A Distant Port, Part Four

by J. Rosemary Moss

Genre: Slash Fan Fiction (Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek)

Rating: PG-13

Link to Part One

~

I felt my entire body quiver as the breath was sucked out of me--and then the light dissipated and, miraculously, Holmes and I were both still alive and unharmed. But the stairs and the hotel were gone. We were in an unfamiliar chamber, staring at a red-shirted stranger who was standing behind a counter. He looked astonished to see us.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded in a brogue that must have originated in Scotland.

Holmes opened his mouth to answer, but a strange whirring sound interrupted him. The Scotsman turned to some sort of equipment that was built into the counter.

“Transporter room,” the Scotsman said to the equipment. “Mr. Scott here.”

“Kirk here, Scotty,” a disembodied voice answered. “Mr. Holmes has outwitted us--prepare to beam up Bones and Spock from the following coordinates.”

It was the same voice that had spoken over Mr. Spock’s communicator; I was sure of that.

“Aye, Captain,” Mr. Scott returned, shooting us a look of disapproval.

Captain? My stomach plummeted. Holmes had plunged us into difficulties with the military--presumably Vulcan’s military. I prayed that Capt. Kirk was at least human, as were the Scotsman and Dr. McCoy.

Mr. Scott, meanwhile, was shaking his head at us. “Come down here, lads,” he ordered. “And don’t get in the way.”

Holmes and I complied, but Holmes, I noticed, did not look in the least chagrinned. On the contrary, he seemed delighted to find himself in these alien surroundings. He gave me a wink and then turned to face the platform which we had just descended.

I turned toward it as well, in time to see both Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy appear in separate beams of light. A moment ago the platform was empty--now the two men stood before us, presumably ‘beamed up’ from the hotel. It was nothing short of a miracle!

Mr. Spock descended the platform immediately and held out his hand to Holmes. “My communicator,” he ordered.

Holmes--with considerable reluctance--handed him the device. “My apologies, Mr. Spock,” he said in a voice that was anything but contrite. “I required further proof of your alien origins. Your intriguing anatomy proved only that you are not human; not that you originated on another planet.”

McCoy rolled his eyes as he too stepped off the platform. “We’re not going to take you all the way to Vulcan just to show you his home town.”

“That will not be necessary,” Holmes agreed. “A tour of this--ship?--should suffice. We are aboard a ship of some sort, are we not?”

Spock cocked his head at him. “Yes, we are. It is called, colloquially, a starship. And your request is logical,” he conceded, “but the decision will rest with our captain.”

“Of course,” Holmes murmured. “Tell me, how many humans serve aboard this Vulcan vessel?”

“Vulcan vessel?” the Scotsman spurted, outraged. “The Vulcans are fine engineers, laddie, make no mistake. And we’ve learned our share from them. But the Enterprise is largely of human design. Why, we launched her straight from San Francisco--”

He stopped abruptly as he noticed Mr. Spock’s cold glare. “Ach, I’m sorry. Too much information, no doubt. But they already knew that they were aboard a starship.”

“It would have been preferable to leave Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson with the impression that this is a Vulcan vessel, Mr. Scott,” Spock said in that dry monotone of his.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about that now,” McCoy said cheerfully. “Welcome to the technology of the 23rd century, boys.”

I turned to Holmes, but he was gaping at Mr. Scott. Gradually, however, his features turned from shock to acceptance. “If you have, indeed, traveled back in time, that would account for the discrepancies--man has reached the stars in the 23rd century?”

“Aye, that he has laddie,” Scotty said proudly.

At that moment, the door to the chamber opened. It slid open, rather. A handsome man in a gold shirt strode inside as the door slid shut again. There was an umistakable air of authority about him as he raised his eyebrows at Holmes and me.

“Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, I presume,” he said as he held out his hand.

“Yes,” Holmes confirmed as he accepted the stranger’s hand and shook it. “And you, sir, must be Capt. Kirk.”

“I am,” he agreed as he turned toward me and shook my hand. “You gentlemen are proving to be quite a bit of trouble--I hope you’re worth it. You already know Mr. Spock, my first officer, and Dr. McCoy, my chief medical officer. This is Mr. Scott, chief of engineering.”

“May we have a tour of this ship, Captain?” Holmes inquired with what I considered a shocking and inappropriate boldness.

The captain, fortunately, was more amused by Holmes’ forwardness than offended. “I’m tempted to give you a tour of the brig for imitating my first officer,” he said with a grin. “But if you find Sulu, Mr. Holmes, I’ll give you a guided tour of the Enterprise myself.”

Holmes bowed. “Agreed, Captain.”

“Mr. Scott will beam all four of you back to the hotel room,” Kirk continued. “If you’ll step back up--”

“Ah, there is one other matter, sir,” Holmes interjected. “Can you provide Watson and me with communicators for the duration of this case? If I understand them correctly, they will allow us immediate contact with you in an emergency--and perhaps immediate contact with each other.”

Kirk gave him a level look and then burst into another grin. “I have to admire your chutzpah, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “All right. We’ll issue a pair of communicators to you two. Why not? What's a few more regulations at this point? But if you abuse them, gentlemen, I promise that you'll become quite well acquainted with the brig.”

But Holmes was undeterred by that threat. He was raising an eyebrow at Kirk. “Chutzpah, sir?” he asked, repeating the word without, I thought, quite the flair that Kirk had given it.

“A word derived from the human language known as Yiddish, Mr. Holmes,” Spock supplied. “It’s approximate meaning is extreme audacity.”

“The captain means that you’ve got some balls,” McCoy added.

“That is not quite the translation, Doctor,” Spock objected. “However, there is another Yiddish phrase--”

“Never mind, Spock,” Bones said, giving the Vulcan an affectionate pat on the back. “Let’s show these boys how to use the communicators...and how to keep them out of sight.”

~

At length Spock, McCoy, Holmes and I ‘beamed’ back down to the hotel room. McCoy, I noticed, was grimacing throughout. I believe I heard him mutter something against the ‘damned transporter.’ I confess that I felt relieved at that. I do not think myself a coward, but the thought of some mishap in that beam of light terrified me.

I had not, I confess, adjusted to the information we had learned aboard the starship Enterprise. Unlike Holmes, who was positively elated at the thought of time-traveling humans from the future, I found the notion deeply disturbing. I could not even begin to imagine the implications…

“Let us meet back here at ten o’clock tonight,” Holmes said, jerking me out of my thoughts. “The four of us should divide into pairs: we have a fair bit of ground to cover. I think it will be best if Spock and I pair up while the two doctors do likewise; that way one man in each pair will know London and the other will have a phaser.”

None of us objected, but I raised my eyebrows at Holmes. “Where are we searching, precisely?”

“I shall have a list of establishments this evening,” Holmes answered. “In short, Doctor, I believe we’ll find Mr. Sulu in a brothel.”

McCoy’s eyebrows shot up at that. “He’d best be alive and well when we find him--if he’s been enjoying himself in a brothel this whole time, I’m going to strangle him.”

Spock, meanwhile, was cocking his head at Holmes. “Sulu would not have attended a brothel in this time period--not, at any event, to take part in the ‘pleasures’ it offered. Apart from the risk of disease, he would know that he was breaking a strict regulation regarding our interactions with the native populace here.”

“Be at ease, Mr. Spock,” Holmes said. “I do not believe that Sulu intended to, ah, indulge himself. I suspect, rather, that his chivalrous nature got the better of him.”

“I still don’t understand,” McCoy put in. “Why wouldn’t he have left us some word? And why would he have left his phaser and communicator behind? If he'd been expecting trouble, he would have taken both.”

“All in good time, Doctor,” Holmes promised. “Until this evening, gentlemen.”

~

“I still do not understand how you concluded that Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are sodomites,” I said as I thrust down the paper in my hands.

Holmes glanced up from the chair opposite me and raised his eyebrows in astonishment. “My dear fellow, is that all you can think about? After all we’ve learned today?”

I gave him what I hoped was a wry grin. “I am trying my damnedest, old boy, not to think of all we’ve learned today. I assure you that I am not yet equal to it.”

He smiled appreciatively at that. “Understandable,” he owned. But then his face grew serious and his grey eyes began to bore into mine. They had a queer look to them. He kept staring, but at length he seemed to reach a decision.

“I’m a sodomite myself, Watson,” he confessed, “so no doubt I am more familiar with the signs than most men.”

I inhaled sharply. For a long moment, I could only stare back at him. And yet somehow I was not surprised. I had already known this, I realized. And now that the words hung between us, out in the open, they did not seem so very shocking.

He paused and looked away. "I trust that you will keep that information confidential? The law can be rather tiresome in some regards."

I continued to stare. Holmes’ indifference to the fair sex and extreme devotion to logic had led me to describe him as a sort of cold, calculating machine--rather like Mr. Spock. But Holmes wasn’t cold in the least; he is as passionate a man as I have ever known. I have long been aware of that.

And while I did not, of course, approve of sodomy, I did not mean to look down my nose at my friend. It might be an unfortunate weakness on his part, but it did not detract from his greatness. And I must admit that I was flattered by the trust he placed in me. A trust I had no intention of breaking.

“Of course,” I managed at last. “You must know that I would never betray any secret of yours, Holmes.”

He turned back to face me again. “Will you be packing your bags?”

I shook my head at once. “Certainly not, old man. Did you think to frighten me off so easily?”

He managed a smile at that. “Very good.”

He sank back into his chair and seemed to dismiss our conversation. In fact, his brow suddenly furrowed in thought. I could tell that his mind had drifted back to the Enterprise and our peculiar case. I should have been relieved, I suppose, but I almost found myself wishing to discuss his revelation in greater detail. Had Holmes a lover? Was there a Dr. McCoy in his life?

“I expect a message to arrive at any moment,” he said. “That should give me some idea of where to begin our search tonight.”

“Who will the message be from?” I asked, forcing my mind back to the case.

“Maggie,” he answered. “You do remember how I asked you to wait outside the hotel for me before we left? Well, I renewed my acquaintance with the chambermaid and introduced myself properly this time. She’s quite willing to be of assistance.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “In exchange for another pleasant flirtation?’

He laughed. “Well, there was a bit of that. But my girl now prefers to be paid in a more tangible fashion. But the cost is negligible compared to what we’re earning for this case.”

I grinned, content with that response. It is perhaps not surprising that I was no longer worried by ‘his girl.’ I was now fairly certain that he would not be swept away by her.

LINK TO PART FIVE