Within minutes, the audience began to settle down. The gas footlights were turned up to full, throwing a deep yellow light on the underside of the announcer’s face while he stepped onstage and strode out to the podium, raising his hands for silence.
Nikola stood ready offstage while the speaker introduced him to the packed hall of expectant faces. “Those of you who keep a sharp eye on scientific discoveries have already heard about our special guest this evening. And although Nikola Tesla may be unknown to the world today, please listen to him explain the ground-breaking wave of patents which the government recently approved in his name, and you will realize why Mr. Tesla’s anonymity is about to change.”
He looked over to Nikola’s spot in the wings and gestured welcome to him. “Mr. Nikola Tesla …”
Nikola walked to the podium amid polite applause while the speaker modestly retired from the stage and took his spot centered under the long A.I.E.E. banner. His head was clear, his body felt strong, and the moment was exhilarating. He knew that if only they could be persuaded to set aside what they had been taught and consider the implications of what he was about to demonstrate, he could not fail to amaze the audience.
He remembered the note cards in his pocket and took them out, but after he glanced at them he put them away again. Instead he gazed out into the room, trying to take in every face in the auditorium, to lock eyes with every pair. He took a deep breath; the air felt good, a bit dusty, academic. Perfect for the occasion.
On cue, two graduate students pushed a wheeled table from the opposite side of the stage. It was set with a matched pair of two-phase induction motors that Nikola hand-built especially for the event, to provide a practical demonstration proving his lecture tonight on alternating current was to be entirely fact-based, not a thing of dreams.
With practiced subtlety, Nikola scrunched over and briefly clenched all his muscles to clear his vision. He looked back up and took a deep breath, then began.
“A whirling magnetic field marks today’s frontier in electrical power, but that frontier exists on only one note, along an endless scale of energy frequencies. By modulating energy as we would music, we can create—in our lifetimes—stunning developments in mass transit and mass communication. These small motors you see here will demonstrate why the power of alternating current is important to the future of humanity.
“Still, they are only the first step. Because we will be able—again, in our lifetimes—to create a standing wave of energy surrounding the entire planet, which will provide free electrical power to anyone, anywhere on earth! I am not talking about transmitting information. I am talking about transmitting energy itself, anywhere on the planet.”
He looked out on an audience so absolutely unmoving that for a moment they appeared to be carved from wax. He had not performed the demonstration yet, but everyone knew it was coming and nobody seriously expected it to fail because of his patent approvals. What Nikola saw was more than the expectation of seeing a demonstration of proven machinery. If some among them regarded him with that familiar look of hurt and envy he knew so well, the details of their faces were too far away to see. The audience as a living body listened with that particular mixture of awe and disbelief felt by elite members of any prestigious trade when they are presented with a groundbreaking truth about their field. He was about to demonstrate to them that this one had been right there in front of their expert eyes, all along. As for the familiar looks, they would come.
* * *
Nikola arrived at his laboratory the next morning before the sun was clear of the horizon. He cherished the early hours when no one was in the lab almost as much as he cherished the late hours when no one was in the lab. His level of excitement after last night’s event was so high that a single hour of sleep was enough to restore his strength and set him eager for another day.
He stood atop the lab’s tallest A-frame ladder positioned next to a giant, half-constructed transformer while he carefully checked the coil wiring. He was aware that the procedure had already been done twice by his staff, but for him the many subtle powers of the number three included the power of a third check in preventing mistakes.
He heard the front door open and close, but it was not unusual for assistants to come in early, so he did not look away from his work. Moments later a stocky, dark-haired man with a thick walrus mustache entered the room. The man was attired in a suit appropriate for royalty and clutched a fat cigar in his teeth. He glanced around until he caught sight of Nikola up on the ladder. He eyed him with a predatory grin for just a moment, then announced his presence by calling out in a deep voice that boomed around the lab.
“Free electrical power to anyone, anywhere!” He let out a dramatic sigh. “Magnificent! Who wouldn’t love the idea?”
Puzzled, Nikola regarded him without moving down off the ladder. He replied with ritual politeness, “Ah. Thank you.”
“I mean, talk about your public relations!” the man bellowed. “And really, as for whether or not it has to be absolutely free, well, perhaps it could be suggested that one could also offer ‘Low Cost And Affordable’ as a worthy alternative?”
“Sir. This is a private lab.” He climbed down to emphasize his point.
But the uninvited visitor was already closing in. The man offered an outstretched hand in the customary American greeting.
“Mr. Tesla, my name is George Westinghouse, and your speech last night was brilliant!” Westinghouse reached him and stopped, holding out his hand. The flash of nausea that swirled through Nikola made him regret his studies in bacteriology. When he combined his knowledge of the emerging field of germ studies with his observation that few people ever washed their hands…
There was a single empty moment before Nikola could make any response at all to this surprise greeting. If he had more time, a few minutes even—but at that point the best he could do was to step to the floor, ignore the man’s hand, and instead offer a sincere bow from the waist.
Westinghouse didn’t appear to notice anything unusual. He dropped his extended hand and forged ahead. “Hell, I wanted to congratulate you right there on the spot, but the crowd around you was enormous. Any rate, here I am. Your discoveries? Truly brilliant, sir. Brilliant!”
“Thank you, Mr. Westinghouse. I know you by reputation of course.”
“You should! Hell yes, man; I’m the strongest supporter of the Tesla alternating current that there is! I want to see the whole country running on it!” He glanced around as if making certain that no spies lurked in the shadows, then went on.
“And I have a financier who wants you to design giant alternating current dynamos that will eventually harness electrical power off of the great Niagara Falls!”
“Niagara Falls?”
“Mm. Heh-heh. Know the place?”
“Yes! Yes I do indeed! I have often thought—”
“They want me to acquire your power system for that task, Mr. Tesla. Lock, stock and barrel.”
Nikola had to sit. He flopped onto the floor and took a few deep breaths. “Sir, the power of that much water will no doubt run into many millions of volts.”
“Then you’re in luck! They only want your guarantee that you can put 100,000 volts on a single wire and carry it from Niagara to Buffalo, New York. Permits will take time. You’ve got a few years to work with, here.”
Nikola fought to steady his breath and to keep his vision from sliding into a chaos of overlapped imaginings. Slowly, he replied, “Mr. Westinghouse, please tell your financiers that if they chose to underwrite the equipment to tap 400,000 volts, then we could deliver power to the entire eastern seaboard.”
Westinghouse beamed at that. “First Buffalo. Later the entire eastern seaboard, if you don’t mind. These people are big on proof. Results. Things that actually work. If you’re interested, of course.”
“If?? When can we begin?”
Westinghouse gave out a hearty laugh and clapped his hands together. “How do
es tomorrow sound? I don’t like nitpicking!” He leaned closer to Nikola and asked in confidential tones, “You’re not a nitpicker, are you?”
“Ah, actually, I suppose I am a—”
“Because I am prepared to offer you one million dollars for all forty of your existing patents on alternating current power.”
Nikola was entirely unaccustomed to thinking of money in such terms. He ran his mind through a series of recollections about the stuff. For this country of America in the late nineteenth century, the finest luxury hotel room cost a few dollars a night. A fine home of equal luxury in the city could be had for ten to twenty thousand dollars. A large sized laboratory could be built on choice land purchased for a thousand dollars an acre, stocked with everything necessary to work with electrical energy, then staffed with well-paid technicians and run for a year, maybe even two years before it would need to turn a single penny of profit.
He had to take a pause. Nikola was in such shock that he could not find his tongue. Westinghouse quickly decided to fill the silence. “Plus royalties! Royalties of one dollar for every single horsepower of electricity generated by your creations. Royalties are where a man makes his—”
“One million? One million dollars?”
George Westinghouse grinned and winked like a co-conspirator. “Fifty thousand cash to start. And I mean first thing, tomorrow! I hope you love this country as much as I do!”
“Oh yes, I— I am going to become a citizen one day! My life here would be impossible anywhere else!”
Westinghouse smiled in satisfaction. “There you have it. Me, I’m born and raised here in America and I couldn’t say it better than that!” He thrust out his hand. “This is how I like to do business! No nitpicking!” He looked down at his hand, then back up at Nikola. “So my man will be by tomorrow with the papers and your check.”
“Tomorrow?”
Westinghouse’s hand was still out. “Yep. Fifty thousand down. If you accept.”
Nikola blinked hard several times but his vision refused to clear. “Are there actually people in America who would turn down a million dollars—plus royalties—for an invention?”
Westinghouse was still holding out his hand. He boomed out the big laugh again. “Only the stupid ones, sir.”
Nikola smiled in amazement, and then slowly—although without actually looking—he reached out and clasped George Westinghouse’s hand with his own.
A few minutes after the surprise encounter Nikola found himself sitting alone on the floor of the silent lab, slumped against the wall in a warm sunbeam. The feeling was that of a beautiful dream. Everything was different now. In one tick of the clock, everything was different. Why, this was an absolute guarantee of a laboratory of his own where he was free to work on anything at all, with plenty of equipment and qualified help. It occurred to him then, that as of this day he was separated from the first part of his life by a breach he would never have to cross again.
“Nikola!” Karina’s voice came from somewhere close by.
He snapped alert and looked around. A moment later she stepped out from the shadows, her expression full of concern for him. “Why do you keep turning from me?”
“Shut up! Shut up!” He covered his eyes and took a long, deep breath. When he spoke again his voice was small and tired.
“I am a preacher’s son. And he seems to haunt me. I am not proud of that, but I cannot deny it. As sure as I feel about you when we are together, I still hear his voice repeating that every time I listened to you, disaster followed.”
Karina moved to him and lightly touched his face. “You have made powerful enemies, but you have already changed the world more than you know.”
The pull of attraction from Karina was nothing he could resist for any length of time. As much as he feared her, his strongest abilities to discipline himself and control his emotions faded against her power over him. She wielded that power simply by being in his presence, whether she was inside his consciousness or outside in the hard world.
Sharp metallic sounds came from the large main lab door. It was being unlocked and slid back; the noise pulled his concerns from Karina. Mingled voices of arriving workers mixed with approaching footsteps of heavy work boots. Nikola only had time for a brief and panicky glance around before he realized that he was cornered.
He hunched over slightly and clenched all of his muscles in a huge effort to concentrate, to drive out Karina and her visions before anyone walked in, and only managed to finish half a blink before three of his younger male employees entered. The first one stopped at the sight of Nikola, who was now standing in the middle of the room with a confused and guilty expression. The other two quickly bumped into the first one with annoyed grunts—until all three looked up and saw the inventor.
Nikola looked like a drunk trying to fake sobriety. Plastered with sweat, clothing askew, he turned to face them, moving as if heavy weights were pressing down on his head while he looked up and attempted a smile. “Good morning,” he croaked.
The three men’s self-conscious pause lasted only a second, then they each muttered a quick good morning and stepped off to their respective work areas. They moved with the timeless manner of experienced employees who know better than to ask.
* * *
Thomas Edison did not look out of the window of his Manhattan laboratory one single time after someone told him about the truckloads of equipment and construction materials that were arriving down at Tesla’s place. Edison knew his people would be watching him to see how he took the news, the same way farmhands watch the farmer to determine how they will react in a storm.
But all Edison’s employees were going to see was a man hard at work doing research. He stood slightly bent over his desk, holding a book out to catch some extra light from the desk lamp. As for his expression, he felt perfectly confident that people could study him out of the corners of their eyes all day long and learn nothing; his face could be stone, for all it revealed.
Edison was already well aware that dozens of men and even a few women had lined up to apply for jobs at Tesla’s new lab in the last two days. Whatever was going on, they were seeing a lot of newly hired people down there.
“Whoop-dee-doo,” he muttered under his breath, just the way his mother used to do when she was making fun of someone who was getting too high and mighty. Whoop-dee-doo for Nikola Tesla and whatever nonsense occupied him.
None of it was a surprise to Edison, who considered his ability to size up a man one of his greatest strengths. He knew Tesla was trouble from the very first day. Edison generally found that men who are too well-spoken and too polite turned out to be an aggravation once they worked their way into things. It never took long; their soft voices and soothing attitudes more or less put you to sleep, then they robbed you.
Work at Tesla’s lab had been going at a constant pace ever since that idiot George Westinghouse handed Tesla a million dollars plus a fat royalty agreement. The obvious danger in putting power into the hands of such a man as this Tesla fellow quickly manifested itself when he lost no time in undertaking some sort of massive project that obviously required tons of new equipment and a rash of job applicants.
Why all the secrecy? He knew Tesla wasn’t making some sort of explosive weapon. The young immigrant was, however, building a dangerous electrical power system that should never be allowed to exist in a world of fallible human beings who can suffer instant death if they touch the wrong wire. This was exactly what they will inevitably do, Edison repeatedly assured anyone who would listen. The harmless buzz of a direct current shock was nothing compared to the controlled lightning of alternating current. It blackened flesh to the bone and stopped a heartbeat in an instant. No, Tesla was engaged in exactly such a pursuit and everyone in the trade was aware of it, and still the operation was shrouded in secrecy, as if he labored in the black-magic den of some old necromancer, not merely an industrial laboratory built to experiment with electrical energy. There would be
precious little experimentation required beyond the state of the art today if direct current was universal in America, instead of the copper-wired thunderbolts that were being employed by this upstart foreigner.
Perhaps, the famed man reflected, it was time to bring one of the boys over from the New Jersey compound—some fellow Tesla is sure to have never met—and have that man apply for a job at Tesla’s lab. Now more than ever it was going to be vital for Edison to know his enemy in the war of electrical currents. Maybe he could offer the man a fat bonus for success—a verbal offer, that is.
He realized that he might have to let his man stay on the payroll while the guy also collected a check from Tesla, just to ensure loyalty in the meantime. Let him cash in on his two-paycheck windfall by funneling every tiny fact and nuance of Tesla’s work right back to Edison. Tesla was certainly doing more than merely developing elements of Philadelphia’s new power grid that the idiot Westinghouse had contracted out to him.
No, something else was going on down the street. It was something much more than the mere manufacture of an urban lighting system. Not that an alternating current system wasn’t bad enough in itself, but Edison knew that the real danger lay in whatever line of experimentation Tesla was now underwriting with his newfound wealth.
If there is anything more dangerous than a crazy man who thinks he’s a genius, Edison quoted to himself, it’s a crazy man who thinks he’s a genius and gets his hands on serious money.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Three Years Later
Philadelphia
Three years went by in the hard world while Nikola lived essentially among his visions while his laboratory manufactured working models of his designs. In this manner he gave the hard world its due while he sat back in his tiny rocking chair and kept the lights on inside.
In the Matter of Nikola Tesla Page 20