Tesla's Attic (9781423155126) (14 page)

T
he fact that Vince knew the location and religious affiliation of every mortuary in town was one of those things he never thought would come in handy—unless, of course, he was ever lucky enough to witness a multicar pileup or a high-casualty natural disaster. Still, he couldn't help but know. His mind was a spring-loaded, bloodstained steel trap when it came to tidbits of morbidity.

Being that Svedberg was a Scandinavian name, and that all the Scandinavians he knew were Lutheran, Vince reasoned that Svedberg would be chilling at the Clausing & Corkery Mortuary, in preparation for a funeral later in the week.

“Hey, Nick,” said Vince as they approached the quaint Victorian mortuary. “Looks kind of like your house, doesn't it?” And noticing Nick's discomfort at the suggestion, he said, “Don't worry, I'm sure any bodies at your house are unintentional.”

“Let's just get in and get out,” Nick said.

“So,” asked Caitlin, “how are we going to get in?”

Vince handed the heavy wet cell to Nick. “The side door has a sticky lock when the weather's been wet,” Vince said. “Sometimes it doesn't fully engage and can be jimmied open with a credit card.”

“How do you know this?” Caitlin asked, a slight tremor in her voice.

“Well, sometimes when I can't sleep—”

“Stop right there.” Caitlin put up her hand. “My disturbing-image meter is already in the red with the first half of that sentence.”

Vince shrugged, and he reminded himself that personal information should really only be shared on a need-to-know basis.

The side door, not used by the general public, was neglected and weather worn. Vince put his hand on the doorknob to steady it, and just as he said, the door opened with a little credit-card tinkering.

“Voilà,” Vince said, holding the door wide. The others hesitated, not yet ready to step into the dark space beyond the open door. “Don't be such lightweights,” he said. “There's nothing in there but death.” And he strode into the void, knowing they would follow if he led the way.

Vince felt his way down the hall until he reached the alarm panel. From experience he knew he had thirty seconds to disarm the security system. He had once tripped it accidentally, and then he hid and watched the security guard enter the code.

Vince heard the others enter the hallway behind him and the steel door creak closed as he punched in the numbers by the light of his iPhone.

“They've got a rent-a-cop who comes by once an hour or so,” he explained.

“There's no security here now?” whispered Nick, looking around.

“Nah,” Vince said. “It's not like the guests here need hand-holding. We should be okay, but keep your ears peeled in case anyone comes in.”

“
Eyes
peeled;
ears
to the ground,” Caitlin corrected him, unnerved. “Keep your expressions straight.”

“Just be listening,” Vince told them.

He led them down a stairway and into the prep room. Various tools of the trade hung on the walls, and a sink table was set smack in the middle of a green tiled floor.

Vince held out his hands. “This is where it happens, people. The Egyptians did it with sea salt and linen. But now it's formaldehyde and stainless steel.”

“Dude,” said Nick. “Enough.”

“Right.” Vince noted that not everyone had as healthy a perspective on life and death as he did. “Let's take a look in the chill drawers, shall we?”

He led them across the room to a series of square refrigerator doors set into the wall. Nick and Caitlin kept a nervous distance.

“Just tell us when you find him,” Nick said. Caitlin's eyes were closed, and Nick was looking down at the oversize battery in his hands, clearly to avoid having to look anywhere else.

Vince sighed. “I guess I'll do this part.” Without hesitation, he opened the first of many doors holding the mortuary's current clientele.

The first two drawers held women. Vince could tell without even having to look at the toe tags.

The third and fourth drawers were empty. And the fifth held the prize.

Vince pulled the steel tray out all the way. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I give you the late Mr. Svedberg.” And he pulled off the sheet with the flourish of a magician.

Nick and Caitlin cautiously approached as Vince inspected him. He had the standard look of death. Nothing remarkable about him or the disposition of his remains.

“Sometimes,” Vince said, pointing to Svedberg's face, “they've got one eye open and it's like they're winking at you.”

Caitlin let out an audible shudder at the thought.

“Just do it,” said Nick, holding out the battery.

Vince fished in his pockets for the insulated wires, attached one end of each to the wet cell, and held the other ends over Svedberg's chest. He took a deep breath, realizing this was nothing like a fish, or a frog, or a possum. Vince knew this would truly be a life-defining moment for him. Life-defining and death-defying, he thought, in a very literal way.

Then he touched the electrodes to Svedberg's chest.

The most annoying thing about being reanimated, Alfred Svedberg was quick to discover, was not the foul mood one finds oneself in; nor was it the acrid smell of embalming fluid. Instead it was a sudden and overpowering craving for corned beef and cabbage, both of which are good sources of iron. Since the dead are anemic, what with their blood being drained and all, the oft-referred-to zombie penchant for human brains is nothing more than a legitimate craving that could easily be satisfied with spinach.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Svedberg asked. “Can't you see I'm busy?”

Svedberg spontaneously knew that he was dead. Realization of one's own death must be a universal component of reanimation, although further research would be required to prove it.

“Mr. Svedberg,” said a girl. He didn't recognize her at first, because of the angle of his view: somewhat upside down. “We're sorry to bother you. But you were going to give us some important information before you…that is to say, before you…”

“Before I was murdered? Is that what you're trying to say?”

“So it
was
murder,” said a boy standing next to her, holding some square apparatus that Svedberg immediately knew was the source of his unexpected life energy.

Now he identified two of the kids. They had come to see him shortly before his death. Young Caitlin Westfield and Nick something. And it made him furious.

“Why should I talk to you? It's because of you that I was killed! I had so many plans, so many years ahead of me—”

“Not anymore,” said the boy holding the electrodes to his chest. “The best you can do now is make a difference. Maybe even point the finger at the people who did this to you.”

Svedberg had less interest in vengeance than in getting back to being deceased, from which he had been so rudely interrupted. But it was obvious this trio was not going anywhere until he gave them something.

“Fine,” he said. He tried to cross his arms, but he found them both very stiff, as if he had double tennis elbow that no amount of physical therapy could cure. And though his jaw felt a little bit looser, this conversation was a struggle no postmortem personage should be subjected to.

“Please, Mr. Svedberg,” said Nick. “We need to know about the Accelerati.”

“Do you have any idea what they'll do to me?” Svedberg asked.

“Uh, what more could they do to you?” asked Caitlin.

Svedberg had to admit she had a point. “If I tell you, will you let me rest in peace already?”

They nodded, and so he began.

And whoever said, “Dead men tell no tales,” had never met Alfred Svedberg.

“My grandfather wasn't just a jeweler. He was a gemologist. He studied precious gems. He actually synthesized the first artificial diamond, which you call cubic zirconia. Of course, he never got credit. As a member of the Accelerati, he was bound to a code of anonymity. Although he was never supposed to speak of it, not even to his family, he confided in me just a few days before he died.

“The Accelerati began more than a hundred years ago, according to my grandfather. It was an honor society, created by the man history claims to be the greatest inventor of all time: Thomas Alva Edison.

“As the story goes, Edison grew tired of the pompous posturing and mundane concerns of other wealthy businessmen. He wanted a society of intellectuals, scientists, inventors, and great thinkers who could and would change the world. But from the very beginning, Edison had an agenda. The Accelerati were never about enlightenment. They were the dark side of genius, the secret shadow of invention. For the Accelerati it always was, and always will be, about power. Not some vague, idealistic grasp at control, no—but power in the literal sense. Electricity, fuel, the very energy that drives our world. Edison's goal was to control everything from production, to delivery, to consumption—and he almost succeeded. There is a reason why nearly every American power company has Edison as part of its name.

“Oh, there was no question that he was brilliant, both as an inventor and a businessman, but he fell one level short of the genius it would take to truly master the world's energy supply. That's why he created the Accelerati, co-opting the brainpower of some of the world's greatest minds. Minds who were the equals of Einstein, Fermi, or Bohr, but names you'll never hear because of the Acceleratis' vow of anonymity.

“It was they who detonated the first atomic bomb, a mile beneath Harvard, years before Oppenheimer began his experiments. It was they who broadcast the first television signal, when the public was just beginning to accept radio. And when a member went astray, it was they who, like the hand of God, would wipe that person out, and sometimes their entire neighborhood, in a freak ‘accident' or natural disaster that had nothing natural about it at all. It was a warning to its members that crossing the Accelerati was met with the severest of consequences.

“Even after Edison was gone, the Accelerati continued their quest for energy—with results as glorious as microwave transmission, and disasters like Chernobyl. My grandfather played the loyal member to protect his family, long after he realized what they were. Once they had the secret patent on the artificial diamond—one of many ways to finance their cause—the Accelerati had little use for him, so they let him be.

“It was an attempt to harness geothermal energy that did them in. In their arrogance, they had gathered in 1980 to witness the dawn of a new era, toasting their own brilliance as their geothermal engine tapped the core of a dormant volcano. It malfunctioned, and the Accelerati were killed in the resulting explosion—an event known to the world as the ‘eruption' of Mount St. Helens.

“Some years later my grandfather died thinking the Accelerati were gone, disappearing into their own most-deserved anonymity. I thought so, too, until you brought me that pin. I should have picked up and left that very moment. I was foolish enough to think they might not be watching. But they're always watching. I saw him through the glass door of my shop, shortly after you left. A tall man in a white suit, with a remote control in his hand. Did you know that a universal remote control could be recalibrated to the electrical signature of a human heart? No? Neither did I.”

The dead man was silent after that, looking rather sour about the whole thing. Nick was both relieved by the light he had cast and terrified of its scope.

“Tesla and Edison hated each other,” Nick pointed out.

“Envy,” Svedberg said, “is a powerful motivator. Tesla had what Edison lacked: that highest level of transcendental genius. He was the one scientist who could have made all of Edison's dreams come true. The Accelerati were always trying to get their hands on his secret inventions, but they never could.”

Nick looked at the others, but they kept their eyes fixed on Svedberg, who laughed as something seemed to occur to him.

“My grandfather told me a legend that the greatest of Tesla's inventions are hidden right here in Colorado Springs, disguised as ordinary household items.” He shook his head. “People will believe anything.”

Then he paused for a moment, his smile fading as he turned his eyes to the wet cell that was, for the moment, keeping him alive.

“Oh,” was all he said.

Caitlin then pulled the diamond ring out of her pocket—the last remnant of the man's shop—and she placed it in his hand, forcing his stiff fingers to close around it. Nick could see her eyes were filled with tears.

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Svedberg,” she said. “You're here because of me. I did this to you, and I'll never forgive myself.”

“Well, young Miss Westfield, because you and your mother have always been so kind to me, I'll give you something few people, if any, ever receive. Absolute forgiveness from beyond the grave.”

“Technically,” offered Vince, “you're not in the grave yet.”