It took a lot less time than John had imagined for his premonition to be confirmed. Now that they were firmly in space and the travel tablets had kicked in he felt better, and decided that a drink was in order. He turned to his neighbour.
"Fancy a drink?"
In response he got an amused look. "Have you ever been in the bar of one of these?"
John looked dubious. "Surely it can't be that bad. I was in the military, remember."
Sherlock gave him a short, hard stare before conceding. "Very well."
As they entered the rear of the craft John was unpleasantly reminded of the rough local that his squad occasionally visited during his time on the Moon. There had been a lot of trouble there and this place looked little different, space craft or not.
It was dingy and the smell of stale beer mingled with the illicit cigarette smoke into an unsavoury atmosphere. Most seats were taken, the clientele having a seasoned look about them already even though they had been in space less than an hour. Miners, mostly, John figured, on their way out for their regular three-month shifts. Other than the shifty-looking man behind the bar there was no sign of any crew. What remained of the no-smoking signs that once adorned the walls had been heavily defaced. It didn't look like anyone had cleaned up in here for weeks. The place breathed trouble.
Enter at your own risk, John thought as he made his way to the bar, Sherlock following shortly behind. The shifty barman came over, looking him up and down, and gave a grunt to signal that he was ready to take their order. John tried to put on a pleasant face and ignore the state of the place and its host. The bar itself looked like it had the standard metal surface like the ones on the military convoys, but it was hard to tell under all the grime. John tried not to touch it.
"Pint of lager, please," he said, turning to Sherlock. "What are you having?"
Sherlock moved next to him at the bar, his impeccable looks incongruous with the state of this place. He briefly looked over the row of spirits at the back of the counter.
"Macallan please. But not from that bottle." He nodded to indicate the bottle on the rack, and the barman narrowed his eyes.
"And what, pray, is wrong with that bottle?" He was mimicking Sherlock's speech, and a few heads around the bar and adjoining tables turned to see what was happening. Most looked less than friendly, and John was beginning to wonder if coming to this place had been a mistake.
Sherlock remained unperturbed, calmly regarding the bar man. "It's been cut with something cheap. There are clear signs of tampering around the neck and besides, the colour is wrong."
The barman gave him a long, mean look, which Sherlock returned calmly. Then he reached under the bar and produced an unopened bottle. Sherlock's gaze never left him as the man filled a clean glass with ice and poured the whisky, then pulled John a pint. The sound of glass hitting metal as he put the two drinks down on the bar far too hard spoke volumes.
John had watched the exchange with some trepidation, all senses on the alert. Everything told him they were treading on a knife edge here, and his preoccupation with what the other patrons as well as the bar man were doing made him slow; before he could pay, Sherlock had taken out his wallet and handed the bar man a twenty-dollar note, dryly adding, "I'll have the change."
John made to protest, but Sherlock cut him off quietly. "Leave it." He handed John his drink, and as John accepted he looked at Sherlock's face. There was no mistaking the twinkling in Sherlock's eyes. He's actually enjoying this, John thought incredulously. He wondered what kind of madman thought it would be fun to defame the barman in a place like this.
They made their way to the last remaining empty table, in a smoky corner right towards the rear of the room. Almost without thinking John positioned himself with his back to the wall, overlooking the other patrons and with a good view of the bar. Sherlock, on the other hand, pointedly moved his chair so that he faced only John, his back turned upon the barman and the rest of the room.
John lifted his glass with a dubious look on his face. "Cheers, I think. I'm sorry for making you come here."
"No need to apologise. It is proving to be an interesting diversion." Sherlock tipped his glass briefly towards John's and took a sip, then put the glass back down with a small satisfied smile.
John wondered what the man did for a living that made going into a dodgy bar seem like an interesting diversion. He was about to ask when he noticed that a group of men a few tables away were obviously talking about them. The way they kept surreptitiously pointing in their direction, accompanied by the furtive looks of ill intent made John sit up, alert.
He didn't have his gun. It was hidden in his main luggage, no doubt still making its way to Mars. If he was lucky he'd get it on arrival, if he wasn't he would have to wait another two or three days for it. As it was, he was unarmed and feeling acutely vulnerable. His shoulder still ached and he wasn't sure how much use he would be if it came to a fight. Even so, he was determined not to go down lightly should it come to that.
He looked back at Sherlock, who was watching him intently. Quietly, Sherlock said, "trouble?"
John nodded, just a little bit. "Think so." Sherlock only raised an eyebrow in response, picked up his drink and took a slow sip. "How many?"
"Five," John responded. "But they're only thinking about it."
Sherlock put his glass back down and looked at it for a moment, thoughtful. "Stay where you are and don't do anything stupid."
John stared at his companion, surprise battling it out with offence. "What? Mister… I mean Sherlock, I got you in here in the first place. I am not going to sit here watching while they beat the crap out of you." He managed to keep his voice down, but only just.
A slow and altogether worrying smile spread across Sherlock's face. "Oh, I'd like to see them try."
At that moment their argument was cut short as one of the group of five men got up and swaggered over to their table, his moves looking a little odd and bouncy with the low gravity. It's hard to look like a heavy when you aren't, in fact, heavy, John couldn't help thinking. Even so, he wouldn't underestimate this guy.
The man stopped at the side of Sherlock, put his right hand on the table and leaned over menacingly. "Hey, posh boy. You're in my seat."
Sherlock rolled his eyes, and John was sure he muttered "predictable" before turning to face the man, looking him over briefly. John looked at the unlikely combination – Sherlock, elegant, stylish and slender verging on underweight, looking completely out of place here. His opponent was at least a head shorter than Sherlock, stocky, muscular, overweight and drunk.
Unfortunately John could see that Sherlock was no match for the sheer muscle of the guy, and he steeled himself for a fight. "Leave him alone. The seats are here for everyone."
Surprised, Sherlock turned and looked at John. The miner sneered. "Oh, defending him, are you. Afraid the pretty suit might get scuffed?" He turned to Sherlock again, leaning further towards him. His face was threateningly close to Sherlock's now and there was no mistaking his intentions. The taller man regarded him calmly, not even blinking.
The miner narrowed his eyes. "Well, you shouldn't be taking people's seats if you can't fight your own fights." Taking his hand off the table he pushed Sherlock roughly on the shoulder.
What happened next went so quickly that it took John a moment to catch up. Sherlock jumped up, pushing the chair back with such force that it went flying across the floor, following a weird-looking arc in the low-g environment. In the same move he raised his fist, punching the man squarely on the chin as he came up.
The miner was caught completely unawares and for a second looked stunned, stumbling backwards while clutching his jaw. It was all the time Sherlock needed, as he delivered what looked to John like some kind of flat-handed karate punch to the guy's solar plexus. The man doubled over with a gurgling noise and collapsed towards the floor, travelling in a comical slow motion, gradually sagging backwards until he came to rest a few feet from the table that he had started from. There he remained, gagging and fighting for breath.
Sherlock gave the man a look of utter disdain, straightening his jacket as he turned back to John. Then he retrieved his chair and sat back down. He didn't even look to see what the other men would do, John thought.
He didn't need to. The men at the other table sat and gaped for some time, then a couple of them got up to help their fallen comrade. After a while they managed to lift him back up onto his chair where he sat, looking somewhat green and coughing occasionally. It didn't look as if anyone from the group was planning anything else, John observed, although they were muttering amongst themselves in hushed tones.
He looked at Sherlock who was sitting there completely unruffled, looking smug if anything, and slowly drinking his whisky. "Well," said John. "That was spectacular."
Sherlock briefly raised a dismissive eyebrow. "Hm. It was predictable." Then he gave John a quizzical look. "You didn't need to defend me, though. You have no loyalty to me. You don't even know me."
John shrugged. "I don't like a bully. Besides, I got you into this mess in the first place." As an afterthought he added, "Anyway, you couldn't have taken all five of them on in one go."
Sherlock looked at him a moment longer, his face unreadable, then returned his attention to his glass. John wondered if he was wrong, whether Sherlock could have dealt with them all, or whether he would have needed John's help. He was beginning to believe that there was a lot more to this 'posh boy' than met the eye. After a while he remembered his beer.
They drank in silence for some time, Sherlock appearing to have no interest in any further conversation. John was dying to find out what Sherlock did for a living, but he wasn't sure how the question would go down, or even how to ask it. "So, do you often get to beat people up?" just didn't seem to have the right ring to it.
Instead, John took another good look at their surroundings. The table was no cleaner than the bar, and he dreaded to think what his sleeve was stuck on when he lifted his glass off the surface. It struck him that Sherlock had so far managed not to touch the table at all. Even after the scuffle he still looked impeccable.
He moved on to contemplating his beer, not wishing to look at the room or he table any longer. The beer wasn't bad, as lager went, even if it was a little flat. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about it, and he quickly ran out of observations. All he could hope was that it hadn't been cut with anything worse than tap water. Momentarily at a loss for something to say or do he just concentrated on drinking it, without trying to think too much about anything at all, wondering how long Sherlock could keep quiet for.
In the end it was Sherlock who broke the silence. Suddenly focusing on him, he said, "So. You've got questions." It was a statement of fact, not a query. John decided now was as good a time as any.
"Yeah. What is it exactly you do for a living?"
Sherlock smiled a lopsided smile. "What do you think?"
John thought about his answer for a while. "I'd have said special police, blade runner, probably." He hesitated.
"But…?"
John waved his hand vaguely. "You just don't strike me as police." More like a replicant, he added to himself, but he didn't voice the thought.
"I'm a consulting detective. Only one in the universe. I invented the job."
"And what exactly does that mean?" It made no sense to John.
"It means that when the Interplanetary police are out of their depth, which is always, they call on me." Sherlock sat back again and took a long sip.
John laughed. He couldn't keep the disbelief from his voice when he said, "You're having me on. Interpol don't consult amateurs."
"You're right, they don't," Sherlock responded without a trace of humour. With one last draught he finished his glass and put it down. "You've seen what I do. I am not an amateur, Doctor."
Sore point, John thought. It struck him that Sherlock seemed a bit of a diva for all his apparent sophistication. Still, with a mind like that it wasn't all that surprising. He rescued the situation by getting the next round of drinks. To his immense satisfaction the five men at the table behind them pretended he didn't exist as he walked past, and the barman poured the whisky from the proper bottle without prompting.
John returned to the table and put Sherlock's drink down. "You've got the barman well trained already," he said. Sherlock smirked and picked up the glass. "I hadn't even started on him. He's a weasel. At a guess he is smuggling something, drugs probably, hidden in the fridges. He owes a lot of money."
John blinked, "Oh." He was quiet for a while, digesting this. "Are you going to, ehm, you know, confront him about it?"
Sherlock stared at his drink. "Probably not. As long as he doesn't try to serve me sub-standard whisky again. Or maybe I will, it might be diverting. Although it would shut the bar down, so not before our approach to Mars."
Definitely not police, John concluded. He still wasn't convinced that the guy wasn't a replicant though. He was simply too weird to be true. Combined with his extraordinary powers of observation and the lighting reactions the Tyrell slogan 'more human than human' fit rather too comfortably. He shirked away from the thought.
Instead, he went for safer ground. "So, are you visiting Mars on a case?"
But Sherlock seemed distracted, lost in thought, still staring at his drink. It took such a long time for him to answer that John was beginning to believe that he hadn't heard him. He cleared his throat, unobtrusively, seeing if he could get a reaction.
Sherlock looked up. "Hm? Yes, a case. Very much so." He looked back at his glass again and John wondered if that was it for the day. Just as he had come to the conclusion that Sherlock was not going to say anything else on the subject the taller man suddenly sat up and focused on him.
"You're a doctor. In fact you're an army doctor." John nodded. He wasn't sure where this was going.
Sherlock continued, "Any good?"
That got John right in the professional pride. He squared his shoulders and looked the other man straight in the face. "Very good."
If Sherlock noticed John's hurt feelings he didn't react. "Seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths?"
John nodded, remembering too many incidents on Earth, countless horrific injuries in the eternal war zones of the old Middle East, assimilated still only in name but never in spirit to the United Nations, or so it had seemed during his time there. The friends that were carried on makeshift stretchers into the camp surgery on the Moon, as ambush after ambush weakened their position and dwindled their numbers. He had saved them, most of them, at least. He could never forget the ones that he hadn't. He just nodded.
"A bit of trouble, too…?"
John didn't need to answer that. He just glanced at his shoulder. "Yes," he said. "Enough for a lifetime."
Sherlock regarded him for a moment longer, then nimbly fished his communicator from inside his jacket and flicked it open. "Want to see some more?"
John looked at him. It seemed to him that he was being offered a lifeline, something that could save him from being dragged down into the boredom of eking it out on an army pension with nothing else to do but applying for locum work when he arrived on Mars. Even if this was only for a few days, a week, it would be so much better than that. He felt a little of his old sense of adventure return, that well-known buzz, a feeling of opportunity. He didn't have to think twice.
"Oh God, yes."
Sherlock moved over quickly, planting his chair right next to John with an elegant flourish. He didn't look remotely unbalanced in the low gravity, John noticed, in fact it seemed to suit him. His movements looked more cat-like than ever.
John had to suppress the urge to move a little away from him, though. It didn't look like Sherlock had any concept of personal space, because he had moved in so close he was nearly touching him. However, before John could get too uncomfortable about it his attention was caught by the picture on Sherlock's screen.
The remains were those of a woman, he could tell that much, but only just. The amount of damage on her was simply astounding. John looked at it in horror for a few moments, then turned to Sherlock. "Who did this?"
Instead of answering, Sherlock called up another image. It was hard to tell the gender of this victim and John couldn't look at it for very long. "Jesus. What's doing this? Who are these people?"
Sherlock called up another photograph. This time John had to look very closely, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Finally he pulled back and looked at Sherlock. "A dog. That was a dog. Was it a real dog?"
Sherlock flipped his communicator shut and shook his head. "No, it was an animoid. There are two more human victims for which I haven't seen photographs yet. They have kept hold of the bodies of the last three victims, and we can examine them in person when we get to Mars." He put the thing back in his pocket.
"The victims are unrelated in any technical sense of the word. The murders have been committed all over the Mars colony in the last month, with no set pattern to them. But here is the interesting bit. They were all committed by different individuals."
John stared at him in disbelief. "No. How can that be?"
In response Sherlock smiled briefly. "They were all killed by replicants."
"What?" John couldn't believe what he was hearing. After everything that had happened twenty or so years ago, even now referred to as the Roy Batty debacle, this was simply unbelievable. Countless reassurance campaigns from the Tyrell Corporation to calm down public opinion had followed the death of old Tyrell. The rhetoric had continued year after year, the guarantees getting more self-assured with every new generation of Nexus replicants. Replicants are useful. Replicants are emotionally stable. Replicants are peaceful. Replicants are safe.
"How?" was all he could say. Sherlock was just observing him, waiting for him to come to grips with the information. Now he shrugged.
"Apparently, the replicants were known to the victims, and as far as we know they were trusted by them. It appears they turned unexpectedly violent. There is no pattern in the source of the replicants, they are from different batches, bought from a variety of suppliers, and were created for different purposes. The only thing that links them together so far is that they were Tyrell-made, and all less than a year old."
John raised his eyebrows. "Wow. So much for the Tyrell propaganda."
"Hm."
John stared at the table, lost in thought for some time. Just as he became aware that it had got awfully quiet around them, Sherlock suddenly spun round in his seat, arm outstretched, and seemed to grab something. John looked up, surprised, only to see the blade of a knife arc its way gracefully through the air in front of him, missing his face by a hair's breadth, and burying itself into the table an inch away from his hand with a dull thud.
For a moment he just stared at it, mesmerised, then he forced his eyes away from the knife trying to work out where it had come from. Looking over to where Sherlock had been he was surprised to see that the tall man was off his chair, kneeling down with his right leg on the back of one of the miners who was lying face down on the floor. Sherlock held the man's arm twisted high up on his back and the miner was groaning in pain, effectively immobilised.
John jumped up, ready to help, but Sherlock stopped him with a wave of his free hand. "No need, Doctor. I think I have things under control." He leaned over and whispered something in the man's ear. He took his time and John wondered whether it was an elaborate threat or a compromising deduction, and whether there was a difference. In any case, the man sagged noticably when Sherlock had finished.
Sherlock stood up and let the miner get to his feet. The man scrambled up and practically ran back to the table, not looking behind him and shaking visibly. He got a shock when he realised that Sherlock had followed. John smiled to see a grown man jump nearly a foot in the air with surprise, made to look even worse by the lack of gravity. Sherlock, on the other hand, just gave the guy a disdainful look, after which he turned to the other men around the table.
"Gentlemen, I have been very tolerant of your interferences so far today. However, I promise you that the next moron to inconvenience me will break a limb."
He regarded them a moment, letting the words sink in, then turned on his heels and returned to John, who sniggered. "Couldn't have said it better myself."
Sherlock looked at him, surprised, still serious from the confrontation. Then, suddenly, he broke into a wide grin which lit up his whole face. "Well. They were being moronic."
John giggled, getting very silly now. "Any particular limb you had in mind?"
"Oh, I don't know," Sherlock replied, just loud enough for the men to overhear. He looked serious again, but there was a wicked glint in his eye. "Upper arm, probably, just above the elbow. Extremely painful as well as long-winded to heal. That would also ensure the maximum time spent in an awkward cast. Very inconvenient when trying to keep down a job as a miner. And the drugs would prohibit any alcohol consumption for weeks."
John smiled wryly. He couldn't help but admire the guy's grasp of anatomy and he had no doubt that it wasn't an empty threat. Even so he had no wish to see things get to that point. He looked at his watch, trying to make sense of the time difference between Earth Central Time and the ITC's self-adopted ship time. By anyone's reckoning it was coming up to lunch time, and he very much doubted that any of the crew would be brave enough to serve them their food in here.
He got up. "How about trying the lunch?"
Sherlock shook his head. "No. I tend not to eat when I'm on a case. I find digestion slows me down." Even so, he finished his drink and stood up to follow John, who tried not to look too incredulous.
Before they went Sherlock reached over and pulled the knife out of the thin laminate of the table, studying it a moment. It was a simple flick-bladed pen knife, with a long tapered point and an old-fashioned ivory handle, sharp and no doubt lethal in the right hands. He closed it nimbly, flicked it into the air, caught it and slipped it into his pocket in the same motion. "I'll keep that."
Walking out of the bar was like walking out of a gloomy cave into the sunlight of a summer's day. Suddenly this part of the ship seemed welcoming, bright, and friendly. John took a deep breath, surprisingly relieved to have escaped in one piece, and made his way to their seats.
Sherlock slipped into his seat by the window and John sat down too. Once more Sherlock seemed to have gone into his shell, as almost immediately he was entirely focused on his communicator, apparently resuming the furiously typed conversation that he had been engaged in at the hotel, and seemingly unaware of John's existence.
John shrugged mentally; he wasn't on the lookout for a best mate after all. All he hoped was that the hint at getting him physically involved in this case had been sincere, that the man wasn't just humouring him. But then, Sherlock didn't seem the kind of person to humour anyone so he had to assume the invitation was genuine.
While waiting for the food he had a look at the in-flight magazine. Since he didn't envisage returning to the bar any time soon he wondered what other entertainment might be available. He flicked his way past the glossy advertainment features to the passenger information section. The aft of the ship was huge, obviously built at a time when luxury space travel was the up and coming thing, even if that had never really taken shape. There was space for all sorts apart from a disreputable bar there, he thought, looking at the ship's layout on the page and trying to work out what was what.
As it worked out the only things that were actually advertised were a games arcade and a cinema. The rest of the space wasn't designated as anything on the schematic. Computer games had never been John's interest so he disregarded the mention of the arcade, although four days of being in this place might bring him to that yet. He looked for the cinema listings. Consult your nearest vid screen for today's showings, it said in the magazine.
Well, that was no use. The nearest vid screen was cracked and looked as if it had been like that for years. It flashed green occasionally, suggesting that the mech team were in denial about it, hoping it might switch itself back on if they left it long enough. He looked at Sherlock.
"Do you want to see what's in the cinema later on?"
Sherlock turned to him. "Hm?"
John showed him the magazine. "Look. There's a cinema here. I just wondered if you wanted to come along."
Sherlock looked at him as if he was from a different planet. "Why?"
"Why not? It would break up the journey. And it's got to be better than the bar."
"Sorry, not interested."
"Don't you watch films?"
"Not as a rule."
"Cinema in space," John said, revelling in the memory. "That used to be the only enjoyable thing about the military convoys. You've got to try it if you've never been."
Sherlock was frowning now, bemused. "No I don't."
"Why not? Are you really going to spend four days bashing that communicator and staring out of the window at the void?"
The look Sherlock was giving him spoke volumes. He was regarding him now as if he was a completely different species. John didn't need to be a consulting detective to understand that nobody had recently, or ever, asked this man to come and see a film.
It made him wonder about a host of other things, too: whether he had friends, a partner, what he did to switch off, or whether he did switch off at all. He parked the questions for future reference, with the uneasy notion that all of this, too, fitted the profile of a replicant rather too well.
"Come on, Sherlock. You might enjoy this."
Sherlock looked at him for a moment longer, then seemed to reach a decision. "Fine."
At that moment lunch arrived. It looked, if possible, worse than the breakfast John had struggled with this morning. He picked at it while Sherlock had a coffee. John wondered if he ever ate at all. He was just working his way through the worse Battenberg slice he had ever tasted in his life when there was an announcement on the tannoy.
"All passengers are reminded that it is now a legal requirement to obtain a valid Voight-Kampff Test certificate before entry to the Mars colony. Please ensure you arrange with the cabin crew to take the test in room C4 on the aft deck."
In all the excitement of the morning, John had forgotten about the new regulations that specified the test had to be taken by all civilian travellers between colonies. He'd only had to take this test once before, when he joined the army, and he remembered his test as being quick and simple. As a naturally empathic person he was easily identified as truly human.
He couldn't help himself though, and he briefly glanced over to gauge Sherlock's reaction. He was a little taken aback when his eyes met Sherlock's, who was looking at him with some amusement, obviously having guessed his thoughts.
"Maybe I should point out that I am human."
John cleared his throat, uncomfortable with being put on the spot like that. Sherlock was still watching him, and he realised that he was going to have to give an answer.
"I never said you weren't." That, at least, was true.
Sherlock smiled briefly. "You thought it though. In fact you thought it several times today."
John couldn't deny it, especially since it had clearly been obvious to Sherlock. On the other hand, he thought, he couldn't be the first to have considered the possibility. "Do people usually assume you're a replicant?"
"Now and then, yes."
John smiled and shook his head. "Yes, I did wonder. Especially the way you seemed to enjoy that godawful coffee they served at the hotel."
Sherlock looked at him, even more amused than before. "I managed to get proper whisky in the ship's bar. Do you really think I couldn't acquire some real coffee in an overpriced Earth hotel?
John laughed at that, briefly. "Of course. What was it, waiter cheating on his girlfriend?"
"No. I simply encouraged them to think I was a Federal Standards agent working undercover. It wasn't that hard."
John looked at him in admiration. "Brilliant. That's just brilliant. Why didn't I think of that?"
"Because you're an idiot."
He just gaped at Sherlock. He didn't really know how to respond to that.
"Oh don't look like that, practically everybody is."
It wasn't worth commenting, John thought, although he raised his eyebrows in offence. The guy's manners left much to be desired. However, before he could get too much into a sulk, Sherlock jumped ahead again.
"Let's investigate this cinema, then, if you have quite finished with lunch."
