contained four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Joe could eat and paint at the same time), two bananas, a dozen carrot sticks, a big thermos of disgustingly diluted Juicy Juice, paper cups, a Tupperware jar of filtered water for the Cloudman's atomizer, and four oranges.

If all that wasn't enough weight for a semi-handicapped youngster, the inevitable bottle of sunscreen lurked beneath the sandwiches, cocooned in what Ma considered the ultimate barrier: Reynolds Wrap.

Now, I'd better stop and tell you about the bane of my early childhood. I was born with a deformed left hand. At first, my doctors were convinced it was Dupuytren's contracture: a rare condition where excess collagen inside the hand binds its joints into clenched uselessness. When the usual treatment (injections of collagenase and other collagen dissolving enzymes) did exactly nothing, the doctors could only scratch their heads. But they wanted to perform a series of experimental operations anyway. My parents flat-out refused.

I only learned of this refusal years later when my brother, Tim, who is five years my senior and selfish enough to have the brains
and
the looks in our family, told me about it. I couldn't imagine why my parents wouldn't agree to surgery but Tim had a theory. He claimed that Mom and Dad didn't give a damn about my big defect (they really did seem strangely unconcerned). He said they were only willing for me to get treatment as long as they thought I had Dupuytren's because both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher suffered from the condition, and Dad especially would have hated it if I'd grown up to be an "asshole conservative politician."

I didn't believe my big brother, not much anyway, but I didn't understand why someone hadn't tried to do
something
.

I hated my crippled hand with all my heart.

My friends, naturally, hadn't helped. They'd dubbed it "The Claw" because of how it was all scrunched up. Our old family physician once told me in private that I wasn't, as I thought, uniquely cursed. He'd seen a case or two like mine before and he wanted me to know it was strictly a "hereditary condition." I had no idea what he was talking about; no one else in my family was crippled in any way.

And it sure would have been easier to carry Atlas's Sack down to Beck's Beach with two functional hands.

"Good morning, young Gregory," the Cloudman would always announce when I got within twenty feet of his easel, even when I crept up from behind. "I trust that today's glorious sun will reflect off your best behavior?"

"I'll try real hard, Uncle Joe," I'd always respond, lying through my baby teeth.

The "Uncle" was honorary but absolutely earned. An understanding had crystallized between this eccentric painter and the local parents that he would act as an unofficial day care provider in exchange for meals and resident privileges. Trust me, our parents got the best of
that
bargain.

But I always wondered how on Earth such an understanding ever got started. When I called the painter "eccentric," I meant it.

Just to give you an inkling: the man spent every day, even in the worst winter weather, in the company of the Atlantic Ocean, and he never painted a single wave, sailboat, or seagull. Just clouds. As long as he could see clouds he'd paint them; his favorite were the cumulous variety but he'd stoop to stratus or cirrus in a pinch. A big, clear plastic tarp was Joe's answer to rain or snow. On foggy days, not commonplace on Cape Cod, he'd just stand there and patiently study the bland sky.

* * *

I have to admit that Joe was one ugly old cuss. He had a sun-dried tomato of a face and his eyes were undeniably scary. Even my dad, Mr. You-Think-This-Is-Bad-I've-Seen-Worse, once confessed (under pressure) that he couldn't remember a fiercer case of cataracts. Joe's corneas were so thickly encrusted, it seemed impossible for him to perceive anything smaller than an ocean liner, let alone wield a liner
brush
. Not to mention keep an eye on brats like I used to be.

Yet he did every task with ease and grace. He watched over us like a faithful hawk and somehow the quality of his art never suffered.

Joe was even a
commercial
success. His paintings sold faster than fresh crab cakes, usually to Martha's Vineyard gallery owners who, like mercantile mountains, were forced to come to him. Sometimes tourists who were too savvy or insensitive to be discouraged by the "Residents Only" signs would drift over our pathetic few square yards of hauled-in sand (which had to be replaced after big storms) and watch Joe working. Most would soon haul out cash or checks, even while the fast-drying acrylics were still tacky, and to their own astonishment, hand over whatever the Cloudman required without one syllable of bargaining.

That part, at least, I thought I understood. Joe's artwork was exquisite. His painted clouds appeared swollen with an almost . . . religious light, and they evoked strong and peculiar feelings that you could
almost
name. The Cloudman's big secret, or so he claimed, was all in the under-painting.

Even discounting the cataracts, it was a mystery how Joe managed to keep track of as many as seven kids without turning his face away from sky, paints, or canvas. Ears like Superman (and a bladder to match) was the consensus. If any of us got overly obnoxious, or took one step past the shallowest waters, that incredible voice of his would come after us like a charging bull.