Tesla (57 page)

The walls of smoke swirled on the paths. The monuments grew bigger as they approached the center. Watching his every step, Tesla passed by columns and sarcophagi of pink granite. Venerable names were inscribed on small classic temples or pseudo-Byzantine chapels.

They walked behind the coffin covered with deathly garlands. “Flowers are the way the earth laughs,” a poet said.
What does it laugh at?
Tesla wondered. He was dizzy. It seemed to him that the breeze of nonexistence—rather than the wind of this world—touched him. The pug-nosed Swezey supported him the whole time. Tesla did not like anyone to touch him, but he could not help it this time. His step, always so light, now barely made sufficient contact with the earth to hold him down.

You’re not bound to your body, and one day you’ll be able to observe your own skull with modest interest like an object on the table.

Madame Blavatsky told him that.

They passed through otherworldly luxury.

A square mausoleum resembled Morgan’s library. It was inscribed:
Robert Underwood Johnson.

In his mind Tesla saw the marble nose and the heavy mustache that flowed into the beard. He remembered Luka’s passionate advice: There’s no happiness outside the community of humans.

And his Katharine…

Breathless from a sudden burst of laughter, she squeezed her glowing cheeks between her palms. That laughter turned around the Electricity Pavilion once, and all the men attending took a ride on it. Her entire ear fit into Robert’s mouth. Robert kissed her on her heart and her stomach when she was pregnant. She used to say that a man and a woman, embracing, created a fortress in the cold universe. She believed in outbursts of emotions like cloudbursts of rain.

There she lay in safety, surrounded by the urns of her four dogs.

Katharine was a sailboat with sails full of wind. Robert was an anchor.

They had what he never had. Because…

There’s no happiness outside the community of human order!

Something else became clear to Tesla:

There is no happiness within it either…

Agnes squeezed his arm and said, “Both Mom and Dad are here. I’m not afraid of death anymore because now I have some of my own over there.”

A chest pain echoed those words. All of it was too much for him. From the outside, he looked as cold as an iguana. His soul—whose existence Buddhists deny—pained him relentlessly.

Swezey gave him a ride to the New Yorker Hotel, which looked like a stocky ziggurat.

He almost carried him to his room.

Tesla forgot to close the door to Suite 3327. The draft slammed it.

The next day, the Do Not Disturb sign appeared on the door.

Dane visited him every night.

His fainting spells never stopped.

CHAPTER 122

The War of the Worlds

Show to them… the blinding thunderbolt and they will never ask you for either the Beauty or the Good.

La Brier

The musical theme of the Mercury Theatre rang above the clink of silverware in Tesla’s New Yorker Hotel. The announcer’s voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theatre and star of these broadcasts…”

“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own,” Orson Welles intoned. “We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

Tesla started to show some signs of interest in the broadcast when the announcer’s voice became distinct from the fog: “We now take you to the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra…”

While Ramón Raquello tried to entertain him, Tesla was told that there was a phone call waiting for him. Mr. Dučić and Petar Čubrić, the consul from Gary, Indiana, called from there to tell him that the news that he agreed to be the patron of the local church was received with great joy. In raised voices, they read excerpts from the American Srbobran over the phone.

“Our world-renowned patron greets our world-renowned Gary! This morning
, the Srbobran
received a historical wire from Gary which reads: A great honor has been bestowed on our famous city,”
the bull-like voice bellowed over the phone.
“Our great genius NIKOLA TESLA agreed to be the patron of our Gary temple, which will be consecrated on November 24.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” The patron acknowledged them in a muffled voice.

“But how about this?” Dučić shouted.
“In our opinion, there’s no greater genius in the history of mankind, the one who has made the life of ordinary people easier, than Nikola Tesla.”

To them, everything was crystal clear. Tesla was a Serb, born of a Serbian mother, a Serbian genius who drew his inspiration from his Serbdom, so great Serbian thoughts occurred to him—a Serb!

“Thank you.”

“They say that at one point all the factories in America broke down, and you fixed them all. And they say that you spend every night in Lika.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“But how about this…”

Tesla went back to the dining hall. As soon as he drew up his chair, the announcer spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the latest bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. Toronto, Canada: Professor Morse… reports observing a total of three explosions on the planet Mars… . This confirms earlier reports received from American observatories. Now… comes a special announcement from Trenton, New Jersey, [where] a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill.

“We have dispatched a special mobile unit to the scene, and will have our commentator, Carl Phillips, give you a word description as soon as he can reach there from Princeton.”

The announcer shook off the burden of concern and sighed in relief: “In the meantime, we take you to the Hotel Martinet in Brooklyn, where Bobby Millette and his orchestra are offering a program of dance music.”

The pouting clarinets played swing for only twenty seconds.

A light tenor blared above them: “We take you now to Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”

Voices buzzed in the background, and police sirens screamed, as a voice out of breath joined in from New Jersey:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Carl Phillips again, at the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey… Well, I… I hardly know where to begin… . Well, I just got here. I haven’t had a chance to look around yet,” Phillips said. “Yes, I guess that’s the… thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with terrific force. The ground is covered with splinters of a tree it must have struck on its way down. What I can see of the… object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor, at least not the meteors I’ve seen.”

Tesla waved to the waiter: “Please, bring it.”

The waiter smiled and brought him a silver mug of coffee that the old man sniffed with his eyes closed, but did not drink.

Carl Phillips continued: “Now, ladies and gentlemen, there’s something I haven’t mentioned in all this excitement, but now it’s becoming more distinct. Perhaps you’ve caught it already on your radio. Listen… It’s a curious scratching sound. The professor here thinks it comes from the unequal cooling of its surface. But no…”

Voices: “She’s movin’! Look, the darn thing’s unscrewing!… It’s red hot, they’ll burn to a cinder!… Keep those idiots back!”

On the radio, a piece of metal rang as it fell.

The competent and tragic voice of Carl Phillips announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed… Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or… something… . It might be a face. It might be…

“Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large, large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… Ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so horrible… The crowd falls back now. They’ve seen plenty. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can’t find words… I’ll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I can take a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be right back in a minute.”

The voice faded out into the sound of the piano.

Having been preoccupied with the broadcast, Tesla remembered himself. He smiled and turned around as if he wanted to say: What’s going on?

Carl Phillips came back and reported: “A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. There’s a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they’re turning into flame!”

Screams and unearthly shrieks came from the loudspeaker.

“Now the whole field’s caught fire,” Carl Phillips wailed.

An explosion cut him short.

Several people shrieked in the dining hall. A woman at the next table covered her mouth with her hands. A man with a small mustache pulled a girl toward the exit.

The sudden silence was interrupted by the announcer: “Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill.”

Tesla gave a slight smile. His infallible memory recognized the text. He smelled the coffee one more time and went to wash his face. He heard the maître d’hôtel whispering to two younger waiters: “One should keep a cool head.”

A chubby man ran downstairs, leaving his wife and child behind.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” pleaded the white-haired black receptionist.

There was an indescribable mess around the exit door.

Instead of going out into the street, Tesla returned to the dining hall just in time to hear the metallic voice of General Montgomery Smith.

“I have been requested by the governor of New Jersey to place the counties of Mercer and Middlesex as far west as Princeton, and east to Jamesburg, under martial law.”

Fresh as a rose, the announcer cut in: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.”

Tesla smiled darkly.

“The battle which took place at Grovers Mill ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors. The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray.”

The father of the laser gun laughed loudly at those words.

“The monster is now in control of the middle section of New Jersey and has effectively cut the state through its center. Communication lines are down from Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean. Railroad tracks are torn and service from New York to Philadelphia discontinued… Highways to the north, south, and west are clogged with frantic human traffic….

“Langham Field, Virginia: Scouting planes report three Martian machines visible above treetops, moving north towards Somerville with population fleeing ahead of them. Heat ray not in use; although advancing at express-train speed, invaders pick their way carefully. They seem to be making conscious effort to avoid destruction of cities and countryside. However, they stop to uproot power lines, bridges, and railroad tracks….

“Here is a bulletin from Basking Ridge, New Jersey: Coon hunters have stumbled on a second cylinder similar to the first embedded in the great swamp twenty miles south of Morristown.”

Bells were ringing over the city, and then gradually diminished.

The announcer’s voice reflected the gravity of the moment: “I’m speaking from the roof of the Broadcasting Building, New York City. The bells you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as the Martians…”

Someone screamed in the hall. None of the hypnotized rose to their feet.

“Estimated in last two hours three million people have moved out along the roads to the north, Hutchison River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic. Avoid bridges to Long Island… hopelessly jammed. All communication with Jersey shore closed ten minutes ago. No more defenses. Our army wiped out… artillery, air force, everything wiped out. This may be the last broadcast. We’ll stay here to the end.”

Over the speakers, voices were singing hymns.