The Lost Pleiad

by Sesh Heri

  “It’s all over for ‘im,” a newsboy said, shoving a paper forward.

  “Amelia Earhart?” Tesla asked. “They’ve given up on her?”

  “Oh,” the newsboy exclaimed, “yeah-uh-huh. She’s a goner too. But that ain’t who’s on the page. Get a load. It’s the radio guy!”

  “Radio guy?” Tesla asked.

  “Yeah-uh-huh,” the newsboy exclaimed. “You know— whazzhizzname— that radio guy, Mac-a-roni— sold noodles on da radio or somtin’. He’s dead. Stone cold. But don’ lissen ta me— read it for yerself!”

  Tesla took the newspaper from the newsboy and read the following headline: “MARCONI DIES - World Mourns Inventor of Radio”

  Tesla’s eyes moved over the many columns under the headline.

  “So?” the newsboy asked. “You gonna buy it or rent it?”

  Tesla took out two quarters and gave them to the newsboy.

  “Say!” the newsboy exclaimed. “Thanks mister!”

  Tesla stood looking at the headline, not reading the text.

  Finally he whispered to himself: “The donkey.”

  Then Tesla went over to a trash can near the entrance to the subway to throw away the paper. Just as he started to throw the paper into the trash, his eye fell upon a word in the text of the Marconi obituary.

  The word was Electra.

  Tesla’s eye shot back and forth over the word.

  Electra.

  The word was in a line of text that read in part, “…his yacht Electra…”

  Tesla drew the newspaper up to his face and began reading the Marconi obituary. His eyes sped past the banal biographical details, past the sickening false history of Marconi’s triumphs in electrical invention, past the sophomoric praise from his many colleagues around the world, past other words and other sentences that now formed no coherent pattern in Tesla’s mind, past all irrelevancies to that final, all important phrase—

  “…his yacht Electra.”

  His yacht Electra, Tesla thought. What about his yacht Electra?

  The words in the text answered Tesla’s question, but Tesla had to force his eyes to read the words, which were: “Early reports said that Marconi had passed away on his yacht Electra anchored at sea off the coast of Italy, but later reliable reports identified his place of death as Rome.”

  The confusion about Marconi’s place of death did not immediately impress itself upon Tesla’s mind. It was rather that Marconi’s yacht was named Electra just like Amelia Earhart’s plane manufactured by Lockheed— and that Marconi had died on the very same day that the official search for Amelia Earhart had been called off. This was too much coincidence for Tesla. But what, Tesla wondered, did it mean?

  Tesla went back up to this apartment and called George Ade.

  “Yes,” Ade said, when Tesla told him what he had just read in the paper. “I just read that, too. Don’t know what to make of it. How about you?”

  “It is not a coincidence,” Tesla said. “Can you talk to FDR about it?”

  “I don’t talk to FDR,” Ade said. “He talks to me. I’m sure he’s noticed. And I’m sure he knows more about it than we do. If he wants us to know, he’ll tell us.”

  “I need to know,” Tesla said. “What did Marconi have to do with the Electra Project?”

  “Who knows?” Ade asked rhetorically. “We’ll just have to sit on what we suspect.”

  “If you knew, you’d tell me,” Tesla said.

  “Of course,” Ade said.

  “Very well,” Tesla said. “I believe you.”

  “Now,” Ade said, “that’s awfully broad-minded of you, my friend.”

  “I will tell you something,” Tesla said. “I have just received a transmission from Amelia Earhart.”

  “No,” Ade said.

  “It was Earhart herself,” Tesla said. “The original article, no imitations, calling on 2160 kilopulses. She has made it through the eye of the torsion field.”

  “But,” Ade said, “that would mean that she’s been flying for sixteen days straight.”

  “Not necessarily,” Tesla said. “Highly unlikely, in fact, as even you can imagine— for a number of reasons.”

  “Time distortion?” Ade asked.

  “Unquestionably,” Tesla said. “Now go talk to FDR whether he likes it or not. Tell him I heard her loud and clear and she’s out there somewhere about to descend over land, it just may not be land in our dimension of reality.”

  “I’ll call him,” Ade said.

  “Good,” Tesla said.

  “What about Marconi?” Ade asked. “Anything you want me to say to FDR about Marconi?”

  “Tell him,” Tesla said, ‘just tell him that…Marconi was a donkey.”

  “A…donkey?” Ade asked.

  “That is the correct appellation,” Tesla said. “A donkey.”

  With that, Tesla hung up the telephone.

  Tesla went out of his apartment and down into the streets of New York. He went to a store and purchased a bag of bird seed, and then set off for Bryant Park. He needed to think, and this was where he did some of his best thinking.

  When he reached Bryant Park, Tesla found a flock of pigeons on the walk. He began scattering seed, whistling and speaking to the birds all the while.

  “Now, now,” Tesla said. “No need to crowd like that. Show some civility. Manners. That’s better. Now you over there, you come here, too.”

  A rain of seed fell out of Tesla’s hand and down to the pavement. The birds clustered eagerly.

  Then Tesla saw a shadow fall over the birds, a shadow cast from behind him. He turned around. Silhouetted against the glow of the morning sun was a man’s figure, standing immobile. Tesla blinked and squinted to adjust his sight. He took a step forward. Then the lines of the man’s face emerged within the silhouette. There was a line where the mouth was supposed to be, drawn tight and still. The eyes were slits behind spectacle lenses. Tesla thought the face familiar, but unspecific as to identity. Then the face of the silhouette spoke the one word “hello,” and Tesla knew to whom the face belonged: George Palmer Putnam II.

  “Mr. Putnam,” Tesla said.

  “I was told I might find you here,” Putnam said.

  “I see,” Tesla said. “You wanted to speak with me.”

  “About my wife,” Putnam said. “I was told that you might know where she is.”

  “Who told you that?” Tesla asked.

  “I cannot say,” Putnam replied. “Do you know where she is?”

  “No,” Tesla said. “I am sorry.”

  “If you know anything, I wish you’d tell me,” Putnam said.

  “I do not know anything,” Tesla said.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” Putnam said. “Give you anything you want. Money? You can have it. Political pull? I can arrange it. What? What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

  “I want to help you,” Tesla said, “but I cannot help you. I have no help to give. I do not know the whereabouts of your wife. If you believe I do, then you are very mistaken. All I can tell you is to not give up hope. She may be found yet.”

  “You tell me that,” Putnam said, “but do you really believe it?”

  Tesla cast a handful of bird seed to the pavement.

  “Have you ever lost someone?” Putnam asked. “Do you know what it is to lose someone— someone close? Someone who knows you better than anyone else in the world, better than you know yourself? Have you ever…ever known anyone like that…lost anyone like that?”

  “Yes,” Tesla said.

  “How could you?” Putnam asked. “I know you’ve never been married. I know all about you. Everything. I make it a point to know all about everyone with whom my wife has dealings.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Putnam,” Tesla said. “You do not know me. You do not know me at all.”

  “Have you ever walked into an empty room?” Putnam asked. “A cold, empty room that was once alive? Have you ever known a room that was alive? And now that room is still, and silent,
and cold. Have you ever known that?”

  Tesla nodded.

  “You are a liar, sir,” Putnam said. “A filthy, damned liar.”

  The silhouette turned and moved away slowly, as if shifted on a conveyor belt, without motion of its own.

  Tesla dropped his head a moment, and then looked up. The silhouette was gone, leaving only the morning sky in its place. Tesla looked into the blue. He looked into the blue with all his heart, all his mind, all his soul. But not a thing anywhere in the blue could he find.

  Back at his apartment laboratory, Tesla quickly assembled an automatic recording device and attached it to his kilopulse sender-receiver. Over many more days, nothing was recorded on the device. But then, at infrequent intervals of many more days, Tesla would discover a message awaiting him when he checked the recording. It was always the same: the voice of Amelia Earhart saying: “SOS…SOS…SOS…SOS….” and then fading into static. Tesla eventually compared the recoded messages that he had compiled over many weeks and discovered that it was exactly the same transmission repeated at intervals, as if someone was sending out a recorded message of Earhart’s original SOS on the 2160 kilopulse waveband.

  In October of 1937 Tesla’s closest friend, Robert Underwood Johnson, died. Tesla would go to Bryant Park each day to feed the pigeons and to think. He thought of many things and people in his past, the long years that had become increasingly short, the faces once seen daily now gone forever, and a white pigeon with gray-tipped wings that had once flown into his life and filled his heart with joy.

  One night Tesla walked the streets of New York, his mind and emotions in ferment. He thought of Amelia Earhart and his last meeting with Putnam. He thought of Earhart’s SOS that continued to be repeated on his kilopulse receiver. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and started back to his hotel. He had decided that he must telephone George Ade.

  When Tesla got home, he placed the call to Ade, told him that he was still continuing to receive the SOS broadcasts, and that the time had come for him to meet with FDR to see what further could be done to locate Amelia Earhart.

  “I can’t get FDR and the others interested in your interceptions,” Ade replied. “They find it all interesting. Our technicians have received those same signals. But FDR tells me they need something more than a brief, untraceable SOS to follow up on it.”

  “I can show them how they can follow up on it,” Tesla said. “I can give them all they need to follow up on it, if they will only give me sufficient funding. It will take money. I will also need the U.S.S. Cosmos at my disposal.”

  “I’m afraid that the Seven won’t give you that,” Ade said.

  “Why not?” Tesla asked.

  “I think they just want to forget about Earhart,” Ade said. “They see it all as a gigantic bungle. They have assumed that she and Noonan died inside the torsion field or shortly after coming out of it.”

  “That is not a logical assumption, “ Tesla said. “She transmitted a clear message from somewhere after coming out of the field.”

  “I’ll have to be bluntly honest with you,” Ade said with a sigh. “I owe you that.”

  “Owe me what?” Tesla asked.

  “They blame you,” Ade said.

  “Who?” Tesla asked. “Blame me? Who blames me?”

  “The Seven,” Ade said. “FDR in particular. He thinks you’re too old to be involved any longer.”

  “Too old,” Tesla said, grinding his teeth. “I shall out live him. I shall out live all of the Seven. And bungling? It is they who have bungled, bungled for years. I have dragged them all along tooth and nail every inch of the way. I have dragged blind men behind me through a blind world.”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Ade said.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “You are only the messenger.”

  “That’s all,” Ade said.

  “Good night, George,” Tesla said. “And good bye.”

  Tesla hung up before Ade could reply.

  Tesla looked about his room, glancing up at a row of shelves containing empty enameled cans manufactured by the Nabisco cracker company. Tesla was now subsisting upon nothing but these crackers and warm milk.

  Tesla glared at the rows of cans.

  “Old!” Tesla said. “Think old and you are old! I’m not old.”

  Tesla slipped a bag of bird seed into his pocket, rose to his feet, went out of the hotel, and down into the street. He crossed Seventh Avenue and kept walking along 34th Street to Fifth Avenue. It was now close to midnight.

  As Tesla walked, he mumbled to himself, recounting his conversation with George Ade. Tesla thought: Too old to be involved? How can they refer to me as merely “involved” when I created the very fabric of the technology that they now employ? It is the Seven who are merely “involved.” I have dragged them all along the whole way, blind men always struggling against the path of reason, always following some inscrutable course of their own, as if they were being pulled in another direction by an invisible hand. Whose invisible hand? The financiers? Or someone bigger behind them? The Nine Unknown Men of the Himalayas? The Martians? Or someone or something further behind them? Something even non-human— non-physical? The Order of the Flaming Sword? A grand puppet master controlling human destiny? Yes, perhaps I have only been “involved.” Perhaps I have only been a puppet…now a puppet living off of crackers and milk….

  Tesla suddenly looked up. A glare of white light filled his eyes with stabbing pain. Thoughts rocketed through his mind: Is this the Martians? Is this the Nine Unknown Men? Is this the puppet master behind the Nine?

  Then Tesla felt a crushing pain followed by a deafening avalanche of black.

  Tesla crumpled to the pavement. He had been struck down in a single, thunderous stroke— not by the Martians— not by the Unknown Nine— not by the puppet master of the Nine.

  Tesla had been struck down by an onrushing New York City cab.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  War of the Worlds

  “Never cry over spilt milk.

  It may have been poisoned.”

  — W.C. Fields

  When Nikola Tesla regained consciousness, he saw a crowd gathered over him where he lay upon the cold pavement of 5th Avenue. A cab driver stood talking loudly to a policeman.

  “He just stepped out in front of me, I tell ya!” the cab driver exclaimed.

  Someone in the crowd shouted, “Get back! He’s comin’ to!”

  The policeman knelt down and adjusted a coat that had been thrown over Tesla’s prone figure.

  “Hey, old timer,” the policeman asked, “Can you hear me?”

  Tesla nodded.

  “Don’t worry,” the policeman said. “The ambulance is coming.”

  “No,” Tesla gasped.

  “What’d ya say?” the policeman asked, bending down to Tesla’s face.

  “No,” Tesla repeated. “No ambulance. No. No doctors.”

  Tesla lifted his head.

  “Don’t move, old timer,” the policeman said. “You’re hurt bad. You’ve been hit by a cab.”

  “Got to…” Tesla gasped, raising himself up on one elbow.

  “Got to nothin’,” the policeman said.

  Tesla’s eyes widened.

  “Am I under arrest?” Tesla asked.

  “Old timer,” the policeman said, “I’m just trying to help you.”

  “Then stop calling me old timer,” Tesla said, “and help me on my feet.”

  “You shouldn’t move,” the policeman said.

  Tesla rose to a seated position on the pavement.

  Another policeman pushed through the crowd, and asked, “What’s happening?”

  “This old fellow got hit by a cab,” the first policeman said.

  “Why,” the second policeman said, “that’s Mr. Tesla!”

  “You know him?” the first policeman asked.

  “Well, sure,” the second policeman said. “He lives over on Seventh Avenue. Feeds the birds in the park. See him out all the time. Say, this is
rough. Too bad.”

  “Get me back to my hotel,” Tesla said to the second policeman, extending his hand up into the air.

  “You should be seen by a doctor,” the second policeman said.

  “I’ll be seen by no one!” Tesla snapped. “I’m going back to my hotel if I have to walk there!”

  The two policemen shook their heads.

  Then Tesla suddenly sprung to his feet and looked straight at the policemen whose jaws dropped.

  “He just stood up!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  “No doctors,” Tesla said. “No ambulances! No medics! No nurses! Step aside— now!”

  The two policemen stepped apart and Tesla stepped between them. The first policeman took Tesla by the arm.

  “Unhand me,” Tesla said coldly, “or I will file a false arrest report.”

  “He means it,” the second policeman said. “He’s got friends. He ain’t no ordinary guy.”

  The first policeman released his grasp on Tesla’s arm.

  Tesla straightened his coat, and then stepped forward into the crowd that parted as he came through. He disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  The two policemen stared at each other and then shrugged their shoulders simultaneously.

  “What about me?” the cab driver asked. “You’ve got my license number.”

  “G’wan,” the first policeman said. “Get outta here. Everybody— get outta here.”

  Tesla walked back to his hotel and went up to his room. When he got through the door, he immediately picked up the telephone receiver and called Western Union.

  “Hello,” Tesla said. “This is Nikola Tesla. Is Kerrigan there? William Kerrigan?… Put him on, please…. Yes, get him on the line immediately…. Thank you…. Kerrigan?… This is Nikola Tesla. I’m in my apartments here at the hotel. Can’t make it out tonight to feed the pigeons at the Cathedral…. I’ve had a slight accident. Can you come, just for tonight? I’m sure I’ll be all right in a day or so…. Yes, I’ll leave the pigeon feed outside the door. No need to knock…. Thank you.”