Drexler must have realized that as a German he would not be allowed within a mile of Tesla’s papers. He slipped out as quietly as he had arrived.
His departure sparked a sudden urge in me to do the same. I stuffed the letter into my suit jacket pocket and made my exit.
Outside I stopped on the cold corner of Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street. How different the city from my last visit. The streets bustled. Gone were the desperate men seeking work. They were either in the army or laboring in the armament factories. Nothing like a year of global warfare to save politicians from disastrous economic decisions.
Penn Station lay directly ahead. My train back to Chicago would leave from there, but I had time to kill. To my left, the Empire State Building beckoned. On my previous trip I’d had no time to visit the Tallest Building in the World, but I could remedy that now.
* * *
The way the wind buffets the windows makes me glad the 102nd floor observation deck is enclosed. Chicago may be the Windy City but I doubt street-level gusts can compare to a winter gale a quarter mile up. The sun is low enough and red enough now that I can stare into its eye without wincing. The views in all directions steal my breath.
I finished Tesla’s letter while waiting in line for an elevator to the deck. Among other things, he told me he burned the film of the successful test in Wales. He ended by repeating what he’d said five years ago:
You saved the world, Charles. The world should be told so it can accept you as its hero.
Saved the world? That April morning seems like a bad dream now, but I suppose I did. As for the world accepting me as its hero, however…I cannot see that happening. The world is a long way from accepting someone like me.
Even though I was able to accomplish what I did only because I am the way I am, that would not be enough. Truly, had I been a woman through and through, and pretending to be a man merely to land the job, I would have fallen into the same funk of hopelessness and despair that affected everyone else at Wardenclyffe. I might even have followed the others in a plunge down that bottomless shaft. Instead, the dissonance roiling within inured me to the Occupant’s influence and allowed me to function at a more normal level.
But that would not be enough to prevent my being shunned as a freak instead of lauded a hero. Always I seem to have something to fear. The spread of the eugenics movement throughout the 1920s was frightening enough, but its adoption as state policy by the Nazis is downright terrifying. If they win this war, I and others like me are doomed.
But I remain optimistic. The Allies will prevail.
And here, with the world spread out before me, I know I am not unique. There are others like me out there, many living as demimondaines. Someday the world will understand us, but I have no hope of that in my time. Someday medical science will allow someone like me to be as male on the outside as he is on the inside, but I will never live to see it.
And so my choices are limited. But I refuse to live in the shadows. I have no choice in being an unconventional man, but I can and do choose to live a conventional life, in plain sight…as a man.
And to that end, it is time to return to the two people who matter most in that life: my wife and child.
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD
The preponderance of my work deals with a history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this secret history has been revealed in the Adversary Cycle, some in the Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. I’ve listed them below in chronological order. (NB: “Year Zero” is the end of civilization as we know it; “Year Zero Minus One” is the year preceding it, etc.)
The Past
“Demonsong” (prehistory)
“The Compendium of Srem” (1498)
“Wardenclyffe” (1903-1906)
“Aryans and Absinthe”** (1923-1924)
Black Wind (1926-1945)
The Keep (1941)
Reborn (February-March 1968)
“Dat Tay Vao”*** (March 1968)
Jack: Secret Histories (1983)
Jack: Secret Circles (1983)
Jack: Secret Vengeance (1983)
“Faces”* (1988)
Cold City (1990)
Dark City (1991)
Fear City (1993)
Year Zero Minus Three
Sibs (February)
The Tomb (summer)
“The Barrens”* (ends in September)
“A Day in the Life”* (October)
“The Long Way Home”+
Legacies (December)
Year Zero Minus Two
“Interlude at Duane’s”** (April)
Conspiracies (April) (includes “Home Repairs”+)
All the Rage (May) (includes “The Last Rakosh”+)
Hosts (June)
The Haunted Air (August)
Gateways (September)
Crisscross (November)
Infernal (December)
Year Zero Minus One
Harbingers (January)
“Infernal Night”++ (with Heather Graham)
Bloodline (April)
The Fifth Harmonic (April)
Panacea (April)
The God Gene (May)
By the Sword (May)
Ground Zero (July)
The Touch (ends in August)
The Void Protocol (September)
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium (ends in September)
“Tenants”*
Year Zero
“Pelts”*
Reprisal (ends in February)
Fatal Error (February) (includes “The Wringer”+)
The Dark at the End (March)
Nightworld (May)
* available in The Barrens and Others
** available in Aftershock and Others
*** available in the 2009 reissue of The Touch
+ available in Quick Fixes Tales of Repairman Jack
++ available in Face Off
F. PAUL WILSON is the award-winning, NY Times bestselling author of fifty-plus books and dozens of short stories spanning sf, horror, medical thrillers, adventure, and virtually everything between. More than 9 million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into 24 languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media. He is best known for his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. He was voted Grand Master by the World Horror Convention and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers of America, the Libertarian Futurist Society, and the RT Booklovers Convention. His works have received the Stoker Award, the Porgie Award, the Prometheus and Prometheus Hall of Fame Awards, the Pioneer Award, and the prestigious Inkpot Award from San Diego ComiCon. He is listed in the 50th anniversary edition of Who's Who in America.
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