Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

Now as Holmes came in through the shadows of girders and wheels, he saw that Adams kept removing his straw hat and mopping his brow with his linen handkerchief—the unshaded overhead work lamps gleamed on his bald head each time he removed the hat—and was busy talking to a tall young man dressed in a far-too-heavy wool suit who, because of the young man’s long black hair, sharp beak of a nose, copper complexion, and black eyes, Holmes took to be a Red Indian. Adams was lecturing and looked as excited as a school boy.

“ . . . But this! This, Mr. Slow Horse, the ancient Greeks would have delighted to see and the Venetians, at their height, would have envied. Chicago has turned on us with a sort of wonderful, defiant contempt, and shown us something far more powerful even than art, infinitely more important than mere business. This is, alas or hurrah, the future , Mr. Slow Horse! Yours and mine both, I fear . . . and yet hope at the same time. I can revel and write postcards about the fakes and frauds of the Midway Plaisance, but each day I pass through the Machinery Hall and each evening I return here, to this very chamber, to stare like an old owl at the dynamo of the future . . .”

Adams seemed to hear his own lecturing tone, took off his straw hat and mopped his scalp again, and said more softly to the young man as Holmes came up behind them—“I must apologize again, sir. I babble on as if you were an audience rather than an interlocutor. What do you think of this dynamo and the now-quiescent wonders of the Machinery Hall, where I’ve seen you staring each day even as I do, Mr. Slow Horse?”

The tall Indian paused before speaking and his voice shocked Holmes it was so resonant. “I think, Mr. Adams,” said the tall, dark man, “that it is the true and revealed religion of your race.”

Adams launched into another excited speech and Holmes made himself known to him—he knew that the Indian had noticed him enter and knew where he was the entire time he’d been in the vast space with them—and Adams was saying, “The Virgin Mary was to the men of the thirteenth century what this dynamo and its brother shall be to . . .”

He realized that Holmes was standing there and stammered to a stop. He removed his straw hat again and said, “Mr. Slow Horse, may I present my companion at the Fair today, the eminent Sher . . . that is . . . the eminent Norwegian explorer, Mr. Jan Sigerson.”

Instead of offering his hand, Holmes stood straight, heels together, and bowed toward the man in an almost Germanic fashion. The Red Indian nodded back but also seemed as reluctant to touch bare hands as Holmes was. Without knowing how or why he knew, Holmes knew that this young man—not quite so young seen close up, Holmes realized, noting the creases around the eyes probably only a year or two short of Holmes’s own 39 years—was not only a Lakota Sioux of the kind that Holmes had met more than 17 years ago, but was a wičasa wakan —a holy man of that tribe, a shaman, a man touched with the ability to see in more dimensions than most human beings.

“It is a true pleasure to meet you, Mr. Slow Horse,” said Holmes. “We Europeans rarely get the opportunity to meet a practicing wičasa wakan from the Natural Free Human Beings.”

The Indian, whose real name Holmes had known instantly and absolutely was not “Slow Horse”, looked at Holmes in a way even more alert and startled than could be explained by this white man’s use of the proper Lakota term.

Henry Adams, holding the brim of his straw hat in both hands, took two steps backwards from the two men. Adams felt he was looking at two huge eagles staring into one another’s eyes.

Holmes broke the gaze first. He turned to Adams. “I apologize for interrupting, Henry, but Lizzie and the Senator are waiting at Franklin’s steam launch at the main pier. Evidently we’re running a little late for Mayor Harrison’s dinner.”

Adams said something to the Indian and turned to leave. Holmes bowed toward the tall man again—still afraid, for some reason, to touch his bare hand—and said, “It has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Slow Horse, and I can only hope that someday the wasichu wanagi will no longer be a problem for you.”

Holmes realized that he’d said that he hoped “the Fat Taker’s ghost, that is, the white man’s ghost , would no longer be a problem for the man”, but he had no idea why he’d said it. The Indian responded only by blinking rapidly.

Holmes turned in embarrassment and followed Henry Adams out of the roaring Intramural Railroad Building and had gone about a hundred yards before he stopped, touched the historian’s arm, and said, “Please go out to the yacht with the Camerons. I just remembered one last thing I have to do.”

“Well . . .” said Adams, seemingly shaken by something he’d seen or sensed. “If you must, but it would be a crime for you to miss Mayor Harrison’s dinner . . .”

Holmes nodded even though he hadn’t really heard Adams’s words. He turned and jogged back to the railroad building.

The Indian was gone. Holmes jogged down actual dirt paths and then narrow lanes back to the Parade Ground near the railway entrances, thinking that if the Indian gentleman were there as part of Buffalo Bill’s adjacent show, this would be the way he’d leave the fairgrounds.

It was. Holmes caught up to him just before the man went through the metal turning spokes of the exit.

“Mr. Slow Horse!”

The tall man turned slowly. He looked unsurprised to see Holmes again.

“I . . . there’s something I must . . . if you could help me with . . . I’m sorry,” stammered Sherlock Holmes. “Your name is not Slow Horse, is it?”

“No, it is Paha Sapa,” said the other.

“Black Hills,” whispered Holmes.

“And your real name is not Sigerson,” said Paha Sapa. “You did not even try to hide your Oxbridge English accent.”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes.” He held out his hand and finally the Indian took it.

Holmes felt the greatest shock in his life, at least since the three bullets had struck him in the Himalayas. He saw and knew immediately that Paha Sapa had felt the same energy pass between them.

When their hands released, the energy was still there between them—far stronger than the ozone and charge in the dynamo room.

“I must ask you, Paha Sapa,” said Holmes, “how can I tell if I am real or not?”

“Wicaśta ksapa kiŋ ia,” said Paha Sapa.

Holmes somehow understood. “The wise man speaks . . .”

“But I do not yet know if I am a wise man,” Paha Sapa finished in English.

“Tell me anyway,” said Holmes. “I already know that I am not a wise enough man to answer this question.”

Paha Sapa’s eyes pierced him—it was a physical sensation of being pierced, as with arrows.

“All men born to women are real,” said Paha Sapa. “But even some of them are . . . faint. Weak in reality. The strongest beings are those who sing themselves into existence.”

“I don’t understand,” said Holmes.

“The Six Grandfathers were not born of women, but they are real,” said Paha Sapa. “I and all my fathers and grandfathers before me have helped sing them into reality.”

Holmes’s expression asked the question— How?

“By telling their stories,” said Paha Sapa and afterwards Holmes could not remember if it had been said in Lakota or English. “By telling their own stories. But mostly by having others tell their stories.” Paha Sapa paused a second before saying almost fiercely, “Telling them and believing them!”

“Yes,” said Holmes, not sure exactly what he was agreeing with but knowing that he agreed with all his heart and soul. “Pilamayaye,” said Holmes. “Thank you.” It was not enough, but it was all he could get out.