ROLLERCOASTER
-x-
Merde, He Wrote. Part 2
-x-
Algernon Bloom didn't bother to blindfold his captives as they were driven to the marina – there was little point, since the fog still obscured all but the closest landmarks. The automobile alone was suggestion enough that they were not about to remain in 1904 for long, and as they drove, Dixon noticed that they were once again in San Francisco. This didn't cheer him as much as he thought it would – if the Blooms were based on Hill's adversaries rather than Holmes', he was sure that he could expect far greater levels of sadism at their hands, and far fewer cups of tea. The car pulled to a stop alongside a jetty and the three captives were roughly bundled out.
'What are you doing?' Hissed Dollis as they were jostled at gunpoint towards a dinghy at the end of the jetty.
Dixon glanced over his shoulder to see that, behind him, his niece was addressing not him, but Holmes.
'More to the point,' continued Dollis beneath her breath, 'why aren't you doing anything?'
'I have no idea to what you are referring, Miss Hill…'
'Come on! You can take these guys!'
'With a revolver pressed against my back…? Holmes would never take such a risk.'
'So, what? We're just going to allow ourselves to get abducted?'
'We don't know that it isn't a crucial part of the plot that we end up on Bloom's boat,' Picard told her, quietly.
'But this is humiliating…'
The goon manhandling Dollis down the jetty clipped her lightly over the head.
'Zip it, Blondie.'
'Hey!' Dollis exclaimed, incensed. 'Did you see that?' She turned furiously to Holmes. 'Did you guys see that?' She glared up at her assailant. 'How dare you hit a woman?'
'Only language some dames understand,' leered the thug. 'Now, if you don't want a pop in the lip, I suggest you keep that pretty face of yours shut…'
Dollis looked from the goon to Holmes again, with an expression of irritated demand.
'What?' Holmes asked her, blankly.
'Aren't you supposed to be a Chivalrous Gentleman?' Dollis spat. 'Aren't you supposed to protect a Lady's honour…?'
'Your honour is not at stake here,' replied Holmes. 'I believe it would be more pertinent for you in this particular situation to do as you have been told, and be quiet.'
'Wise words,' smirked Algernon Bloom.
'You stay out of this,' snapped Dollis.
'I beg your pardon…?' asked Algernon, his sickly smile dangerously frozen.
'I said,' replied Dollis with the same tone of threatening courtesy, 'you stay…'
Bloom slapped her across the face.
Dixon tried to intervene, but it was too late. The full might of Natasha Yar's indignant fury hit Algernon square between the eyes, sending the criminal reeling backwards, clutching a bloody nose. The hoodlum who had clipped her head earlier made an attempt to cosh her into quick submission with the handle of his pistol, but again she was too fast. She ducked and span on the ball of one foot, lashing the other out as she did so. There was an almighty rip as the seam of her pencil skirt gave way under the force of the high-kick, and the goon crumpled in agony, cupping his crushed crotch.
Algernon recovered his wherewithal swiftly, and drew his pistol, aiming it at the woman.
Still technically unarmed, Tasha had made the decision to remove her impractically heeled shoes, and was brandishing them as makeshift weapons at anybody who might dare approach her.
'Give it your best shot,' she snarled, 'and let's see if these damned shoes can't hurt you as bad as they've been hurting me the last hour…'
'Tasha!' warned Picard.
'Who?' snapped Bloom.
'A little more caution, Miss Hill…' added Holmes.
'I can take these idiots,' Tasha hissed.
'However,' reasoned Data, 'Dollis Hill cannot.'
Tasha paused, unsure.
'If Dollis Hill did win this fight,' added Picard, 'it would change everything…'
Tasha sighed, resignedly. 'It'd ruin the story, wouldn't it?'
Algernon cocked his gun. 'What are you lunatics talking about?'
Picard set his face, and became Dixon Hill once more. 'Remember your Nervous Condition, Dollis.'
'Nervous Condition…?' echoed Dollis, shoes still in hand.
'It is not uncommon in this day and age for a Lady experiencing high anxiety to succumb to The Vapours,' Holmes added.
'Oh,' grumbled Tasha under her breath, 'you're kidding…'
'You are prone to dizzy spells,' Dixon reminded her, meaningfully.
'Stop talking crazy,' ordered Bloom. 'Stop it, or I swear, I'll…'
Dollis dropped her shoes. She held the back of a hand delicately up to her troubled brow. Her eyes rolled back, her eyelashes fluttered unconvincingly and, taking great care to keep her knees together so as not to allow the considerable split in the back of her skirt to expose her undergarments, she swooned dramatically onto the wooden jetty.
Algernon sneered victoriously, and nodded to the goon who, with tears still in his eyes from the kick to the crotch he had earlier been dealt, scooped Dollis up and roughly slung her over his shoulder.
With a good deal more violence than before, the remaining two heavies gripped Dixon and Holmes by the arm and scruff of the neck respectively, and dragged them in the direction of the waiting dinghy. As he was painfully jostled, Dix met eyes with Holmes and offered him a relieved grin.
'Well,' he breathed, 'that was a close one!'
-x-
A ten-minute dinghy ride brought the prisoners to a luxurious looking cruise ship, moored a little way from the coast. They were quickly bundled down below, where they were taken to a small, dank cabin. The only furniture there was a small table with four metal chairs, and a large armchair, obscured in a particularly dim corner of the room. As they were brought inside, one of Bloom's goons dragged three of the metal chairs together into a clump in the centre of the cabin. Algernon Bloom indicated with his gun that Dixon and Holmes should sit. They did so, on either side of Dollis, who had been unceremoniously deposited, still "unconscious", in the middle chair. It was only as the heavies were chaining them together to their seats that the Girl Detective opened her eyes, sat upright and began to complain that the chains were chafing her wrists.
Algernon groaned. 'And we were all so enjoying the peace and quiet that your little nap was bringing us…'
'Yeah, well don't count on that happening again,' Dollis retorted, with a deliberate scowl in Holmes' direction. '"The Vapours",' she murmured to herself. 'Of all the ridiculous…'
'Perhaps, Miss Hill,' replied Holmes, 'you should simply avoid any more confrontational situations, thus evading any further spells of giddiness.'
'Perhaps, Mister Holmes,' Dollis countered, 'you should stop being such a…'
'Well, well, well,' interrupted a smooth, rich voice from the cabin's dark corner.
Dixon stared in the direction of the voice, expecting the spark of a cigarette lighter to illuminate a face in the shadowy armchair. Instead, the soft bulk of the entire chair appeared to shift, and rise, and move towards them. Out of the gloom stepped a man who was oversized in every proportion; the obese rolls of his form draped expensively in fine tailoring, thick gold rings glittering on his chubby fingers. He did indeed stop to light a cigarette, but only once he was in plain sight of the captive trio. 'What amusing house guests my little brother has brought back.'
'Aldous Bloom,' breathed Dixon, knowing a Noir nemesis when he saw one.
'Mister Hill,' greeted the fat man, sucking on his cigarette. 'And Mister Holmes, I do believe… you are a long way from home, Sir.'
'Indeed, I am, Sir,' responded the shackled Edwardian.
'Surely,' continued Aldous, 'this has nothing to do with the added presence of… what did you say this girl's name was…?' Bloom waved his cigarette in the general direction of his female prisoner. 'A "Miss Hill"… any relation, Dixon?'
'Why doesn't anybody ever know who I am?' groaned Dollis.
'My niece,' explained Dixon. 'Dollis.'
'Ah,' Aldous sighed, happily. 'What an unfortunate name for such a delightful young lady. And quite the firecracker, it appears.' Bloom took another long suck on his cigarette, taking in the woman's torn stockings and split skirt appreciatively. 'I can't imagine that it would be quite enough to lure me as far from my comfort zone as it has you, Mister Holmes, but then you have always struck me as a rather perverse individual.'
'I trust that you are not insinuating what I believe you to be…' began Holmes.
'I meant no offence,' replied Aldous, his swollen face splitting into a sharp, cold grin. 'She is rather pretty.'
'Hey!' Dollis snapped. 'I came here with Dix. The Limey's just tagging along for the ride.'
'"Limey"?' repeated Holmes, with raised eyebrows.
'What have you done with Jimmy Three Fingers?' asked Dixon suddenly, growing increasingly desperate to keep the narrative of the simulation going. 'Was he in on all of this too?'
Aldous continued to enjoy his cigarette. 'No, no. Young Jimmy has been a thorn in my side for some time; easily bought, no principles. A perfect accomplice for people such as yourself, Mister Hill. Luckily for me, he's also immeasurably stupid.'
'Is he hurt?' Dixon asked.
'After a fashion,' leered Algernon, slipping to his brother's side, an ebony cigar box in hand. 'He'll probably wash up on the coast in a day or two, depending on the tide.' The younger brother opened up the black box. 'They may have some trouble identifying him, though…'
Algernon held out the box so that the captives could see the contents. It was not filled with cigars.
'Algy can be terribly clumsy with a pair of shears,' smiled Aldous, grinding the stub of his cigarette under foot. 'Still, at least my prize piranha shan't go hungry for a while.'
'You won't get away with this,' Dollis announced.
Aldous leaned his enormous bulk in towards the manacled woman. 'Won't I? After I've got away with so very much already? Jimmy was one of the Little People, as were the Tewkesburies, for all their haughtiness, and their dusty wealth, and their useless titles. As are you, Miss, and your esteemed Uncle, even the so-called "Great Detective", since he was idiotic enough to follow you here. Little People are nothing. Me – I'm one of the Big People. You have no idea what wheels I have in motion, Miss Hill, no idea what I am capable of becoming. Nor will you ever, since I'm afraid none of you shall survive to see exactly what a Big Shot you tried to mess with. Nothing can stop me now. I am beyond the laws of man and God…'
Dollis giggled loudly. '"Beyond the laws of man and God"? Could you think of anything a little more trite?'
Aldous weighted himself away from her again. 'Miss Hill, am I going to have to sedate you?'
'Could you?' Holmes added, courteously.
'Go jump off a waterfall, Sherlock.'
Aldous turned his attention to Dix. 'Such interesting company you keep these days, Mister Hill. Are they always like this?'
'Not that I'm aware of,' sighed Dixon, wearily, 'I'll give them that, at least.'
Bloom smiled his ghastly smile again, like a razor cutting through a ball of raw dough. 'Well, at least you can console yourself that you won't have to put up with them very much longer.'
At his brother's side, Algernon's eyes lit up. 'Is it time we did a little pruning, Aldous?'
Aldous lay a calm, plump hand on his brother's shoulder. 'In time, Algy, in time. Torture and execution are such uncivilised activities, particularly on an empty stomach. I believe we have time for a little supper before we break out the pliers. Look at them.' He gestured to the trio, chained to their chairs. 'They're not going anywhere – the Limey, out of his depth; the Broad, all mouth and no shoes; and my good friend Mister Hill, who gets to listen to all their yipping and yapping for the rest of his life.' He smiled again as he ushered Algernon out of the cabin. 'They say Hell is other people – perhaps after an hour or two, your shears won't seem so bad after all. We might even find them all too happy to throw themselves overboard, and spare us the trouble.' He turned to the trio, cheerfully. 'Enjoy your soiree.'
Aldous pulled the door shut behind them with a great bang, followed by the scrape and clatter of deadbolts being drawn across it.
'Well, thank you very much,' Picard muttered at the locked door.
'Why do they always do that?' Tasha added. 'Why do they always do a little speech about how invincible they are, tempting fate for us to prove them wrong, and then just go off for no good reason, giving us ample time to escape?'
'Your suggestion that Holmes should "go jump off a waterfall",' enquired Data, over her, 'was that an allusion to Reichenbach Falls?'
'They didn't even leave one guy to guard us,' Tasha continued, 'not one! I mean, that is slack. That's just asking for trouble.'
'In case you did not realise,' added Data, 'Holmes as I am playing him has already survived that incident. In order to avoid another encounter with the self-aware hologram of Professor Moriarty, I am avoiding setting any mysteries prior to the events of "The Final Problem".'
'That's because we're supposed to escape now,' Picard told Tasha. 'I'm sure that the Holodeck computer felt that the chains and the locked cabin were challenges enough without adding an armed guard to the situation.'
'But, I mean,' continued Tasha, 'we're right at the heart of their secret headquarters, which they brought us to, when we were already looking for it, but in entirely the wrong place… there'll be clues and weapons lying all over the place… they haven't even checked to see whether one of us might actually have the remorseless super-strength of a steely automaton… and these are supposed to be Master Criminals?! I wouldn't let a rookie Ensign on their first day outta the Academy get away with those kinds of security oversights.'
'But this isn't Starfleet,' Picard reminded her, his patience wavering. 'This is fiction.'
'Why might a mid 20th Century Terrestrial man ever suspect that one of his opponents may be an android?' Data asked. 'Furthermore, Holmes is not an android. He has considerable physical strength for his age and build, but he would not be capable of breaking these chains, if that is what you are suggesting I should do…'
'You're kidding. This is our chance to escape, but you're gonna leave us all tied up here, just because it suits your character?'
'I also take exception to your referral of me as a "steely automaton", which is both inaccurate, since I am not fabricated from steel, and, I suspect, intended to be insulting…'
'Yes, thank you, both,' snapped Picard, 'but our window of opportunity is getting shorter and shorter the longer you bicker…'
'"Bicker", Sir?'
'If you two don't mind,' Picard replied through gritted teeth, 'I could really, really do with a moment to think.'
The other two captives fell silent for once, but still he couldn't concentrate. He found himself grimly anticipating the next bout of petty exchanges between the other pair, rather than focussing on the task in hand. 'Think,' he ordered himself, 'think. All that "little person, big person" business that Bloom was talking about – what do you suppose that meant?'
'Seemed pretty nonsensical to me,' Tasha replied, 'just pointless bragging.'
'No.' Picard shook his head. 'There are always important clues in the villain's Monologue. It'll lead us to what this whole mystery is really about. We just have to work out how.'
'Aldous Bloom spoke of "wheels in motion",' added Data, 'implying that he is plotting criminal activities the scale of which will dwarf those he is already involved in.'
'He's already committed kidnap, grievous bodily harm and murder several times over…' muttered Dixon.
'Not to mention,' continued Data, falling back into Holmes, 'that he is the single most prolific smuggler and trader of opium of which I am aware.' The Great Detective shook his head, disapprovingly. 'An empire built upon the misery and enslavement of others.'
'Well, that's rich,' snorted Tasha, 'coming from you. Wasn't Holmes a notorious Opium Fiend himself?'
'Certainly not!' Holmes retorted. He paused for a split second. 'A little morphine every once in a while, perhaps,' he admitted, 'and a dash of the Devil's Dandruff to ease the occasional period of cerebral torpor…'
Tasha scoffed again. 'You, high as a kite on Uppers. Now there's a mental image I didn't need…' She trailed off as a realisation dawned. 'It's people.'
'"People"?' repeated Dix.
'An empire built upon the misery and enslavement of others… isn't there a big war going on in this period of Earth's history?'
'This mystery's set in 1943,' replied Picard, 'so, yes. The whole world is at war. Throughout Eurasia in particular, the level of suffering must be… I can't imagine.'
'I can,' Tasha replied. 'They killed civilians, didn't they – there were attempts at genocide. There would have been people – vulnerable people – trying to escape to the relative safety of the Americas, seeking sanctuary. And that's where people like Bloom come in. They offer escape, they offer hope for a better life… and either fleece them of every ounce of value on them, down to the fillings in their teeth, or worse still, keep hold of them as slaves, to work in sweatshops, or push drugs, or get locked away in brothels.'
'He's smuggling people?'
'He's building up an army of slaves,' Tasha replied. 'I've seen it happen. Those are the real Little People – the terrified and desperate forced into crime and prostitution. Commodities that he can treat like something he just scraped off the bottom of his shoe.' Tasha paused again, then blinked, brightly. 'Bobby pins,' she announced, suddenly cheered.
'I beg your pardon?' asked Data.
'I pinned my hair back a little when I was getting into this stupid costume,' beamed Tasha. She turned her head a little so that he could see the tiny grips in her hair. 'I assume that the Great Detective is capable of picking locks?'
'Undoubtedly,' replied Holmes. He made an attempt to bring his shackled hands up to the woman's head, but a further chain running along the crook of his arm made it impossible for a man with normal human strength and dexterity to do so. 'Excuse me,' he added, before leaning his head towards her, and burrowing his mouth into her hair.
Picard waited for Tasha to take noisy exception to the android's peculiar and intimate act, but she didn't. Apart from a long, slow blink and a slight curl of the lip, Tasha gave no reaction at all to having a synthetic nose thrust against her ear. Picard looked the other way with a slight sigh, almost wishing they'd start up their bothersome bickering again.
'Got one…?'
He turned his head again at the sound of Tasha's enquiry. Data was pulling his head back away from her, a bobby pin between his teeth. The android worried his tongue against the strip of flimsy metal, the way Dix's secretary would with a strand of chewing gum, swiftly straightening out the hairgrip.
'Impressive trick,' admitted Tasha. 'But could you tie it in a knot?'
'I could fashion it into a simplified miniature representation of Michelangelo's David, if you so wished,' replied Data through the hairpin.
Tasha cocked an eyebrow. 'Intriguing.'
'But,' Data continued, 'I do not believe that now is the time.'
'Quite,' agreed Picard.
He sighed resignedly again as Data pulled his wrists up to his mouth and set to work picking at the manacles around them with the pin between his teeth. For a while, a relative silence descended – the only sounds being the slosh of the waves against the side of the boat and the scratching of the hairpin in the lock. Picard couldn't imagine that the peace would last long. He was right.
'I'm sure you can go a little faster than that,' Tasha exclaimed after a minute or so of picking.
'Patience, good woman,' replied Holmes, still concentrating on the lock.
'And for the last time, could you please knock off the Holmes stuff? I think it's been pretty unequivocally demonstrated that this is Hill's world, leaving Holmes in entirely the wrong time and place. Why are you still even bothering?'
'Why indeed?' replied Holmes. 'Why go to the trouble of any of this?' he slipped back into his usual persona again. 'Why did you join in this simulation in the first instance, Tasha?'
'I needed some R&R time,' snapped Tasha. 'I needed some time away from you, not that I got that…'
'Are you somehow insinuating that that is my purposeful doing?' Data countered. 'Need I remind you that it was I who was first using this simulation this evening?'
'I wanted to get away from it all for a while,' continued Tasha, 'away from all the stupid mistakes I've made in the past that keep on catching up with me these days. I wanted to not be Tasha Yar for an evening – just an evening. And what am I…? A tie-in, with a stupid name, who doesn't have a gun and faints at the first sign of trouble, with no shoes and a torn skirt…'
'None of those are my responsibility,' interjected Data.
'Chained to a tweedy idiot…'
Something in Picard snapped. His head jerked up suddenly, his fists bunched.
'Data,' he demanded, a little louder than was necessary, 'let me out.'
'If you will just allow me to unlock my own restraints first, Sir…'
'No, Data, you will let me out right this instant.'
'I cannot do that while remaining true to the story.'
'Dammit,' Picard told him, desperately, 'either you break character and pull me out of these chains or I will terminate this whole sorry scenario right here and now, and nobody will get to find out how it ends!'
The android stared at him for a moment, a little taken aback, then in three fast, fluid movements pulled his own manacles loose, reached across Tasha to pop apart the chains binding Picard, then sat back down in his own chair and carefully bent the links of his shackles back together in order to start painstakingly picking them open with the pin again.
'Are you feeling all right, Sir?' Tasha asked him, concerned. 'Do you want to stop the programme?'
Picard stared at them as he got to his feet, freeing himself from his chains. He took a deep, calming breath.
'No,' he replied, rubbing his face. 'No. It's just…' He stopped, and gazed at the pair again for another moment. 'It's just that… I've had a brainwave,' he told them with forced cheer.
'What is it?'
'I… don't want to jinx it,' Picard replied. 'I need to get back to my office. Right now.'
'But we are on the Bloom Brothers' Boat,' Data reminded him.
'I know, I know…' Picard pulled aside a ragged cloth hanging on the wall and was relieved to find an openable porthole, just big enough for a man to fit through. 'I'll leave you two to deal with all of that business, I just need to…' he pried open the porthole. 'Just need to get out of here before I lose my mind,' he breathed to himself.
'Are you throwing yourself overboard, Sir?' asked Tasha.
'I'll be fine,' soothed Picard. 'I can swim it to the shore no problem. It isn't far.'
'Are you certain, Sir?'
He took one last look at their upturned faces, then nodded, resolutely. 'Very certain.' He began to squeeze himself through the porthole, legs first. 'Good luck.'
He just heard Data wish him 'Bon Voyage' as he pushed his way entirely out of the cabin, clung on to the side of the boat for a moment, then kicked himself away towards the dark sea. There was a brief drop, then a splash, and cold, stinking water enveloped him.
-x-
The mist had turned into a thick drizzle by the time a sopping, sorry looking Dixon Hill squelched back into his office. His secretary looked up from her magazine with widened eyes.
'Geez, what happened to you, Dix?'
'Don't ask. It's been a long, long evening, I can tell you that for sure.' He removed his shoes, and rung his socks out onto the floor. 'You're here late.'
'Catching up on work.' His secretary flicked another page in her magazine. 'So where's your "niece"?'
Dixon sank into a chair. 'She bumped into an old flame.'
'Showed you the door, huh?'
Dix shook his head. 'It isn't like that. Those two have a bond that's… that's very, very strange indeed, but runs very, very deep. And I would be a fool to try to stand in the way of that bond, or to get involved in it in any manner. She was right. It is complicated.'
His secretary smirked to herself. 'I knew she wasn't really your niece. But what're you doing here? Don't you have a case to crack?'
'They were infuriating,' breathed Dix, with something close to a hint of wonder. 'Utterly exasperating – unproductive, unfocussed, querulous, the pair of them. To their credit, they're normally nothing like that, and it's in my interests to keep it that way. I can't run the risk of that… monstrosity of an interpersonal relationship spilling onto my Bridge.'
'What about a bridge…?' asked the Secretary, absently.
'Maybe it's just this place – the game we were all playing - that brought that out,' muttered Dix, 'but I can't be sure. They needed something good to share again – that much I could tell. They needed to achieve something together more than I needed to crack the Tewkesburies' mystery.'
His secretary looked up. 'You gave up the girl and the case? Ouch.'
'Ouch,' sighed Dix in agreement.
His secretary pressed her lips together, sympathetically. 'You should go home. Take a hot bath, get an early night. Get outta those wet clothes.'
Dixon shook his head again. 'I'm not sure that I should. It's my mystery, technically. What would happen if I left…?' He began putting his wet socks and shoes back on. 'Besides, I'm not sure that I want to. I feel that I… I should stay until they've worked it all out.'
'Why all the responsibility?' replied his secretary. 'You're not their Dad.'
'Aren't I?' muttered Dix, half to himself. 'I might be the closest either of them has to one.' He paused. 'Well, now I really am depressed.' He got to his feet. 'I'm going for a walk.'
'It's raining,' warned the secretary.
Dix held out his dripping arms. 'I can't exactly get any wetter.'
With that, he walked back outside. The heavy drizzle had turned into a downpour. Not that that mattered any more. The solitary figure of Dixon Hill paused beneath the yellow illumination of a lamppost. He turned up his collar, looked up at the light and tutted reproachfully.
'Cliché,' he sighed, and shuffled wetly away.
