Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

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  Racing along one of these quiet sidewalks was a messenger boy who had been told that a fast delivery would bring a big tip. He approached the en- trance of the Great Northern in a burst of Olympic speed, slipped breathlessly through the entrance of the hotel, went up to the desk clerk, and announced: “Telegram for Robert O’Brien!” The desk clerk wrote down a room number on the messenger’s envelope, handed the envelope back, and the boy bounded away to the elevators. There, the boy said to the elevator operator: “Fourteenth f loor!” and up the two of them went. When the elevator operator stopped at the hotel’s top f loor, the messenger pushed back the door, and bounced out into the hall, looking up and down its length. His gaze fell upon the room number for which he had been looking; it was only a few steps away. He went up to the door and knocked. Shortly, the door opened. “Robert O’Brien?” the messenger asked. “Yes.”

  “Telegram.”

  O’Brien signed for the telegram, tipped the messenger, took the envelope, and closed the door. He opened the envelope and looked at the telegram message. It was an apparently meaningless series of numbers. He went to the door of an adjoining room and knocked. The door swung open, and behind it stood Dan Lamont, Secretary of War. “It just came in,” O’Brien said.

  “Get on it,” Lamont said, “and let me know the moment you’re done.” Lamont closed the door. O’Brien went to the desk in his room and sat down with the telegram in hand. He took out a sheet of hotel stationery and began writing, his pencil scratching along the surface of the paper. In a few minutes O’Brien was fin- ished. He got up and knocked on Lamont’s door again. Lamont answered the door and O’Brien held out the sheet of stationery. Lamont took the sheet, looked at O’Brien’s pencil scratchings, said, “Burn the telegram,” and then closed the door. With the sheet of stationery in hand, Lamont went across his room and through a door into a spacious adjoining suite, and on across this second room to another door where he stopped and knocked. He listened by the door a moment, heard a steady rasping, and then cracked the door open and put his head inside.

  Lamont saw that President Cleveland was still heavily asleep, snoring like a bear. “Mr. President!” Lamont said sharply.

  Cleveland made a sudden horrific gasp that sounded like tearing cloth and sat upright in bed. “Goddamn sonovabitch I’ll gut you like a fish!” Cleveland roared with his eyes tightly shut.

  “Mr. President!” Lamont shouted, “It’s me, Dan Lamont! Wake up! Mr. President!” Cleveland slowly opened his eyes. “What?” Cleveland asked, looking around the room. “Mr. President!” Lamont said.

  “What?” Cleveland asked, rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is it? It better be important!” “It’s the telegram,” Lamont said. “From Asaph Hall at the Naval Observatory.”

  “Oh,” Cleveland said. “Oh, that. All right. All right. I’ll be out in a minute.” Lamont pulled his head back and closed the door. He heard Cleveland coughing in the next room. The coughing went on for more than a minute; then it turned into a gagging sound. The sound stopped, a minute or two passed, and then Cleveland came out of his bedroom wearing his dressing gown and slippers.

  “What do you have?” Cleveland asked, taking the sheet of paper from Lamont’s hand.

  Cleveland looked at the sheet of paper and read the following: “Dear Mr. President,

  Achieved clear viewing tonight. Mars clear disk on western horizon above horns of Taurus. At 9:24 pm Washington time observed bright lights on or near surface of Mars f lashing at intervals of five seconds or less. Unable to determine exact location of lights on Martian globe due to distance of planet from Earth and local atmospheric conditions. Will continue to monitor skies as per your instructions. Asaph Hall.” Cleveland studied the message a moment longer after reading it aloud. “What does it mean?” Lamont asked. Cleveland looked up at Lamont, and said, “Tesla and Clemens have reached Mars—but they may be dead.”

  Lamont said, “We need to start work on a cover story for both of them. Tesla’s no problem. We can say that he was electrocuted in a laboratory acci- dent. Mark Twain will be more difficult. Do you know if he’s been sick lately?” “He coughs a lot from those cheap cigars he smokes,” Cleveland replied. Lamont thought for a moment, and then said, “We could say he caught cold—pneumonia.”

  “Don’t say anything—yet,” Cleveland said. “Just keep Clemens’ suite closed. Allow no one in there.” “Yes, sir.”

  “Especially Fred Hall. Have a man keep an eye on him.” “Yes, sir.”

  “Round up the hotel’s doctor and tell him that it has already been deter- mined that Clemens is seriously ill and is to have absolutely no visitors.” “Yes, sir.”

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  “And if anybody asks where Clemens is—Hall or anybody else—have the doctor tell them he’s in bed with a cold—with a cold, nothing more.”

  Now, do you see what I mean? Do you see how skillfully Cleveland con- structed this lie? He was careful, and modest, and extremely economical in his claim. I was sick with a cold, nothing more, nothing less. This claim allowed maximum f lexibility. If he needed me to get a little sicker, he could arrange that; if he needed me to get well all of a sudden, a cold was just the thing that could allow that development also. And if he needed me to die, he could turn up my temperature, give me the chills, the whooping cough, the double pneu- monia, all in due course, and then when the situation required it, he could make me gasp my last breath, and maybe even supply me with some dying words; but then, he would probably forego the dying words; that would be overdoing it, and would violate Cleveland’s principle of economics. The Presi- dent knew how to lie, and he taught me something about how to tell a lie that will live, but I still lack his talent. You see, I would have got up an enthusiasm and would have wanted to supply some dying words, and I would’ve supplied them; and then, by and by, somebody would notice something in those dying words; it would be a clue that would, when traced out to its logical conclusion, prove with irrefutable logic that I had not died at all and that I could have never spoken those words at the time claimed, or at any earlier time. Yes, the lesson I learned from Cleveland was: lie, yes, lie, but only lie as much as is absolutely necessary. The rest of the time, tell the truth. It will all go much better if you do so, for both you and the lie. What had really happened to us? What was the truth? Were we alive or dead? Cleveland did not know, and neither did we.

  In the confused pitch-black of the airship time stood still. There was no light, no sound, no motion; there was nothing by which to judge the passage of time, so, for us, there was no time. But then I felt the urge to emit a sort of low groan, so I emitted it. After that, I knew I was alive to one extent or another, whether I wanted to be or not. I sort of groaned again, and I think I said something like: “Is anybody there?”

  I heard a stirring somewhere in the pitch-black, then the fricative scratch of a Lucifer match—[s-suf-ff!]—and Tesla’s face appeared in front of me f loating in the pitch-black. “Mark,” Tesla said quietly, “are you injured?” “I don’t know,” I said, “I hardly know if I’m alive.” “Czito!” Tesla said. “Here, Mr. Tesla!” Czito replied.

  “Get the electric torch,” Tesla said.

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  I heard Czito rustling past me, and then a moment later, the pilothouse was f looded with electric light. Lillie and Ade lay on the f loor of the pilothouse. Houdini sat on the f loor with his back leaning against the bulkhead aft of the pilothouse; he was rub- bing his face and squinting at the light. Lillie and Ade began moving about on the floor. “What happened?” Houdini said. “Did they get us? Did they get us?” “Where are we?” Lillie asked, rising up on one elbow. Ade put a hand over his face, and said, “We crashed.” “We crashed,” Houdini repeated. “We crashed. They got us. They got us.” “No one has us,” Tesla said. “I believe our ship is buried in ice. How deep, I cannot say.”

  Tesla took the electric torch from Czito and threw its beam on to the pilothouse windows. Beyond the wi
ndows was only a solid white wall—around us and above us. We all began slowly dragging ourselves up from the f loor, feeling for broken bones as we staggered to our feet. “Is anyone injured?” Tesla asked.

  “I’m all right,” Lillie said.

  “Me too,” Ade said. “Just shook up.”

  “Ah,” Houdini said, “it was nothin’. A bump in the dark, that’s all, a bump in the dark.” “What about you, Mark?” Tesla asked.

  “I am sure that I am mortally wounded with internal injuries, but at the moment I don’t feel a thing. Perhaps I am internally paralyzed and don’t know it.” “Let me see you,” Tesla said shining the electric torch at me. He studied me a moment, and said, “You seem all right. Are you in pain anywhere?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I’m in pain everywhere, I suppose, but no more than usual. Don’t worry about me. What about the airship?” Tesla motioned Czito to the control switches in front of the pilot’s wheel, and handed Czito the electric torch. Tesla tried the switches. Everything on the board was dead. “It must be the coils,” Tesla said. “Come along.”

  Tesla descended the stairs of the pilothouse, and Czito followed, illuminat- ing their way with his electric torch. I followed them, and behind me, Lillie, Ade, and Houdini came along in the gloom. Tesla slid back the door to the ship’s engine and looked in.

  “Yes,” Tesla said, “the coils are fused. And all the capacitors appear to have completely discharged, and the pulse has extinguished the drive crystal.” “What can be done?” I asked.

  “Fortunately,” Tesla said, “We have extra wire down on the lower deck. I believe we can affect a repair.”

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  Czito handed me the electric torch, and went back toward the pilothouse. In a second, he came forward with another electric torch, its beam falling upon the f loor of the upper deck. Tesla said to Czito, “Go below and begin uncoiling the conduction wire from the big roll. Mr. Ade, you and Miss West go below and help Mr. Czito. Erich, I want you on the ladder to guide the wire up through the hatch.” “What shall I do?” I asked.

  “You stay here with me and supervise,” Tesla said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I imagine you are in great need of my expert supervision.” The others went below while I held the electric torch on Tesla so that he could see inside the engine cabinet. He began snipping away on the coil of wire with a pair of wire cutters. He managed to cut out a long section of wire and pull it off the coil. I could see where several wires had been melted into one lump of copper.

  “That looks to be your problem,” I said with an air of expertise. “Yes,” Tesla replied, “one of them.” Tesla continued for several minutes tediously unwinding the big coil of wire. Occasionally he would find sections where the wire was fused and he would cut those sections out. When he finished with the primary coil, Tesla went to the other cabinet and started all over again inspecting the secondary coil.

  After much tedious work, the coils had been thoroughly inspected and all the fused sections removed. Tesla rewound all the coils by hand, noting as he did so that they had to be wound just so or they would be “out of tune” and the airship would not work properly. When all the remaining wire had been wound back around the armatures again, each coil was short by a certain amount. Now the wire came up from below threaded through the hatch by Houdini. I peered down through the hatch and saw Lillie holding the other electric torch, trying to illuminate at turns both the work of Czito and Ade below and Houdini up on the ladder, each of them getting just enough light to guess at what they were doing. As I watched this, I suddenly noticed that Lillie’s electric torch was getting dimmer and dimmer. I looked at mine; it was going out, too. “Quickly!” Tesla said.

  Houdini quickened his pace in feeding the wire up through the hatch and on to the floor of the upper deck. Tesla’s fingers worked rapidly inside the cabinet. “Hold the light a little closer,” Tesla said. I asked, “Will these lights hold out until your work is done?” “Let us do our work, and let the lights do what they will,” Tesla replied.

  I took that to mean “no.” It was not at all reassuring. When the lights went out again, it would be totally dark, and I had no idea how Tesla would finish his work under pitch-dark conditions.

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  The worst happened. Both electric torches —the one I held and the one that Lillie held—went out—and at just about the same time. “Are there no other lights or lanterns on the ship?” I asked in the blind blackness. “None,” Tesla said.

  “What about the electric torches on those glass helmets down on the lower deck?” I asked. Tesla said, “ The power for the torches on the helmets and the equipment on the pressure suits is transmitted wirelessly from the ship’s main engines. The only other source of power is the capacitors in the emergency craft. We must leave those alone; for if the airship cannot be repaired, the emergency craft is our only hope of returning to Earth alive. All our other systems are out and they will not come up again until this coil has been finished. Keep working.”

  Keep working? Yes, that’s what Tesla said. Now he reminded me of Horace Bixby, the master riverboat pilot who had the river courses of the Ohio, Missis- sippi, and Missouri memorized so well that he could steer a steamboat with his eyes closed. Tesla was doing something like this. I could hear him working with the wire as fast as ever in the pitch-dark. He worked on for many more minutes, working only by touch and memory. Then I recalled the strange nature of Tesla’s memory, and wondered if by some unfathomable power he was summoning a vision of the coil and engine before him, a vision of what they would look like if the ship had been illuminated with electric light. I fully believed and believe that he was seeing the unseeable by the strange power of his memory and imagination. Then— “It’s done,” Tesla said.

  He said this in such a way that he conveyed an absolute certainty. I did not have to ask him if he thought the engine would work, or what the odds of its working might be. No, I could tell that Tesla knew with absolute certainty that the ship’s engine had been repaired. I heard the snap of a switch where Tesla stood, and the airship’s interior was suddenly f looded with bright electric light and the drive crystal began to f lash with a rainbow of colors. Tesla was standing inside the machinery of the engine. I felt a draft of cool air and realized that the system that filtered and circulated the air inside the ship was working again as well. “Some of these capacitors have exploded,” Tesla said. “We can manage without them. Mr. Czito, come up here and reroute the circuits.” Tesla stepped out of the engine, and said to me, “Now let’s check the pilot’s wheel.” We went up to the pilothouse. In a moment Czito appeared with a tool box and then went out again. Tesla unscrewed a metal plate on the panel in front of the pilot’s wheel and looked in. “More fused wiring,” Tesla said.

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  Tesla went to work. Every few minutes I would peer over his shoulder to see what he was doing. He was cutting out some wires and fusing other wires together with a little rod. I said, “I tell you, when we hit ground, I was sure we were headed for the hereafter.” “Yes,” Tesla said. “Fortunately, the electro-magneto-gravitic field surround- ing the ship acted as a shield, a field of force. Our artificial gravity field, or that is, what was left of it, further protected us from the inertial forces of the impact.” “But do you think we can get out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves into?” Czito came back up the stairs of the pilothouse and said, “I’ve rerouted the circuits around the damaged capacitors.”

  Tesla said, “Mr. Czito has just answered your question. We may not have full power, but we have enough to blast our way out of this impact site. Perhaps enough to blast through solid rock if necessary.” “In that case,” I said, “a little bit of ice over our heads shouldn’t be a worry.” “It shouldn’t be,” Tesla said.

  Tesla closed up the panel in front of the pilot’s wheel and screwed it back tightly into place. “The wiring is finished,” Tesla said, handing Czito the tool box. Then he turned to me and said: “The wheel is yours, Mark. Take her up.�
� I went to the switch that started the ship’s engine. “Straight up through the ice,” Tesla added. I closed the switch. The solid wall of ice covering the pilothouse windows lit up with blue electric light. “Here goes,” I said. I pushed the accelerator down and steered the ship up. There was a great cracking sound and the ice in front of the windows churned and thrashed as we began moving upward. In a moment daylight broke through, the ice outside fell away in chunks, and the yellowish skies of Mars shone through the pilothouse windows. I heard gasps of relief from everyone behind me. “Take her all the way up,” Tesla said.

  I steered the airship up toward the sky, but the ship’s prow would not follow. We bumped and skidded along the surface of the ice field for about three hundred yards, and then I brought the ship to a halt. “The ship won’t respond,” I said.

  Tesla stood there for a moment, thinking, and then he happened to turn around and look aft through the pilothouse windows. “Czito!” Tesla said. “The aerial conductors have been damaged!”