"Oh," I say. Yes. People. Pennsylvania. I'd send him straight back there if I could.
"If you refuse, Westinghouse will go under, we'll have to sell to Morgan, and there will be no royalties regardless. Either way you will not get paid. But if you tear up your contract with me, Westinghouse, along with your invention, may survive."
I'd always liked George. "You mean my polyphase system will survive?"
"Yes."
He left me little choice.
The walk to Pennsylvania Station is a quick one. The evening rush is long past. I make the walk even faster as I try to outrun thoughts of what it is I just agreed to. There will be more, I tell myself. When I have completed my work at Wardenclyffe, money will no longer be a worry.
Pennsylvania Station is a magnificent building. Wrought-iron gothic arches span the interior, and the space the station commands is all the more noticeable at this hour because it is nearly empty. My heels click on the marble, picking up speed when I glance at the time. Ahead, I see the conductor turn away from the track entrance. I step aboard with moments to spare.
The train's engines are already at full steam, the wheels just beginning to turn. I turn my head to the window, prepared to get some rest, but find instead that I am staring out the window at the passing backyards of Brooklyn and Queens, Hicksville, Syosset, Greenlawn, and Kings Park until the backyards break up and Long Island opens up into just sand and sky and trees and sea.
I'm the sole disembarkee at the Wardenclyffe station. As the train pulls away it drags all the light, all the sound, with it. Wardenclyffe is dark. The village, owned by a man named Warden, has very few residents. A couple of farms, a couple of orchards, and beyond that—forests all the way down to the bay. A dark and sleepy village. It seems that everyone but the last stationmaster has already gone, and he whistles as if he'd been waiting for me, impatient for his bed.
In a moment, my eyes become accustomed to the dark. I can smell the sea and the pine trees. I can hear the brush of the needles, the leaves, the low, dry grasses sweeping the sandy soil. The tower of Wardenclyffe is visible off in the distance. It surprises me. It always does, as if it were an architectural wonder, the last artifact of its kind left behind by some ancient advanced civilization. The Aztecs. The Incas. The wooden tower rises high above a rectangular brick laboratory. It soars 187 feet above the ground and is topped with a fifty-five-ton mushroom cap. Invisible from where I stand is a network of subterranean passages, an underground city as complex as any colony of ants or honeybees.
There is much work to do. I set off walking toward it.
From the path I squint my eyes to look at Wardenclyffe. I don't want to see it clearly. The tower is not done, and worse, with my eyes open I can see no way to raise money for its completion. So I squint, and when I do the powerful beams of communication and radiant energy become visible to me. Pure, free power plucked from the sky. One day Wardenclyffe will send its wireless energy, its wireless signals, off to Zimbabwe, California, Capistrano. When I squint I envision how, with money and a bit more time, the laboratory will slowly climb up the tower, making the final structure a pyramid, as in old Egypt, though surpassing even the Sphinx in importance and beauty. With my eyes half-closed I imagine each floor—magnificent laboratories, acres of libraries, legions of bustling assistants, chaotic administration rooms. The World Wireless Telephone and Energy Transmitto—I lose my footing. I trip. Through squinted eyes I was not watching where I was going. I land on the path and my wrists burn. Drawing the scraped flesh up to my mouth, I open my eyes. The tower stands directly before me as only a wooden framework, a scaffold. Its insides, even the metal rod that runs 187 feet to the top and down 120 feet into the earth, are exposed, open to the elements. I have already spent the $150,000 investment received from J. P. Morgan. In fact, I have already spent far beyond that investment, diving deep into debt on all sides, labor, favors, supplies. I haven't paid my bills at the Waldorf in years. Morgan has stopped replying to my letters. He's done, he says. Still I beg him weekly.
"I'll get the money," I tell the tower, rubbing my cut palms and knees. I look to see what I tripped on. It is a sheet of newspaper; debris caught in the wind has wrapped itself around my left leg. I dislodge the offensive litter, and shifting the paper's grip I am ready to let it go when an advertisement there catches my eye. This Christmas why not surprise the family with a double socket. Give the gift of electricity.
"I already did," I say to the ad and grab hold of the paper with both hands. I study the advertisement. There is a family of four shown gathered around a double electrical socket as though around a roaring fireplace. I address this happy family. "Do you even know what electricity is?" The family continues to smile. There is no answer because this family has been so mesmerized by technology that they are no longer even curious enough to try to discover where the electricity they love comes from. I stare at the family and am just about to let the newspaper fly when I am certain I see the father in the ad crimp his dot-printed mouth to one side and whisper to the mother in the ad, "Wireless? I told you he's from Venus." The wind blows hard against the newspaper in my hands. I let it go.
As the wind comes again I stand, raise my arms up to catch the breeze, hoping it might carry me off too. The wrought-iron weather-vane on top of the laboratory shakes in the wind. I imagine the confetti shreds of my contract with Westinghouse taking flight, and me along with them. Twelve million dollars. Maybe I do belong on Venus or Mars. There is nothing to hold me here. Even my inventions have forgotten who invented them. I keep my arms raised, prepared to lift of, but nothing happens.
I stand before my tower at Wardenclyffe. "Morgan has refused to give me any more money," I tell the structure.
"He what?" the tower asks, stirring its steady bearings.
"Not only that—he said he has sunk more than enough money into you and then asked me where he could put the meter. I didn't know what to tell him. I need more time, more money before any of this could be metered. He wasn't interested, and in fact he's warned other investors off the project. He has told them not to fund Wardenclyffe. There was even an article in the Times. They called you my milliondollar folly."
The tower writhes and stews as I watch.
"Don't worry. I'll figure something out" I say.
But the tower does not ask for more of an explanation than that. Rather, it sprouts feet from its foundation, tears its tethers, and lets loose a terrible roar of pain and fury in the face of this injustice. The tower, an angry giant, lifts one leg and then the other. Each falling footstep wreaks a great earthquake.
"Oh, dear."
My terrific monster sets off in a rage, howling, crisscrossing the world. Its mushroom head a beacon, a homing device detecting cigar smoke, swiftly narrowing in on the object of its anger, J. P. Morgan, a man who I fear will momentarily, summarily be torn to bits by my invention.
But no. That is not how it happens. Instead the tower creaks in the wind. Instead I enter the lab. It is dark and quiet when the tower says, "Not today, Niko. It is about to rain and I am tired."
No. The truth is that the tower says nothing. The tower cannot speak. It has a design flaw that is keeping it from functioning properly. Rather, it sighs and settles; the wind blows salt into its joints, preparing it for the day that will come soon when this land will be incorporated into the town of Shoreham and I will surrender the deed of Wardenclyffe to the Waldorf Hotel in order to pay my bill. And soon after that, the United States government will find cause to rip my tower limb from limb, suspecting it of housing German spies. Leaving behind just the small brick laboratory, they will spread rumors, stirring fear in order to destroy a device that would one day have provided free energy to the world and brought the capitalists like Morgan to their knees.
12
Please remember that Magick is Science.
—Aleister Crowley
Alternating Currents
New York is haunted by bones, hair, abandoned baby carriages, abandone
d babies, grease, hardened old chewing gum, forgotten silver frames with photos of people no one remembers tucked inside, even the sphagnum moss that once grew where the stock exchange now sits. People have lived in this city for so long that there are dead things in the soil, in the drinking water, in the air New York City breathes. Ghosts wait on stoops or lean against doorways. The only place these ghosts really disappear is inside the hotel. Here, Louisa thinks, everything is different. It's not yet old enough to be haunted. This is the new world. Here is the efficient. Here is the modern. Elegant people dine on the latest dishes: Lobster Thermidor, Lamb Kidney en Brochette, Mousse of Capon with Sauce Suprême, Roasted Chicken Jeanette, Cold Consommé with Rice, buffet plates of sliced pineapple, cream cheese, and nuts, baked Alaska. Everything is cleverly designed, space age, really. Sleek, functional, and hidden. There are numerous back hallways, ingeniously concealed stairs and doors for employees only. Maids slip into these secret shortcuts. Stewards slink behind the walls of rooms, catching snippets of conversation—"Paper says Errol Flynn's been acquitted of rape," or "Let me comb your hair," or "Darling, of course we can just call room service."
Louisa climbs one of these secret passages, a back stairwell that runs all the way from the main kitchen up to the forty-third floor. A service elevator runs the same route and so this stairwell is rarely used, but Louisa likes the silence there. She checks in with the head maid and then goes to the stairwell to think about kissing Arthur Vaughn. Taking one slow step at a time, she is imagining Arthur's neck, his collarbone, his fingertips, when the latch of a door opens below. Voices make their way up the stairwell and so she treads very softly, listening.
"We have many strange guests, but he's the strangest by far." It is the assistant general manager, Mr. Hammond, dreaded for his bean counting. The taps on his shoes strike the metal guard of each stair.
"Yes, sir." And his secretary Mr. Verbena.
"I don't have to tell you, Mr. Verbena, but Mr. Tesla's bills are months and months over—" The door closes again on Mr. Hammond's sentence.
There is one question she still wants to ask Mr. Tesla.
If Mr. Tesla were from the future, wouldn't he be able to read the stock reports that will one day be printed and place his money accordingly? Yes, he would, Louisa figures. If he were from the future, he would be rich. It is important because if Azor is wrong about Mr. Tesla, he might also be wrong about Arthur and Louisa.
Louisa climbs from floor fourteen all the way up to floor thirty-three, taking two steps at a time. There is a resupply linen closet on thirty-three, the key for which she fishes out of her uniform. She begins to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, and up to eighteen. With the towels wedged between her hand and her chin, Louisa knocks on Mr. Tesla's door.
"Why, you devil!"
A small group has assembled on the street outside the laboratory. Katharine and Robert, Samuel and the author Marion Crawford. Katharine is clutching the string of the bell I had rigged. She gives it an extra tug or two, though I've already opened the door.
"Come inside this instant or we'll risk alerting the officers of the law." In they file, giggling in explosive bursts. It is not uncommon for the police to show up at my doorstep, following up on neighborhood complaints of blue flashes or sixteen-foot-long bolts of lightning streaming from the roof. And, of course, there was the time I nearly destroyed the entire neighborhood, having accidentally unleashed a miniature earthquake with a small pocket resonator that, through a series of gentle taps applied at the exact same point on each wavelength, multiplied the vibration so that all of Mulberry Street began to tremble. Mortar and steel bent. Walls were ready to collapse underneath my mini-resonator, and a thought struck me at the time: with this device, the world could be split into two halves just like an apple. The police came then.
I look both ways before closing and locking the laboratory door.
Earlier that evening the Johnsons had urged me to join them for supper at the Waldorf, but I'd resisted temptation. Dane guarded the door, staying by my side as I worked, though he's made himself scarce now that they've arrived.
"Tell me what you dined on," I ask Sam, torn and sorry to have missed the dinner.
"Yes. Let's see. First, dates and cured meats, then oysters served raw on the half shell, some Spanish sherry, a Bordeaux, a leg of lamb served with white beans and parsnips. A selection of Irish cheeses, a chocolate tart, and a samovar of coffee. They all asked for you," he says.
"Who did? The lamb?"
"New York's tender flowers. That's who. They wondered where their reticent and alluring bachelor had gotten off to."
"Oh," I say. "Them."
Katharine looks away while Robert watches her.
"And there was a phalanx of journalists as well. Hoping for another smoky image of those dark, mysterious Serbian eyes."
"No," I say. He is teasing my vanity.
"Well, I suppose you'll never learn the truth if you keep hiding out in the lab," Katharine says.
"But now we demand a demonstration." Robert stomps his foot, which sends Sam and Marion into fits of laughter. I suspect that more than a few bottles of wine have been consumed.
"Yes, since you insisted on missing dinner in order to work, we've come by to inspect your progress. Just to be certain you didn't simply get a better invitation and sneak out the back door," Katharine says.
"A better offer? Impossible," I tell them.
I ready a device I've been working on of late, a trick of sorts. I switch the small platform on and watch as the indicator climbs all the way up to two million volts. Pointing out the extraordinarily high voltage to my friends, I do not smile. I want them to understand the potential dangers involved. A fraction of this voltage could easily kill a man. I take my place on the platform. Within moments I'm ensconced in a force field of fire; glowing rays of brilliant white light surround my figure. They radiate from my very being. I shine as though I am myself the sun, while my audience, people I would have imagined immune to the spectacles often created for them here in my laboratory, stand with mouths agape.
"You see," I tell them, "a high voltage such as this one skims the surface, dances over the skin of an object, while a lower voltage would easily enter my body and kill me instantly. It is all a matter of volts," I say, jumping down off the platform, still throwing an occasional spark from my person.
"But how did you know the first time that it wouldn't kill you?" Sam asks.
"Yes, that's a good question. I wasn't certain." I start up another small platform on the other side of the laboratory.
"Please," Sam says. "Might I?" He wants to lead the demonstration.
"I suppose, but you must come down when I tell you to."
"Of course."
This platform is set on top of a mechanical oscillator, some rubber and cork. It produces a very steady and pleasing vibration. I've found that a number of physiological benefits are produced by the vibrations.
Sam climbs aboard and the oscillator begins to move him. He starts to shake, a black and white pudding in his dinner suit. The contours of his large mustache curl up into a terrific grin. "Good heavens!" he says. "I've never felt such paradise. It's, it's..." and for perhaps the first time words escape the great orator. The others again break into fits of laughter, watching as Sam dances on the platform, moving by magic.
After a few minutes I give Sam my warning. "You'd better come down now. I think you've had enough."
"Not by the jugful!" he says.
"Sam, it would be best if you came down from there."
"You couldn't get me off this with a derrick!"
"Remember, I advised you, Sam."
"I'm having the time of my life. Nothing could get me off this wondrous device, not you, not an army of—oh! Dear Lord. Where is it, Niko? Where?" he asks, his face suddenly desperate.
"Right over there in the corner, through that small door." And now I chuckle, pointing out the bathroom, Sam having just discovered the device's potent laxativ
e effect.
"Why, you devil!"
Louisa stands back from the door, concerned she is being addressed.
"You'd better come down now. I think you've had enough" The door swings open. Despite the stack of towels pressed close against Louisa's chin, her jaw does drop slightly.
"Mister," Louisa says, and then, "Tesla. Here are your towels, sir, all of them."
"Ah, yes. Please. Come in. You can leave them..." He spins. "Here. By the washstand." And so Louisa enters the room, craning her neck in every direction, eager to see to whom he'd been speaking. The room is empty. "Louisa, I must thank you again for your help the other day."
"It was no trouble at all. Indeed, I enjoyed myself."
"As did I," he says.
"You're looking much better."
"You think so?"
"Yes."
"I'll take your word for it."
On the bed is a small device resembling a fan. There are a number of tools scattered beside it as though he'd been tinkering. "What's that?" she asks, pointing to the bed, careful not to touch anything this time.
"That," he says, scraping his hands down the length of his jacket as if trying to iron any wrinkles from it, "is a polyphase alternating-current motor. It takes electrical energy and turns it into mechanical power. That is the basis for almost all electricity in use today."
Louisa stares, waiting for it to do something.
"I'm afraid it's not much to look at."
"Oh," she says.
"But—oh, I know. I've got something for you." In the far room he opens the doors to a large wardrobe, one she hadn't looked in yet. Inside is a terrific laboratory in miniature. Coils of wire, small boxes of bolts, canvas satchels filled with tools whose purposes Louisa can't even begin to fathom.
The Invention of Everything Else Page 20