Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

‘If they want us,’ I said, ‘then we shall go to them. We shall go to see Jack.’

‘But that’s suicide!’ Moran said, stirring.

I laughed. ‘Do you think me a fool?’ I said. ‘I have studied them, from the very start. I know them better than anyone alive. You are a hunter, Colonel Moran. And it is time for us to hunt.’

He looked at me wanly. The fight wasn’t in him. Six months since it’d all begun. Six scant months since the world changed for ever. And we have fought them, in the streets and alleys, in the shadows, every day and night. And still, we were losing.

I checked my gun. Before, I had no use for guns. I believed in the mind, in pure mathematics. It was that which led to my infam ous lecture, before the Royal Society, about the dynamics of that d—ed Marsian asteroid.

I knew, even as I was speaking, that they did not believe me. They heard the words but the meaning did not register.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own, because, of course, this is complete and utter poppycock.

I would not have called them intelligent, not exactly. They had a species’ predatory hunger, a need to survive. Intelligence was secondary. As for being mortal – they could be killed, yes, but with difficulty. But they were coming, even though, back then, I did not yet know the extent of it.

The Royal Society was packed that night but no one was listening any more. A man in the second row from the front was the only one paying attention. He was dressed in a seersucker suit, with mutton chops down his narrow face and a sun hat, which tried to disguise his bright fevered eyes, and failed. He had always taken ridiculous pride in his disguises, which I never understood – he was never very difficult to spot in a crowd.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘your outrage does you no credit. This is science, simple and inevitable mathematics. There is a Marsian asteroid heading directly to Earth. If my calculations are correct – and my calculations are never wrong – it will hit somewhere to the south-west of London in approximately six months from today.’

The man in the seersucker suit raised his hand. ‘Professor Moriarty?’ he said.

‘Yes, Holmes?’

He flushed red under the fake sideburns, mortified his disguise did not fool me.

‘What do you mean, alien life forms?’ he said.

‘I mean exactly that. It is my determination that the course of this asteroid is not random. It has been aimed .’

‘You consider it a hostile act?’

‘I don’t know what else we can call it, Detective.’

‘But that means …’

‘That the British Empire is under attack.’

‘Your empire, you mean. The secret criminal empire of which you are master!’

‘Like a spider in the centre of a web,’ I said, tiredly. ‘What was it you called me when we last met? The Napoleon of crime? I am a mathematics professor, Mr Holmes. A good one.’

The truth was I rather liked the old boy. Of course he liked to claim he was the top of his field, but then he was the only one in his field. Mostly, he did divorce work, much as he tried to deny it. All around us the distinguished members were booing and shouting. Only Holmes understood, and yet he misunderstood profoundly.

‘They could be emissaries,’ he said. ‘Ambassadors from the red planet. If you are right—’

‘I am never wrong—’

‘ If you are right, then this is marvellous,’ he said. ‘A first meeting with an extraterrestrial race!’

He thought he understood people, you see. He had that trick where he guessed where you came from or what you did by the type of cigarette you smoked. He was an idiot.

‘I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this affair,’ I said.

‘You speak of danger,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Danger is part of my trade.’

‘That is not danger, you fool!’ I said. ‘It is inevitable destruction.’

He smiled, thinly and without charm. ‘Then I propose a wager.’

‘Oh? I did not have you pegged as a gambling man, Mr Holmes.’

‘Only when I can be sure of the outcome,’ he said, smugly.

I wondered if I should not let Moran shoot him. The Colonel was eager to play with his latest toy, some sort of air rifle used to hunt big game. It would have been wasted on Holmes. A knife in the ribs would have been quicker and quieter, and cost less to boot.

‘Speak your mind,’ I said. No one else was listening. They were still ranting and raving, calling me delusional, a madman and a flake. It had become a sort of sport. To them I was a nobody, a provincial mathematician, and they were, or so they thought, the grand men of their day. Unbeknown to them, most were in hock to me already. The others would be blackmailed or robbed, perhaps murdered. I do not suffer fools.

‘You say it will hit in six months,’ he said. ‘Let us meet then, and go to welcome these life forms of yours. These Marsians . And we shall see who is right.’

I smiled at him pleasantly enough.

‘Gladly,’ I said. I had my own plans for the landing. By having Holmes along, I thought, I could kill two birds with one stone.

Though, as it turned out, I had underestimated our strange visitors from another world. And it had cost me: it had cost me dearly.

The trajectory of the asteroid’s fall led me to conclude that it would make landing somewhere near Woking, Surrey. It seemed unlikely to be a coincidence. It was far enough from urban habitation to be discreet, yet close enough to London to make any kind of attack a swift one. It was visible now in the night sky, a red, baleful eye, which had drawn a crowd and some members of the constabulary, trying to keep the peace, including that buffoon, Lestrade, of Scotland Yard.

When we arrived it was night. Holmes was already waiting, smoking a pipe, leaning against a fence with a nonchalance that didn’t fool me for a minute. He was a hopeless addict, and I could see by the shaking of his hands and the feverish look in his eyes that he had taken enough cocaine to give an elephant a heart attack. What he was seeing in the night sky was anyone’s guess, at that point. It must have seemed a magical fireworks display to him, some ethereal wonderland in the night.

To me, that red glare meant nothing less than a declaration of war.

‘Stand back, stand back!’ Lestrade shouted.

The observers gaped at the sky in a bovine fashion. Holmes gave me a nod and I nodded back, guardedly. I had my own plans for this extraterrestrial invasion.

My men had surrounded Horsell Common. They were hidden in the trees, drawn from the mean streets of London: heavy men, with heavy guns. My plan was simple. As soon as the asteroid – meteoroid, now, and soon to be a meteorite – landed, my men would open fire. Anyone who got in their way – a certain detective, say, or a dim-witted Scotland Yard inspector – would be blasted to kingdom come. I quite relished that thought.

‘I wonder what type of cigarette tobacco they smoke,’ Holmes said, dreamily. I saw his man, Watson, emerge from the trees then, fumbling with his belt.

‘This is no time to go to the loo,’ Holmes murmured. Watson shrugged. He was a small, stocky man who moved with a slight limp in bad weather.

We watched the sky, and that hateful red glow coming nearer and nearer.

Now there were only the three of us left, Moran and Fagin and I. The boy, Twist, we left behind. He was no use to anyone any more. We crept through the city’s dark curfew.