by Terry, Mark
An electric taxi traveled along the dirt-packed lane, the driver giving the threesome a backwards wave. The Electrobat had been built sturdy, like an uncovered wagon. With spoked wheels, it gave the impression of a stagecoach, but it got the job done. It barely shuddered along the bumpy path, weighted down with sixteen hundred pounds of lead acid batteries.
Tesla smiled, watching after it. “They brought Electric Vehicle Company out here for testing at my urging, but electric cars don’t yet have range of petroleum vehicles and likely won’t in time to catch up with gas cars and Ford. If we wanted to, we could, but it would take real competition.”
Tesla led the group through the chain-link fence towards the front door of the lab. A gray, plain structure for the most part, it had a sleek and gleaming electric tower fastened to the roofing, stretching over a hundred feet into the sky.
Nikola ran a hand along the upper lip of the doorway and came down with a key. “Then of course there’s money involved. It is expensive to switch out batteries that drive cars. Of course,” Tesla shrugged and turned to open the door. “If they had listened to me, they wouldn’t need batteries.”
The door opened from the inside, and Simon stood there. “Dobrodošli.”
“Simon!” Ida exclaimed.
Tesla looked at Ida blankly. “I told you he would prepare for us.”
Edison and Ida looked at each other and shrugged, and Ida stepped inside. Thomas Edison stood at the doorway, glancing up at the electric tower. The raised eyebrows were the only sign of emotion on his tall forehead. Then, not wanting to be caught being impressed, he quickly looked down, but he couldn’t keep his face from hiding his emotions.
The giant oscillator and a massive electrical resonant transformer circuit were the centerpiece of Tesla’s electrical laboratory. Tesla looked up at the equipment proudly. "It has become possible to transmit through even moderately rarefied strata of atmosphere electrical energy to practically any amount and to any distance."
Edison shrugged and looked impatient. “What does that have to do with finding Randolph?” he barked.
Tesla waved his hands. “Nothing. But it may be useful eventually.”
“How?”
“Someone is going to die first. Us or vampire. You have any ideas on that one?”
Edison said nothing and Tesla simply turned away without a change in expression.
“What the hell are we going to do, Nikola?” Edison growled.
“Thomas, didn’t Kansas City teach you anything?”
Edison smiled at Ida sarcastically. “It doesn’t matter! I have to get John Randolph back. My business depends on it. My inventions depend on it!” Then he wheeled on Tesla. “And you and I, we have a contest to finish, do we not?”
Tesla half-smiled and tilted his head. “We have agreement. But you might want to rethink—”
“So you want to quit? Leave one of us standing, as it were?” Ida demanded.
Edison turned on her. “Look you obviously think you’ve got a great story here.” He pointed at Tesla. “And I don’t know anything more about what makes a good story than a pig knows about Latin. What I do know is that I’m going to call Ed Dickinson, the railroad superintendent. He’s been a friend since I came out here for the eclipse in seventy-eight. I can get a Pullman car to Omaha and then to Iowa City. It’s a two-day carriage ride to St. Louis from there. I don’t have to go back to Kansas City.”
“Thomas what is it you think that is going to accomplish?” Ida asked.
“I have to find John Randolph!”
The pounding on the door caused them all to jump. Tesla ran over to a large metal globe on a six-foot pole.
“What is that, Nikola?” Ida asked, stepping toward the door.
“It’s a Van de Graaf generator. It will focus energy and produce electrified stream of air to repel anything.” He motioned to the front door. “Open door.”
The front door of Tesla’s laboratory opened. John Randolph stood on the threshold, leaning against one jamb.
“John Randolph!” Edison ran to the disheveled bookkeeper. The smaller man shook visibly and looked as if he would fold to his knees as the inventor neared. But Edison's big hands clamped to his shoulders and John Randolph almost seemed to draw strength from the touch.
He didn’t drop, but his head hung. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Sorry! For what?” Edison said, looking over his shoulder at Tesla. Then quieter, “You still have the records with you, right?”
Randolph looked up with raised eyebrows and nodded, sliding a small package tied in string out from an inner pocket.
Edison slipped the package into his coat, took a single deep breath, exhaled, and nodded. “You’re all right then? Anything broken? Anything bleeding?”
Randolph inclined his head. “No, sir.”
Edison clapped the man on the shoulders. “You’re all right then!”
“But how did you get here?” Tesla asked.
Randolph blanched, doubled over, and wretched.
Tesla asked, “Randolph, what happened?”
The bookkeeper looked up and blinked absentmindedly. “It undid me. Wholly and completely. I relinquished my will, and I retreated from suffering and uncertainty.”
“Where have you been? How did you get here?” Tesla repeated.
Randolph’s brow furrowed. “A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar—” He giggled hoarsely.
Edison shook John Randolph by the shoulders. “Randolph, get hold of yourself, man!”
Randolph laughed hysterically for several long moments.
“What’s the matter with him? I mean, he’s clearly mad,” Edison said to Tesla.
“That a man should wake each morning and believe deep in his heart that he will live forever, even though he knows he is doomed,” the bookkeeper said softly.
“He’s quoting Krishna.” Tesla crouched down next to Randolph. “What happened to you?”
“He made me see. He made me see!”
“See what?” Edison asked, standing behind Tesla.
“Eternity is a long time to spend alone without others of your kind.” The bookkeeper’s eyes wandered about, unfocused.
“Is the vampire coming back?” Tesla peered into the bookkeepers face.
“Love doesn’t please itself by seeking revenge.” His eyes were focused on Tesla. “Should we put out the light?” he giggled.
“The man’s insane. He’s not going to help us,” Tesla muttered.
Ed Dickinson stood next to the Baker Electric Torpedo outside the front gate. He had two suitcases at his feet. “Tommy, good to see you again!” He motioned to the suitcases. “I had one of my assistants go out and buy you new clothes and supplies.”
“Tommy?” Ida asked, glancing at Edison.
Dickinson smiled. “Tommy and I have been friends since our fishing trip in ‘78. The White River expedition, right?”
Edison nodded. “Yes, Major Thornburgh accompanied us as well. He got called away for an offensive against the Ute nation and died in that campaign. ”
“Remember Daniel Talbot?” Dickerson asked.
Edison chuckled. “For the richest man in Sioux City, he didn’t have much of a constitution did he? Come on in. I’ve to get Randolph.”
Dickinson and Edison stepped in, leaving the lab door open while Ida stepped over to the car.
Tesla moved around, working on several control panels, while Simon stood attentively off to the side. When Tesla saw the men enter he stopped working and said, “Thomas, this is not a good idea.”
Edison waved a hand dismissively. “There isn’t any more discussion. Eddie has kindly provided a taxi for us. Randolph and I are heading for Pueblo where we’re going to take the Santa Fe to Los Angeles in the morning. You can continue to do your work here, and I’ll let you know when I’ve got the lights going.”
“Yes. Simon, Grgor and I have many important experiments to finish, but we have
threat that will not go away.” Tesla stopped and looked over at Simon. “I mean, Simon and I have experiments.” He put a hand to his forehead.
Randolph sat in a leather, baroque side chair with a blanket over him, looking peaked. He cringed as Edison came closer and moaned. “Sir, we can’t go to California.”
“Has anyone seen Ida?” Tesla asked.
Edison jerked a hand over his shoulder. “She’s outside, looking at the taxi.”
Tesla shook his head. “No, I can see taxi from here. I haven’t seen her for several minutes.”
Tesla, Edison and Simon all came from different directions, calling out Ida’s name, and met in front of the taxi.
“Anything?” Tesla asked.
Edison shook his head.
“Ništa,” Simon said.
“Nothing up here!” Dickinson shouted from the second floor balcony.
“Ida’s gone,” Tesla muttered.
John Randolph groaned in miserable self-loathing and agony. Edison held one shoulder, Simon the other. Tesla grabbed the bookkeeper’s chin. “Where did the vampire take Ida. What has he done with her?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“Sit him down.” Tesla motioned Edison and Simon to a chair in the corner of the room and came over with a large glass orb about eight inches across. They led the bookkeeper to the chair. As he approached, the orb glowed a brilliant violet. He held it low, at his waist.
“What is that?” Edison asked, stepping back.
“It’s called violet ray. You needn’t be afraid. It's very safe. Very effective.”
Randolph had been staring at the floor, and he glanced up. His eyes squinted at the light for a moment, then glazed over. His jaw slacked.
Tesla knelt in front of Randolph, holding the orb at the same height as before, and spoke softly, “Krodhād bhavati sammohaḥ sammohāt smṛiti-vibhramaḥ. smṛiti-bhranśhād buddhi-nāśho buddhi-nāśhāt praṇaśhyati.” He paused for several moments, watching Randolph watch the orb. Then he repeated the Sanskrit phrase.
“What are you saying to him?” Edison asked, leaning forward.
“Fear leads to clouding of judgment, which results in bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intellect gets destroyed; and when the intellect is destroyed, one is ruined.”
“You’re hypnotizing him?”
Tesla stood. “More like relaxing him. Helping him to remember. He’s full of anxiety and anger at what has been done to him. We have to get through that.” He leaned close to the bookkeeper. “John, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“John, where is Wedderburn?”
“Master.”
“Where is the Master, John?” Tesla said, still softly, almost whispering.
“Observe my statutes and keep my ordinances. Do them so that you may live securely in the land,” the bookkeeper whispered.
“That’s Leviticus,” Tesla told Edison. He leaned closer to Randolph. “Where John? What land?”
Randolph looked at Tesla and croaked, “To hell you ride!”
“We cannot leave a lady in distress,” Edison said to Dickinson. “We may have need of your train service still. We just won’t be going to Pueblo. We’re going to Telluride.”
Interlude 69
Monday, March 20th, 1893, 3:14 p.m.
Telluride, Colorado
Ida screamed. A brief lick of light far away broke through the cold darkness then the flash of a burst of flame.
Wedderburn stood about ten paces away in human form. Milo stood next to him, a torch in hand, laughing. They were in a tunnel. Milo lit a second torch and slid it into a notch in the rocky wall. The vampire flashed his teeth.
Ida shivered, her breath coming out in gasps. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming again. She tried to move, but her arms were bound with rope to bent spikes embedded in the rocky walls.
“You may go,” Wedderburn said softly. Milo looked disappointed to leave the impending spectacle, but only for a moment. Then he nodded and disappeared.
“Yes,” the Gunslinger said smoothly, “you are trapped.” He moved soundlessly from near the flame to having his face within inches of Ida’s in the blink of an eye. “No escape.”
Ida didn't blink. Didn’t twitch.
One of the Gunslinger’s hands came up and a single finger transformed into a gnarled, hairy extension with an inch long nail. He ran it along Ida’s cheek, his smile never wavering. “Your tinkerers, your nyctophobiacs, they will be coming. They will try to save you.” He dropped his hand and stepped back. “They believe they can the hold back the inevitability of the universe. The peace and serenity in the dark that comes to the world every day. They think they can stop the darkness from coming.” The vampire took another step back. “I will show them. That is MY domain.”
Then the Gunslinger simply vanished. He didn’t fly. He didn’t transform. He vanished. His voice spoke from nothingness, “Do you know, the Aztecs made human sacrifices so the sun would continue to move and day would turn to night? Imagine. Sacrificing for the coming of the darkness. What beauty. What sublime and precious adoration.”
Ida whimpered but kept her gaze steady.
The Ute Native Americans were the first people to inhabit the Telluride Valley. The elk and mountain sheep were plentiful for centuries providing them food, clothing and tools. The mountain sheep had crossed over the Bering Sea land bridge before the last ice age, moving across the mountain ranges and finding themselves finally in the lush San Juan Mountains surrounding this box canyon the Native Americans named “The Valley of Hanging Waterfalls.”
Built on the toll roads from Denver starting in 1888, the Rio Grande Southern became the first railroad to reach Telluride—the same year Tesla had begun working on the alternating current power plant that would eventually power the Gold King mine. Tesla planned to deliver power into Telluride streets by running electric lines from the mine, making it the first city in the world to have electricity in its streets, as well as its homes.
In 1890, Telluride exploded in a gold rush. To the north, ran Colorado Avenue, the widest boulevard in town. Since prospectors and deliveries entering Telluride coming in from the southwest had nowhere to keep going but into the mine’s dead end canyon, they had to turn around in town. The town built the road wide enough for large burro trains to make the hundred-eighty-degree turn and head back.
The Rio Grande line crept on its circuitous route along the mountainous ridges of the San Juan forest towards Durango, heading for Telluride. Tesla and Edison had spent most of the last day and a half catching a narrow gauge line from Salida through to Ridgeway and then south.
Randolph spouted a lot of babbling nonsense about passing eternity, living energy and had a strange obsession with sunlight. He stayed wrapped in a horse blanket much of the time that they tried to talk to him.
Eventually, Edison spent much of the journey staring out the window watching the Ponderosa pine and the Douglas fir blur past. Tesla watched the man huddled on the seat next to them, and his gaze traveled to the couple in front of them talking about starting a dry goods business in town. The wife worried about safety.
“That Hole in the Wall Gang was scaring people just a few years ago in the bank there!”
The husband remained adamant that Telluride had gotten richer and had more opportunity than any city back east. “It's a dynamic, flourishing town of different people. Finns, Swedes, Chinese, Irish, Germans, Italians and French. Lots of money from the gold mine flowing through the town. Men with more time on their hands—most working a full day less than they used to!”
Tesla’s gaze wandered back to Randolph in time to see him snatch a spruce beetle off his window. Randolph stared at the bug for a long moment and then moved to put it in his mouth.
Tesla grabbed his wrist and snatched the bug away.
“Hey!” Randolph cried out. T
esla held the bug between two fingers over Randolph’s head.
“Give that back!”
“Where is Ida?”
“That’s mine!”
“Where is Ida?” Tesla moved his face closer.
“I don’t know! The master has not told me! He has abandoned me! I am adrift!” The bookkeeper curled into a ball, covering his face with his hands, sobbing.
Interlude 70
Monday, March 20, 1893, 5:10 p.m.
Telluride, Colorado
The train depot stood at Colorado and Townsend Streets on Telluride’s west end. The Rio Grande pulled into Telluride, and no one noticed the small burly man sitting on the roof of the first passenger car.
Tesla, Edison and Randolph got off the train surrounded by young families and several businessmen. The late day sun faded behind the San Juan Mountains.
“Well,” Edison said, looking around, “Where to now?”
Both Edison and Tesla looked to Randolph, with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. He shrugged. Tesla pointed south.
Boarding houses and warehouses surrounded them as they walked south a block to Pacific Street. The San Miguel River rushed by behind the depot. Tesla and Edison peered up and down the street and then prodded Randolph east.
They went another block to Oak Street and came upon a miners’ rooming house. Further up past Fir and Pine Streets, bordellos, saloons, gambling rooms and dance halls, packed Pacific. From Pacific they turned north on Willow and reached Colorado Avenue. The Mahr Building stood at the corner. A small sign said “Site Of Former San Miguel Valley Bank.”
“Where to now?” Edison asked. “Just keep wandering Telluride? It’s getting dark.”
Randolph slumped to his butt at the side of the road, moaning.
Tesla stood at the corner of Colorado and looked up and down the street. “There’ll be a sign. Something to tell us where to go.”
“That’s the plan? To wait for a sign? Maybe an Edison light bulb to turn on and help light the way?” Edison asked.