by Farris, John
"Young woman, I must ask you to please step out of my way."
"You have the Gift too, although it doesn't work the same. But you can visualize marvelous machines in your mind; the most wonderful inventions come to you in a flash, out of nowhere. When you were younger, and had that nervous breakdown—"
"How could you possibly know about that?"
"It's part of your pattern—what I see. Never mind. But your senses went completely out of control, for more than a year. You could distinguish objects in the dark by the images they made on your skin. You suffered from roaring noises in your head; and a train whistle twenty miles away made your body vibrate uncontrollably. You were in touch with other places, other worlds—"
There was a cruel flash of light behind Tesla's eyes; he covered them with one hand. His precise and brilliantly focused mind failed him then, like the light of a match in a storm on the sun. He felt naked to this woman who seemed made from darkness and called herself "Raven."
"Don't go on," he murmured. "There's nothing I can, or will, do."
"But you've been thinking about it, haven't you? And you're afraid of Edgar's machine."
"I know it to be an almost perfect source of limitless power. Night after night, its energy expands exponentially."
"Get rid of it!" Her fear and anger clouded around him, bitter as plague. "You know how."
"It would be necessary to destroy the entire chateau! Millions of dollars worth of his property. How can I betray my benefactor? He's made so much of my research possible."
"He's nothing but a crazy man. You must have realized that by now."
They heard the celebratory whistle of the inbound train, a blowsy chuffing; the lightening of the windy woods around them brought her eyes into bold relief. Faren looked around.
"Lord, here they come! More of his innocent guests, headed straight for Mad Edgar's web." She pressed closer to Tesla. "I'm telling you the truth—he'll turn half of them into monsters with his wicked machine."
"It was only meant as an experiment—a—a plaything."
"You can't lie to me. You're afraid of it—and afraid of him too."
Faren lowered one shoulder and threw herself against Tesla, knocked him down, sprawled on top of him. She went quickly through the silk-lined pockets of his coat, and found what she was looking for. He tried to hold her back. His hands were large but slipped from taut denim and she ran, toward the headlamp of the locomotive, homing in on the Wildwood depot.
Gilded coaches whimsically shaped like pumpkins, drawn by teams of matched black horses, were drawn up alongside the gas lit cedar wood platform to receive each visitor as he stepped down from a private car. Dray horses hitched to massive wagons awaited the unloading of tons of luggage. The chateau's overdressed band, sixty members wrapped in full-volume brass, saluted the train hulking forward and dead slow now but with a clangorous bell, unmusical violence.
Tesla, on his knees, went unheard as he shouted, "Catch that Indian woman! She's stolen something valuable from me! You must get it back from her!"
The Mikado locomotive, black and red and trimmed in slender, reedy brass, stopped in flaring skirts of steam as Faren dashed across the tracks in front of it, for a moment wildly luminous and observed by many of the welcomers. It was obvious, to one man at least, that she'd been up to no good.
He reined his big but aging horse around and crossed the tracks in pursuit of the hard-running woman.
Faren was nearly out of breath and the horse took long strides, easily clearing a split-rail fence she had to clamber over; she was toppled in mid-air, sent crashing to the soft ground on the other side.
Before she could drag herself to her feet and take off in another direction, into the deep, safe woods, James B. Travers had dismounted and seized her. He was a fit big man but with sagging pouches under his eyes and winter in the full sideburns. She glared at him.
"You'd better let me go!"
"What are you doing this far from the reservation? What's that in your hand?"
She kicked at him, to no effect. Nikola Tesla leaned against the rail fence, catching his breath. Travers glanced at the inventor, then twisted Faren's wrist. Her clenched hand opened as she grimaced in pain. The thing she had stolen from Tesla, small as the works of a music box, fell to the needle-matted ground.
"There it is, thank God!" Tesla cried.
Travers, keeping a firm grip on Faren, stooped to pick it up.
"That's all she took from you?" he inquired of Tesla. "What is it?"
"An oscillator, sir. Obviously she knows of its potential. I judge her to be out of her mind. Obsessed by some obscure vendetta that may have to do with her tribal origins. Somehow she has gained the knowledge that the small oscillator you hold in your hand, attached to a wall of the chateau, would in a matter of hours cause it to crash into a heap of rubble."
Travers blanched, and looked again at the little machine; so much destruction from such tiny vibrations. He felt movement along his spine, as if the oscillator were already operating, stealthily, in the palm of his hand. He looked up at Faren.
"Good God. Who are you, and why should you want to destroy my life's work?" He spoke softly, as if to a crazed animal, or to the devil.
His softness set her to weeping.
"Mr. Travers—I know who you are. And believe me, something terrible is going to happen if you don't—won't give me the chance to talk to you, to explain, while there's still time."
Two men in fedoras who were part of the security force that protected the chateau pulled up in a closed automobile. Without replying to Faren, Travers turned her over to them.
"Lock her up until the sheriff arrives to take her off our hands."
"Fuck you!" Faren shouted. Travers winced, then looked contemptuously amused. He turned his back on her as she ranted, "How can you be so stupid? I'm the only one who can save any of you, and you won't listen!"
"Such language from a woman," Tesla said regretfully, pocketing the oscillator that Travers returned to him.
Travers swung up into the saddle and sat looking at Faren, who was being forcibly placed in the back of the automobile. Of Edgar Langford's arriving guests, few seemed aware there had been a disturbance. The band was playing a Sousa march, and Faren's continuing protests and appeals attracted little attention.
"She's not like any woman I've ever met," Travers said; wondering if he was correct in so quickly dismissing her as a lunatic. Agitated, yes; and something perilous, preternatural, had flared in her eyes: I know who you are. The old, dull saddle creaking between his thighs even as Sibby withered on voluminous cushions in her constant twilight. He carried within him, like a burnt gallows, the charred skeleton of their tragedy. While there's still time. But if you truly know me, thought Travers, you know then how I have used my time, and there is so little left—with no prospect for absolution. There is only stone and mortar that must endure. Give me the chance to talk to you, to explain. He took a last look at the automobile careening off to the accompaniment of toot and flute and buffooning brass, and imagined his beautiful chateau in ruins. Skyrockets were expanding overhead, painting the nearly full moon in corpselike colors. The lines around Travers's mouth deepened, hardened. No, he would not speak further to her, whatever she might be: salvor, destroyer, dark messenger of the unfriendly gods whose only passion was for torment.
"Mr. Travers?"
"Yes, sir?"
"At what time will the train be departing for the East?"
"Promptly at half-past twelve, Mr. Tesla."
"I would like a car prepared. I'm afraid I must leave on short notice—I have urgent business that will require my presence in New York for the next fortnight at least."
There was so much going on, twenty-four hours a day, in preparation for the Revels: and Alexander wanted to be in on everything. Thus he was most often at his father's side, napping where he happened to sprawl when too exhausted to stand anymore, whether it was at three in the afternoon or quite late at night. He
rarely visited his mother, lying so seriously ill in her apartment. And he no longer had Jacqueline to himself: she was busy with the baby girl born just two months ago, an event he had reason to associate with his mother's present condition. When Edgar was unavailable to him, then Taharqa or any one of numerous maids attended to his needs.
They were having a late supper in Edgar's apartment, when the train arrived. Alex was given permission to leave the table (he was just picking at the meat course anyway), and go to the windows, where he trained his father's large brassbound telescope on the depot.
"How many coaches tonight, Alex?" his father asked him.
Alex counted to ten and stopped; he couldn't see them all.
"I believe your uncles are due to arrive tonight from Boston."
"What's an uncle?"
"In this instance, they are your mother's brothers. Mr. Oliver Waring the Fourth and Mr. Robert Westerfield Waring."
"When is Charlie Chaplin coming?" No one else on the guest list interested him half as much. The twiddling cane; the nervous mustache and tipsy bowler hat. He frequently slid out of his chair chirping laughter at the antics that flickered in the screening room Edgar had recently installed. He loved Charlie Chaplin almost as much as he loved his father.
"Perhaps tomorrow night," Edgar informed him.
"Come and sit down now, and you may have your dessert."
"Is it chocolate mousse?"
"Yes, it's chocolate mousse."
"Yum." Alex returned to his chair, and was seated by a footman. He put his head into his hands, thinking. Edgar sipped wine and looked at the boy's downturned face, glimpsing a slightly sullen expression.
"Something is on your mind."
"Well—it's only four more days. And nothing's ready! The floats don't look like anything yet, they're just chickenwire."
"They will be quite beautiful once the paper-mache and paint are applied."
"I heard Mrs. Carmody say she needed ten more seamstresses to finish all the costumes—"
"They are arriving this very minute, and will be at work within the hour."
"Oh."
"Is anything else bothering you?"
"There're only a few animals. But you promised—"
"I promised you strange and glamorous pets for your zoo. You shall have them. Don't I always keep my promises to you, Alex?"
A large quivering mousse was brought to their table, and the boy was served. He plunged in a gold Tiffany spoon and sucked on it.
When he could speak he looked his father in the eye and said, "Yes."
"All right, then. If I have satisfied all of your concerns, when may I see a smile?"
The boy shrugged instead, stirring the mousse on his plate but not eating any more of it.
"I heard one of the maids say—"
"Dear, gossipy Adelaide?" Edgar interrupted with an edge of malice and irritation in his voice.
Alex already knew better than to say anything that might get a servant into trouble.
"I dunno. Just one of the maids. I don't know all of their names yet."
"Yes, and?"
"She said that Mother—" He shook his head, bewildered. He was a clever boy, a prodigy. In a few days he would be six years old. He understood already that life was a series of puzzle boxes, illusions. The workings of some could be grasped right away; others must be exhaustively studied, and frequently they still made no sense to him. "—that Mother will soon die." (What sort of illusion was death?) "Why will she die?" (Not all illusions were entertaining.) "Where will she go? Into the ground, like Dombey?" He was referring to a favorite pet, a Springer spaniel which, let loose in the stable yard, had been kicked in the head by a nervous hunter-jumper.
"You must never, never, pay the slightest attention to the idle chatter of servants. They are common people, peasant immigrants, less than dirt under our feet. Is that understood? Come to me if you have questions."
"Well—"
Edgar took a few moments to cut into his own dessert, a spotless and glowing beurré from his hothouse orchard.
"It is true that your mother has been very ill with a fever since the birth of Laurette. We all must have hope that she will soon recover."
"Was it the baby's fault?"
"Your mother had a difficult period of labor," Edgar conceded.
"Does that mean lying down like a mare when a colt is going to come out?"
"Yes.''
"Did Laurette come out between mother's legs? All wet and slippery?"
"Aren't you going to eat your mousse?"
"It's too sweet tonight," Alex said indifferently, having no appetite except for information. "Well, tell me."
"You always want to know too much for your age."
"I want to know as much as you do."
"In time you certainly will."
Edgar Langford's secretary, a young man with a mop of yellow curls and pince-nez glasses, was beckoned from a doorway, where he had been waiting. He placed a red leather folder on the table beside Edgar's place setting. Edgar didn't open it.
"Tonight's arrivals, sir. The Warings have requested a few moments with Mrs. Langford."
"She is too ill to be disturbed at this hour, Standish. Tomorrow."
"Yes, sir. Mr. Tesla regrets that he must leave tonight on urgent business, and would like to pay his respects."
A grimace of surprise and disapproval was followed by a deepening of the flush on Edgar's pocked cheeks.
"Very well. Tell him I will meet him in the lantern, at half-past the hour."
"Where is Mr. Tesla going?" Alex said, and he smothered a yawn. His head had been drooping toward the tablecloth.
"Perhaps he may be persuaded to postpone his hasty departure." Edgar looked up at his secretary, who seemed uncertain about the next item of business.
"Anything else, Standish?"
"It seems that Mr. Tesla was assaulted near the depot by an Indian woman, who is now being detained for the sheriff."
"A Cherokee? Here? Was Tesla injured?"
"Fortunately he was not."
"Where did she come from? Is she some outcast from the Reservation, looking to steal whiskey or a watch?"
"No, I don't think so. She was dressed as a man and obviously deranged, babbling some nonsense. She said she was of the serpent Erim. She seemed convinced you would know what that meant, and demanded to be allowed to speak to you."
Edgar Langford stared down at the table for a few moments. If his complexion had been red before, he now appeared near to combust. But his eyes, as always, were ashen, cool in cognizance and speculation. He reached out to fondle the head of his walking stick, gold flowing through his hand, faded fangs but undimmed ruby eyes like gloating Acheron.
"Continue to detain the woman. The sheriff will not be notified until I have so decided."
"Very good, sir."
Now Edgar Langford looked across the table at Alexander. The boy's head was resting on his arms. He was asleep.
"Have Taharqa come and put my son to bed," he said to Standish. "I'm afraid the pace we've set these past few days has been too much for him. I don't want him to take sick . . . and miss all the fun we're going to have."
Nikola Tesla waited on the floor of the lantern in the haunt of the rare machine, hands clasped behind his back, gazing up through welder's goggles at the drizzled lacework of silver. Months had gone into the assembly of the machine, which now carried on its mysterious work autodynamically, extracting from the dry and ancient cosmos droplets of mirror-force light that spun and rayed within brainy convolutions, busy as the wasps of God, in damned eternal silence, foretelling of a wild season. He no longer believed these myriad impulses occurred at random, but he had no clue as to the meaning of their restless foraging; the cold dreaming clusters they sometimes formed. The machine was tolerant of his presence, but too bright for endurance, powerfully competitive. In Tesla's opinion the halves of the dome had remained open too long. For rainless weeks, through temperate nights, the corpulent ma
chine had been fully exposed to the deep empyrean. Almost nightly, electrical storms flickered over the Smoky Mountains; it would be only a matter of time until a boiling tempest appeared directly above Tormentil, loosing terrific bolts of energy, gratifying the theomorphic machine.
Bronze doors opened and Edgar Langford entered, crumpled over his walking stick with the bane head and brackish red eyes. Light lent by the servile machine swelled glamorously around his head, a suave lavender aura.
"I regret your precipitous decision to leave Wildwood. Might an additional two hundred thousand dollars in compensation persuade you to reconsider?"
"It would not, sir."
"Go, then. I shall carry on without your counsel."
"To which you lately have given so little of your attention. I feel that I must urge you, for the last time, to halt all experimentation, and dismantle your machine."
Edgar Langford laughed incredulously, and aimed his walking stick at the center of the radiant machine. "I've never had a toy half so entertaining."
"Toy? Why are you trifling with me? We both know it to be a huge and insatiable malignancy."
"Are you afraid of it, Tesla?" A wasp of light, rapacious, was poised above one dark brow.
"I am afraid of what I do not know—all that you may well have held back from me. I have had no choice but to be guided by your translations of the Babylonian tablets."
"I am the only man alive who could have translated them," Edgar acknowledged boastfully. "No copies exist in any museum. None will ever be made available to those who might have been my colleagues."
"I suggest, Mr. Langford, that you dismantle this ungodly web at once. It feeds, so voraciously, on sources of power I scarcely comprehend."
Edgar Langford limped past the inventor to another area of the lantern, where he placed himself between two small, chimerical objects made of some rustless unalloyed metal and mounted on identical pedestals. Almost imperceptibly at first, then with a scary, twinkling velocity, he began to dissolve before Tesla's melancholy eyes.
"We are both geniuses," Edgar asserted. "I have the greater knowledge; naturally you are jealous of me. Do you know how I achieve invisibility? You do not have an inkling. Because I am no mere illusionist, my dear Tesla—I am Marduk himself, king of sorcerers. If you have patience, then I will share all of my knowledge with you. Stay, be privileged."