The Lost Pleiad

by Sesh Heri

  They had reached an elevator door. Professor May pushed a button in the wall.

  “New,” Tesla observed, looking over the elevator door.

  “Yes,” Professor May said. “We built this. We believe that the beings that cut these tunnels long ago didn’t need elevators or stairs. They were probably natural levitators, probably not even humans.”

  The elevator door opened and Professor May, Tesla, and Kel-Kar stepped inside. The door closed behind them.

  “Fifth floor,” Professor May said, and the elevator moved upward. A series of numbers lit up in succession above the door as they moved: 2, 3, 4….

  On the number 5 they stopped and the door slid aside. Professor May went through it, followed by Tesla and Kel-Kar. They walked down a tunnel cut through volcanic rock and soon reached a set of double doors ten feet high. Professor May waved his right hand side to side and the doors parted.

  They entered a room lined with bookshelves. A young, longhaired, bearded youth sat behind an oak desk carved with a profusion of images, astronomical, animal, and human. The bearded youth wore a dark blue robe that came down to his feet. Tesla thought the youth looked like a Merlin or a medieval monk. The youth’s eyes remained on the book spread before him on the desk.

  “Speak,” the youth said.

  “We’re here to see the Boss, of course,” Professor May said.

  The youth glanced up at the Professor with an expression of patience bearing an infinite disdain. He rose from his chair behind the desk.

  “You come with me,” the youth said, pointing to Tesla.

  The youth turned. A panel in the bookcase pivoted, creating a doorway. Kel-Kar stepped forward and went through it.

  “Now you,” the youth said to Tesla.

  Tesla looked over at Professor May and then back to the youth, and asked, “And who are you supposed to represent— Merlin the magician?”

  “Come along,” the youth said. “There is little time.”

  Tesla came forward, stopped in front of the youth, and said, “I like to know the name of the person with whom I walk.”

  “I have many names,” the youth replied, “but you may call me Fulcanelli.”

  Tesla looked the youth over, and then said, “I thought you were a good deal older.”

  “I was,” Fulcanelli said. “Ever so often I am a good deal many things. Shall we go?”

  Tesla nodded, and stepped through the opening in the bookcase.

  “What about me?” Professor May asked.

  “You remain here,” Fulcanelli said.

  “That’s not a square deal,” Professor May said. “I got our man. I should be let in on this pow-wow.”

  Fulcanelli slightly raised his eyebrows, then turned and went through the opening in the bookcase. As soon as he went through, the bookcase immediately pivoted back into position, closing off the opening and leaving Professor May standing in the empty outer office.

  Now Fulcanelli led the way down another tunnel lit at intervals by stone spheres glowing with purple phosphorescence.

  “So you intend to introduce me to your Boss?” Tesla asked Fulcanelli.

  “Boss?” Fulcanelli asked. “That is May’s inane nomenclature.”

  “I thought Fulcanelli was French,” Tesla said. “I detect no French accent in your speech.”

  “That is because there is no French accent in my speech,” Fulcanelli replied. “When I speak a language, I do so correctly. Now I am speaking American English, since that is the language you now know best, your European tongues, including your native tongue, having grown somewhat inept from years of disuse.”

  “You seem to know much more about me than I know about you,” Tesla said.

  “That is because I do,” Fulcanelli said. “We are here.”

  They were now standing before a door of steel, twelve feet high by six feet wide. Suddenly the door slid back and Fulcanelli held out the palm of his hand, gesturing for Tesla to pass through.

  Tesla stepped into a long, spacious room, one wall of which was a continuous glass plate providing a view of the cavern beyond, the saucer craft down on the cavern floor and the massive rock walls curving up to the great sky-light doors a thousand feet above. The other three walls seemed to be made of some kind of plaster surface, painted an eggshell white, and upon these walls hung paintings that in a glance spoke to Tesla one word: masterpiece. Without a chance for scrutiny or analysis, Tesla sensed that he was seeing entirely unknown but original works of such masters as da Vinci, Vermeer, and Poussin. The furniture in the room was of a severe modern design; couches of that same eggshell white as the walls, armchairs— all comfortable looking. It was a place, if not to live, at least to work, if one could become accustomed to the sun-less view beyond the window.

  At the far end of the room sat a desk with an oval top and supported by a single, curving rod set into a round base on the floor. The desk seemed to be molded of some white substance, perhaps, Tesla thought, like one of the new plastics.

  Behind the desk sat a man in a swivel armchair made of that same white molded material. The man rose form his seat and faced Tesla, Kel-Kar, and Fulcanelli.

  Tesla recognized the man’s long, solemn face and high forehead immediately: the eyes filled with both self-pity and a hostile command, a thin-lipped, closed mouth, a chin neither here nor there, a demeanor insistent in its passivity, raging in its quietude. Tesla had not seen this face in years, and, although the face had aged, it was still the same face.

  “Aha!” Tesla said with a smile. “The donkey yet lives!”

  The long, solemn face and high forehead of Marchese Guglielmo Marconi did not move, only Marconi’s eyes locked upon Tesla, fire lit up in the pupils, and then instantly died out.

  “Someday,” Marconi said, his mouth hardly moving, “you must explain this ‘donkey’ remark. I have been hearing about it for years.”

  “I’ll explain it now,” Tesla said. “It is inevitable that I must do so, for of course a donkey cannot know what the word donkey means. I could direct you to a dictionary, but that, too, the reading of a dictionary, I should not reasonably expect you to be able to do. Perhaps you could pay someone to do it for you, like you do with your laundry. A donkey, sir, is a beast of burden, an animal, a low creature, who carries treasures that are not his own. This perfectly describes you, sir. For the term thief is not applicable to you. It is too noble a word, and connotes one who is capable of much thought, planning, and action. These characteristics you do not possess. However, a donkey has the treasures it carries placed upon its back by others. This describes you. The treasures you have carried about the world in your plodding, mindless way were placed upon your person by your betters, by the men of high finance who were not common thieves but pirates par excellence. Those financial pirates who placed those treasures upon your donkey’s back had stolen them from many great men— from Meucci, from Lodge, from Righi…”

  “From you,” Marconi said. “You have failed to mention yourself.”

  “My name goes without saying,” Tesla replied. “The educated world knows what of mine you have carried about, braying and snorting and kicking your heels as if the blind world cared to see your antics. The great mass of people do not care about what you have claimed to have done anymore than they have cared about what I have actually done. If the men of high finance tell them the lie that you are the ‘Father of Radio,’ they will believe it— for five minutes. Then they will forget that you ever existed. The men of high finance can put up monuments in your name and name streets after you, but the people who will travel along those streets will not know who you were. So in the end all that will remain of your antics will be a forgotten absurdity. But the reality of what I have done— and the reality of what others like me have done— that too will remain. And that reality will not be an absurdity, but the basis of humanity’s life and survival.”

  Marconi stared at Tesla in silence. After a long moment, Marconi finally said:

  “What you say…is t
rue. What you say…I have said to myself times beyond counting. I have said it to myself everyday, many times a day. I have lived it. I have breathed it. I have always known it.”

  “They why?” Tesla demanded. “Why did you steal my inventions— mine and those others? Why did you lie in court?”

  “Because,” Marconi said, “I was compelled, compelled by my fate.”

  “Your fate,” Tesla said with contempt.

  “We all have fates,” Marconi said. “You, as much as I, have a fate that compels you.”

  “The excuse of a weak liar,” Tesla said. “An excuse one would expect from a donkey.”

  “Perhaps,” Marconi said. “And then perhaps it is not an excuse at all, but a simple truth gained from experience. Even a donkey can learn. Perhaps a donkey has a perspective others do not. He is situated to see things from the bottom up and to learn that few things are what they seem to be. Perhaps a donkey can see that the world is filled with other donkeys, all braying and kicking and being led by the nose.”

  “To a donkey,” Tesla said, “everyone else looks like a donkey also.”

  “Perhaps,” Marconi said. “But all of this— what I was, what you were— is neither here nor there now. That I was a donkey in my life no longer matters. That life of mine is over. To the world I am dead. To my family I am dead.”

  “I have heard,” Tesla said, “that you have been as dead to your family for many years. A man who abandons his wife and children is not a man.”

  “And I have heard many things about you as well,” Marconi said, “that you have never had a wife or children. I say a man who never had a wife and children is not a man.”

  “Why should I have children when my progeny is the world?” Tesla asked.

  “An ancient quote and boast,” Marconi said.

  “You are in no position to judge what a man is,” Tesla said.

  “And you are in no position to disagree with me,” Marconi said. “You are my prisoner.”

  “Ah,” Tesla said, “finally some honesty— a refreshing breeze in a fetid cave. Perhaps you can ascend on the evolutionary scale from donkey to kidnapper to attempted murderer. At least such an awkward climb would bestow upon you the status of the semi-human.”

  “You have not asked why I have brought you here,” Marconi said quietly.

  “I do not need to ask,” Tesla said. “I know why. You have brought me here to— once again— pick my brain, steal my ideas.”

  “This time I offer payment for your ideas,” Marconi said.

  “What payment could you offer me?” Tesla asked.

  “Why don’t we all sit down,” Marconi said.

  Tesla did not move.

  “Very well,” Marconi said, coming from around his desk. He stopped in front of the floor to ceiling window and looked down into the cavern below.

  “What you see down there before you is the result of ten years of planning and labor,” Marconi said. “While the world thought I had attached myself to Mussolini’s regime, I was planning this: a secret city here in the Andes. I designed this place at first as an escape from the very system of finance that supported me, a system that I came to loathe as I saw how it always supported both sides in any undertaking, how it always played both ends against the middle— and how it constrained even me in my own, personal development. So I located this dormant volcano with its ancient tunnel system in the ‘Y’ between the Andes and its spur range of mountains, and here began building a secret city according to my own designs. Site Y is now nearly one thousand strong in population, consisting of both Earthlings and Martians. The Martians are all resistance fighters, revolutionaries against the present regime on Mars. They are led by Kel-Kar here. Ninety-eight of us earthlings are scientists and philosophers. Many of the philosophers are followers of Fulcanelli. Some of us once worked in various capacities for Majestic Seven.”

  “Such as Professor May,” Tesla said.

  “The Professor was a low-level operative,” Marconi said. “He was more of a surveillance subject than operative. He is still, for me, a subject of suspicion and surveillance.”

  “I can understand that,” Tesla said. “And you? You, yourself? What was your relationship with Majestic Seven?”

  “Yes,” Marconi said, “as I’m sure you have now guessed, I was once an operative for Majestic Seven, a double-agent spying on Mussolini and Hitler.”

  “You were involved with Project Electra, as well,” Tesla said.

  “You knew?” Marconi asked.

  “I guessed,” Tesla said. “I noticed that you gave your yacht the same name as Amelia Earhart’s plane model.”

  “A little vanity of mine,” Marconi said, “but I have noticed that sometimes that the best way to hide the truth is to leave it in plain sight, for who looks at what is in plain sight? Project Electra was a multi-faceted, complex undertaking. There was much more to it than Earhart’s flight. The assignment given to me by Majestic Seven was to gain the confidence of Mussolini, and, through him, gain access to Adolph Hitler and his most secret project of the Third Reich— the Bell. I managed to gain Mussolini’s trust, but never Hitler’s, though I met with him on more than one occasion. I found it impossible to gain Hitler’s trust.”

  “Why?” Tesla asked.

  “Hitler is possessed,” Marconi said. “He is possessed by lower astral entities. They took root in his psyche years ago when he was conditioned by the Thule Society for his present role as the leader of Germany. Hitler was given peyote to open his astral wheels to the lower planes. Once they had re-created the Martian Bell, they linked Hitler’s astral body to it and they are now using Hitler as the Bell’s astral ground.

  “Then Hitler will be the doorway through which the NYMZA will escape the astral plane,” Tesla said.

  “That is correct,” Marconi said. “They were coming close to achieving this in 1937 when they were attempting to link the German Bell with the Time Modulator on Guadalcanal. The Germans were attempting to access the Time Modulator using the Bell so that it would generate the complete set of frequencies for the ancient Table of Destinies.”

  “I thought that was lost,” Tesla said, “thousands of years ago. That is, the complete Table.”

  “Yes,” Marconi said, “it is what we all thought. The ancient scrolls indicate that the Table of Destinies was destroyed in the last intergalactic war that swept through our solar system. But the Table was actually preserved in the Time Modulators. Each of Earth’s Time Modulators contained a portion of the Table of Destinies. The Thule Society discovered this two decades ago. Eight years ago the Society began extracting the frequency Tables from the Time Modulators. By 1937 they had extracted all the frequencies except for those contained in the Time Modulator on Guadalcanal. When the Germans attempted to destroy Earhart’s plane with a scalar ray, they erased all of the frequency Tables from the Time Modulator on Guadalcanal. That now leaves only Earhart’s plane with its onboard recordings to complete the Table of Destinies.”

  “With the Table of Destinies,” Tesla said, “one has the power of creation and destruction, the topological causalities of all entities in the universe. The one who possesses it will become a god.”

  “Or a demon,” Marconi said. “According to ancient legends, especially those of the Sumerians, the possessor of the Table of Destinies is always driven mad and becomes a vessel of universal destruction.”

  “The inevitable result of a finite mind possessing infinite power,” Tesla said.

  “We can already see such a development beginning in the person of Adolph Hitler,” Marconi said.

  “But Hitler does not possess the complete Tables,” Tesla said.

  “No,” Marconi said, “not yet. But the Thule Society and the S.S. are gripped in the obsession that he will, for the men behind both the Thule Society and the S.S.— the real rulers of our world who play both ends against the middle— intend to use Hitler as their astral puppet. It is they who may yet gain possession of the Table of Destiny, and to that en
d, they are now driven to locate Amelia Earhart’s airplane— wherever it may be in time, space— or other dimensions.”

  “What about the duplicate of Earhart’s plane that entered through the torsion field?” Tesla asked.

  “The Japanese have it,” Marconi said, “and German agents have already removed all of its onboard equipment. They have also salvaged all of the cameras and anti-gravity components that were jettisoned into the ocean, and in doing all this they found that the duplicate Earhart had recorded all the frequency Tables from the Guadalcanal Time Modulator, but that these Tables did not integrate with the Tables derived from the other Time Modulators on Earth. The Tables recorded on the duplicate of Earhart’s plane were part of a different series of number sets, and this is not surprising, since those recorded frequencies came from a Time Modulator in a parallel universe. Therefore those parts of the Table that the Germans retrieved from the duplicate Electra are of no use in this universe. When I received word from Majestic Seven that the public search for Amelia Earhart was being called off and that no secret search for her would be made, I decided that it was time for me to stage my death, as I had been planning to do so for many years. I knew that the Thule Society and the S.S. would not give up looking for Earhart and her airplane, and I feared that they just might find her. So I ‘died’ to the world and to my associates, to my family, and came here, here to Site Y in the remote Andes to continue my search for Amelia Earhart— to find her before Hitler does.”

  “And if you find her,” Tesla asked, “what will you do?”

  “I will use the craft you see below you being built in the distance to fly to wherever she is— in time, space— or other dimensions,” Marconi said. “And there, in a force that neither Germans nor Martians can overpower, I will take possession of the last frequencies of the Table of Destinies and utterly destroy them. Now do you understand, Mr. Tesla, why I have brought you here under such extreme circumstances?”

  “Yes,” Tesla said, closing his eyes.

  “Then,” Marconi asked quietly, “will you help us? Will you join us here at Site Y and assist us in our undertaking— our quest to find Amelia Earhart?”