Tesla's Signal (26 page)

“Nikola, listen to me.” She gazed deeply into his eyes. “When something bothers you, you try to escape from it by repeating behaviors. Washing your hands, calculating food volume, multiplying by threes―”

He looked away. “I'm sorry...that's just the way I am.”

“No. What happened to 'your mind is the engine; your will is the driver'? Don't tell me you couldn't control those quirks of yours if you tried.”

“S...sorry. I just...” He massaged his temples. “That show back there. The screen...”

“Yes. That was one scary show.”

“You see, Clara? I
wasn't
crazy. They really
are
after me.”

“You were right, Niko. I'm sorry I doubted you.
Now
what do we do?”

Now what do we do?
Her question bounced back and forth inside his head. The urge overpowered him, to run...anywhere.
They
could be watching from every window in every building. He could feel their eyes and probing instruments, their irresistible commands in his head. His hand crept to the scar at the back of his neck.

“Have to hide. The Martians want me dead and I'm about to have one of my breakdowns. I can feel the signs. But this time I won't go down.
No
.” He squeezed his head, trying to force himself back together. “I'm not going crazy again. I
am
the driver. I can do whatever I set out to do,” he told himself. “As a boy I almost died when I fell into the...I almost drowned but I mastered myself...used the principles of science to escape...” Niko covered his eyes and walked in a circle, trying to keep the interior light flashes at bay. “It's better to stay somewhere dark and hidden. Yes―I know a place. Come.”

He began walking as fast as he dared, and Clara held onto his arm to keep up. Every passer-by seemed to be an enemy.

When they reached Bowery Street, Niko led them down the stairs of a subway station, into a square of blackness. “This station was never finished. There was a corruption scandal―the Tammany Hall bosses made off with the funds.” He took out a tiny bulb attached to a coil of wire. It illuminated their way with a bright light. “They did run power lines though. That was considerate of them.”

Clara traced the cracks in the wall with her fingers. “How'd you know about this place?”

“After I saw that Morgan wanted to bury me, I took note of some places in New York where I might find refuge if I needed to. I left supplies. Extra equipment, batteries.”

The tiny light gave them a circle of brightness, like a candle. Within this circle they sat down and rested in the quiet: no crowds, no trains rumbling back and forth.

“Niko, who was that Shelia woman? Have you seen her before?”

“I think so. I just got a flash of...a feeling. She made my skin crawl.”

“Did she try to...get
familiar
with you? If she did, I'll give her
a knuckle sandwich,
as my gangster friend Jake likes to say.” Clara made a fist.  

He grinned in spite of everything. “Dear Clara, you are the toughest hellcat in New York.” Niko could not actually recall what had happened with Shelia...and he did not want to recover the memory.

“Come, let's charge up.” He opened his pack while Clara pulled her gear out of an oversized handbag. They laid out the watches, receivers, transmitters, the sonic umbrella and the other gadgets they had built. Niko put on a pair of thick gloves and opened a panel on the wall. After making a ground connection, he attached a clamp to the electric cable.

Clara chuckled. “Stealing electricity...my my, you certainly are a dangerous criminal.”

“It is not
stealing.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I'll
just
borrow
a few volts, that's all.”

“It's great to see you feeling better. A life of crime suits you well.”

Niko sighed. “Not really. I'm too old for this life...brawling, hiding from the law. I need to make some plans.” He connected a wire to his induction gun and set it down to charge. “I need to find allies―people I can trust.”

“Don't you have any connections with influential folks?”

“Not anymore. After Morgan blacklisted me, most of them dropped me like a hot potato.” He mentally took inventory. “J.J. Astor, Stan White...they haven't returned my calls. Mark Twain is off in Chicago. The Johnsons...well, they're still friends...”

“The ones who just took us to the Opera? I don't think you can trust them anymore.
'Once you go to the Silver Chamber, you're never the same'
—that's what those girls said.”

She told him about the women at her Theremin concert. “They acted like drug addicts...they didn't seem in their right minds. And their eyes had a funny silver glow.”

“Yes. I saw the same thing at the Engineers' Club.” He shut his eyes, recalling. “Michael Pupin's eyes had that color. Several others too. They acted irrational...wouldn't listen to a word I said.”
 

“That screen at the Opera House,” Clara said. “It reminded me of that glowing sphere the Martians tried to install on Wardenclyffe Tower. Perhaps it's the same thing.”

“You're right. It
is
the same thing!” They stared at each other, horrified, as the truth became clear. “The screen emits a frequency...it does something to the mind. A kind of hypnosis...” He began pacing, hugging his arms. “These Martians are taking control of peoples minds. It
wasn't
just my imagination.”

“So
that's
what they were doing up there on the Tower,” Clara cried.

“Yes. Their Orb...they plan to broadcast their hypnotic frequency and make the whole world into one huge Silver Chamber. And...” for a second Niko could not make himself finish. “They want to get their hands on
me...
because...because I somehow escaped their control.”

His fists closed around the induction gun as he tried to suppress his terror. He visualized a device like a transformer. But instead of converting voltage, it converted fear into anger.
“Whatever they're trying to do, I won't let them.”

“We've got to warn people to stay away from those shows,” Clara said.

“Yes. Perhaps a radio broadcast. I'll ask Hugo if I can borrow some radio equipment.”

He began to pace in a circle. “I'll show those bastards who's a 'mad scientist'.
They
have a frequency? Well
I
can produce a frequency too. I'm a dangerous man—I can destroy a building with an oscillator.” His hands clenched into fists. “They have flying ships? Well I have the plans for those too. They can wreck bridges with their death ray? My Teleforce ray will bring down a whole fleet of enemy aircraft—as soon as I can build it. By all the saints, I'll fight them.”

Clara smiled, pointing a finger. “That's more like it. Less
'crazy'
and more
'I will do'.”
 

But Niko realized that his words were just empty boasts. To do what he had proclaimed, he would have to undergo a radical change.

He would have to stop being a weak man—the kind of coward who hid behind comforting rituals: meticulous hand-washing, aversion to germs... counting and quantifying and fixating on the number three.

There would be no time for hand-washing when the Martians came after him.

Nikola resolved to become as strong as steel. “I will do it—I swear by the Holy Trinity.” He made the sign of the Cross, as his father used to do. “You shall be my witness, Clara. I make a holy vow by every saint, and by the memory of my beloved mother and father and all of my ancestors—that I will make Swiss cheese out of those monsters. I won't rest until I have wiped them from this Earth.”

“Amen
. That's
my Nikola!” Clara applauded, her eyes shining. “But you're wrong about one thing, Mister.” She stared at him, eyeball to eyeball. “It won't be just you. You need
me,
Niko―for my skills, and just...because it's too big for one person. We have to do it together.”

“No, no, no.” He shook his head back and forth. “Clara, these aliens mean to kill me. And that's just what I deserve. All of this is my fault—I
invited
them here.” For one second he gripped his head, willing himself to die and somehow undo the harm he had caused. “I have no choice but to fight them, if it means my death, or worse. But you...” he held out his hands. “You're innocent. For your own safety, you shouldn't get involved. There's no reason you have to die too. ”

She put her hands on her hips. “You shut your mouth. You're not getting rid of me. My family was slaughtered by Cossacks. I couldn't do anything to save them.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Not this time. I'm going to fight back.”

They stared into each other's eyes with burning intensity. “Very well,” said Niko. “I guess there's no point trying to get you to see reason. All right then—we'll  go into battle together.”

He forgot his reluctance to touch another. His trembling fingertips met hers.

15: Attention New York

“Here, Niko, I got you some new threads. For the best-dressed man in New York.” Grinning, she handed him a battered hat and a bundle of ill-fitting charity clothing.

“What? You want me to wear
these
rags? What did you do...raid a trash bin?”

She affected an injured expression. “For your information, while you were taking a little catnap, I went up to a very prestigious Salvation Army shelter on 2nd Avenue. It's just what you need. The famous Dr. Tesla wouldn't dream of being seen in clothes like these. You look like a thousand other refugees down on their luck.”

Niko ran a palm over his stubbled cheek. “Yes. My luck has been been poor lately.”

They emerged and passed a shoeshine stand. Next to it, a pile of newspapers blared out the headlines.
Tesla Derails Train, Starts Riot at Engineers' Club, Causes Blackout in Lower Manhattan.
This time an artist had done a rendering of the Mad Scientist looming over the city, clutching a train car in each hand. It looked so silly that Niko burst out laughing. “I'm also guilty of causing rainy days and the grippe.”

“You have to admit, they did a pretty good likeness of you.”

“Certainly not. I'm much more handsome than that.” He groomed his mustache with a finger.

***

“I haven't been to this area in quite a few years.” On his arrival in America he had lived here in the Lower East Side, in a tenement crammed with other immigrants—but then he had risen in the world. “It's become even more crowded since I left.”

“Yes. Because of the pogroms,” she told him. “Everyone is leaving the
shtetl.
Whole villages are emptying out.”

The streets were so overflowing with humanity it was difficult to make one's way through. They dodged pushcarts, wagons, vendors of fish and vegetables who cried their wares in multiple foreign languages. Hordes of immigrants crowded the streets—gesturing, shouting, conducting business. Grimy, ragged children swarmed about.

“Nobody will look at you twice here, Niko. I guarantee it.”

Storefronts proclaimed their wares in Yiddish, Russian, English and other languages.
Dry Goods, Kosher Butcher, Ladies Corsets.
Above, clotheslines stretched across streets. Housewives leaned out of windows and shook dust out of mops. Niko thought about germs and then realized it was far too late.

They passed garment-industry establishments where immigrant women streamed in and out with armfuls of piecework. They passed noisy and smoky factories of many sorts, and at last Clara stopped at a large fenced yard filled with sheet metal and piles of spools.
Lowes Metal Works,
said the sign.

“Well, here we are. Home sweet home.” At the storefront office, she shooed away two boys who sat on the steps playing dice. “Ike, you and your friend get lost awhile.”

Niko had to stoop to enter the low-ceilinged room. It reminded him of  his first lab—except his lab had been spotlessly clean and neatly organized. This place was a hodge-podge of scrap metal, tools, molds, horseshoes, containers—and a quilt in one corner, behind a counter.

“See?” Clara pointed to the corner.“That's where I've slept, ever since I was a girl. And those are my most valuable possessions.” There, stacked neatly on the quilt, were about 50 issues of Hugo Gernsback's magazine,
The Electrical Experimenter.
 

“Clara!” a voice boomed. Out came Abraham Lowe, a balding fellow with a bushy black beard. A leather apron covered his brawny chest. His bulging muscles strained to carry a huge bin full of scrap. “Clara, look what I—” He caught sight of Niko and put the bin down.