Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

Krane spread his hands again. “It’s obvious, ain’t it? We completely reject the modern world and all its madness. We have turned our back on that, and gone back to living how the human race was supposed to live, before technology subverted us.”

They’d rejected science, in other words. It was not the first example Holmes had heard of that, but this seemed an extreme one. Gazing round the camp again, he could not see a generator anywhere, nor any item run by batteries. The only concession to this age at all was a rusted old Jeep parked behind Krane’s tent. Americans must have their cars , was his wry thought.

This community had managed to sink a well, and that must have taken more than a few shovels. Otherwise, he might have stepped back several centuries.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that you expect to survive in an environment as harsh as this one without the slightest modern contrivance?”

“Sure. The Indians did it for centuries, so why shouldn’t we?”

“And besides,” Krane added, raising up his eyes and lifting his hands slightly, “we have the Old Gods looking after us.”

And there it was again, that oblique pagan reference. There were no such things as any ‘Old Gods’. If Krane had gotten these young people to believe in nonsense of that sort, he truly was a scoundrel.

Holmes regarded them again. They barely blinked as they stared back. Their pretty young faces were expressionless as cattle, and he found himself wondering if their leader had managed to mesmerise them in some way.

So many of them, though? More were coming forward the whole time, venturing out from the rows of wigwams. There’d been examples in the past of mass hypnotism but … so many, over such a timescale?

“You’re all here of your free will, then?” he asked out loud to the assembled mob.

“Well of course—” Krane began.

Holmes raised a hand of his own.

“I’m asking them, not you.”

And he stared bleakly at them.

One by one, these children nodded. Several of them even smiled. At first glance, at least, they seemed entirely happy with this primitive existence. But then Holmes noticed something that gave him genuine cause to revise that.

Right at the very back of the group, there was a dark-haired girl – about eighteen years old and terribly pretty – who was neither smiling nor nodding. Her face was stiff. Her eyes were very wide.

The great detective wasn’t sure if he should bring her to the others’ notice. It occurred to him he might be putting her in danger. But she might well be in danger anyway, considering what had happened to the other three. And that made Holmes’ mind up.

He abruptly began marching in her direction. Krane tried to grab hold of his sleeve, but Holmes brushed him off.

“What do you think you’re doing, pilgrim?”

“I’d just like to have a little chat.”

It would be no such thing, of course. But there was no other way to do this.

Holmes stopped in front of the young woman, who was lovely in a baby-faced way. She was very thin, but not malnourished. And was holding herself with her shoulders stooped, her whole upper body trying to draw in on itself. Indeed, she looked considerably alarmed to have become the focus of everyone’s attention.

He ignored that.

“And you, madam?” he asked her firmly. “Are you happy here?”

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. She looked as though she wished the ground might open up beneath her.

“Amy?” Holmes heard Krane utter behind him.

So that was her name. He waited.

The girl wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was staring bewilderedly into her leader’s face. A strange light flared up in her eyes, and a shudder ran right through her narrow limbs.

She appeared to have forgotten where she was for a brief moment.

Then she turned to Holmes and blurted, “Yes, of course. Of course I am. Why do you even ask?”

And before another word could be said, she had turned around and bolted. Holmes watched gravely as she disappeared into a tent.

“Satisfied?” Krane was asking.

No, not at all. There was something terribly wrong going on here. But Holmes, of course, did not say that.

Some time later that afternoon, Sheriff Moore phoned Holmes in his room and told him, “We’ve found her records. Amy Hamilton from Boise, Idaho. We got her down as a runaway, but from a year back. She’s eighteen now, and her own person.”

“Theoretically,” Holmes pointed out.

The sheriff’s tone became a little more uncertain. “Are you sure that it was wise, bringing Krane’s attention to her like that? She was obviously unhappy about something, and I can’t imagine he’d be too delighted.”

“He’ll keep his eye on her,” Holmes said. “Which means that, for the next couple of days at least, she’ll find it hard to run away. Considering what happened to the others who attempted that, I’d say that might work to her advantage.”

Except that when he put the handset down, he let out a lengthy breath. By God, he hoped that he was right – that he had not endangered the poor woman.

It was going to be a waiting game from this point on. Holmes stared out through his window at the desert. He could have chosen one of the luxurious hotels in town, but instead had opted for an old but pleasant motel on the city’s very edge. The patterns on the furniture were faded, but the room was very clean. The television set was practically a relic, but it worked.

The foliage of the Sonoran plains was clearly visible from here. The shadows across it were beginning to lengthen.

Holmes felt impatience grip him, but he reined it in. He forced himself to read a while. Then – once the purple light of evening had begun to grip the landscape – he phoned a local takeout and ordered a meal. The young Hispanic fellow who brought it to him was extremely cheerful. Since leaving the artificiality of Las Vegas behind, he had come to genuinely like this south-west part of the United States. The landscapes were stunning, obviously. And the people, although unrefined, were friendly and hospitable to a fault.

Harlan Moore might strike you as a big grinning buffoon when you first met him, but the man had a shrewdness that he kept well hidden, and Holmes liked the cut of the man’s jib.

The skies began to darken, but there were still a couple of hours to be killed. Holmes switched on the TV, flicked through the channels, finding only the usual piffle, half of it in Spanish. He finally ordered up a movie, one of the Star Trek ones with the original cast. It wasn’t simply the imagination of the show that fascinated him – the far-flung cultures and the alien races. That was all very intriguing, of course, but there were many fictions of that kind these days. No, it was the mind-set of the characters themselves that he most warmed to.

Americans they might be. But Kirk, McCoy and all the others – to Holmes’ mind – embodied none other than the spirit and the morals of the long-dead British Empire. Courage. Honesty. Devotion to duty. A selflessness in the face of danger. A firm conviction of what things were right and what were wrong.

When they explored – which they always did boldly – it seemed as though the blood of Burton, Speke and Livingstone flowed through their veins. And when they were forced to do battle, they went about it with the sound heart and the steady hand of a Kitchener or Gordon.

How marvellous to find such attitudes still alive in this modern age. Except that it was only fiction.

The harsh truth was – and Holmes knew it only too well – that even in his own country of origin, the principles which drove the Empire had been long ago abandoned. Greed was good and self was all these days. Little wonder that so many people tried to reject this society in favour of a simpler one.