“Impostor!” declared my companion.
“I assure you that that is not the case,” said Mycroft. “I grant I’m not your brother, nor a habitue of the Diogenes Club, but I do share his name. I am a scientist—and I have used certain scientific principles to pluck you from your past and bring you into my present.”
For the first time in all the years I had known him, I saw befuddlement on my companion’s face. “It is quite true,” I said to him.
“But why?” said Holmes, spreading his long arms. “Assuming this mad fantasy is true—and I do not grant for an instant that it is—why would you thus kidnap myself and my good friend, Dr. Watson?”
“Because, Holmes, the game, as you used to be so fond of saying, is afoot.”
“Murder, is it?” asked I, grateful at last to get to the reason for which we had been brought forward.
“More than simple murder,” said Mycroft. “Much more. Indeed, the biggest puzzle to have ever faced the human race. Not just one body is missing. Trillions are. Trillions.”
“Watson,” said Holmes, “surely you recognize the signs of madness in the man? Have you nothing in your bag that can help him? The whole population of the Earth is less than two thousand millions.”
“In your time, yes,” said Mycroft. “Today, it’s about eight thousand million. But I say again, there are trillions more who are missing.”
“Ah, I perceive at last,” said Holmes, a twinkle in his eye as he came to believe that reason was once again holding sway. “I have read in The Illustrated London News of these dinosauria, as Professor Owen called them—great creatures from the past, all now deceased. It is their demise you wish me to unravel.”
Mycroft shook his head. “You should have read Professor Moriarty’s monograph called The Dynamics of an Asteroid,” he said.
“I keep my mind clear of useless knowledge,” replied Holmes curtly.
Mycroft shrugged. “Well, in that paper Moriarty quite cleverly guessed the cause of the demise of the dinosaurs: an asteroid crashing into Earth kicked up enough dust to block the sun for months on end. Close to a century after he had reasoned out this hypothesis, solid evidence for its truth was found in a layer of clay. No, that mystery is long since solved. This one is much greater.”
“And what, pray, is it?” said Holmes, irritation in his voice.
Mycroft motioned for Holmes to have a seat, and, after a moment’s defiance, my friend did just that. “It is called the Fermi paradox,” said Mycroft, “after Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist who lived in the twentieth century. You see, we know now that this universe of ours should have given rise to countless planets, and that many of those planets should have produced intelligent civilizations. We can demonstrate the likelihood of this mathematically, using something called the Drake equation. For a century and a half now, we have been using radio—wireless, that is— to look for signs of these other intelligences. And we have found nothing—nothing! Hence the paradox Fermi posed: if the universe is supposed to be full of life, then where are the aliens?”
“Aliens?” said I. “Surely they are mostly still in their respective foreign countries.”
Mycroft smiled. “The word has gathered additional uses since your day, good doctor. By aliens, I mean extraterrestrials— creatures who live on other worlds.”
“Like in the stories of Verne and Wells?” asked I, quite sure that my expression was agog.
“And even in worlds beyond the family of our sun,” said Mycroft.
Holmes rose to his feet. “I know nothing of universes and other worlds,” he said angrily. “Such knowledge could be of no practical use in my profession.”
I nodded. “When I first met Holmes, he had no idea that the Earth revolved around the sun.” I treated myself to a slight chuckle. “He thought the reverse to be true.”
Mycroft smiled. “I know of your current limitations, Sherlock.” My friend cringed slightly at the overly familiar address. “But these are mere gaps in knowledge; we can rectify that easily enough.”
“I will not crowd my brain with useless irrelevancies,” said Holmes. “I carry only information that can be of help in my work. For instance, I can identify one hundred and forty different varieties of tobacco ash—”
“Ah, well, you can let that information go, Holmes,” said Mycroft. “No one smokes anymore. It’s been proven ruinous to one’s health.” I shot a look at Holmes, whom I had always warned of being a self-poisoner. “Besides, we’ve also learned much about the structure of the brain in the intervening years. Your fear that memorizing information related to fields such as literature, astronomy, and philosophy would force out other, more relevant data, is unfounded. The capacity for the human brain to store and retrieve information is almost infinite.”
“It is?” said Holmes, clearly shocked.
“It is.”
“And so you wish me to immerse myself in physics and astronomy and such all?”
“Yes,” said Mycroft.
“To solve this paradox of Fermi?”
“Precisely!”
“But why me?”
“Because it is a puzzle, and you, my good fellow, are the greatest solver of puzzles this world has ever seen. It is now two hundred years after your time, and no one with a facility to rival yours has yet appeared.”
Mycroft probably could not see it, but the tiny hint of pride on my longtime companion’s face was plain to me. But then Holmes frowned. “It would take years to amass the knowledge I would need to address this problem.”
“No, it will not.” Mycroft waved his hand, and amidst the homely untidiness of Holmes’s desk appeared a small sheet of glass standing vertically. Next to it lay a strange metal bowl. “We have made great strides in the technology of learning since your day. We can directly program new information into your brain.” Mycroft walked over to the desk. “This glass panel is what we call a monitor. It is activated by the sound of your voice. Simply ask it questions, and it will display information 011 any topic you wish. If you find a topic that you think will be useful in your studies, simply place this helmet on your head” (he indicated the metal bowl), “say the words ‘load topic,’ and the information will be seamlessly integrated into the neural nets of your very own brain. It will at once seem as if you know, and have always known, all the details of that field of endeavor.”
“Incredible!” said Holmes. “And from there?”
“From there, my dear Holmes, I hope that your powers of deduction will lead you to resolve the paradox—and reveal at last what has happened to the aliens!”
“Watson! Watson!”
I awoke with a start. Holmes had found this new ability to effortlessly absorb information irresistible and he had pressed on long into the night, but I had evidently fallen asleep in a chair. I perceived that Holmes had at last found a substitute for the sleeping fiend of his cocaine mania: with all of creation at his fingertips, he would never again feel that emptiness that so destroyed him between assignments.
“Eh?” I said. My throat was dry. I had evidently been sleeping with my mouth open. “What is it?”
“Watson, this physics is more fascinating than I had ever imagined. Listen to this, and see if you do not find it as compelling as any of the cases we have faced to date.”
I rose from my chair and poured myself a little sherry—it was, after all, still night and not yet morning. “I am listening.”
“Remember the locked and sealed room that figured so significantly in that terrible case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra?”
“How could I forget?” said I, a shiver traversing my spine. “If not for your keen shooting, my left leg would have ended up as gamy as my right.”