Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Babel Plants - Part Two

Part Two

I had no clue why we were here. I thought I shouldn't change history. But how could I remember and do all I said and did then, or now as it has become? I couldn't possibly duplicate the details. I could refrain from blurting out knowledge of what was to come on a bigger stage. If I were to be here in 1963, would I let JFK get shot? That one event stood out for me. But by then I would be in high school. Here? I mean this house? But also, here, this "here"?

We settled down into an imitative role for me and Mr. Holmes in the armchair. I never sat there. He was always there, if not coming or going, with legs crossed. Dry pipe in his mouth. I did find my volume of Sherlock Holmes stories and gave it to him. So far as I could tell he only glanced at a few pages as he quickly leafed through it. I was usually doing homework. Seventh grade. Mr. Holmes might disappear for days. So if Mom came down to check on me or collect the bedding for the wash, he most often wasn't there.

To school I rode a bus. My best friend, Duane, was on the same bus. The junior high had hundreds of kids. Teachers in suits or sport coats or dresses. The usual - mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, English, social studies, and shop class. Girls had on dresses and didn't take shop. They took home economics. I was definitely interested in girls.

Then one night Mr. Holmes had the local newspaper (we had not taken the paper in the other back-then) spread open on his lap as he sat in his usual place. He always read the newspaper after they got done with it upstairs. I rarely checked the paper.

Ah, said he, here it is, this must be it.

What?

Mr. Holmes, with the newspaper as his source, informed me that two students, boys, at my school had started "to babble" as the reporter for the newspaper put it. The teachers at first thought it was a stunt. A joke. But, no, the boys could not communicate. It's all a babble. They could still write well enough.

What do you mean this is it? Boys that babble. So?

But why? They are in hospital now. They began to babble sometime after lunch. They routinely ate at the cafeteria. See the challenge here?

I said I had recently had lunch at the cafeteria though I often bag it. I have had no ill effects. Hundreds of others eat there too. Just two guys? I fail to recognize a challenge.

I have been thinking we were brought here for this very sort of thing.

I don't follow you.

Someone has poisoned these boys. We are to find out who did it and why and stop them.

Really? Well have at it. I've got a big introductory algebra test tomorrow. Keep me posted. (I thought Mr. Holmes was more than slightly off his nut. He wasn't of course a real tutor. He knew of a math tutor, Dr. Moriarty, but having read Conan Doyle, I wanted no part of Dr. M's instruction. Now wait, could Dr. M be behind the babbling? But Dr. M never figured much in the original stories. He becomes an archenemy in later times like in the recent BBC series. Anyway I hate these wordy problems of algebra - if Henry left 3 hours before Jake left 2 hours behind Sam and Sam lives on the other side of the river and proceeded along a hypotenuse to head off Trudi who walked backwards at 0.5 yd/hr, then where is Henry after a 6-hour lapse?)

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As you can realize, my boy, I have been gaining accounts, whilst in disguise, about what happened at the school. Now the boys can no longer write. Also, a third boy now babbles. The first two boys are faced with isolation from their parents, peers, and everyone else. This aspect is the worst of it.

I agree. Bad deal for them. But you found out more?

To be sure. The boys ate during a different lunch period than you. With so many students they do have two lunch times. The two boys never ate the cafeteria food. They brought their lunches in sacks from home.

Brown bag lunches.

Yes, as you wish. So that they brought from home what made them babble. The third boy had joined them for lunch that day. They indulged in a food exchange.

So from their home came the bad stuff.

Undeniably so.

Is there more?

Oh, yes. I visited the boy's home as a concerned parent and an appreciative one in that the boys, it turns out, eat homegrown food, none of that cafeteria mystery meat or other products for them.

Good show! (I thought I would toss that in but Mr. Holmes was unappreciative.)

The family, said Mr. Holmes, of the two boys live on a ranch on the east edge of town. They raise cattle and have vegetable planters. In one planter was lettuce that the boys had in their sandwiches that babble day. Though I am not well studied in edible plants, I thought the "lettuce" looked not at all regular. I inquired after the source of the plant. The parents said some nice people from a greenhouse had given them some seeds - the seeds for the "lettuce". A newer kind of lettuce, the parents were told. More nutritious, enriched - that sort of thing. All other sources there for the sandwiches, which were usually daily the same, seemed not out of the ordinary. Therefore, I made it known my interest in plants, especially lettuce, and wished to know the whereabouts of this greenhouse. They assured me it was quite isolated, well out in the country, no roads to it. Isolated all round about. I borrowed a horse from them. They said it was a long ride and offered provisions. I, of course, had no need of them.

The greenhouse was operating by itself. No sign of any recent activity by any persons. I entered and found the plants in question. I have returned with eight of them in pots. They are safely boxed in a far corner of your backyard. May I bring them in? I advise you to stay well clear of them.

No problem. I babble enough as it is - so some tell me.

So Mr. Holmes thought the plants contained something that made the boys babble. Perhaps. Anyway, more students and non-students had begun to babble.

Mr. Holmes wanted to set up a chemistry lab there in the basement. I had had a small chemistry set off in the corner. It was mostly forgotten. It had been a Christmas enthusiasm. But Mr. Holmes, once back from Sam's Hobby Shop, Army surplus, Edmund Scientific, and I don't know where else, had assembled a lab with tubing from ceiling to floor and running all along a wall of the basement - the one beyond his chair, actually the west wall.

I told those upstairs that Mr. Holmes was now my chemistry tutor though no chemistry lab courses were offered at the junior high.

Mr. Holmes set to work using parts of some of the plants for analysis. There were four potted plants on the floor near the lab bench that he apparently had no need of. I know he needs no sleep, nevertheless, he worked three days straight on coming up with an antidote for the plant's effect. More people were reported to be babbling.

A manifesto had appeared in the paper from a group claiming to be responsible for the babbling. They said their aim was to rid the planet of all others. Then they could then enjoy the planet all to themselves - as it should be. They were putting the harmful part of the plant into drinking water, food products, and the atmosphere. It might take some months to get the job done, but they could wait.

Mr. Holmes noticed the chemical reactions were running slower than he had experienced in Victorian England. His watch, my watch, and all the clocks around us might be running slower but how could we tell? The molecules and atoms that Mr. Holmes was dealing with in chemistry were like clocks of their own - they had no need of references to timepieces.

After three days, Mr. Holmes realized the game was up. He had not arrived at a cure. I was dimly aware that he was done. I had stayed up nights lately to help. I was no more than an extra pair of hands, but I helped. I was feeling distant from myself, maybe I was babbling a bit. One of my sisters had begun to babble. Maybe I was super tired. I went to bed.

When I got up who knows how many hours later, I didn't feel so hot. Mr. Holmes was gone. On my card table was the diary, open. He had made an entry:

Sorry, my dear boy, it seems I was wrong. They can't be stopped. Of course, the ill effects of the Babel Plant, as the newspaper calls it, can't affect me. All others will be unable to communicate with all others and it will be as if each was forced into their own language. Millions and millions of languages will be in existence. All of them will be alone. The loneliness will be paramount. I am off, to a cottage by the sea. I trust I shall find one. I will gather about me dogs, cats, and so on. I will do philosophy and smoke. And I hate bees.

I read this entry and saw the chemistry lab in the background as I did so. Something was moving in that background. I got up from the card table and went over to a flask on the outer edge of his apparatus. All the residue from concurrent reactions were discharging into the flask. A glass stopcock hadn't been tightly closed by Mr. Holmes. The flask was overflowing. The overflow was running along the tabletop and dripping over the side. There were four Babel plants on the floor near the table's edge. They were the four plants Mr. Holmes had not needed. Two of the plants were untouched by the drip. They looked OK. Two others were getting the drip on them. They were not looking good. They were withered!

I grabbed the flask, sealed it with a rubber stopper and put it in my carrier on the front handlebars of my bike. I went to Sam's Hobby Shop. I didn't know where else to go. Maybe I wasn't thinking too clearly. He was a former airman and had last served at the local airbase, the one out west of town. It had been an Army installation. Anyway, maybe Sam knew where to go.

Sam said they had a lab, not known to many, on the base. He would take it there; he assured me.

I then wanted to get home, to the basement. I wanted Mr. Holmes to be there. Someone to talk to about all this until the End. I got home, no Holmes. Once into bed, I went into a coma.