quantum: any means necessary?
ash: do no serious damage. don’t get caught
Quantum parsed those last sentences. What kind of damage did Ash deem to be serious? Tough to say. He’d have to use his own judgment. And no matter what, he didn’t intend to get caught.
Chapter 8
A flurry of movement by the door told Joe his mother had arrived at the Oyster Bar. Even in New York City, home to a fashion industry and full of beautiful women a third her age, something about Tatiana drew all eyes to her. She was always a star.
She still wore the black dress from the funeral, but she had taken off the hat, veil, and gloves. Her black hair, hair that would never go gray, was cut in a severe bob that angled forward, longer at the chin than at the nape of her neck. A new cut for her, and it looked good. She crossed the floor with easy grace.
He hadn’t inherited any of her coordination.
A wheeled suitcase trailed along behind her. He jumped to his feet to take it from her.
She kissed him on each cheek and held his face in her hands for a second. “You look pale.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “You look great!”
She waved her hand. “Always you say this.”
“Always it’s true.” He brought her suitcase to their table and parked it before pulling out her chair. His mother was a stickler for manners. “What do you have in here, rocks?”
“You are closer than you think.” She held her fingers down for Edison to sniff.
Edison refused, because he was wearing his vest. When he wore his vest, he considered himself on duty and didn’t respond to anyone’s overtures but Joe’s.
“Such a serious dog.”
“It’s his training.” Joe didn’t bother to explain. She wouldn’t have listened if he had. “What’s in the suitcase?”
“We must speak of your father.”
The waiter saved him from answering. His mother ordered a Brooklyn Summer Ale without opening the menu, and he ordered the same.
“So.” She tapped the top of the suitcase. “You didn’t come today.”
“I can’t. I explained before.”
“Can’t? Won’t try? Who can say which this is?”
“I can say. I don’t like it, but I have a real condition.”
“But he was your father. You owed him such.” She pushed back her hair on one side, and Joe saw the long scar it usually concealed.
His father gave her that scar. One night, she’d come back to the trailer late. His father, standing by the door with a whiskey bottle, had clipped her across the side of the head. If the bottle had been full, it might have killed her. As it was, it took Farnsworth nine (scarlet) stitches to close the wound. Joe was five years old, and when he sat holding her hand while Farnsworth sewed up her head, he had thought she would die.
He leaned over and touched the scar. “I didn’t owe him a damn thing.”
She took her hand in his. As always, her hands were warmer than his. “Your time together was more than those moments. Good moments, too. You owe him your life, the man you have become.”
“I don’t.” Joe’s voice rose. He brought it down. “Anyway, I couldn’t go to the funeral. You know that.”
She dismissed his agoraphobia with a squeeze of his hand. “Anything is possible. Always.”
The waiter arrived with the beer. Joe ordered bluepoint oysters with steak fries, and his mother followed the waiter to pick out a lobster. Joe couldn’t eat a lobster after he’d been formally introduced. His mother never worried about things like that.
He sat in his chair and wished that she was right, that anything was possible, and he’d be able to go outside again the minute he wanted to.
His mother returned and sat. “They fly the lobsters straight in from Maine. Imagine! I can see them sitting in little seats with their seat belts fastened, wishing they were allowed to smoke.”
He laughed. “Maybe they let them smoke on those flights. The lobsters won’t live long enough to get gill cancer.”
Dinner was better after that. She caught him up on the happenings of the people in the circus. She kept in touch with them, although she hadn’t performed in years.
When he got rich, he had bought her any house she wanted, and she chose a Victorian in San Francisco with a view of the sea. It looked much like the one where he lived, except that hers was full of old circus people and relatives from overseas.
“I suppose you are curious about my suitcase,” she said after they had eaten.
“What’s it for? You going on a trip?”
“It’s for you, from your father.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Not from him directly,” she said. “From the Teslas, passed down.”
“But Dad wasn’t a Tesla, was he?”
“You knew?” She raised her sculpted eyebrows. “All this time?”
“I found out today at the funeral. Someone told Miss Torres, and I looked it up from there. Dad’s real name was George Smith.”
“Your Miss Torres is a pretty woman. Smart, too, and not one to be led about. Good for you, I think.”
“She works for me. That’s it.” This was his chance to tell his mother about Celeste Gallo, but the thought of explaining their complicated relationship to his mother was too daunting. “Why did Dad lie about being a Tesla?”
“His name was officially changed with the government. He was as Tesla as you.”
“But he always said we were descended from Nikola Tesla. That we got our mathematical minds from him.”
“Perhaps you did.”
“Not if we’re not Teslas.”
“Your father was born a Smith, this is true. But he did know Nikola Tesla. His father worked for the great scientist, and your father saw him often when he was a boy. That contact made George aspire to be a scientist—and so your scientific interest may come from Nikola himself.”
“Dad told you that my grandfather was a scientist in Nikola Tesla’s lab?”
“No scientist. Your grandfather raised racing pigeons, and he took care of Nikola Tesla’s pigeons.”
She’d verified everything he’d found online. “So, Dad pushed me to be like my ancestor Nikola Tesla, but not a drop of Tesla blood runs through my veins. I have pigeon-keeper blood in my veins.”
“There is no shame in that.” His mother gave a decisive shake of her head, as she always did when she considered a subject closed.
“There is shame in pushing a child to adopt a legacy that isn’t his.”
“Here you are. A famous man. A rich man. A computer genius. All because of that pushing. Is it so wrong now?”
“Yes.” He had a hundred things he wanted to say, but none of them would change her mind.
“I am here, with my clever little suitcase, because of these connections. Because the famous Nikola Tesla trusted his pigeon keeper more than all the famous scientists he knew.” She nudged the suitcase with her polished shoe. “Are you not curious?”
As usual, she had deflected the conversation down her own path. He was curious. But he didn’t have to admit it.
“I see you look at it, Joe. I know. In this suitcase is a box that your father gave me to pass on to you when he was gone. So I do.”
“It’s probably a bunch of useless papers.”
“Take it down to your hidey-hole and open it to see.”
“It’s a house, Mom, not a hidey-hole.”
“Does it have windows that look out onto the sky?”
“If it did, I couldn’t live there.”
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me about your house.”
“It’s Victorian, the same as yours.”
She snorted. If it didn’t have windows that looked out on the sky, it couldn’t be the same as hers.
“It was built in the early 1900s, the same time as all this.” He waved his hand around to encompass the Oyster Bar and the terminal beyond.
“Why would someone build such a house?” She sounded grudgingly c
urious.
“The lead engineer, the one who designed the station and its tracks, wanted a house to be built there so he could live in the tunnel system he designed.”
“So they gave him a cave?”
“It’s not a cave. You should come and see. The house sits in a hole blasted into the wall of a tunnel.”
“This is a cave.”
“But in that cave they built a two-story house—with a parlor and a billiards room and a kitchen and bedrooms, with wood floors and wallpaper and a fireplace with a mantel.”
He pulled out his phone to show her pictures. He wanted her to understand about the house.
“It looks absurd, but…” The house had clearly caught her imagination, too.
“The engineer’s contract specified that the underground house be deeded to his descendants in perpetuity, and I leased it from them.” He didn’t try to explain how grateful he was to the house. It had saved him from living out his days at the Grand Central Hyatt, where he’d been staying when his agoraphobia struck. In this quaint antique, alone underneath one of the most densely populated cities in the world, he’d felt at home for the first time in his life.
“Take my suitcase.” His mother pushed it toward him with her foot.
He stared at the simple black case. On the one hand, it might contain Nikola Tesla’s secrets, something any nerd in the world would like to see, including him. On the other, it came from his father, and he wanted nothing from him. Nothing.
His mother patted his arm, something she hadn’t done since he was a little boy. “You have earned it, not because of who you were born to be, but because of who you became. Nikola Tesla would be proud to give this to my famous son.”
Joe wasn’t so sure. The company he’d created wasn’t about bringing peace and light to the world. It didn’t have the grandeur of Nikola Tesla’s vision. Joe had created Pellucid to catch the bad guys, but he wasn’t sure that’s how it was used anymore. Nikola Tesla would probably slap him across the face with a glove if he were still around.
“If you don’t take, what should I do with it?” His mother’s eyes flashed. “Throw it away? Turn it over to the US government? They took all of Tesla’s other papers. They might want these, too. This would then be on your hands.”
In Pellucid, he had created something powerful, and he had sold it to the highest bidder. His life’s work was out in the world, maybe doing damage. He wouldn’t let these papers suffer the same fate, no matter how angry he was at his father.
He reached out and took the suitcase.
Chapter 9
Geezer studied the figures through the Oyster Bar’s arched windows. Tatiana sat across from her son at the corner table. She said something to Joe, and he laughed. He answered, and then she laughed, too. Clearly, they enjoyed each other’s company.
Easy for Joe Tesla to laugh. He was recognized as a genius, written up in magazines and all over the Internet, a multimillionaire boy wonder. Geezer had worked his entire life and never achieved the recognition he deserved. But once he had the Oscillator, that would change.
He would take it apart and figure out how it worked, then he would draw up plans for it and present it to the world. He would be known as the one who found the Oscillator. The Oscillator wasn’t doing the world any good locked away in some dusty trunk. It was wrong of George Tesla to sit on knowledge like that. It needed to be shared with the world.
He spotted the suitcase next to the table. Hoping that it might contain George’s secrets, he’d wanted to grab it and run when he saw her come out of the Waldorf, but the sidewalk had been crowded with doormen and hotel guests, and he’d been across the street.
Instead, he’d hailed a cab and followed her. The cabbie hadn’t wanted to do it, so Geezer had to pay him an extra twenty. Like the driver should care where the hell his cab was going—he should just drive.
They’d ended up at Grand Central Terminal, and Geezer had followed Tatiana inside. The terminal was crawling with cops and even armed soldiers, so he didn’t dare make a move then either. But he couldn’t let it get away, not if it contained his legacy. He glared at the suitcase. It was parked next to the table, as if it were an ordinary suitcase full of makeup and dirty underwear.
The sidewalks outside were busy. He’d find a place where he could snatch it. Later, he’d get all the recognition he deserved. He shouldn’t have told Spooky about the Oscillator, but he’d wanted to brag. He wanted geniuses like Ash and Quantum to recognize him. He had been a fool.
But no more of a fool than George. One drunken night George had told him he had Tesla’s Oscillator, but he wouldn’t produce it. He’d gotten defensive when pressed, said he knew where to find it, but he didn’t have it anymore. Said he had a map, but he kept it hidden. He said he wouldn’t reveal it to anyone but his son, and even then not until after his death, which they’d both known was coming soon. He was an old man, and his heart was shot. Geezer sat with him for hours to get him drunk enough to forget they had talked.
A teenager with earbuds bumped into Geezer, and he nearly fell. “Hey!”
“Sorry, old dude,” the kid said. “Didn’t see you there.”
Geezer watched him walk away. He wasn’t surprised that the boy had run into him. He’d been invisible all his life, but that was about to change.
A flicker of light drew his attention to the Oyster Bar. He looked at the Tesla table, expecting to see Tatiana and her son still talking over coffee, moving in the synchronized dance of those who know each other well, laughing at half-finished jokes.
But their table was empty.
They hadn’t come past him. He shifted from foot to foot, ready to run after them, but he didn’t know where. The damn restaurant must have a second exit.
He pushed through the door at the Oyster Bar and sprinted through the dining room until he saw the other exit. He knocked a waiter on his ass when the guy tried to stop him and made for the door.
Everyone moved out of his way as he ran. The commuters weren’t surprised to see a guy running in the terminal. Everyone had almost missed a train at some point.
He pounded into the main hall and saw Joe Tesla close to the clock, a yellow dog trotting along at his heels. Joe was pulling the black suitcase, and a man dressed in black was closing in on him.
Geezer sprinted toward the two men.
Chapter 10
Joe tugged the suitcase behind him through the concourse. Edison walked on his left to stay out of the way, and he felt hemmed in. He shook his head. It wasn’t Edison’s fault that he was cranky because his mother had always known he wasn’t a Tesla at all and had still let him be tortured because he hadn’t been Tesla enough.
Now she’d brought him a box of secret papers from his paranoid father. They were probably Nikola Tesla’s grocery lists, or notes about pigeon care and feeding.
Still, he was intrigued. His father had never given him presents, relying on Tatiana to remember birthdays and Christmases. This might be the first real present he’d ever received from his father. A present wrapped in all the mystery of Nikola Tesla himself.
Joe hurried toward the elevator, and his heart beat faster with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to open the suitcase and see what was inside. She’d have known that, too, just as he’d known that she would love the house when she saw it. She’d thawed after she saw his pictures, agreed to come visit as soon as he could add her to the list of people cleared to use the elevator. He’d get Mr. Rossi to file the paperwork, and she’d be on the list in a few days.
Rush-hour travelers pushed by on either side. Grand Central, busiest place in the world, a cliché because it was true. He dodged left to avoid a gaggle of nuns in tennis shoes. They weren’t exactly jogging, but they made a fast-moving undulating wall of black cotton.
His suitcase was yanked out of his hand—a quick, sharp pull, gone before he could react. Edison’s reflexes were sharper. The yellow dog lunged forward and sank his teeth into the case’s fabric. He braced his sturdy leg
s and pulled.
Joe had played enough tug-of-war with him to know he was deceptively strong. The guy stealing his suitcase hadn’t. He slowed and tugged back. Joe charged him, but the man dodged, punching Joe in the side of his face as he went by. Joe saw a blur of black spandex, a black baseball hat, and sunglasses.
He lay sprawled on the marble. His cheek throbbed, and his hip hurt where he’d landed, but he scrambled to his feet, hands up.
Edison held on to the suitcase. Joe swung at the guy’s face, but just a feint, instead using his real force to knee him in the groin.
But he hit air. Black Spandex was damn fast. Even more humiliating, he was fighting Joe while still holding on to the suitcase—basically winning with one (cyan) hand tied behind his back.
“Police!” shouted someone.
Joe didn’t turn to see where the sound came from, and neither did his opponent. The man slid into a crouch, shot his leg out, and swept Joe off his feet. Again, he hit the floor hard.
From his new vantage point, he saw three men in military khaki and two cops in blue heading for them, a man and a woman. He stayed down. Better to make it obvious that he was the victim when they got here.
His attacker whipped his head around as if to take them all in, then let go of the suitcase. Edison held on to his end, growling. The cops closed in first—a tall blond guy and a shorter woman with black hair.
The guy in black went into a spinning frenzy, like an actor in a martial arts movie. He hurled himself straight at the pair of cops, striking with elbows and arms, bouncing from one to the other with a choreographed grace that impressed the hell out of Joe, even as he lay on the ground with the wind knocked out of him and his cheek throbbing.
The man knocked the largest cop down and spun to take out the second, but she had dodged to the side and was fumbling for her nightstick. She was quick, ducking and weaving expertly.
The soldiers had almost reached them when the attacker hurdled the fallen cop and sprinted toward the outside doors, dodging between commuters as if he’d rehearsed it.
The soldiers took off after Joe’s attacker, but Joe doubted they’d catch up. He’d been attacked by freaking Bruce Lee.
The Tesla Legacy Page 6